{"id":672,"date":"2013-03-10T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T16:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=672"},"modified":"2021-02-25T09:21:54","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T14:21:54","slug":"a-prodigal-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/03\/10\/a-prodigal-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"A Prodigal Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke 15: 11<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the full service.<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Frontispiece<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Have you ever found yourself on the edge, verge or cusp of a new insight, or maybe even on the edge of a new life?<\/p>\n

How much do you need (to acquire, to achieve, to conquer) before you are open to God?\u00a0Open my eyes that I may see\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Maybe this winter morning, this Lenten hour, you too will have a prodigal thought, and you will come to your self.\u00a0 Such an interesting phrase.\u00a0\u00a0But when he came to himself\u2026On coming into his true self\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>There was a man who had two sons.\u00a0 Notice all that is not here, before us today.\u00a0 No incarnation.\u00a0 No pedagogy.\u00a0 No transfiguration.\u00a0 No temptation.\u00a0 No trial.\u00a0 No passion. No crucifixion.\u00a0 No resurrection.\u00a0 Only a story about a man with two sons.\u00a0 One who stays home.\u00a0 And one who goes away.\u00a0 Most of the listenership and most of the congregation today know this story, or at least have a vague lingering memory of some of it.\u00a0 With the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son is the most famous of Jesus\u2019 parables, and rightly so.\u00a0 It is the account of the lavish love, the personal love, the uncritical love, the joyful love, the parental love, the patient love, the courageous love, the magnanimous love, the ecstatic love, the gracious love\u2014the love of God. For you.\u00a0 God loves you.\u00a0 You are loved, so you can love.\u00a0 Because God loves me, I too can risk love.<\/p>\n

A Turn of Phrase<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Prodigal means extremely\u2014extremely something:\u00a0 wasteful, generous or abundant.\u00a0 The verb is (an Aorist participle):\u00a0\u00a0and coming (in) to himself <\/i>(a moment in time, a process in thought).\u00a0 \u201cFor till then he was beside himself, as all men are, so long as they are without God in the world.\u2019 (J Wesley).<\/p>\n

But notice that the gospel, love, is hinged today on a single phrase.\u00a0 After his travel and squandering, and before his return and reception, the prodigal has a thought, a prodigal thought at that.\u00a0 All of the gospel this Lord\u2019s Lenten day turns on a thought.\u00a0\u00a0When he came to himself\u2026When he thought to himself\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>Three pulpits ago Professor Roland Wolseley endured this minister\u2019s more youthful preaching.\u00a0 Now deceased, Dr Wolseley was the preeminent scholar in the field of African American journalism.\u00a0 Through his post at Syracuse University he almost singlehandedly created the discipline, through the publication of many books, the guidance of doctoral students, and a dogged, fierce love of his field, the struggling saintly newspapers and journals of the black community.\u00a0 Roland went to Medill in Chicago, at Northwestern.\u00a0 There, in his twenties he fell under the spell of my own greatest pulpit hero, Ernest Freemont Tittle, at Evanston First UMC, then the largest UMC in the country.\u00a0 Tittle, a pacifist, as was Wolseley, gathered a group of graduate students for fellowship and reconciliation.\u00a0 Wolseley met his wife, Bernice, there, and she went on to be for many years Tittle\u2019s secretary.\u00a0 You can read about Tittle in Robert Moats Miller\u2019s older biography, or in Christopher Evans more recent monograph.<\/p>\n

In those Syracuse years, Roland, a person of deep faith and quiet humor, would trace the work of Tittle in contrast and connection to what he was hearing.\u00a0 Occasionally, too occasionally, he would say, leaving church, \u2018Tittle would be proud\u00a0 of that one\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Another of those early 1940\u2019s graduate student couples, it happened, awaited us when we moved to Rochester, where Ruth and Vernon Lippitt then lived.\u00a0 These people, young in the forties, were mature the eighties and nineties, but had lost nothing of their early conviction, a combination of deep personal faith and active social involvement, found decades earlier, in the arm of a University congregation.\u00a0 Marsh Chapel:\u00a0 the seeds you plant today will flower and blossom and grow for decades, with telling affect.\u00a0 Faint not, fear not, flag not!<\/p>\n

