Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 23, 2024

Road Trip

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Genesis 12:1–3
Luke 15:11–18

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Codi and Hallie are young adults and sisters in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Animal Dreams. It’s the 1980s, and Hallie gets an itch for the road and goes off to Nicaragua. It was during the Contra War. Hallie writes a letter to her sister and tries to explain why she is in Nicaragua.

“Codi, here’s what I’ve decided: the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. … What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I’m living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides. I can’t tell you how good it feels.” (Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams, p. 299).

Her travels opened her eyes to truth about the world and truth about herself. It’s the kind of thing we learn on the road.

Jesus knew about that. It shows up in our scripture today. Listen:

“There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country.”

The prodigal takes a road trip. There has always been a draw to the open road, the wheel in our hand, no map — heads Carolina, tails California — just discover what’s waiting. It’s freedom; but often what drives this journey is hunger. We are searching for something. This hunger shows up in our books, movies, and songs.

The classics like Odysseus and his journey home after the fall of Troy.

Not unlike the novel Cold Mountain, as Inman tries to find his way home near the end of the Civil War.

There’s Huck Finn, all but forced on the road of the mighty Mississippi.

And there’s Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, driven on a journey of revenge.

There’s Tom Jode in Grapes of Wrath, driving until he can find a place that makes room for him in this world.

There’s Canterbury Tales and Life of Pi, Lord of the Rings, and even Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go. The hunger for a road trip is pretty common.

Willie Nelson can’t wait to get “On the Road Again.”

For Rascal Flatts “Life Is a Highway.”

And the Boss sings “Tramps like Us Were Born to Run.”

Before any of that, St. Augustine put it this way: “Our hearts are restless.” Augustine believes that’s the way God has made us.

With a yearning for something else, something new, something beyond what we know now.

Which means, that road trip is ultimately not about a new place, but a new self. As Thomas Foster says, the reason for the journey is always self-discovery. (Thomas Foster, How to Read Like a Professor, p. 3).

The way we say it today is we want a life that is authentic. We want to live in a way that matters. That hunger is what creates the restlessness and puts us on the road.

Because when we can’t find that life where we are, we have to go where an authentic life can be found. Like the song in Hamilton, “In New York you can be a new man.” We are in search of the new person, the authentic life.

If I understand the text, that’s what the prodigal wants. He is on the road to find something he can’t find at home. Home is too confining.

It was philosopher Martin Heidegger who said we must battle to keep from being absorbed by the masses with whom we live. He says we risk falling in the ruts that have been worn by the crowds, and our life being lost among a nonspecific “them.” We want to construct a life that is our own, independent, unique. This is what Heidegger says is authentic. We march to the beat of our own drummer. We all have those dreams, Heidegger says.

I get that. When I was a kid, I was pretty sure I would grow up to play second base for the Atlanta Braves. Which meant I would have to be an astronaut during the off-season. More realistically, I also considered being a preacher, but even those dreams were a bit fanciful. At five years of age, the seat on the swing set in the backyard was the perfect height for a pulpit. So, I preached to our dog. My dad came home, heard me offering the benediction in my soprano voice. He said, “Tom, are you pretending to be your father?” I said, “No man, not you. I’m Billy Graham.” We dream big, or better said, dream of a big life.

But somewhere along the way, if we are fortunate, we fail to become that rock star or movie star or sports god. If we are fortunate, our stars shine in lesser skies. And we begin to look for a life defined less by its size and more by its meaning.

That’s more than enough to put us on the road.

The prodigal is no hero for most interpreters, and that’s justified. When you ask your dad for your inheritance when the old man is still living, it’s the equivalent of saying, “I wish you were dead.” That might explain the prodigal’s desire to get out of town as well as why dad might be willing to go along. Doesn’t sound like their relationship was the best.

But there is something else about the boy that’s worth noting. It takes some courage to head out. Our guy has some guts, we have to give him that. If you have ever looked at your life and realized you are not who you want to be, it takes courage to do something about that. St Augustine says, “God created us with restless hearts.” But to hit the road to soothe that restlessness takes courage.

If I understand it, we are restless because we know we are called to live as Christ lived. Jesus evidently believed that we could be a people who could go the second mile, forgive seventy times seven, turn the other cheek, speak grace, choose hope, and live as grown-ups in an immature world. He believed that’s who we could be. But the gap between who Christ calls us to be and who we are now — that gap is what launches us on the journey. But it takes courage.

Our prodigal had courage. And that courage led him to a surprising discovery. The story continues:

“When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, …”’”

When he came to himself, it says. That’s what he has been looking for. He went out to find himself. When he came to himself — ironically, his first thoughts were of his dad. That old man whom we wished were dead. The man he needed to escape, the man who symbolized his own confinement. He comes to himself, and his first words are “father.”

He hits the road, because to be himself he can’t stay home. He must be independent, on his own. He’s got to make his own way. He needs to shake off the chains, the restrictions, the confinement of the old place.

But when he comes to himself his first word is “father.”

Father is a relational word. It is a word of belonging. If I understand the text, a spiritual lesson of the road is that we can’t be who we are called to be alone; our ultimate restlessness is to know we belong.

The prodigal hasn’t fully figured it out yet; he’s still on the journey, for he says, “I’m willing to be your servant.” But even there, he is thinking of himself not alone, independent, but he is defining himself by his relationships.

We live in a culture so committed to individualism, to marching to our own drummer. David Brooks describes our time as a time of “hyper-individualism.” As we said last week, the result is we live in a very lonely culture.

Marina Keegan died in an automobile accident a few days after she graduated from Yale University. After she died, her parents published a book of her essays. She writes, “We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. … What I am grateful to have found at Yale and what I am scared of losing after commencement is … this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team.” She continues, “When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar” (Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness, p. 1). It’s the opposite of loneliness.

Our restlessness, our ultimate restlessness, is to trust that we belong in this world. And, I believe, the key to healthy relationships with one another is to remember, to trust, that we are already claimed by God. St. Augustine said it this way: “O God, you have created us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you” (Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.1, p. 3).

Jesus was clear that a characteristic of God is that we are claimed, we belong.

The story continues:

“The father said, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe — the best one — and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.”

I was taking a walk in my neighborhood back in Kansas City. It was a fall night, about dusk. A mom was in her front yard with her young son, three years old maybe. He was running on little pudgy legs and saying, “You can’t catch me. You can’t catch me.”

And she was doing that slow-motion chase like a parent does: “I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna get you.”

And he ran, and as she got closer, he squealed and laughed.

“You can’t catch me.”

If you think he wanted to escape, you have no idea what’s going on. The whole point is to be caught, to be scooped up in the arms of love, to know in your marrow that you are claimed, that you belong.

It’s no accident that in our theology our spiritual journey begins at the baptismal font, where we are lifted up and before the whole world it is proclaimed “You are a child of God. You belong in this world and there is a place for you in this world, because you are claimed by a holy love that calls you by name.”

You may run. You may say, “You can’t catch me.” But there is no escaping this love. Rest in that.

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church