3/6/16
When our youngest child, Harry, was a little boy, he was not only a very skilled negotiator, he had an instinct for it, he looked for opportunities. Just after he turned six years old in 2000, a friend gave me four tickets to the first World Series game between the Mets and the Yankees; and when Harry found out that he wasn’t going (the game began after his bedtime) he howled – for about twenty minutes. But when it became clear to him that wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he immediately calmed down and began to negotiate himself a deal, which ended up being: two good souvenirs (no pens, no keyrings); tickets to a Knick game that winter; and (this was the kicker) the next time the Olympics were in the U.S., tickets to the diving competition. (I have yet to pay off on that one.)
When he was a little younger, this instinct for negotiation had showed up on a different subject. He sat me down one day and asked me, Who do you love the most: me, Betty, or Sam? And I said that’s an impossible question to answer, Harry. And he said, Well, you have to answer it. I said, Actually, I don’t, but it’s an impossible question to answer: I love you more than anything, I love Betty more than anything, I love Sam more than anything, that’s the way love is. He said, No, you have to pick one. So I said, Okay, look at it this way, Harry, who do you love more, me or Mommy? And he said, Mommy.
Harry was operating here on the zero-sum principle: which is, if you’ve got a birthday cake, you can ask for a bigger slice, but the size of the cake isn’t going to change, so the bigger the slice you get, the smaller somebody else’s is going to be. He was acting on the understanding, which people unfortunately sometimes seem to have, that love is a zero-sum proposition; and evidently he thought that, once he’d found out who got the biggest slice of love from me, if it wasn’t him, he could negotiate his way there; and, if not, negotiate a price that would satisfy him (and probably penalize me at the same time.)
I have always loved this story about Harry, though it has been painfully embarrassing to him for years – he outgrew that understanding of love a long time ago (though he’s still a very good negotiator.) Love is not a zero-sum proposition; and if we see it working that way it’s a sure sign there’s something wrong. Love offers the whole cake, not just a slice. This is because all real love, of whatever kind – parent to child, child to parent, spouse to spouse, friend to friend – is a reflection of God’s love, alive in us. However imperfectly we live it out, that’s how love is born. The seed of human love is God’s love.
Today, the fourth Sunday of Lent, is traditionally known as Laetare Sunday. “Laetare” is the Latin for “rejoice”, which is the first word of the introit that opens the Roman Catholic rite for today, from Isaiah: “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her.” This runs against the grain of Lent, the season of repentance, on purpose: historically, this day was conceived as a day when the church could give itself a break from the normal Lenten rigors. We’re allowed to use rose-colored vestments today if we want (I don’t); weddings, which were otherwise banned during Lent, could be performed on this day; and, traditionally, we give our servants this day off to visit their mothers (that’s where mine are today.)
In all seriousness, though: in honor of this tradition, today let us rejoice as we behold the love of God. The lectionary leads us in this direction in the gospel reading.
The parable of the prodigal son is one of the best-known, and best-loved, stories in the Bible. Partly that’s because, simply as a piece of literature, it’s such a good story: the plot has twists and turns, and there are extremes of emotion that are authentic, we instinctively believe them, the story is truthful that way. Partly it’s because we recognize these characters: the one who rebels against the life he’s always known, wants to get completely away from it, and does, for better or worse; the one (in this story it happens to be the same one) who throws away his inheritance, whether it’s money, or education, or upbringing, or family itself; the one who feels unrecognized and unappreciated, to the point of betrayal, for having lived life the way he’d always been told he was supposed to. We’ve either seen something of these characters in our lives, or been one of them, somewhere along the line.
But more than anything else, as people of faith, we love this story because of what it tells us about the love of God: the father who sees his son returning: the son who left him, for whatever reason, good or bad, it doesn’t matter to the father, he just knows the feeling of absence: the father who sees his son returning, for whatever reason, good or bad, it doesn’t matter, he just feels the joy; sees him from a long way away and doesn’t wait for an explanation, it doesn’t matter: sees him and runs, this old man runs to him (and the way an old man runs, that would be quite a sight), throws his arms around him and kisses him; when his son stammers out the first line of the explanation he’s rehearsed, the father doesn’t wait for the rest of it, doesn’t even seem to have heard his son at all, or care, but turns immediately to his servants and tells them to get the best he’s got, they’re going to have the biggest party he’s ever thrown; and when his older son says, I’ve always stood by you, and you’ve never done anything like this for me, he answers, You are always with me, and all that I have is yours.
Taken as a whole, this is a picture of the love of God: unconditional, unbounded, beyond any expectation we could possibly have, beyond any possibility of our deserving: the opposite of zero-sum. This isn’t just the whole cake, it’s the bakery. And we can feel it’s the truth because we have that seed within us.
It’s important to do this – to behold the love of God – not simply to give ourselves a break on the fourth Sunday of Lent. Think about how differently we would look at life – how differently we would live – if we really carried that understanding of God’s love with us, day in and day out. If we really understood that that’s how we’re forgiven, how much easier it would be for us to forgive; how much more easily we’d be disposed to spread God’s love around (to be “in Christ”, in Paul’s favorite phrase.)
This knowledge of God’s infinite, unremitting love for all of us, all the time, is at the heart of Jesus’ most difficult command, the hardest thing he asks us to do: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
The sun that gives light, and warmth, and life; the rain that gives water, and sustenance, and life. The truth is that when we sin – when we go wrong, when we misunderstand, when we cause pain, when we’re insensitive, when we’re self-centered, and selfish – when we sin – God just loves us harder. It’s the only way out. And it’s right there, all the time. Let us rejoice, indeed. Thanks be to God.
