Sermon: Lost in a Far Country
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Sermon: Lost in a Far Country Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Date: March 14, 2010; for “The Harbor” Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
Garrison Keillor wrote a passage in his Lake Wobegon story book about travelling on the bus with his Aunt Lois, an aunt so young she was like an older sister. Garrison and Lois loved spending time together, and once in a while they would ride the bus to Minneapolis to visit Great-Aunt Posie. Lois shared her nephew’s love of pretending. They would imagine the bus was their private vehicle and they could go anywhere and be somebody. His favorite game was Strangers, pretending they didn’t know each other. He would get up and walk to the back of the bus, come back to the seat and say, “Do you mind if I sit here?” And she would answer, “No, I don’t mind,” and he’d sit, and the game would be on. This is how it went one time: She said, “A very pleasant day, isn’t it?” They didn’t speak that way in their family, but they were strangers, so they could talk as they pleased. “Are you going all the way to Minneapolis, then?” He answered, “As a matter of fact, ma’am, I’m going to New York City. I’m in a very successful hit play on Broadway, and I came back out here to Minnesota because my sweet old aunt died, and I’m going back to Broadway now on the evening plane. Then next week I am going to Paris, France, where I currently reside on the Champs-Elysees. My name is Tom Flambeau, perhaps you’ve read about me.” “No, I’ve never heard of you in my life, but I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt. She must have been a wonderful person.” “Oh, she was pretty old. She was all right, I guess.” “Are you very close to your family, then?” “No, not really. I’m adopted, you see. My real parents were Broadway actors—they sent me out to the farm thinking I’d get more to eat, but I don’t think that people out here understand people like me.” She looked away from him. She looked out the window a long time. He’d hurt her feelings. Minutes passed. But he “didn’t know her.” Then Garrison said, “Talk to me. Please.” She said, “Sir, if you bother me any more I’ll have the driver throw you off the bus.” “Say that you know me. Please.” And when he couldn’t bear it another second, she touched him and he was himself again. The next time they rode the bus, he said, “Let’s pretend we don’t know each other.” She answered, “No, you get too scared.” “I won’t this time,” he assures her. He gets up and comes back and says, “It’s a very pleasant day, isn’t it? Are you going to Minneapolis?” He concludes, “Eventually we do. We pretend to be someone else and need them to say they know us, but one day we become that person and they simply don’t know us. From that there is no bus back that I know of.”[1] That itch to go somewhere else, to be somebody else—just about everybody gets it, some time or another. That yen to leave home grabs hold of you. `Most everybody leaves home eventually, some in a more spectacular fashion than others. Leave-taking might be as gentle and mild as pretending to be Tom Flambeau on the bus to Minneapolis. Or it might be as sensational as telling your father to drop dead and heading down the road to a far country, as the younger son in Jesus’ parable did. He didn’t really tell his dad to “drop dead” in so many words, but in that first-century Palestine culture, to demand your inheritance prematurely was the same as saying “I wish you were dead already” to your folks. The father in the story might have wished he was dead, too, so jagged was the pain of his baby tearing himself away from home in such a dishonorable and abrupt way. But what could the father do? It was clear the boy was going. He might as well give him some money so he could look after himself, even though it meant selling off some of the farm. As for the boy, he couldn’t see or didn’t care what damage he was leaving in his wake, so strong was his urge to get away. I remember that feeling, that surge of “anywhere but here!” so powerful that I thought I might go nuts if I had to stay in that house with those people for one more second. What a rush for that young man to walk away from the confinement of home, to stride away from his tearful father and his scowling brother, to journey to a far country with his pockets full of money. To be among people who had never heard of his wrinkly great aunts or idiot cousins. To be whoever he wanted to be. His leaving starts out as a great adventure, powered by a feeling that overtakes most of us at one time or another. Leaving home is natural, and adventure is good. But there are hazards; this younger son, for instance, he got lost. That can happen when one adventures off to a far country. It’s true that not everyone who wanders is lost, but there’s no doubt that some of them are. There are signals that the kid has gone from the happy wanderer to someone who is desperately lost. The story says he “squandered his property in dissolute living.” We don’t get the details, so we can employ our colorful imaginations to fill in the details. Maybe he was everyone’s best friend, always the one picking up the tab. Maybe he snorted it all up in that generation’s version of cocaine, or smoked it, or drank it in gallons of fruity drinks with pick paper umbrellas on top. Maybe he bought all the bums on the block a tuxedo, just for giggles. Maybe he lit cigars with hundred dollar bills to