Roland also kept us alive during administrative meetings, using punctuative humor.\u00a0 Our trustees usually hired the same painter, a fine painter named Bogus, when the decay of the building outran their native parsimony.\u00a0 When they couldn\u2019t wait any longer to the paint a room, they made a motion to \u2018hire Mr. Bogus\u2019.\u00a0 After the motion and second, with practiced timing, and with all knowing what was coming, yet unable not to laugh when it did\u2014some things are just funny for no real reason\u2014Dr. Wolseley would compliment the recent extravagance of the trustees in hiring Bogus, then add, speaking of Bogus, \u2018Is the is guy for real?\u2019\u00a0 In eleven years I think I heard that question thirty times\u2014\u2018Is Bogus for real\u2019?\u2014and yet it always made me smile.\u00a0 After three hours of administrative board meeting, it doesn\u2019t take much, that is true.<\/p>\n

Roland was a careful listener.\u00a0 He wanted the best for preaching and preacher, and, from Tittle, he knew the best, and he knew the rest.\u00a0 Once the sermon including the phrase \u201cI thought to myself\u201d.\u00a0 Afterward he asked sharply, \u2018Why the redundancy?\u00a0 Just say, \u2018I thought\u2019.\u2019\u00a0 He was probably thinking of William Strunk, \u2018omit needless words\u2019, a fence I have long since jumped, as you have the scars to attest.\u00a0 But I took his advice.<\/p>\n

Except, today, with love and real affection for Roland who is now in heaven, we wonder\u2026When he came to himself<\/i>.\u00a0 There is something in that lingering middle voice construct in a language like ours that has no middle voice, only active and passive, but has lingering forms like this one.\u00a0 The phrase shows the mind circling on itself,when he came to himself<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 We do this in memory, come to ourselves.\u00a0 We do this in discovery, come to ourselves.\u00a0 We do this in prayer, come to ourselves.\u00a0 Give some Lenten minutes to memory, discovery and prayer.\u00a0 We do this in those moments when we realize there is more to life than meets the eye.\u00a0 When he have a prodigal thought.\u00a0 A new, wayward, slightly reckless, excessive, extravagant, prodigous thought.<\/p>\n

Gnostic Thought<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Now I put it to you:\u00a0 how long has it been since you have had a prodigal thought?\u00a0 The prodigal son is prodigally reckless in departure.\u00a0 But he is prodigally excellent and ecstatic in return.\u00a0 His negative prodigality in descent is eclipsed by his positive prodigality in resurrection.\u00a0 How long has it been since you have\u00a0come to yourself?<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>Though no one says so, and to my knowledge no one has yet so written, Luke 15 may be the most Gnostic of chapters in the New Testament.\u00a0 It is about gnosis, self knowledge,\u00a0coming to oneself.<\/i> As the Gnostics taught, we are trapped in a far country, a long way from our true home, like a man who has squandered his birthright, and moved from light to darkness. \u00a0As the Gnostics taught, we are meant to get home, to get back home, to get back out from under this earthly, fleshly, pig slop bodily existence, and back to higher ground, to heaven, to the heaven beyond heaven, to the land of light, to the loving father, like a prodigal son returning to the home that is truly his.\u00a0 As the Gnostics taught, there is just one way to get back home, one key to the magic door.\u00a0 That way and that key is knowledge, self knowledge, the knowledge of one\u2019s own self\u2014whence w come, wither we go.\u00a0 As the Gnostics taught, salvation comes from this sort of esoteric, personal, soulful knowledge.\u00a0\u00a0When he came to himself\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

It is jarring, I give you that, to admit that this most traditional and most popular and most orthodox of parables may well have grown up outside the barn, outside the fences of mainstream Christianity.\u00a0 But there is nothing orthodox about the prodigal and his coming to himself.\u00a0 His is truly a\u00a0prodigal <\/i>thought.\u00a0 I need to get back home.\u00a0 Back to the land of light.\u00a0 Back to the pleroma.\u00a0 Back to the God beyond God.\u00a0 No \u2018Christ died for our sins\u2019, here.\u00a0 No \u2018lamb of God\u2019, here.\u00a0 No settled orthodox Christology here.\u00a0 No cross, no gory glory, no Gethsemane, no passion of the Christ, here.\u00a0 It all comes down to self awareness, to awakening, to a moment of clarity.\u00a0\u00a0When he came to himself.<\/i>The parable of the Prodigal Son is the most Gnostic, most heterodox, most Johannine of them all.\u00a0 Stuck here in the middle of Luke, read here in the middle of Lent, interpreted here in the middle of March.<\/p>\n

