Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 16, 2024

It Can be a Hard Word to Say

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Isaiah 40:28–31
Luke 15:25–32

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The national holiday Juneteenth is this week. You know the significance. Years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the last remaining enslaved people were told that, after generations of enslavement, at long last slavery had come to an end. The former enslaved person is declared by law a citizen and, if our theology of baptism is to be believed, also a sibling.

Some wish to scrub such remembrances from our civic life, deeming them insignificant or irrelevant. But when we make the choice to endeavor to see the full humanity of another, that is never insignificant or irrelevant.

Ken Burns tells of an interview with James Baldwin. Baldwin noted that no person was ever born who chose to be a slave. No person ever accepted it. Slavery has always been imposed from without. Baldwin continued, ironically, every day there are those who enslave themselves with self-deception, with lies and presumed superiorities. Burns said that Baldwin was making not just a political but a spiritual point: the enemy is often us (Ken Burns, Graduation Speech at Brandeis University, 2024). We are often a people who imprison ourselves with our deceptions.

Do you think that’s true?

To put it in terms of our theology, the promise of our baptism is sometimes hard to trust — not just that I am a child of God, but so is everyone else, which means we are siblings.

Jesus says there was a man who had two sons. You know the story, but you wouldn’t have to know the story to know that trouble is coming. If you have two boys there’s going to be trouble. The first brothers were Cain and Abel — just two and one kills the other one. Then there’s Jacob and Esau. Jacob snookers Esau out of all the good stuff. Joseph and his brothers have issues. Admittedly Joseph could be hard to take, talking about his dreams every morning at breakfast, but they didn’t have to sell him into slavery. That’s a bit harsh. When a man has two sons, there is going to be trouble. Happy Father’s Day!

These two sons that Jesus speaks of have spiritual challenges. Jesus focuses on the younger one first, but I will wait to reflect on him next week. Today we reflect on the elder brother.

When we meet him, he is livid and refuses to come to the party. He has learned that the baby who ran off with everything has come home, and rather than being grounded or having his curfew reinstated, he is being treated like some visiting dignitary. Contrastingly, the elder brother has stayed home, done his chores, followed the rules, taught Sunday school, and volunteered at the after-school reading program. He was a Presbyterian, obviously. Well, Dad hasn’t thrown a party for him as long as he can remember.

If you are a firstborn, like me, then you recognize this typical pattern of undeserved favor lavished upon the baby. Parents can’t help it.

Dad goes out to the elder brother and pleads with him, “You are always with me and all I have is yours” (well, what’s left of it anyway, because he’s already given half of it away!).

But the elder brother has words with the old man. “I have been the good son, but when this son of yours comes home, as if you haven’t already given him enough, you kill the fatted calf for him?”

I told you with two boys there was going to be trouble.

The vocabulary, or I should say, the lack of vocabulary from the elder brother is telling. When he speaks of his younger brother, the word he can’t use is, well, brother. He doesn’t say, “When my brother comes home.” No, it’s “this son of yours.” If I understand the text, that’s the point. Brother, sister, sibling — it can be a hard word to say sometimes.

I get it. I have a brother. I have told you about my brother Gene. We also have a baby brother, Jim. It is good Presbyterian theology to believe that each one of us is born with a purpose in life, a reason for being. And for the longest time it appears that Jim’s purpose in life was to get on my nerves. He excelled at that.

And when, with the kindness that is common among brothers who are the firstborn, I would point out that he should repent, you know what he would do? Tell mom. She would send me to my room. I suffered this sort of persecution for years.

But in time, I got him back. It was just the two of us at home. Mom had gone out. Mom told me, “I’ll be away a while. You’re in charge.” Jim was upstairs taking a bath. I yelled upstairs and told Jim I was going next door to shoot basketball with Danny Martin. I went next door, but Danny wasn’t home. So, I came back, but Jim didn’t know I was back in the house. This struck me as an opportunity. I began to climb the stairs. It was an old house, and the stairs creaked. From the tub he heard me and yelled, “Tom, is that you?” I didn’t say anything. I just took another step. It creaked. “Tom, you better tell me that’s you, I’m gonna tell Mom!” I didn’t say anything. I just took another step, and that’s when I heard him jumping out of the tub. I assumed he was going to lock the door, but before he could, I threw open the door and yelled “Haaaaa!”

