You say to yourself, "Oh, it is such a miserably hot day. When will this dry spell end? If only we can get a shower, a squall, anything to provide some relief. I'm not looking forward to the rest of the chores today. I wonder what they've got cooking for dinner tonight. I'm starving. I could eat one of these cows right now. I tell you what, this hay we're feedin' 'em; it doesn't look too bad right now. If only I had some water out here, I might just try a handful."

You work a while longer, letting your mind drift from one thing to the next. Looking up at the sun, you'd push it across the sky if you could, just to make the day grow shorter. As you're working, something makes you think of your brother. It's been a long while now since the two of you parted ways. You wonder if he's working just as hard as you or if he's taking it easy somewhere with his feet up. You take a moment to look up from your work and you see a commotion in the distance. Squinting your eyes, you can't make out what it is or who it is. You ignore it and get back to work. You know there's plenty to get done and you'd better not let something like that distract youÉas curious as you are. You keep stealing glances at whoever the people are as they get closer. "Aaaah," you say, "they must be having something up at the house. It doesn't concern me. I'll take this baled hay out to the barn."

Since it is your tendency to work pretty hard, you don't think anymore about what was going on and how relieved you are to see the sun finally getting low in the sky and you realize it's time to go in and eat. Finally! Even though you know there won't be much to eat on account of the dry spell.

"Oh, it going to feel so good just to get in there, eat, and get some sleep. This work has made me exhausted."

As you get to your quarters, wash up, and come up to the table, you see they've left the same old stuff you've been eating for weeks--a little rice, a little bread, and a tough piece of goat meat. You remember the days when you had plenty. It's not like it was then. After your filling--yet not too satisfying--meal, you finally get to stretch out and go to sleep. It doesn't take you long to drift off. In fact, you're surprised how quickly you reached dream sleep because you find yourself dreaming of what was--when there was plenty of food, music, girls, and your family seemed happy together. You long to go there, to be home again. It's a pleasant dream; it seems to be going on for such a long time when you realize that--wait, you've got your eyes open. The music you're hearing--it isn't in your dreams. The sounds aren't strains from the past--they are coming in through your window. You sleepily stumble out of your small bunkhouse and realize that the sound is coming out of the farmhouse, out of your father's house. As you get up to the house to peer blinkingly into the brightly candlelit room and see there at the table your brother, who deserted your family, his mouth full of the juiciest, most mouth-watering piece of meat. You stand outside, looking in, while everyone is inside--your father included--laughing, giggling, feasting, with your AWOL brother. The anger--no, the rage-- is starting to boil up within you. How could your father do this to you? How could he sit at the table with this...this...THIS SCOUNDREL?

Take the emotions felt in this scene and translate it to the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus' time, when they saw the so-called Messiah sitting down to eat with people who had not come near keeping the law. "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them," they said appalled.

We don't give a whole lot of thought to the Pharisees or the older brother in the story of the prodigal son. Maybe we should. We've all been there. We've lived their experience. "Somebody getting benefits that they haven't worked for shouldn't get them. It's not fair. People who don't live a 'Christian' life shouldn't inherit the kingdom. After I've done so much for the church." Yes, we've been there. How do we reconcile with the sinner, with the other?

"This has been such a long walk," you say wearily, "and I'm not even close to home. I'm having a real hard time believing I'm going home after all I did. What am I going to say to my father? What am I going to say to my brother? I'll say the only thing I possibly can--'I'm sorry. I've been such a fool. How can you call me son? How can you call me brother? I'll make it up to you the best I can. I'll...I'll work doubly hard, as hard as the servants. You should treat me that way.'"

"Oh, why did I do it? I just wanted to have a little fun. Leave the farm for a while. I didn't ever expect it to go as far as it did. I never thought I'd lose all Dad's money. How am I ever gonna face him?"

You walk on, recalling in your mind all the experiences you somehow lived through. Fun times. Crazy times. Chaotic times. Times when you felt the most alive. Times when you felt the most frightened. Now a time where you feel like you could crawl into a hole and never come out. As soon as you felt desperately lost, you knew--as hard as it was to do--that it was time to come home. Really, it was the only choice you had left, if you were going to live.

It's mid-afternoon, you've got quite a ways yet to go, but as you pick up your head, you see a figure walking toward you in the far-off distance. Now, you don't think much of it; there've been lots of people to pass you along the way. But as you take steps closer, you hear a familiar voice ringing out--a voice that you weren't quite prepared to hear yet--the voice you were trying to gear up for. Yet as unprepared as you were to hear the voice, it is as sweet and welcoming as you could have hoped.

The voice is shouting, "Could it be? Is it possible? Oh, my God! Thank you! Thank you! My Son! My Son has come home to me!"

It's your father. You recognize him now, of course, but what is he doing way out here? Why is he traveling all by himself? You find yourself asking, "How did he know I was coming? Oh, my God, what am I going to say?"

Before you know it, he has you in a tight grip, tears running down his face, a smile from ear-to-ear, kissing you from cheek-to-cheek, over and again, an amazing, indescribable, compassionate look in his eyes.

"He's glad to see me," you think, full of wonder. "He's not angry." Then you say what you've been rehearsing you would say, except it comes out gushing, full of emotions you've kept within until the sight of him. "Oh, Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you; I...I'm no longer worthy to be called your son."

Your father only grins and repeats the phrase, "He is home! He is home! My son has come back home; he has come back to our lives."

