Micro-Premies and The Prodigal Son: A Message to the Women of the 22nd Graduating Class of the HOPE Program at Allegheny County Jail

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Luke 15:11-32

11 Then Jesus^* said, ‘There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The 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. ¹³A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. ¹⁴When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶He would gladly have filled himself with^*the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. ¹⁷But 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! ¹⁸I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’ ” ²⁰So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. ²¹Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”^*22But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.²³And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; ²⁴for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate.

25 ‘Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. ²⁷He replied, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” ²⁸Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. ²⁹But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.³⁰But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” ³¹Then the father^* said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³²But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” ’

At 28 weeks pregnant, I have officially compiled a list of things NOT to say to pregnant women.  

So here are a few:

1. Are you sure you’re not carrying twins? (YES, my doctor, my ultrasound technician and I are all sure it’s just ONE baby in there.  Trust us.)
2. You’re huge!  You look like you’re gonna pop! (Um, I have a lot farther to go!)
3. Has your doctor told you to go on a diet yet?
4. You don’t look as fat today as you did last week. (Well, that’s helpful...)
5. You need to put on more clothes; you need to hide that belly. (This belly ain’t goin’ away anytime soon...!)
6. You know, that belly isn’t yours anymore... (Then she proceeds to reach across the counter to rub my stomach!)
7. Stop working!  What are you doing here? You really should go home. (I’m pregnant, not sick!  I’ll never be this strong again in my life!)
8. You’re having another boy?  Oh, well, I guess you’ll be ok.
9. Whoop, you’re getting bigger! (well, duh, that’s kinda the point...)

Some people, though, have actually said some pretty helpful/nice things:

1. You’re looking really good
2. You look healthy
3. Can we bring you a meal when the baby comes?
4. Do you need any supplies?
5. How can we help?

It’s that “How can we help” that means the most to me, because I’m once again reminded that we can’t do this alone.  Raising a child is tough, exhausting work, and it really does take a village.

But the thing is, I don’t think we ever “grow up” to the point where we stop needing each other.

If my son were born today, at 28 weeks, he’d be considered “viable.”  Through the miracle of modern technology, he has a good chance that he’d survive. He’d be one of those “micro-preemies,” maybe 2 pounds, and rushed off to the NICU as soon as he came out.  But he would need a lot of help.  Due to underdeveloped lungs, he’d need to be on a ventilator.  Because he doesn’t have enough body fat, he wouldn’t be able to regulate his own temperature, and so would be put in an incubator. He’d have an underdeveloped “suck” reflex, and so would have to be fed with a feeding tube.  Due to his underdeveloped eyes, he’d be too sensitive to light, and so would need to wear patches over them.  He’d have to stay in the hospital for at least twelve more weeks.

But, with a lot of help, A LOT of intervention, he’d likely survive. But not without the doctors and the nurses and the technology and the parents, and the prayers and the community who loves him surrounding him and supporting him.

But not much will change once he’s born, really.  Sure, he’ll be able to breathe on his own, and he’ll be able to swallow, and his eyes won’t be so sensitive to light, but he’s still going to need a lot of help.  He’ll need to be fed, cleaned, to have his diapers changed, held, comforted, and loved.  He’ll need lots and lots of love.  And not just from me, his mom, but also his dad and his grandmas and grandpas and his church and his teachers.  He’s going to need lots and lots of help from others.

It’s so obvious when we look at an infant to see how much we rely on each other.  But when we get older, we buy into this illusion that we can do it all, all by ourselves.  We start to think that we are independent and can solve all of our own problems. We start to think that we’re weak if we ask someone for help.  Or, we’ve been hurt so often by others, we start to think that other people are only out there to take advantage of us, to hurt us, and so we never let anyone in.

This is where our story of the two brothers comes in.

Jesus, surrounded by the rejected in his society - the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the mentally ill, the poor - is telling stories.  And the Pharisees, the so-called “people who have it all together” criticize him. Why waste your time on “these” people? On the wasters and the failures and the lost?

In response, Jesus tells them this story:

There once was a man with two sons.

The younger son comes to the man and says, “Dad, I really want to party and play and not do any more work. Really, I just wish you were dead so that I could get my inheritance now, and not have to worry about working anymore. I’d rather have the money than be your son anymore.”

For strange, unknown reasons, the father gives him the money, his inheritance, early.

And what does this young son do with the cash?  He wastes it.  He spends it on booze and drugs and prostitutes, until there’s nothing left.  And now he’s lost and hungry and far away from home.

