William H. Willimon - "Homecoming" (April 23, 2000)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Woman | It's from the Gospel according to | 0:03 |
Saint Mark, the sixteenth chapter. | 0:05 | |
When the Sabbath was over Mary Magdalene | 0:10 | |
and Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices, | 0:13 | |
so that they might go and anoint Him. | 0:18 | |
And very early on the first day of the week | 0:22 | |
when the sun had risen they went to the tomb. | 0:26 | |
They had been saying to one another | 0:31 | |
who will roll away the stone for us | 0:33 | |
from the entrance to the tomb. | 0:35 | |
When they looked up they saw that the stone | 0:39 | |
which was very large had already been rolled back. | 0:42 | |
As they entered the tomb they saw a young man | 0:48 | |
dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. | 0:52 | |
And they were alarmed. But he said to them, | 0:56 | |
"Do not be alarmed. You are looking for | 1:00 | |
"Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. | 1:04 | |
"He has been raised. He is not here. | 1:08 | |
"Look there is the place they laid Him. | 1:13 | |
"But go, tell His disciples and Peter, | 1:17 | |
"that He is going ahead of you to Galilee. | 1:21 | |
"There you will see Him, just as He told you. | 1:25 | |
"This is the word of the Lord." | 1:30 | |
Congregation | Thanks be to God. | 1:33 |
Pastor | I want to speak to those of you who are going | 1:43 |
through grief like the death of someone you love. | 1:48 | |
Which by my reckoning includes just about everybody here. | 1:55 | |
For some, your pain is still acute. | 2:03 | |
Others found that the ache of your loss gradually receded. | 2:08 | |
You got up, you went on, but still often when you | 2:15 | |
least expect grief still grips you. | 2:22 | |
And again you realize that there are not many | 2:28 | |
days in this life where there is not loss. | 2:31 | |
Those whom we love keep leaving. | 2:38 | |
Keep journeying into that land from | 2:42 | |
which no traveler ever returns. | 2:46 | |
Emily Dickinson spoke of that hour | 2:51 | |
of lead when grief drags down, | 2:54 | |
despite our determined efforts to rise. | 3:00 | |
My friend Stuart, for whom I still grieve. | 3:06 | |
Once showed me a photograph of his parents. | 3:10 | |
By this time they had been gone at least two decades. | 3:14 | |
And he said, "And I miss them every day." | 3:18 | |
Stuart told me of once opening a book | 3:25 | |
and discovering there a mere grocery list | 3:28 | |
written in his mothers hand and he said, | 3:32 | |
"Twenty years later, just seeing that, | 3:36 | |
I was still utterly undone." | 3:40 | |
When Virgil shows Dante down to the Land of the Dead | 3:45 | |
Dante says, he marveled at the magnitude of those departed. | 3:51 | |
He said, "I had not known that death had undone so many." | 3:58 | |
When tragedy struck Littleton, a gaggle of grief counselors | 4:06 | |
descended upon Columbine High, urging grievers to talk | 4:11 | |
it out, to express the hurt, to weep. | 4:15 | |
Reassuring the bereaved this was therapeutic. | 4:17 | |
Really? | 4:23 | |
After the tears, after the rage, after the complaint. | 4:27 | |
What do you do with grief? | 4:33 | |
What, what is there to be said to the grief? | 4:35 | |
Something more is needed than just expressing the grief. | 4:40 | |
After the rage, after the trite that well meaning | 4:47 | |
consolations of friends, after the therapeutic tears. | 4:51 | |
Great deaths still sits enthroned saying, "I won." | 4:58 | |
Paul says, "Christians do not grieve as those who | 5:08 | |
"have no hope. We still grieve, yes, but not with out hope." | 5:13 | |
And what hope when those who we love keep | 5:22 | |
slipping from our loving grasp and journeying | 5:26 | |
into that land from which no traveler ever returned. | 5:30 | |
Jesus told a story about a father who had two sons. | 5:36 | |
The youngest son demanded an inheritance | 5:45 | |
that he may leave home and go out into, | 5:48 | |
in Jesus' evocative phrase, the far country. | 5:53 | |
The imputant little wretch as youngest son he had no claim | 5:59 | |
to anything that his father owned. | 6:03 | |
But surprise! | 6:07 | |
The father, Jesus said, divided his entire living, | 6:09 | |
his whole life, and the boy promptly slipped | 6:14 | |
out into the far country where he wasted every | 6:19 | |
cent of his inheritance on booze and bad women. | 6:22 | |
Eventually, in hunger and want, Jesus says, | 6:28 | |
the boy came to himself, he said, " I die hear. | 6:34 | |
"And yet I have a home and I have a father | 6:42 | |
"who's servants have it better than I. | 6:46 | |
"I will rise, I will go home." | 6:52 | |
And when he was a long way off, Jesus said, | 6:57 | |
the father saw and ran and embraced him. | 7:00 | |
That father who must have been waiting a long time | 7:07 | |
for his wastrel son to return, grieving for him. | 7:09 | |
