[Comma]

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent IV, Year C
March 27, 2022
 
It is an oldie and a goodie, this parable of the Prodigal Son.  Church folks know it well.  It is about the kid who takes an early withdrawal on his inheritance, takes off to Vegas and blows the whole wad.  Once he is reduced to homelessness, he decides to go home and ask to work for his father for minimum wage.  But the father, takes him in, cleans him up, and throws a big party for his return.  But the older brother, the one who stayed back on the farm and did his chores dutifully, objects strenuously, to which the father says “get over yourself, your brother was lost, destined to die, but here he is: found, alive, we are preparing a feast.”
 
But I want to go back to some particulars in the middle of the story.  After the so stated period of “dissolute living,” there is a famine and jobs are scarce, but the younger brother is lucky to get a job feeding pigs.  Of course, the Jews hearing this story did not keep or eat pigs.  In fact, for them, touching a pig rendered them unclean before God, and one who did so had to undergo a ritual of purification before the priests, and then, rejoin their community.  But the younger son was hungry and, as the text says: no one gave him anything.  Back home, even the poorest of the poor were given something as a matter of decency and respect for God, if not the beggar.  Two strikes. 
 
But then, or as the text says “when he came to himself” [comma] he decides to go home, confess his sin, and accept the consequences.  It is a curious phrase “he came to himself [comma].”  The comma is a small and underappreciated centerpiece here.  A comma is a punctuation mark, indicating a pause between parts of a sentence. (It is also used to separate items in a list and to mark the place of thousands in a large numeral, but that is not the case here).  Neither Ancient Hebrew, nor Biblical Greek has commas, or periods, or question marks.  The sense of the sentence tells you what to do.  Where we put a comma, they might well just start another line for emphasis.  All this is to say, that there is a pause there.  When he came to himself, pause, there is moment to think, to notice, to give silence to a moment of realization.
 
True, I am a grammar nerd, but I read this comma as significant.  The pause might just need to sit there, echoing in our imagination for a bit.  How does he come to himself?  How do we come to ourselves?  Does the necessity of “coming to” happen all at once, through a process, or just a flash of holy hope in the depths of despair?  The philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard defines sin as the despairing refusal to be ourselves.  He goes on to say that getting to that despairing place is a not necessarily a bad thing, but if we stay there, stuck there, we are never fully alive.
 
This is where the story gets personal for this sinner.  I can bear witness to what that comma was in my own experience.  Without getting into the gory detail, I can say that I thought I had years ago taken my place on the wagon of sobriety.  I had recognized that I was not one who can drink alcohol.  While many can, I cannot.  Whether this is genetic or situational is a matter of debate, but the chemical nature of dependency means my brain, with alcohol, flips switches that bypass the off button.  The disease of alcoholism is fatal when left unchecked.  I had been on the wagon, but I had never really taken my seat, put on a seat belt, and taken it slowly.  Instead, hung my feet off the sides, and drove too fast across some really uneven ground, and, as a result, fell hard.  I had talked with my family too much and not enough.  On a morning in late September, I sat on the floor of our living room and talked to the dogs. “I surrender.”  I felt really physically, emotionally, and spiritually horrible.  But then, I felt really good, even right there in the horrible.  I made some difficult phone calls.  Others stepped up and gave me space to go for help.  Janice was supportive and anxious and weary.  Her journey is her story to tell.  There have been many angels along the way.  I guess I had begun to come to myself [comma]. 
 
When I check myself into residential treatment, I walked into a lobby, gave my name, and went back through an empty dining room to a conference room.  With the nurse and clinical director, I answered a bunch of questions, signed a bunch of papers, answered the same questions again, and was told that the house manager would meet me in the dining room.  Anxious, ashamed, nervous, and emotionally raw, I walked out into the dining room, and found the table to be full.  People were eating, talking, and laughing… a lot.  One woman said, “I guess you are new.  You are in the right place.  We can help.”  Apparently, I interrupted a staff meeting as folks introduced themselves one by one.  One guy put his fork down, grabbed my suitcase, and showed me to my room.  The woman who had welcomed gave me a brief tour: the snack room, the laundry room, and the meeting rooms.  Then, she got me some lunch, took me to the dining room, and set a place for me at the table.  I asked her how long she had worked there.  She laughed and so did the others.  “We are here for treatment, just like you.  You may feel awful right now.  We have been where you are.  It gets better” [comma]
 
It got better.  It still does.  I experienced coming to myself not as some gargantuan self-actualized achievement, rather as a real, complete, and unconditional surrender, giving up, and letting God welcome me back to me, welcoming me home.  [comma].  And you all did the same.
 
It’s funny how we call today’s gospel the story of the Prodigal Son.  Jesus never calls it that.  The word prodigal is a describing word for one who spends money or resources freely; one who is extravagant.  True enough, the younger son does some expensive dissolute living, but he does not die.  He comes to himself and goes home where his father welcomes him, cleans him up, and throws a big feast to celebrate.  The father is not duped.  He knows his child, his children, and he loves them beyond ways words or actions can measure.  With no promise of perfection or smooth sailing for the rest of time, he seizes a moment, celebrates the son’s return, and shows him what love does.
 
The son is not a hero because he left and came back.  The older brother is not a hero because he never left home.  The hero is the father’s unwavering and unchanging love for all of them.  Some might call the father one who spends resources freely; one who is extravagant. [comma]
 
This is a story of the prodigal alright, but not the Prodigal Son so much as the Prodigal Father who welcomes the one who ran off, the one who stayed home, and everyone he can find, making a place at the table, so we, too, can come to ourselves [comma] and find our way home.