Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 18, 2007


What do you do when your dreams die?

Besides being called the Story of the Prodigal son, perhaps today’s gospel could also be called the story of four dreamers. There is the younger son. A teenager perhaps, a young man, dreaming the dreams of youth, of a better life. He knows by law he only gets 1/3 of the estate. That’s not enough for his freedom and independence from his family. Like many kids I worked with from small towns around Washington, MO, he dreamed about finding himself, about creating a better life somewhere else, anywhere else than ‘home.’ Then there is the elder brother who held the dream of staying at home, working the family farm, becoming the head of the family one day. As long as nothing upset the apple cart, he would marry the gal down the road, settle in the family home and live a comfortable life. There’d even be a small section in the compound for his kid brother to set up house. It would all come to be. And then there is the Father. He dreams of a nice old age, his family with their families surrounding him as the years add up. Images of meals with grandkids sitting on his lap fill his nights and bring joy to his days.

They are common dreams, all three. Familiar to anyone who has grown up in a family – about happiness, about fulfillment, about connection, about an unsure future and what might be. And like the story of many people’s lives, they are shattered by the experience of life. There’s a line from Les Miserables that took my breath away when I first heard it. “Now LIFE has killed the dream I dreamed…”

The younger son starts it all – he leaves, not only with his share of the inheritance, but with his father’s heart. Then his dream of ‘finding himself’ crumbles with the local economy’s fortune.

The father's dream changes. It becomes an aching dream. If only his son would come home, if he only knew how his son was doing, was he safe or suffering. Was he happy and working? Had he gotten married? Dreams and nightmares vie for attention. He'd dream the dream of welcoming his son back, then fear the son would never come home.

The older brother’s anger changes his dream. “Look at how he has hurt dad, how he broke his heart. Look how he left me to do all the work around here. If he ever dares to show his face, see what kind of reception he will receive from me…”

It is a great story, a human story. We all can identify with the different characters at one point or another in our lives. However, Luke adds just enough of an introduction to help people understand another level of what is really at stake. He tells us that there are two groups there listening – recovered sinners and righteous Scribes and Pharisees. Younger sons and older sons. And between them was Jesus. Between them was HIS dream, the fourth dream, that somehow the gap would be bridged, that somehow the chasm between them would end. That’s the real life dream that Jesus would have BOTH GROUPS know – that they belong to each other – the profligates and the steady stay at home, predictable safe ones – they belong to each other. And it is what he would have each of us know who have experienced the death of our dreams and the brokenness of our lives and relationships.

Jesus ends the story with a father’s pleading, a father’s dream, a plea to all those who stay outside of the banquet because God’s mercy doesn’t pass their muster of faithfulness and justice. And suddenly you know the dream that fills Jesus is the Father’s endless dream that all of his children would find their way home: a father’s pleading to an older son to be reconciled to a father with a scandalous love and a brother with a scandalous failure.

And you wonder if all the elder sons throughout the ages would ever get the point that they had just been offered the same scandalous love that had bestowed on the prodigal? You wonder if the entire party would get the chance to erupt with a dance of joy because BOTH brothers were reconciled to each other and the father. You wonder if the fatted calf party was planned all along to celebrate the restoration of BOTH of his sons, to give back to each boy not only a father, but to each of them a brother again…

So, what will it be – in this story that is left for YOU AND I to finish? What ending will you create with the choices of your life?