The Elder Brother and Family Trauma

I've read many commentaries discussing the parable commonly called The Prodigal Son. I have heard many sermons, and I have discussed it with family, colleagues, and friends. There are still times, however, I think about it in a new way. This week is one of those....

I keep thinking about the elder son--not about his anger, well kind of about his anger. But I'm thinking about what he's angry about, what is it fueling his anger. I'm wondering if maybe there is more to his anger, maybe his anger is really fear or maybe it's defensive or maybe it's both.

Hear me out...(well, read me out!)

When the younger son left, I suspect the father was heartbroken. We know he saw his son from a long way off. I'm imagining the father (just to be totally honest, I put myself in the story and become the father, so I picture a mother...anyway) finishing each day, and perhaps starting each day, staring down the road dreaming of his son returning. I'm imagining the years his son was gone with no communication. He had no idea if his son was even still alive. And I keep picturing the elder son standing at a distance and watching his father's shoulders droop lower and lower. I picture the elder son watching his father age before his very eyes. 

I wonder if the elder son saw the sadness behind his father's eyes even when he tried to mask it. I wonder if instead of the house being filled with his father's booming laugh it became more and more silent as the father's grief slid out of the corners and crept across the floors. I wonder if there were nights the elder son fell asleep listening to his father's muffled sobs.

I wonder if the elder brother was exhausted--so exhausted from trying to be perfect so he didn't add to his father's grief? I wonder if he was tired of hiding his own feelings of brokenness? I wonder if he was tired of pretending his life was perfect so his father didn't worry about him? And I wonder if, in addition to resenting the amount of work he was now doing, he was also heartbroken because he was taking on more responsibility as a result of his father's crushing depression which led to a loss of interest in work, socializing, and even family. Heartbroken because he missed the father he knew, and maybe even his brother...

So I wonder, when the elder brother came out of the field and saw the happiness on his father's face, was he terrified? Was he thinking of all the days, weeks, months, and years when he saw the despair shrouding his father's entire body? Was he guarding his own heart and trying, and failing, to protect his father's? Was he already wondering if his brother would disappear again and he would have to watch his father shrivel for a second and maybe then a third and maybe a fourth time?

Brokeness in families is pervasive and complex. Maybe in addition to recognizing God's unconditional love and mercy and grace, we are also called to remember that we are all connected. Maybe we are to remember our connections are complicated, and as hard as it can be, we are to offer that same love and mercy and grace to each other--despite the risk and possible pain. 

Jesus did walk to the cross.....

I Am Mary Full of Shame

I've been accused of being too out there--too transparent, too unfiltered.  I suppose (I know) it's true, and I know it makes some people very uncomfortable.  I'll be honest, sometimes it makes me uncomfortable, and yet when I try to silence my voice, when I try to fit in, my stomach hurts, my mind races and I can't sleep.  So here I go again....

I preached this week; I wasn't supposed to, but late last week I was asked to fill in for a colleague.  (darn her) I opened the bible to read the gospel--"why did I agree to preach?",I thought.  (Mark 3:20-35) The gospel story was about Mary (and Jesus' siblings) trying to get to Jesus, her son, because she was afraid for him, afraid of what was happening to him, afraid of losing him--it hit too close to home.

Each week preachers come to the text and we try to be objective; we try to hear what God is saying to us through the text and what God wants us to proclaim.  We've been trained by seminaries to leave our own "stuff" out of it.  I so wish it were that easy.  Actually I've been reading David Lose's book Preaching at the Crossroads, and he says, "To put it another way, we preachers do not come to Scripture without a set of questions influenced by our own context and experience.  And we should not, as our questions are what bring us to the text in the first place." (Lose, David (2013) Preaching at the Crossroads. Minneapolis, MN, Fortress Press. p. 41) Perhaps we need to honor that--to own that--to be transparent about that.

As I read the gospel, my heart raced, my palms were sweaty.  I could feel Mary's panic, and I could feel her shame.  In the first century, family was everything--family was the social organizing unity, the family was how you were identified, how you were known--to leave family was to bring shame on the family--to be "out there," to be different was to bring shame on the family.  Life isn't really much different today.  (read at all)

I understood all too well trying to protect a child who others may not understand.  I understood all too well how it felt to not understand my own child.  I understood what it felt like to be kept from my child either physically or emotionally and the panic that takes over as you realize you are completely out of control--I understood what it felt like to be the mother of a child and to be powerless. And, I understood the shame that washes over a mother's body because a child's behavior doesn't fit the norm and the guilt that comes because of the feelings of shame.

I needed to preach the Good News; I needed to leave my "stuff" behind, and yet I couldn't.  I believe we all come to the gospel, to church, to community with our own shame, our own hidden hurts, our own secrets.  I believe there are so many people who show up each week in our church buildings putting on a good face, dressing up our outer selves while we dress down our inner selves, and I wonder why?