Now the father cried, "Come celebrate with me, | 7:15 | |
my son who was dead is alive!" | 7:20 | |
You've probably heard this story before, | 7:27 | |
you know that when the stuff-shirted high SAT scoring | 7:29 | |
older brother refused to come in and party with | 7:31 | |
his prodigal, the jubilant father replied, | 7:35 | |
"Your brother who was dead is a live." | 7:42 | |
You wonder how long the father had been waiting | 7:48 | |
for the dead son to rise and come home. | 7:50 | |
You wonder how the father waited. | 7:55 | |
For all he knew his son was dead. | 7:59 | |
You can just hear helpful friends saying, | 8:04 | |
"Well you've got to face facts. | 8:10 | |
"You've got to get up, you've got to go on. | 8:12 | |
"You need to focus on your older boy | 8:16 | |
"who is still here with you." | 8:18 | |
And yet Jesus said, still the father waited. | 8:20 | |
I can tell you that being a Pastor around here, | 8:26 | |
there is just about no worse duty than telling | 8:31 | |
a parent about the loss of a child. | 8:36 | |
When their student, son, or daughter has died. | 8:40 | |
I expect that the prodigal son was | 8:44 | |
about the age of Duke sophomores. | 8:47 | |
Such grief the father must have felt. | 8:51 | |
The son was still alive in the far country, | 8:55 | |
but the father didn't know that, | 8:58 | |
and still the father waited and he looked down | 9:00 | |
that road in front of the house, | 9:04 | |
still straining to see, hoping for sight of his son. | 9:06 | |
Now we call this story, The Story of the Prodigal Son, | 9:13 | |
but Jesus doesn't call it anything. | 9:17 | |
We might just as well call it, | 9:22 | |
The Story of the Prodigal Father, that is the | 9:23 | |
prodigal that is reckless, extravagant father. | 9:27 | |
And he is, when the boy left home the father | 9:33 | |
extravagantly gave him his entire living. | 9:36 | |
And when his lost son finally returned | 9:40 | |
the father even more recklessly gave him a party. | 9:43 | |
He loved his son extravagantly upon leaving | 9:50 | |
and loved him even more prodigally upon return. | 9:53 | |
I think it's a parable about the love of God | 10:01 | |
that reckless, effusive, extravagant love. | 10:06 | |
It is told by the Savior, who when the wine ran low at the | 10:11 | |
wedding at Cana made a 150 gallons more. | 10:18 | |
I'm a Methodist, I don't know, but still | 10:23 | |
that's got to be a lot of wine. | 10:24 | |
When the bread and the fish gave out in the wilderness, | 10:28 | |
Jesus said, "Look the baskets are full, | 10:33 | |
"it's got to be enough to serve at least five thousand." | 10:35 | |
You will note that love tends toward | 10:40 | |
prodigality, abundance, excess. | 10:42 | |
I respect grief, that's excessive, | 10:49 | |
at prodigal screaming and flailing grievers. | 10:55 | |
Those grievers do just seem to get over, | 10:59 | |
get through grief the fastest. | 11:03 | |
When Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus had died, | 11:08 | |
Jesus wept bitterly and the crowd seeing | 11:11 | |
Jesus weep said, "See how he loved him." | 11:14 | |
Great grief accompanies great loss. | 11:22 | |
That poor uptight, do right older brother | 11:28 | |
in Jesus' story was such a miser, | 11:31 | |
when he got word of this awesome party going on at the | 11:34 | |
big house to welcome his wayward little brother home, | 11:37 | |
"A party and on a Sunday!" | 11:41 | |
In our worst moments we've got | 11:46 | |
this kind of miserly view of life. | 11:48 | |
Life is measured, it is finite, it is terminal, | 11:51 | |
three score and ten says the Bible. | 11:54 | |
Life begins with such potential and then it waste. | 11:58 | |
Waste away to nearly nothing just a few faded memories, | 12:02 | |
a photograph or two and then the hour of lead. | 12:07 | |
The journey into the far country from | 12:14 | |
whence no traveler ever returns. | 12:18 | |
And friends tell us to face facts, admit defeat, | 12:24 | |
let go, stiff upper lip, life goes on. | 12:26 | |
What they mean is grief goes on. | 12:32 | |
But, but what if the story that Jesus told is true? | 12:37 | |
What if God is a prodigal? | 12:44 | |
A father who when it comes to life holds nothing back. | 12:48 | |
Well what then? | 12:52 | |
The father loved the absent son abundantly, | 12:54 | |
when he was away as when he was back home. | 12:57 | |
The father waited in confident expectation | 13:00 | |
that the good-as-dead son would return, would be home, | 13:03 | |
and then the party could begin. | 13:08 | |
With my son who was dead is alive. | 13:11 | |
This is talk of resurrection. It's time to put | 13:20 | |
our grief in context, we grieve yes. | 13:24 | |
And our grief is testimonial to what | 13:29 | |
a good gift life is that God has given. | 13:32 | |
There is grief because death is real. | 13:36 | |
And yet our grief is framed by the conviction | 13:41 | |
