“Two Sons Have I Not”                                 March 7, 2010
Luke 15:  11–30                                         The Rev. Dr. Beth Braxton

MONOLOGUE OF THE MOTHER OF THE PRODIGAL SON(S)

My name is Viola. I am the wife of Fred Dudley of Dudley’s Diner – the best eating place in all of Forsythe County, the most hospitable eating place in all of Forsythe County. The food is simple and delicious!  We serve the best burgers, every ounce measured of grade A beef, pecan pie to die for and the smoothest milkshakes – made with real milk and ice cream!  Grits and gravy for breakfast – just like grandma made and just a $1.50.  And everyone who comes to the diner is treated like family.  The Dudley Diner has been in the family for three generations, going on four.

Let me tell you about my husband. Fred is most generous person you would ever want to know.  He is always giving to the local high school, extra goodies to sell at their concession stands at the football games and ads for the youth musical down at the church.  He is Mr. Hostess.  He personally welcomes persons to the diner, which is open from 7:00am to 10:00pm every day but Sunday.  Sunday is church day; your will find us down at the First Presbyterian Church.  Fred teaches the junior high Sunday School class. He has been doing that for nearly twenty years, so you know what a patient and loving person that takes!

He treats his staff at the diner well also. High school kids can find a job waitressing even if he has all he needs.  His chief cook, Smitty has been with us for years.  Fred even paid for a computer for his special-needs son.

The Diner was doing such a booming business and the town was growing so that Fred started a smaller diner on the edge of town that he basically was letting the boys run, that is our two sons.  Our older son is Adam and younger son, only by two years, Sonny.  Sons are a mother’s pride and joy and continual worry.

Today I want to tell you about the struggle with my sons.  But first you need to know that they, like their father, had gone to state College and done well.  Well, Adam did well; he majored in Business Administration and Accounting.  Sonny was more into philosophy and partying 101 or 301!  He did graduate last year finally – took five years!

The boys are as different as night and day.  Adam typical older child, responsible, serious, conscientious, always did his homework, always obeyed.  Sonny is Mr. Happy–go-lucky, mischievous, smart, no doubt, clever.  He was always playing tricks.  Let me just share this one event when they were in 4th and 6th grades. Sonny put a garden snake in Adam’s lunch box – caused a huge stir in the lunch room and Sonny spent the rest of the day in the principal’s office.

But each of the boys spent their growing up years working here in the diner; they have done everything from waitressing and cleaning floors to cooking and running the cash register up front.  Fred had decided to open this new diner on the edge of town when Sonny graduated.  He wanted the boys to have their own business to manage.  Last year was the first year and it seemed to be working well.

This year, mother’s intuition, I sensed some tension.  I’ll never forget one Sunday when we were sitting here around the dining table for our Sunday dinner.  We had just finished dessert, and I was up stacking the dishes and Sonny said to his father. “Dad, I will inherit half of the family restaurant business when you die –– right?”

“Yes,” said his father.  “It will be divided between you and your brother, fair and square.”  “Why do you ask?”

“Could I have it now?” he asked.  (I nearly dropped the dishes I was carrying.  I stood still.   That question is like wishing his father were dead.)

“I mean I want to do things.  I need my inheritance now.  I am not cut out for this restaurant business.  I don’t like my brother bossing me around; I don’t like you bossing me around.”  His tone was ugly and disrespectful.  I thought this is not the son I raised.

There was quiet for some moments, like an eternity to me. I stood frozen.  His brother looked frozen in time too.  Then the kind generous words came out. His father so magnanimous, said, “Sure son; tomorrow we can go to the bank and do all the paper work.”

By the end of the week, Sonny had packed his bags and was on his way to Jamaica.  We got only two communications from him in that year.  One to say that he bought some fancy car, was renting a quite plush place on the beach and enjoying lots of friends who seemed to be mooching off his wealth.  I kept waiting for the word about a job or new interest that he might be pursuing, but nothing came.  I could tell his father was worried. He often would sit out on the porch of the diner in a very pensive mood.

The next communication was short, but came on the heals of hurricane Ono.  We were glad to hear from him.  His area had been damaged and severely flooded; he said he was okay but running out of money.  I was floored. He had hundreds of thousands of dollars when he left!

Well six months later this is what he told me happened.  He had made friends with someone whose family ran a casino; he had gotten addicted to gambling.  He kept losing; the more he bet, the more he lost.  After the hurricane which destroyed many buildings in town and his car, he walked with many others out to the rural areas, slept in a refugee camp for about a week, then he knew he needed to get work.  He left the refugee camp one morning and walked on to another village where the only work he could find was on a farm helping take care of livestock.  He was asked to take care of the pigs.  He was given a barn to sleep in and one tortilla a day.  He said, “Mom, I was so hungry, that one day when I dumped the food scraps into their trough, I started to take a ham bone that looked like it had some meat left on it; and I broke down and cried. I realized how low I had come.  I never realized that one’s freedom could bring you so low!”

Sonny said at that moment, it was like a light bulb came on in the darkness of his despair.  “I came to my senses, I began to think more clearly and rationally. What am I doing here?”  He asked himself, “when my father’s hired workers, waiters and cooks, have wages enough and good food to eat, and I am perishing here of hunger!”  He began to think about who he was and where he had come from and what he had done.

