Sermon: The Wedding of Pastor Erik Christensen & Mr. Kerry Jenkins

The following sermon was preached by The Rev. Daniel Ruen, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church (Evanston, IL) on the occasion of the wedding of The Rev. Erik Christensen & Mr. Kerry Jenkins at St. Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square on Saturday, June 20, 2015.To listen to an audio recording of this sermon, click here.This sermon was preached following a reading of the parable commonly known as "The Prodigal Son" (though, more on that to follow) found in the Gospel of Luke 15:11-32.+++I imagine myself standing in the crowd listening to Jesus tell this parable, and shouting at the end of it,“But what about when the Prodigal son takes off again. What about when he gets bored of working on the farm, and he steals some money from his mother, and he takes off again. When he screws around, and then comes limping back a second time? Jesus. Huh? What then?"Because we all know that’s what’s ‘gonna happen. The father will take him back. And the older brother will confront his father and say, “Oh no, you didn’t. You did not just this welcome this shiftless, scoundrel back, again, now, did you?”And I wonder what Jesus would have said, to my challenge.Would he have ignored me? Would he have said, "Look buddy, you stretch any analogy far enough, it breaks, so why don’t you have another glass of wine and shut up."Or, would Jesus have said, like I believe he would have:“That father would have welcomed back his son, over and over again, until his death.”And the older brother, with each offensive welcome, would have raged at his father: “I told you. I was right all along! I knew I couldn’t trust you. It was a mistake to risk love and grace, in the first place. I can’t be vulnerable with you, or anyone else. I am all alone.”And the older son was right. He was dead right, by the logic of the world. Only a fool would have expected the Prodigal Son to change his ways after his father showed him such astounding grace.Now: I know I’m taking a heretical risk by extending Jesus’ parable this afternoon, but I do so because I believe it will in some way serve your marriage, Erik and Kerry, and that it will serve this gathered assembly here today. For this is not the parable of the Prodigal Son, in my extended telling. It is the parable of the Prodigal Marriage.The Prodigal Marriage. Because in marriage, there is a lot of, how shall we say it, revolving disappointment. As you two already know, while we are also going to celebrate today, you’re going to have to deal with the next day, and the next problem, and the next victory, and the next heartache, and the next joy, and so on, and so forth.The Prodigal Marriage.You two have already played the part of the righteously indignant older brother in your thoughts, and in your words. I know it ‘cause you’ve told me about it. I know it because I’m married, I have that same voice.As the older brother did in my extension of Jesus’ parable, and as you’ve struggled with in your relationship, you both have said, or thought, in the presence of one another, “I was right all along. I knew I couldn’t trust you. It was a mistake to risk love and grace on you. I can’t be vulnerable with you, or anyone else. I am all alone.”This is the older brother refrain, that all of us revert to when we are afraid, Amen?Afraid, and indignant, and exhausted. “I was right all along. I knew I couldn’t trust you. It was a mistake to risk love and grace. I can’t be vulnerable with you, or anyone else. I am all alone.”The great Methodist preacher, Grace Imathiu, who is from Kenya, she explored Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son some years ago, and she had a revelation. Her whole life she grew up thinking the word “Prodigal” meant “lost,” as in the younger brother was lost, but then welcomed home—and found—by his father. It was only later on in her adult life that she researched the word, ‘Prodigal,’ and she was stunned.The meaning of the word varies, but when you open your dictionary you find that the word, ‘prodigal’ has several connotations:Prodigal means, ‘Extravagant,’Prodigal means, ‘ravenous,’Prodigal means, ‘profuse, wasteful, bounteous, lavish.’And Grace Imathiu realized, the title it had been given, had not been given by Jesus. It doesn’t anywhere in the original text call the younger son, ‘The Prodigal Son." Grace Imathiu decided that if anyone was prodigal by definition in this parable, it was not the son, it was the father. The father’s grace was Prodigal. It was a prodigious, extravagant, ravenous grace. It was profuse, it was wasteful, it was bounteous, it was lavish.Erik and Kerry and I…when we first starting talking about today, and this worship service, the most moving part of your story as a couple was how you shared with me that you were older sons in your families.You two were expected to be the responsible sons.You two were expected to be the informed sons.You two were expected to be the sons-in-charge.And while it was, and is, an important role, it is an exhausting one. Amen?And you shared with me how you didn’t know how and when you could ever really let your guard down with anyone else. “I was right all along,” you learned to say to yourselves, as older sons. "I knew I couldn’t trust you. It was a mistake to risk love and grace. I can’t be vulnerable with you, or anyone else. I am all alone."But the reason you’re here today in front of all these people is not because of your powers of older son-ship. The reason you’re here today is not because you two applied your “older son intellect” and your “older son responsibility” and then decided: now is the acceptable time to wed, now is the acceptable time to choose a partner who is reasonable, and responsible, and safe.No.You two are here, because you were disarmed by a Prodigal Grace. An extravagant, disarming love. A love that, in each of your hearts, in different moments, brought you to your knees. In that moment or moments, when you realized, "Maybe I can finally let my guard down. Maybe I can finally be vulnerable with someone in the way I have always yearned for."A Prodigal Grace. Grace from Kerry. Grace from Erik.A grace that welcomed Erik home.  