But I know why--it's because we're afraid; it's because we live in our own honor/shame culture; it's because we know people even and possibly mostly church leaders are judgmental.  It's because culture has taught us to admit weakness, vulnerability, brokenness is the worst thing we can do.  To admit our world is not perfect, that we are not in complete control is to admit that we are not enough. But we are enough--we are more than enough even with and possibly even more because of all the stuff we bring.

I love Karoline Lewis a professor at Luther Seminary.  I think she's amazing and most of the time I agree with everything she says; but, (you heard a but coming didn't you?) this week I vehemently disagree.  She writes, "I think this is one of the most difficult challenges of parish life for a pastor, for a preacher. You have a lot of family discord to negotiate -- your own, of course, which you can’t let anyone see or know about and which itself creates a loneliness unmatched by other professions." (Quoted here)  That is a lonely place to be, but I don't believe we have to be there--we have to navigate discretion, but not deny. It's a balancing act--a continual challenge.

This week alone I have been privileged to hear about colleagues challenges in their own personal lives--both lay and ordained--and I have heard them say (as I have) that we can't let people know, that we have to keep it secret because we know there are some (we can even name them) who will judge us, who will use our pain, our struggles against us.  I wonder, what would happen if we didn't?  What would happen if we admitted we were struggling--not necessarily spewing all our details, but what if we admitted there were things going on in our own lives that brought us challenges, that brought us to our knees, that brought us to a community where we wanted nothing more than unconditional love and acceptance?

I think what the gospel taught me this week is that I do carry shame and fear, and I am not alone. Mothers have lived with these feelings for centuries; people have lived with these truths for centuries. With all its brokenness, its humanness, I also believe the church in community (and sometimes within the actual walls) can be the place where we find unconditional love, grace, mercy, and acceptance.  I believe we can learn to leave our shame and fear at the door and enter into a community that opens wide its arms and loves us just as we are.  But I believe we all--clergy and laity--have to take that first step and shed our masks--I wonder if we can?

Disclaimer--This isn't the post I wanted to write-the one I'd constructed in my head.  That was all about Mary, but this is what came out.  

We Had Church

This morning I came downstairs, walked into the kitchen and found the counters covered with empty

ice cream containers, empty popcorn bags, dirty dishes and crumb covered counters.  (I wasn't surprised except by the ice cream containers; it looked like that when I went to bed last night.  I had to run the dishwasher with the other dishes before these could be loaded.)  I made the coffee (first things first) and then began the process of cleaning up...

But I wasn't irritated; I wasn't angry; tears welled in my eyes but not tears of frustration or sadness but rather tears of gratitude and joy--sacred tears, holy tears.

I thought about the last afternoon and evening and said a silent prayer of thanks. All four of our children were home, our foreign exchange student was home, and the toddler was spending the night. It was good, and it was holy; it was church.

I thought about the morning and how I had shared tears with dear friends as we talked about hurts in our children; I thought about a lunch with women who give me courage and extend me grace; I thought about a difficult conference that proved to be better than I anticipated (perhaps a reason to maintain low expectations), and then I thought about the evening.

It was a "normal" evening. (What does that mean in the O'Doyle house anyway?) But it was so much more; as I washed the dishes it occurred to me, we had church.

We gathered; we came together with our individual days, our individual lives, our differences in age, our differences in culture, and we were one.  We came together as people at different places in our spiritual journeys and with some very different beliefs, and we were one.  We brought our hurts, our woundedness, our disappointments, our fears; our successes, our joys--we brought all of ourselves. And together we were one.  We loved one another simply and wholly--we laughed, we danced, we colored, we extended grace and mercy, inclusion and love, and we shared our stories and they became one.

Cultures coloring

We gathered around a table (okay not really--we held our plates as we gathered around the toddler) and it wasn't bread and wine but rather macaroni and cheese, popcorn, and Curious George fruit chews thrown in with a little milk, but it was good and it was holy, (even if it wasn't nutritious) and we were one.

I remembered the words Rachel Held Evans wrote in her new book Searching for Sunday, Loving, Leaving and Finding Church, "They remembered Jesus with food, stories, laughter, tears, debate, discussion and cleanup." (Clean-up--hmmm should we be doing that together?)  I learned from Barbara Brown Taylor (and I think RHE did too) that it was important to remember that Jesus told his disciples to "do this" not believe this, and that he gave them literal, concrete things to do in eating and being together.  I thought about how one of my children argues with me about infant baptism (he thinks I shouldn't have had him baptized--so that narrows your guessing as to which child) and that our exchange student isn't Christian but that we were together and it was chaotic and confusing, and it was good and holy,  and it was full of grace and of love, and it was church.

I wasn't there for the whole evening--I was gone talking to other women about what it means to be church--this morning, I realize, I had my answer.