“I need to let go of my pride; I need to admit I have made a huge mistake; I have not only sinned; I have sinned against my father.  I need to go home, but I can’t go home without admitting my failure.”  So for a few days he thought, prayed as he had been taught. For the first time in years he really prayed and he practiced his apology:
“Father I have sinned against heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired workers.”

He walked and walked to the coast, caught a tourist boat bound for the States where he flipped hamburgers, and then hitch-hiked from Miami all the way back to Forsythe County –home.

Fred was sitting on the porch of the diner as he often did in the evening.  He would stare down the road almost as if he knew some day his son would come home.  This night a red pick-up truck stopped down the street at the corner, a man got out and the truck turned.  As Fred watched the man walking toward the diner; he recognized the frame and the steps, “It is Sonny,” he cried!  He ran down the street, stopped face to face and gave him an incredible embrace!  I was running behind him.  Sonny started sobbing,  “Dad,” he said, “I have truly wronged you.  I have sinned. I am not worthy to be called a son; can I have a job in the diner, anything – waiting tables cleaning floors, just treat me as one of your workers?”

Well, it was almost as if Fred did not hear him – he interrupted Sonny and yelled back towards the diner for Smitty, the cook.  “Smitty, Smitty!  Get the prime beef we have been saving, and prepare a real filet mignon dinner with all the trimmings.”  Fred told me to get the bath water ready and get his best suit out of the closet for Sonny to wear.  Then to my great surprise and disbelief, he took off his signet ring that was his grandfather’s (a real symbol of authority) and he put it on Sonny’s finger right there in the street.  He said, gently and with passion, “This son of mine was dead and is now alive, was lost and now is found.”  He embraced him again and said, “Let’s celebrate!”

Isn’t this incredible?  My husband is incredible!!

Fred does not question him or chastise him for what he has done.
He does not demand a report of finances or even ask about the loses.  He does not criticize Sonny.  He just shows forgiving love in his actions; it is pure grace.
I was so floored by what a mess Sonny looked like.  He had a scrubby beard, looked like he had not shaved in weeks; he really had a bad odor about him.  He looked like some of the transients that hung out at the back kitchen door, no he looked worse.  I was about to tell Sonny to go in the back door and clean up, then we could talk about what happened and what we might do.  But not Fred – go draw a bath for him.  Pure grace that man is!

Not much later that evening.  Adam was walking down the street, heading to his apartment, having closed the diner at the edge of town, when he heard music and saw all the lights on at the home diner.  He could see in the windows from the street that there were balloons and candles on the tables, and he thought what is going on, why did I not know if there was a party for someone special.  He saw Smitty, the cook, out on the porch, with a wine glass in his hand – an unusual sight.  “What is going on?” he asked rather indignantly.

“Ah, Ah,” he stammered, “Your father is throwing a big dinner celebration because your brother has come home.  He got out the prime beef for the celebration!  Come on in and feast and celebrate with us!”

Adam was furious!  A few expletives flew from his mouth, his back got stiff and his face red!

Just then his father came out; he told him how wonderful it was to have his brother back home and he invited Adam to come in and eat and join the festivities.

Adam immediately begins with moral judgments of his brother Sonny – “he has devoured your living with prostitutes and you are throwing a party?!  You are rewarding the undeserving.  What  earnings has he shown you from all his estate money?  Huh! What?!  Nothing I am sure.”

Then Adam gets on his self-righteous high horse: “Look these many years I have served you and never disobeyed you; I have been responsible, never late for work! And you never gave me even a barbeque with my friends!”  He was so angry – where did all this anger come from – he has had such a good life here, I thought.

Then I listened again to a loving father explain that they had been companions in the diner business, that they have shared the best of everything life has to offer, that all that was here was Adam’s.  Fred did not put his elder son down; he does not make fun of his piety; he doesn’t accuse him of being respectable because he lacks the courage and gumption to take risks in life.

Adam is more angry at his father than at Sonny; I thought there for a minute that he might just haul off and hit him.  Adam could not see that goodness carries its own rewards. He could not see beyond the surface of a brother who had admitted his mistakes and had come practically groveling home.

This patient and understanding father makes one last plea to Adam, “It was fitting to make merry, for this brother of yours was dead and is alive, was lost and is found.  I have regained a son; you have regained a brother!”

Now I feel like I had two prodigal sons: one who left home physically and one who left home in spirit.

What about your home, your relationships.  Who are you?  The younger son, impetuous, wanting to do what you want when you want it.  Wanting to take control of your own life, as if God were not the giver of it all?  Are you the careless thoughtless younger son who is selfish, thinking only of your own desires?

Or are you the older son, the outstanding citizen, who judges others by your own high moral standard?  Someone who never misses church, always does your duty to contribute to God’s work, always follows the rules, never brought shame on the family or church?  Are you jealous of those who haven’t worked as hard, or come from less important backgrounds, be it schooling or wealth or status, who get positions of leadership in the church or community?  Are we surprised at our own depth of resentment of those who “wasted” their lives until now and are put on equal footing with those who have faithfully “stayed home?”

Or are you seeking, growing in love and kindness, in forgiveness and compassion as the father demonstrates?

In our Lenten devotional, “From Fear to Love” for yesterday, Henri Nouwen writes, “I want you to know that you are the younger child, you are the older child and you are called to become the parent who loves unconditionally.  There is a younger child in you that needs conversion, and there is an older child in you that needs conversion.  There is also a parent in you that needs to emerge so that you can welcome all those who “return” to you day after day.”

This is the Word of God!  Thanks be to God!