He’s so lost and hungry and far away from home, in fact, that he goes a step further in rejecting who he is. He starts to work at a pig farm.  Now for Jews at this time, this is as low as you can go.  In fact, for the Jewish community, it was better to die than to eat or even touch a pig.  But here he is, at a pig farm, so hungry that he wishes he could eat the food the pigs eat. And no one is around to help him.

The kid has hit bottom.  

And then, the text says, “he comes to himself.” He realizes who he is.  Who he really is.  He is not a drug addict or a prostitute or an alcoholic.  He’s his father’s son.  And yet.  He still doesn’t get what that means - He decides that if he just goes back to his father, maybe he could be a servant - at least that’s better than being covered in pig slop and sleeping in the fields.

So he heads home.  He finally realizes that he can’t do this all alone.  He needs help.

And he’s afraid and ashamed and embarrassed and nervous.  Imagine that long walk home.  Imagine what is going on in his mind as he prepares to confess his failures to his father.

And then imagine his face, imagine his emotions, as he sees his father, running towards him, hiking up his fancy robes, slipping through muddy fields, out of breath, until he finds him, and kisses him, embraces him, puts his coat around him, his ring on his son’s finger, his shoes on his son’s feet.  Imagine that astonishing scene.

The father sees his lost son again, and throws him a party.

But this is still the story of two sons.  I wish it were as easy as a lost son returning home and being welcomed with a party.  But it’s not.  There are people who have been hurt by what the son has done. People who are angry.  People who don’t understand.  People who are not yet ready to forgive.  

This is the case for the elder son.  

He’s done everything right.  He’s followed all the rules.  He’s done what he is supposed to do.  But it’s his reckless, drunk brother who gets the party.  What gives?

Like the the younger son, the elder son thinks he can do it all all by himself.  For all of these years, he’s done the work he’s supposed to do.  He’s obeyed the commands and been responsible for himself.  No, he hasn’t squandered his fortune, but he has tried to do it all on his own.  And because of that, he doesn’t understand forgiveness.  He doesn’t understand that he, too, needs others.

But the father embraces this son, too.  He calls him, “my dearest child.” And he tells this son that everything the father has is his.  

The father invites this son, too, into the party, into the community, into the family of folks who need each other in order to survive.

The father embraces both of the sons, not because they’re perfect or because they have it all together, but because it is exactly the opposite.  The father embraces them because they need to be embraced.  They need each other.  They need to be invited to the party and to be re-instituted into the community.

But the question is, a question that we are left with and the story doesn’t answer: will the two brothers accept each other?  Can they mend the hurt that has occurred between them?  

We don’t know. The story doesn’t say.  Jesus leaves it open.

What do these two brothers need to do in order to love each other again?  So much hurt and pain has occurred between these two, the gap between them seems so far apart that no bridge could ever connect them.

Maybe they need a little time.

They need some healing.

They need to process what has happened to them.

And mostly, they need a father who can bring them together, who can help them see how much they need each other.

You all have learned so much during your time with the HOPE program.

You all have changed and grown.  All for the better.  

You’ve been working so very hard.

And more hard work awaits you as you leave this place.  You’ll be tempted to go back to your former ways of living.  You’ll encounter lots of “older brothers” who will be so hurt and afraid and alone that they will judge you.  You’ll get tired, and you’ll feel like running away again.  But remember there is a God here for you, embracing you, kissing you, giving you the greatest gifts - the only gift - you really need - to know that you are loved, exactly for who you are, exactly where you are.  You’ve come to your senses; you’re returning back to who God made you to be - back to your beautiful strong self. But you’re going to need others.  We’re all tiny infants in the arms of God.  We all need lots and lots of help and support.  We need to know that we’re not alone. And some of us will need more help than others, and that’s ok. What’s important is that God works through the people around us.  Real community is one that enables you to be your best self, the self that God created you to be.  

So when you leave this place, for some of you that’s very soon, and for others, not for awhile, remember that we’re all about 28 weeks along in our birth journeys.  And we need lots of help. We need people to help us eat, people to help us breathe, people to help us find homes and jobs and people to help us get our kids back.  And each person that comes and helps is like a kiss from God, right on your neck.  That person is one more exclamation of God, “my child was dead, but is alive again!”  It is one more invitation back to the party. And maybe, when we’re back in the party, we’ll see opportunities to reconcile with those whom we have hurt.  But that’ll take some time, and some healing, and some guidance from the Father of us all.

A sinking ship or the missio dei?

I think maybe I am the last person who should be giving a sermon on Stewardship Sunday.   I’m the kid who has spent her entire life going to school - spending, rather than making - money. And I’m sure my in-laws are really looking forward to the day that ends. I’m the kid who thinks the best way to spend money is on comfortable shoes and good beer.  I’m the kid who is notorious at the seminary for arguing that most churches should blow their endowments. 