The Gospel challenges us to come out from hiding.<\/p>\n

You cannot hide behind a distrust of organized religion today.\u00a0 The prodigal thought soars beyond that.\u00a0 You cannot hide behind a disdain for clergy, for formality, for robes and choirs and altars and candles.\u00a0 This prodigal thought pierces all that.\u00a0 You cannot behind the hideous moments in religious and Christian history\u2014many there be\u2014as a way to fend off the gospel, at least not this morning.\u00a0 The knife cuts deeper, to the deeps, to your very soul.<\/p>\n

You cannot hide on the left behind a critique of Catholicism today.\u00a0 Prodigal thought soars beyond that.\u00a0 You may reject the celibacy of the priesthood, the sacrifice of the mass, the subordination of women, and the infallibility of the pope.\u00a0 But many, very many, Catholics do the same.\u00a0 No, the gospel undercuts your smart but narrow critique, and asks about your soul.\u00a0 You do have one you know.<\/p>\n

I cannot hide on the right behind a critique of Calvinism today.\u00a0 Prodigal thought soars beyond that.\u00a0 I may reject Calvinist total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.\u00a0 Not all saints persevere, grace is resistible, atonement limitation is not divine, election has a human dimension, and depravity, well, it certainly is present, but not total.\u00a0 But you know, many Calvinists, very many, would agree.\u00a0 No, the gospel undercuts my own smart but narrow critique, and asks about my soul. I do have one, you know.<\/p>\n

It asks whether you are coming to know yourself?\u00a0 Are you?\u00a0 This is the parable, oddly enough, that calls the seekers\u2019 bluff.\u00a0\u00a0 Today the Gospel attacks where you have finally no ready defense.\u00a0 It moves to your mind, your soul, your own most self.<\/p>\n

Calvinist Interlocutor Lent 2013 M Robinson<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

As our Calvinist Lenten preaching partner this Lent, M Robinson, writes in\u00a0The Death of Adam<\/i>, and in\u00a0Absence of Mind, <\/i>prodigal thought is soul thought, and meant to change your life. She is a powerful voice today honoring the mind. A prodigal thought is a tussle between the mind and the world, the mind and the soul, the mind and itself.\u00a0 Give her voice some space in your mind:<\/p>\n

It all comes down to the mystery of the relationship between the mind and the cosmos. 3\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

Consider\u2026The deeply pensive solitudes that bring individuals into congregations and communities to be nurtured by the thought and culture they find there 9\u2026The mind as felt experience\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

We suffer today the exclusion of the felt life of the mind 35\u2026A central tenet of the modern world view is that we do not know our own minds, motives or desires 59<\/i><\/p>\n

The mind is an illusion according to modern theory\u2026 The renunciation of religion in the name of reason and progress has been strongly associated with a curtailment of the assumed capacities of the mind\u2026 75<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

Yet we have\u2026 A singular capacity for wonder as well as for comprehension 72\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

For the religious, the sense of the soul may have as a final redoubt, not as argument but as experience, that haunting I who wakes us in the night wondering where time has gone, the I we waken to, sharply aware that we have been unfaithful to ourselves, that a life lived otherwise would have acknowledged a yearning more our own than any of the daylit motives whose behests we answer to so diligently<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

Soul is\u2026a name for an aspect of deep experience\u00a0 116\u2026 The self that stands apart from itself, that questions, reconsiders, appraises. 119\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How does your soul fare?\u00a0 Are you open to the challenge of a prodigal thought\u2014in memory, in discovery, in prayer?<\/p>\n