that the same God who so recklessly, | 13:47 | |
extravagantly over flowed in giving life shall | 13:50 | |
continue to give life even in death. | 13:55 | |
The father waits, confident that the far | 13:59 | |
country of death shall not have the last word. | 14:05 | |
The father waits ready to give life | 14:08 | |
abundantly more than we deserve life. | 14:11 | |
Not because of who we are but because it is | 14:15 | |
the nature of this God to love extravagantly. | 14:19 | |
Listen to the story, those whom we have loved and died. | 14:26 | |
And have left us, have left us to come home. | 14:32 | |
The God who gave them now embraces them in eternity. | 14:39 | |
And they await us to join the party. | 14:44 | |
Grief is not the last word, the last word is home. | 14:49 | |
And then we find what we thought was home | 14:57 | |
namely here wasn't home, this was only a weigh station. | 15:01 | |
And what we thought was the end, namely death, | 15:08 | |
was in Christ the beginning. | 15:12 | |
And what we thought was unredeemable loss, | 15:16 | |
death, is in Christ homecoming. | 15:19 | |
Would you note that The Story of | 15:26 | |
the Prodigal Son has no ending. | 15:29 | |
We wonder, did the older brother ever let go | 15:33 | |
of his sniveling logic, relax, relent, join the party. | 15:37 | |
We wonder if the younger son ever learned from his mistakes | 15:43 | |
and got more mature and responsible. | 15:47 | |
We don't know, Jesus doesn't let us peak inside the party. | 15:50 | |
All we know is that both boys are finally safe at home. | 15:57 | |
All we know is that the father has at last got himself | 16:02 | |
what he always wanted, a family at home. | 16:06 | |
Maybe the story doesn't end because it's eternal? | 16:12 | |
We know when the party began but | 16:16 | |
for all we know it never ends. | 16:18 | |
The end is depicted by Jesus as an eternal party. | 16:23 | |
For those sons and daughters who once were dead | 16:28 | |
but now alive, lost but now found. | 16:32 | |
The ones we love and whom death seems so cruelly to have | 16:37 | |
snatched are not lost but found, not dead but alive. | 16:40 | |
In a God who shall not let miserly | 16:47 | |
death defeat divine extravagance. | 16:50 | |
What we experience is the pain of giving them up to that | 16:53 | |
dark country is through the eyes of faith homecoming. | 16:57 | |
Look at all that God has gone through for us | 17:04 | |
down through the ages, to find us and embrace us. | 17:08 | |
Shall death defeat the purposes of such an extravagant God? | 17:14 | |
In the darkness of grief, women came to the | 17:22 | |
tomb for the dead body of Jesus. | 17:25 | |
Hear the words spoken, "Do not be alarmed. | 17:31 | |
You're looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was | 17:34 | |
crucified, well he's not here. | 17:36 | |
He's raised, he's going on ahead of you." | 17:39 | |
Going on ahead of you...where? | 17:42 | |
Towards the end of John's Gospel Jesus told his disciples | 17:48 | |
he was leaving them and they were sad. | 17:53 | |
And then Jesus said, "I'm going to prepare a place for you | 17:56 | |
"that one day you may come too." | 18:02 | |
Our hope in life, in death is that the same God who | 18:07 | |
raised Jesus may condescend to raise us as well. | 18:13 | |
Beginning the week after my mother died | 18:21 | |
I had this recurring dream and in my dream, I was back home. | 18:26 | |
It was a home designed and built by my mother | 18:32 | |
whose every inch she cherished, whose every corner spoke | 18:37 | |
to her of creativity and her love of beauty. | 18:41 | |
I remember being pleased that I was dreaming of home. | 18:46 | |
Because I expected she would be there. | 18:52 | |
And I would move from room to room in my dream | 18:55 | |
and I would be surprised to see every detail, every book on | 18:58 | |
the shelf just as I remembered it from childhood. | 19:02 | |
But then I would wake up and I would realize | 19:07 | |
that my mother had never appeared in the dream. | 19:10 | |
Night after night, this dream. | 19:14 | |
I kept thinking she would eventually reappear | 19:16 | |
in this place that she loved but she never did. | 19:20 | |
Finally, it dawned on me, it wasn't a dream about my | 19:26 | |
being back home again, it was a dream about her being home. | 19:32 | |
Not at our home but at God's. | 19:40 | |
She was now safe, embraced, at home with the God | 19:46 | |
who had loved her in life now forever. | 19:52 | |
She was at home in a place prepared for her. | 19:57 | |
It wasn't a dream about my misty long forgotten past, | 20:04 | |
it was a dream about a still unfolding, | 20:11 | |
unconstrained, extravagant future. | 20:14 | |
From this far country of grief and death. | 20:19 | |
She was home and by God's grace so shall we. | 20:25 | |
Christ is not here, he is gone on | 20:33 | |
to prepare a place for us, | 20:39 | |
home. | 20:43 |