A grace that welcomed Kerry home.Now, I’m a white Lutheran preacher, which means I’m culturally conditioned to preach short homilies at weddings. I told Erik and Kerry at our first meeting that they shouldn’t worry, I won’t preach long at the wedding, that my homily would be 3 minutes, at the most.But when Kerry heard this, he recoiled, and he said, “Three minutes! Three minutes??? We didn’t ask you to preach at our wedding to preach three minutes. No. If you’re going to preach, you’re going to preach.”Well, all right, Brother Kerry. Then consider what you just heard as a kind of extended introduction! And at the end of today’s worship service, everyone may direct ‘the-sermon-was-way-too-long’ complaints in that direction. Because I’m just getting started on the issue of Prodigal Grace. I can testify to that all day long.That disarming grace that brought you two to your knees. That disarming grace that lays us all low.Which brings me to the parable of the Prodigal Church. The Prodigal Church. O, my people, my people.How many times has the broken, sinful institution of the church—like that younger son, in Jesus’ parable—left its responsibilities, and ran away from its true calling? The calling to be a prophetic place of radical welcome? How many times has the church betrayed its ideals? Too many times.And yet here we are, with Erik and Kerry as a strong, gay couple serving this church, blessing this church, forgiving this church, and all churches by example, showing it Prodigal Grace. Your love and faith is more prodigious than the church’s love because you two show the grace of the father, especially today. And therefore you become what the church should have been all along. You are willing to embrace the church, in all its brokenness, in all its younger son disappointment, you welcome the church home with extravagant—many would say ‘wasteful’ grace, by your blessing of this space today.But, you know, your Prodigal Grace extends beyond the institution of the church this afternoon. It extends its offensive, lavish love to us, and to the whole world.An interracial, gay couple, with different denominational backgrounds?You are saying to the world — a world which has not welcomed you; a world where you’ve had to fight for your true selves; a world that keeps coming back to you with yet another round of discrimination and lies; a world that rages at you, with the words of the older brother:“You were never meant to be! You and your interracial and gay love cannot be trusted. It was a mistake to risk love and grace on you. We cannot be vulnerable with you, or anyone else. We will isolate you. We will oppress you. We will attack you.”But God’s Prodigal Grace. The extravagance of God’s higher power? It dances in the face of such darkness. Amen?Which is the dance we are tasked to host this very afternoon, in the wake of the terrorist attacks at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that occurred in South Carolina on Wednesday night.Chris and Cameron, the children of Pastor Sheronda Singleton, one of the nine victims, spoke out to the media yesterday. Their mother was a pastor, a high school athletic Coach and a speech therapist, she was gunned down by a sick, white terrorist, after having being welcomed into their bible study.Chris, Pastor Sheronda’s daughter, was quoted as saying:“I feel a lot of love. I’m a little bitter, but I’m overwhelmed with love,” said her daughter. Then Cameron, Sheronda’s son, said, “We already forgive the killer for what he’s done. Because love is stronger than hate.” And his sister repeated the line: “Yes,” she said. “Love is stronger than hate.”How much deeper, or broader, or towering, could the Prodigal Grace of God get than that, in this moment? When these Christians are given every right to speak the words of vengeance and cold anger, yet they can only bear witness to the Prodigal Grace of Jesus? For that is how their mother raised them. That was how they were raised.And so, you two, raise us up, as an assembly today, when we desperately need a sign of Prodigal Grace. Your marriage, which you will always remember as being held with the South Carolina church terrorist attack on one side, and Pride weekend upcoming on the other, your marriage stands in a kind of Prodigal Defiance. A Prodigal Defiance in the face of our country’s sins of racism, slavery and LGBTQ oppression. In Prodigal Defiance.It’s a union that will not be denied, Amen?A union that is extravagant in the face of racism.A union that is lavish in the face of heterosexism.A union that is profuse in the face of hatred and confusion and the ongoing apathy of our society to fight for justice, and change this empire of blood and greed.A union that is ravenous, devouring all our hopelessness and despair, and daring us to dance today, to raise our voices, to declare victory even on the cross.A Prodigal Grace. Standing in Prodigal Defiance.And being that great gift to all of us gathered, no matter our creed, or our beliefs, or our ways — how could we not stand as your friends and family and say, “We bear witness to the sign of you two brothers, who demonstrate Prodigal Grace in your very bodies and in your public courage to join together in faith, hope and love.”It is in this event that we are all blessedly reminded of the Prodigal nature of life. That this day and everyday is the opportunity to get our Prodigal On.To get our Prodigal on.To revel in the gift of this world. To find joy in all our struggles. To lift our heads up from our devices and our daily grinds and our complaints and receive the Prodigal gifts of all life as we know it.The Prodigal Marriage. The Prodigal Family. The Prodigal Day. The Prodigal Moment. The Prodigal Kiss. The Prodigal Fight. The Prodigal Embrace. The Prodigal Dance. The Prodigal Protest. The Prodigal Discussion. The Prodigal Party. The Prodigal vocation. The Prodigal Organization. The Prodigal Activism. The Prodigal Sadness. The Prodigal Lament. The Prodigal Memory. The Prodigal Involvement. The Prodigal Risk. The Prodigal Chance. The Prodigal Second Chance. And the third, and the fourth. And all of God’s offensive, marvelous, mysterious grace. The Prodigal Late Night, Hold Me Because I’m Scared, I Don’t Know If I Can Go On kind-of-love. The Prodigal Grace of a simple story, which ends with yet another chance, yet another opportunity, yet another life.Then the father said to the jealous, angry, older brother, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice today. We had to celebrate and rejoice today. Because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”Because of this Gospel, we have no choice:We have to celebrate and rejoice today, no matter the anger and jealousy of the older brother that is the world, and that is the worst part of ourselves. Amen? You have no choice. Our calling as followers of Jesus is to rejoice, in spite of the darkness, to transform that darkness, and to make ourselves new.Erik and Kerry: thanks be to God for you. Thank you. Thank you for bearing Prodigal Grace to one another, and for bearing it for this assembly today.We cheer you on. We attach ourselves to your love, and we wish also to be taken as we are, summoned out to be what is intended, in a world both broken and beautiful. A world of prodigious, pregnant, ongoing chances to live anew, and to make change.Amen.