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When He Came to Himself in Memory<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In my fifties I have come to myself, at least in one sense.\u00a0 I realize I now have time for opportunities I no longer have.\u00a0 Once I had opportunity but no time.\u00a0 Now I have time but no opportunity. I walked on the Charles River the other wind swept day, along the northern bank, along Memorial Drive.\u00a0 The wind blew hard and cold.\u00a0 Now seven years into a delightful deanship, with things rolling, no tenure to earn, ten books out, 1000 sermons written and delivered, and so on, I have the real mental and spiritual freedom easily to converse with my dad.\u00a0 But he is dead.\u00a0 Now that I have time I don\u2019t have him.\u00a0 When I had him I didn\u2019t have time.\u00a0 Now I have the time.\u00a0 Stepping along the river bank, in the heart of the city of Boston he so loved, across the river from the University he so loved, thinking of him whom I so loved, I came to myself.\u00a0 And what would I not give for another conversation with him?\u00a0 You know this in your own experience.\u00a0 I am driven to memory, and saved by memory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When He Came To Himself in Discovery<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Our son is a thirty five year old lawyer in Albany, NY.\u00a0\u00a0 He wrote a letter to the editor of the paper there, about a man in his church who had died:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe front page article \u2018Religion? More reply \u2018none\u2019\u201d, Oct 21, about the decline in our community, particularly in my demographic, forced me to think about why I still go to church, despite its flaws.\u00a0 As I continued through the paper, I found my answer in the obituaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met Dr. Wesley Bradley at Trinity UMC about five years ago.\u00a0 I was immediately drawn to him\u2014to the earnestness of his handshake, to the comforting advice he offered me as a new dad, to the way he proudly strolled down Lark Street with his lovely bride as if it were their first date<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough I did not know the extent of Dr. Bradley\u2019s professional accomplishments until I read his obituary, I knew the greatness of his grace.\u00a0 I witnessed the faith that had sustained him and I learned from his humble and caring example.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe church provides a time and place for God\u2019s grace to touch and connect us.\u00a0 But for church I would not have known Dr. Bradley.\u00a0 My soul, which now grieves his passing, would have remained unaffected.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI go to church to feed my soul.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the only way to do it, but I think Dr. Bradley\u2019s life of faith is worth my generation\u2019s consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When He Came To Himself in Prayer<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We stood with 500 eighteen year olds gathered Thursday evening past, in the wake of the death of our 18 year old student.\u00a0 For many, in their teens, a first harsh encounter with death.\u00a0 In a secular gathering they offered a secular prayer. \u00a0Some came to themselves that evening, thinking:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe mean to be thoughtful, and to be together in our thoughtfulness.<\/p>\n

We are not alone in our thoughts.\u00a0 We have each other to lean on.<\/p>\n

We will lean on our friends,\u00a0 those with whom we can share a hug.<\/p>\n

We will lean on our groups, classes, dorm and hallway neighbofrs, those who know our names and call us by name.<\/p>\n

We will lean on our own traditions of memory and hope, so significant, now, those words and events and stories that place all experience in ultimate perspective.<\/p>\n

We will lean on our religious traditions, wherein we sing and kneel.<\/p>\n

We will lean on our faith, that dimension of life that is deepest and truest to our own most self, our soul, the dimension of deep experience.<\/p>\n

We will lean on some snippets and memories of words and phrases\u2014goodness and mercy will follow me, let us love one another, love is God, let us watch over one another in love.<\/p>\n

We may be moved to wonder again, at life, the meaning of life, the boundaries of life, and our own choices and actions and words therein.<\/p>\n

We will be thoughtful and we are not alone in our thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coda<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Memory. Discovery. Prayer. What will it take for you?\u00a0 How much more do you need (to acquire, to achieve, to conquer) before you are open to God?\u00a0 God is patient.\u00a0 He waits.\u00a0 Like a dad who has time when his son does not.\u00a0 He waits.\u00a0 He waits at home, hoping for little dust rising on the trail a long way off, sign of a boy coming home.\u00a0 He waits at home, knowing the pig husks we can mistake for real food.\u00a0 He waits at home, having already given more than enough in inheritance.\u00a0 He waits at home, awaiting that moment that may come\u2014today?\u2014in a far country, in a rough circumstance, in an unwelcoming place.\u00a0 That moment of prodigal thought\u2026.But when he came to himself\u2026My life flows on in endless song\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke 15: 11 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. Frontispiece   Have you ever found yourself on the edge, verge or cusp of a new insight, or maybe even on the edge of a new life? How much do you need (to acquire, to achieve, to conquer) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}