All the way home you catch up and share stories of your adventures, at least the ones you can tell your father. Once you arrive home, your father surprises you by telling you to clean up and put on a new robe and sandals and come to the dining room in the farmhouse. When you arrive, there is food galore--they even kill one of the large calves. There is music and decorations and candles making the room glitter. You sit and eat and share more of your stories, laughing with your still-grinning father.

It dawns on you that you haven't seen your brother yet. Where is he? You feel the feeling in the pit of your stomach, in anxiety about how your reunion will be with him. But you get lost again in the merry-making--in your father's hospitality--that moment will come when it comes....

What a feeling it must have been for those who were invited to sit at the table with Jesus--to be looked at in such a compassionate way and to be cared for despite what the religious officials thought about them--despite the way they had treated themselves, treated others. They wondered what it would be like if the officials actually sat down at the table with them. What would they talk about? Would they have anything in common? Could they possibly get along? Could this Jesus reconcile their differences?

"I just felt like walking today," you think to yourself. "Everything around the farm is going okay. The servants, my eldest son, they all have everything under control. We could use some more rain, but if God wants it to rain, God will make it rain. We'll make do. God does have a funny way of making things happen. That reminds me--I had a dream last night. I had a dream that my younger son--my missing son--needs to come home. I'll admit I need him to come home. A piece of me has been missing ever since he left. I don't know if that need caused me to have the dream, but I dreamt that I met him on his way back home. In the dream I said over and over again the same prayer I've repeated for so long, 'O, Lord God, bring my boy home safely and I will let him know how much I love him, how much I miss him.' I had almost forgotten that prayer. It's been so long since he's been gone, and I've gotten so absorbed in the work around the farm that I stopped saying the prayer. Oh, how awful I feel--I stopped saying the prayer. But, O God, you know how the pain is still in my belly. The hole still remains. May the dream be a reminder to me, a renewal of the prayer, that God, if you can send my boy to me, I will welcome him as a shepherd would welcome one of his beloved lost sheep. I guess that's why I'm walking today--a silly notion that my dream would come true. Oh my, look at where the sun is in the sky! I've spent most of the day walking; I didn't realize how far from home I've gone. It's time I head back."

As you prepare to turn back, you see a solitary figure ahead in the distance. It could be anybody, but there is something familiar about the way that silhouette is carrying itself. Aaah, it can't be. It might be. "I'll just go see," you say. "If it's not him, I'll turn around and go on home. This dream is making me see things." It's not long before you realize that you're not hallucinating, that it's not a mirage--it is, in fact, your son. He's a lot gaunter. He looks tired and worn. "But, O Lord God, you've brought him home to me," you say half-whispering, half-speaking. "I swear by your steadfast love I will keep my promise and bring him home in celebration!"

You run to him and squeeze him as only a parent can. You don't believe there are enough kisses within you to show how you feel to see him standing before you. He tries to apologize and ask for forgiveness, but through your joy and relief, you kiss him some more. "Wait 'til we get home and I alert the cook," you think to yourself. "Oh, what a celebration we will have! Wait until your brother sees that you've come home. What a day this is! Only in my dreams did I think it could be possible. Only could God inspire a moment such as this." Finally, you say aloud, "My son, I love you. You were dead and now you are alive. You were lost but now you're found."

The preparations are made. The table is set. Your son is clean and robed; the celebration has begun.

No matter how lost a child seems to be, nothing can compare with the moment when a parent is reunited with a child. Indeed, God has claimed us, even gone farther than we would expect to seek us out, to bring us home, to give us new life.

Unfortunately, Jesus' parable doesn't extend into a dialogue between the two brothers. Luke's message is that those who came to the table would be welcomed, that all who seek Christ will be reconciled to God. In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, he states, "If anyone is in Christ, there's a new creation. Everything old has passed away; everything has become new."

But what of the relationship between the older and younger brother? Could the old relationship of rivalry become new? What of the reconciliation between the Pharisee and the tax collector? Could the old lines of sinner and pure, outsider and insider, be crossed, even erased, that a new relationship could be formed?

If we have reconciliation with God through Christ Jesus, what about reconciliation with one another? I painted a picture of what it might have felt like for the brothers to be at the verge of a confrontation, the feelings of the boys in relationship to the celebration at the table. The one who is lost is the invited guest; the one who had always been there was literally on the outside looking in. The father who loved them both had assured them, in a way unique to his relationship to each boy, that the table was theirs to enjoy. Could they tolerate sitting together--at the table?

When we claim our reconciliation in God, aren't we responsible to live our lives in response to God's grace by seeking reconciliation in one another? To sit at the table in God's presence, having been invited by Christ to come and sort out our differences, to work on existing--even thriving--in one community?

The Apostle Paul said that by claiming God's grace through Christ, we have been entrusted with the message of reconciliation. God has come a great distance to seek each of us out. Just as we feel our stomach flip when we see our divine parent coming in the distance to claim us--in spite of our waywardness--may we learn to claim one another in the same spirit of reconciliation. For, if we cannot reconcile with one another, can we ever be fully reconciled with God?

Let us pray.

Loving God, you love us like a parent, more than we can ever know. Give us the strength to teach each other, as sister and brother, following the love that Jesus shows to each of us. Oh, God, you've made us in your distinct image, each with unique differences, each which you love and claim for each individual. We pray that you will strengthen us through your Spirit to tolerate our differences and to love one another for who we are, to come together in dialogue, in discussion, in compassion, that we might be one community, in the whole body of Christ. For it is in the name of Jesus Christ who loves us all and brings us together at the table that we pray. Amen