He wasn’t in there. I knew he couldn’t have been raptured, but he wasn’t in there.

That’s when I saw the curtains move. He had climbed out the second-floor window. There was just this little awning over the front steps. I ran downstairs, opened the front door, and there was my brother hanging off of that awning, and let’s just say he was not dressed for the occasion.

I was thinking, well, this is awkward. But that is the moment my mother returned home, and faster than an Olympic qualifying time, she was out of the car, retrieved her naked son from off of the front of the house, looked at me, and said, “Go to your room.” I said, “Me? I’m not the one hanging off the front of the house.”

“Go to your room.”

I was sent to my room for most of the Carter Administration.

Being brothers can be challenging.

So, we can’t be surprised by the reaction of the elder brother here. He has been diligent in doing the home thing, and his kid brother who traveled the world to “find himself,” comes back and dad welcomes him home with rejoicing.

It’s grace, no doubt. But when grace is extended to the wrong folks, it can be offensive. It can leave the righteous feeling unappreciated. So much so that the elder, who has many good qualities, simply cannot see this young man as one to whom he is connected. He is not my brother, but this son of yours.

That simple shift in perspective is at the base of so much pain in the human story.

Commentators use many words to describe the elder. Arrogant. Pharisaic. Vengeful. Graceless. For me, he seems nothing more than lonely. Self-imposed loneliness. There is a party going on where he is wanted and loved, and he chooses to stand outside alone.

It was just over ten years ago that I began to see the data of how lonely this culture is. The AARP has reported that 35 percent of adults forty-five or older report being chronically lonely.

I read a report by Dr. John Cacioppo, who at the time was Director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago — perhaps some of you work with him or know him. His research revealed what he called an epidemic of loneliness. He reported that when we are lonely there are elevated levels of epinephrine, a stress hormone, in the body, and that white blood cell counts are altered. Loneliness even penetrates our cells. He writes, “When you are lonely, your whole body is lonely” (Dr. John Cacioppo, The Atlantic, May 2012).

A year ago the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, called loneliness an underappreciated health crisis. I shared this with the Cornerstones group earlier this month. The Surgeon General said we must prioritize building social connection the same way we have prioritized other critical public health issues such as tobacco, obesity, and substance use disorders (“How to Feel Less Lonely,” New York Times, 2 May 2023), because, the physical health consequences of insufficient social connection include an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia. Lacking social connection increases risk of premature death by more than 60 percent. It is comparable to smoking daily.

The father comes out and pleads with his son, “Come in. All that I have is yours!”

But the elder brother can’t claim the connection. He embraces a lie that he does not belong to the one who has come home. He does not belong because he is better than him or because he is superior in some fashion. But he cannot see what his father sees, so this one is not my brother, but this son of yours.

I think one of the most challenging teachings of Jesus is his insistence that we belong to one another, that we are in this journey of life with one another. We are not independent, but interdependent. It seems to me that the shutdown that we all experienced only exacerbated this social isolation.

You as a congregation have responded to this. You have said that one of the most important works of this church in the future is to be a place of connection, a place of friendship. And friendship has to be practiced. It has to be chosen, and it comes from seeing the full humanity in one another.

The father pleads, “You are with me, and all that I have is yours.”

Now some have tried to do the math. When dad says, “All I have is yours,” how much does dad have left? He’s already given half to the prodigal, and that’s gone. Now the fatted calf is also off the table — or on the table. It’s fair to wonder when he says, “All I have is yours,” what does he really have?

The text doesn’t say. As a matter of fact, the only thing the text says the old man has — well, you remember, there was a man who had two sons. That’s all he has.

There was a man who had two sons …

We might expect some trouble. But if I understand it, the gift of one another is also what saves us.

That’s a good thing to remember in this culture of loneliness. It’s a good thing to remember on this week of Juneteenth. This week we remember how important it is to see one another as citizens and, if the promise of our baptism is to be believed, as siblings.

There was a man who had two sons …

We know to expect trouble, but the gift of one another is what saves us.

Look around and see what God has, and all that God has given you …

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church