Seriously.  That’s what I think.  Of course, I don’t have a fiscally sound bone in my body, nor do I understand the complexities of dividends, trust funds, or annuities.  I don’t even know the differences between all those.  But I do know a little bit about church, and I know that the Presbyterian Church and the Christian Church as a whole, to quote my friend Pastor Jim Walker, is “the Titanic.”  It’s a sinking ship.  We are losing members at an astounding rate; some estimates claim that we have lost more than 50% of our population since the fifties.  Buildings are crumbling.  Congregations are shrinking, and in some places, pastors are stretched thin to meet the needs of up to five different congregations at once.

Just travel over to Hazelwood and you’ll see four different churches all within a block of each other, and all either dying or dead, boarded up, crumbling, abandoned. This ship is sinking. And we really should just grab the good silverware and jump into the lifeboats. The church - as we know it - as we are comfortable thinking of it - is dying.  And here we are treading water, trying to keep our doors open, trying to stay relevant.  

But of course, I’m also the kid who has spent countless hours parsing Greek verbs, reading Calvin, and arguing the benefits of infant baptism and weekly communion. I’m the one who is banking on the hope that there is something still living in this whole Christian Church thing. I’ve put my entire hope for my future, heck, for my son’s future, in this one crazy, dying, church basket.  From the outside, statistically, financially, and maybe in every other way, this is a very bad investment.  

Unless of course, you were to sit down with me over a cup of coffee, or a really dark stout, and chat with me about how much life I have received from doing what I’m doing.  I’d tell you about the people who come to the Table on Tuesday and Thursday nights at Hot Metal, about how they call me “Reverend” even though they know I’m not officially one yet. About Gail who drives thirty miles just for a meal, some friendship and to give me a huge hug and a smile as she says, “oooooh dear.”  I’d tell you about the women in the H.O.P.E. Pod at the jail, how they give me so much hope just by their stubborn tenacity and their willingness to share a little bit of their stories with me. I’d tell you about what it’s like to hang out with a group of young people, arguing over the superiority of different brands of ketchup, or eating Swedish Fish and cheese pizzas until we get sick, or that amazing moment when one of them opens up enough to talk about the pressures he or she feels from school and family and friends and society.  I’d tell you about the exhilaration and excitement I feel when a see a tiny chink of new life come through the words of tired Scripture.  

These are the investments that give me life. So, I guess my currency is just different. 

And maybe that’s why the traditional perspective of the story of the Widow’s Mite is so crazy-making for me.  We quickly rush to the assumption that Jesus is praising the widow for giving up everything she has - presumably, even the chance for her next meal - for the sake of the Church.  Look how much devotion and trust she has!  Look how committed!  Look how loyal!  We should all be like her!  We should all give up everything we have, to the point of absolute destitution, so that we can have the faith that she has.  But then we realize that we can’t, or we won’t, and then we give up on the giving and the vulnerability and the trust, and we blame practicality and go back to living our isolated, guaranteed, fiscally sound lives. If we look at the story this way, we’re still thinking with the currency of this world.

I don’t think Jesus wants us to be living on the brink of abject poverty any more than he wanted this widow to.  Just a few chapters earlier he criticizes the scribes and the Pharisees for putting their “Corban,” or their offering to God, above their parents’ physical needs.  In chapter 7, Jesus basically claims that our bodily needs are more important than our “offerings to God.” And I don’t think this is because Jesus thinks we shouldn’t offer anything to God.  I think it is because we are so very insistent upon differentiating and dividing our worlds.  We have separated our experiences into line items in order for them to fit in our budgeted lives: this much time goes to work, this much to family, this much to church, this much money goes to our cell phone bill, this much for our electric, this much for insurance, this much for NPR, this much for goats in Rwanda, this much to the church.  Everything has its perfect column, its perfect delineation - Its perfect allotment - it’s perfect limit.  Our lives are so subdivided that they have become pieces that we try to fit together to form into some kind of whole.  And heaven forbid we “go over budget.”

But I think Jesus wants us to understand that the currency of the Kingdom of God is completely different.  God’s currency is measured in wholeness.  And the only way to do that is to become a part of the missio dei - the Mission of God; and that probably means we’ll always be over budget. And I’m convinced it looks just like that picture on the communion table. And it’s just like that millisecond of joy I receive when a woman in my class at the jail “gets” that she doesn’t have to be a slave to her addiction, or her occupation, or the traumatic thing that has happened to her.  It looks like that messy moment when everyone is scrambling for their loaf of bread at the end of the meal at The Table. Or when our blind buddy, Brian, comes up for communion and ends up dipping half his fingers along with his entire piece bread into the cup. Or when I’m entirely exhausted and spent from the day of teaching and ministering and meeting and stretching out of my comfort zone that all I can do is watch reruns of the Gilmore Girls.  