When our youngest child, Harry, was a little boy, he was not only a very skilled negotiator, he had an instinct for it, he looked for opportunities. Just after he turned six years old in 2000, a friend gave me four tickets to the first World Series game between the Mets and the Yankees; and when Harry found out that he wasn’t going (the game began after his bedtime) he howled – for about twenty minutes. But when it became clear to him that wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he immediately calmed down and began to negotiate himself a deal, which ended up being: two good souvenirs (no pens, no keyrings); tickets to a Knick game that winter; and (this was the kicker) the next time the Olympics were in the U.S., tickets to the diving competition. (I have yet to pay off on that one.)
When he was a little younger, this instinct for negotiation had showed up on a different subject. He sat me down one day and asked me, Who do you love the most: me, Betty, or Sam? And I said that’s an impossible question to answer, Harry. And he said, Well, you have to answer it. I said, Actually, I don’t, but it’s an impossible question to answer: I love you more than anything, I love Betty more than anything, I love Sam more than anything, that’s the way love is. He said, No, you have to pick one. So I said, Okay, look at it this way, Harry, who do you love more, me or Mommy? And he said, Mommy.
Harry was operating here on the zero-sum principle: which is, if you’ve got a birthday cake, you can ask for a bigger slice, but the size of the cake isn’t going to change, so the bigger the slice you get, the smaller somebody else’s is going to be. He was acting on the understanding, which people unfortunately sometimes seem to have, that love is a zero-sum proposition; and evidently he thought that, once he’d found out who got the biggest slice of love from me, if it wasn’t him, he could negotiate his way there; and, if not, negotiate a price that would satisfy him (and probably penalize me at the same time.)
I have always loved this story about Harry, though it has been painfully embarrassing to him for years – he outgrew that understanding of love a long time ago (though he’s still a very good negotiator.) Love is not a zero-sum proposition; and if we see it working that way it’s a sure sign there’s something wrong. Love offers the whole cake, not just a slice. This is because all real love, of whatever kind – parent to child, child to parent, spouse to spouse, friend to friend – is a reflection of God’s love, alive in us. However imperfectly we live it out, that’s how love is born. The seed of human love is God’s love.
Today, the fourth Sunday of Lent, is traditionally known as Laetare Sunday. “Laetare” is the Latin for “rejoice”, which is the first word of the introit that opens the Roman Catholic rite for today, from Isaiah: “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her.” This runs against the grain of Lent, the season of repentance, on purpose: historically, this day was conceived as a day when the church could give itself a break from the normal Lenten rigors. We’re allowed to use rose-colored vestments today if we want (I don’t); weddings, which were otherwise banned during Lent, could be performed on this day; and, traditionally, we give our servants this day off to visit their mothers (that’s where mine are today.)
In all seriousness, though: in honor of this tradition, today let us rejoice as we behold the love of God. The lectionary leads us in this direction in the gospel reading.
The parable of the prodigal son is one of the best-known, and best-loved, stories in the Bible. Partly that’s because, simply as a piece of literature, it’s such a good story: the plot has twists and turns, and there are extremes of emotion that are authentic, we instinctively believe them, the story is truthful that way. Partly it’s because we recognize these characters: the one who rebels against the life he’s always known, wants to get completely away from it, and does, for better or worse; the one (in this story it happens to be the same one) who throws away his inheritance, whether it’s money, or education, or upbringing, or family itself; the one who feels unrecognized and unappreciated, to the point of betrayal, for having lived life the way he’d always been told he was supposed to. We’ve either seen something of these characters in our lives, or been one of them, somewhere along the line.
But more than anything else, as people of faith, we love this story because of what it tells us about the love of God: the father who sees his son returning: the son who left him, for whatever reason, good or bad, it doesn’t matter to the father, he just knows the feeling of absence: the father who sees his son returning, for whatever reason, good or bad, it doesn’t matter, he just feels the joy; sees him from a long way away and doesn’t wait for an explanation, it doesn’t matter: sees him and runs, this old man runs to him (and the way an old man runs, that would be quite a sight), throws his arms around him and kisses him; when his son stammers out the first line of the explanation he’s rehearsed, the father doesn’t wait for the rest of it, doesn’t even seem to have heard his son at all, or care, but turns immediately to his servants and tells them to get the best he’s got, they’re going to have the biggest party he’s ever thrown; and when his older son says, I’ve always stood by you, and you’ve never done anything like this for me, he answers, You are always with me, and all that I have is yours.
Taken as a whole, this is a picture of the love of God: unconditional, unbounded, beyond any expectation we could possibly have, beyond any possibility of our deserving: the opposite of zero-sum. This isn’t just the whole cake, it’s the bakery. And we can feel it’s the truth because we have that seed within us.
It’s important to do this – to behold the love of God – not simply to give ourselves a break on the fourth Sunday of Lent. Think about how differently we would look at life – how differently we would live – if we really carried that understanding of God’s love with us, day in and day out. If we really understood that that’s how we’re forgiven, how much easier it would be for us to forgive; how much more easily we’d be disposed to spread God’s love around (to be “in Christ”, in Paul’s favorite phrase.)
This knowledge of God’s infinite, unremitting love for all of us, all the time, is at the heart of Jesus’ most difficult command, the hardest thing he asks us to do: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
The sun that gives light, and warmth, and life; the rain that gives water, and sustenance, and life. The truth is that when we sin – when we go wrong, when we misunderstand, when we cause pain, when we’re insensitive, when we’re self-centered, and selfish – when we sin – God just loves us harder. It’s the only way out. And it’s right there, all the time. Let us rejoice, indeed. Thanks be to God.