impress the busty blond in the corner. Maybe he bet on the camel races. Who knows? It’s possible he was well and truly lost before he went on his squandering bender. His “dissolute living” could have shown he was trying to find himself, trying to invent a persona others would like and admire, or, worse yet, trying to escape from himself. He finally knew himself to be lost when he was down and out with the pigs—the real ones, not just the piggish people who may temporarily have sucked up to him while he was buying. Not only was he alone with no one who cared enough about him to give him something to eat, but to be employed feeding pigs would have been completely repugnant to his people, the Jews. So his lonely place among the pigs located him as far as he could possibly be from his comfortable home and from the faith his family held dear. We ache for him, ache with him, lost and alone. Even though he got lost under his own power, even though he acted like a jerk. We feel deep compassion for the lost boy. We so want for him to be found. You want to know one of the things that keeps parents up nights? We know it’s natural and right for those of you growing up to want to leave home and strike out on your own adventures. We know that you might “leave home” psychologically or emotionally before you actually move out of your bedrooms. We know you might do that by trying on some new personas or trying out some new behavior that proves you’re not a kid any more. And we know that not everyone who wanders is lost. But what keeps us up nights is worry that you will get well and truly lost on your growing up adventures, and that you won’t know how to come back home. And what is most disquieting is that even those who know you best might not know that you’ve gone from wandering to lost. Because you can keep lost a secret. I know of one heartbreaking case of a secretly lost boy on Bainbridge Island who killed himself in 2001. His name was Garth Manheim. One of his sisters was in our daughter Emma’s class. I didn’t know Garth, but I was thinking about him and read what his family wrote about him on a webpage they put up after his suicide. His family didn’t know how deeply troubled he was until he was found dead. There were few signs, and he wasn’t sharing his feelings with those who loved him. It wasn’t until two years after his death that Bob McAllister found the letter Garth had written to himself as a freshman (an English assignment) that revealed his state of mind. Students write to their senior selves and expect to get the letter back when they are graduating. Garth talks about feeling depressed and lonely, about how his parents were the only ones who loved him and no wonder, because he saw himself as a "sullen jerk". He talks about being lonely, denigrates his own writing, which he calls "meaningless." He writes, "Nothing in the world seems to make sense right now. I'm insane over nothing, jealous of those who are happy, and angry with the way the world works." Then he says, "I'm also contemplating suicide if you want to know all of it. I feel so damn miserable and don't know why." He finishes with, "God, I can only wish you [his 18 year-old self] are in better shape than I. I hope you have found a date for the prom, I hope you are happy. I hope you are rocking down the house in your tennis game...I hope you are better than me, pal. I pray you are." And then, the most painful part, a postscript where he writes, "P.S. Are you even alive?" His parents write candidly of how bitter and regretful they are over their failure to see how much he was suffering at a time they thought he was doing well and flourishing. Let me tell you, this scenario is a total nightmare. No one with any scrap of compassion wants the lost child to end his or her life, no matter what they might have done on the way to getting lost. We can deal with the damage that has been done. All we want is for you to come back to yourself, and to find that compass in your own heart that brings you home. The younger son in the parable “came to himself.” That sounds like he found some little sliver of his true self underneath all his recklessness, bravado, and shame. He found a scrap of himself, the boy that loved and was loved. He wanted to be himself enough to decide to return to a place where people knew him, even if he wasn’t confident that they would forgive him and love him still. That’s what we want for you, if you are lost. We hope you will find the courage to admit you are lost. We hope you will come to yourself. We hope you will uncover the person who loves and is loved, even if there is only a wisp of you left. We hope you will set your compass for home. And if home is not a safe place for you, because, regretfully, not every home is a refuge, find a place where you are loved. Find it in your network of friends, in your extended family, in your youth group, in your faith community. We may be faltering in our practice of forgiveness and imperfect in offering truly unconditional love, but we’re trying will all our might to embody the indestructible love of God. With the Holy Spirit’s wind at our backs we are sprinting out to meet all the lost ones to catch you up in an embrace before you even have time to fall to your knees. Don’t be a stranger. We know you. We love you. Come home. Discussion questions:
[1] Keillor, Garrison Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories New York: Viking, 1987, p. 305-06 |
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