A pastor friend of mine got an email last week from another pastor who was asking for help with a “membership” campaign.  Asking for clarification, my friend asked, “do you mean a stewardship, or a discipleship campaign?”  And the pastor said, “no, a “membership” campaign.  We just want more people to come to church.”

It sounds like he just wants better drive-thru statistics: “Welcome to Generic Christian Church USA, billions and billions served!”  The poor guy’s campaign is doomed from the start.  People don’t want “church.” We want community.  We want discipleship. We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.  We want to be participants in the Mission of God. 

This was clear to us when we had a community meeting in Stanton Heights to talk about the future of an abandoned church building.  Last April, the congregation just folded up and left, leaving its silk flowers and communion trays and donation envelopes behind.  But at this meeting, a cookout, more than eighty people showed up - and they all brought potato salad and haluski.  They voiced their opinions on what they wanted to do with this building.  Some wanted a “silver sneakers” program, others wanted an after school tutoring program, others wanted community meals, and still others wanted some space for yoga.

They were very clear, unanimous even, about what they didn’t want.  They did not want a church.  And yet. They want community.  They want discipleship. They want to be stewards of their community.  They want to be a part of a mission that is greater than themselves. What they really want...is church - to be a part of the missio dei, to be the Body of Christ in the world.

Being a part of the Mission of God really does mean giving money, or time, or our skills and talents. All that stuff is required. But it’s not the end in itself. Jesus’ disciples were told to give away their very coats if asked.  “Certain women” practically bank-rolled Jesus’ entire ministry operation.  Others offered their homes, shared meals, visited the sick and the dying, or went to distant lands on journeys of their own to spread the Good News.  So it’s not that God doesn’t want us to give; it is, in fact, that God wants more from us than our gifts or offerings.  God wants our very selves. God wants us “over budget.”  Can I be so bold as to say that God needs our very selves?  We are what God is doing in the world. And that’s how we’ve been created to be. 

We are invited to stop compartmentalizing, to stop differentiating what parts of our lives go where, and to see ourselves wholly - and holy - as children of God who are a part of the mission of God.  Are you getting it?  It’s a vitally important paradigm shift in our worldview.  It’s a shift away from budgets and line-items, to fullness, completeness, “over-budgeted-ness,” and ridiculous abundance.

Jesus tells the scribes, and tells us: “Beware of those people who are so devoted to one way of doing church that they start worshipping the institution and the traditions and the bricks and mortar instead of worshipping God. Beware the people who “give” only to improve and solidify their social and economic status. Beware of those people who just want warm pews and full collection baskets.  Beware of the people who claim there is just one way to participate in the Mission of God.  Beware of those people who make a poor widow feel so little of herself that she gives everything she has, even her very last meal, in order to support an institution that abuses and condemns her. 

Beware of ourselves, who, so often, define our worth, our identities, and even our faith on the currency of this world.  Don’t you see?” He says. “This woman here, with the two pennies we don’t even bother to pick up in the parking lot - she has given more than any of us.”

What if we lived our lives with the trust of this poor widow, but not a trust in buildings and furnaces and institutions or traditions but a trust in the Kingdom of God? - with a trust that we are invited to be a part of that Kingdom; we are invited into a grand community that explodes the boundaries of our carefully carved out and budgeted lives. What if?  

That is what stewardship is: participation in the Mission of God. It’s discipleship and communion. It’s active and it’s messy and complicated, and from the outside looking in, a really bad investment.  But for us, stewardship might mean keeping a roof over our heads and paying for staff to keep this community going.  It might mean prayerfully considering how we can use the resources we have - maybe even some of our endowment - to keep this community thriving and flourishing and participating in the Mission of God.  We have a lot of good silverware here; maybe it means gathering it up, jumping ship and building something new?  Maybe it means doing church differently?  Above all, it means listening deeply to the heart of God, listening deeply for the call of God to direct us and invite us to our part of God’s mission.  It means participating in, going “over budget” in our community - letting ourselves make mistakes, letting ourselves try new things, maybe even letting ourselves do something that to the outside world seems like a ridiculous idea, a poor investment, maybe even a “waste” of money.

May our stewardship escape the bounds of budgets and numbers and isolated line items.  May our stewardship permeate every aspect of our lives, so that we are all bringing all that we have to the Mission of God.  What an amazing gift that can be. What an amazing gift that is.  Thanks be to God.