“Belonging Is a Gift”
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Many years ago now, back when the internet was young and social media had yet to be born, there was an organization dedicated to feeding the hungry and, even more important, eradicating hunger altogether.
All it took to support this work was to go the the organization’s website, click on an icon, and—voila!—one cup of food would be donated to organizations that provided food to the hungry.
And so it was that I made it a habit: Every day when I got to work and turned on my computer (this was also before smartphones), I would go the organization’s website, click, and know that at no cost to me a little food would go to someone who needed it.
There were also other ways to donate food through the website. One could make a monetary contribution to the group or purchase items for sale; the more expensive the item, the more food that would be donated.
So when Christmas rolled around and I was looking for gifts for my family (who lacked for nothing), I bought them gifts from the Hunger Site. It was a no-brainer, I thought: gifts for my family, food to people who needed it. Win-win.
And when one of my relatives thanked me for the gift, I let her know that my purchase of her gift had also helped provide food to the hungry. I thought she would be pleased.
But this good, church-going person did not seem happy at all.
“Well!” she huffed. “I hope the food goes to people who actually deserve it!”
And that, my friends, is—in a nutshell—what makes the gospel so scandalous: It tells us that God’s unconditional love and extravagant grace, God’s tender mercy and limitless forgiveness, God’s blessing and healing and new life is for everyone. It doesn’t have to be deserved. It doesn’t have to be earned. It doesn’t require clean living or right belief; it doesn’t require any belief. It doesn’t depend on our devotion or repentance, on how closely we follow the ways or Jesus or how well we love God and our neighbors.
Now, don’t get me wrong: All of those things will make our lives better. Those practices will facilitate our healing and wholeness. They will bring more joy, meaning, and fulfillment into our lives. All those practices will make the world a better place.
But they won’t make God love us any more than God already does. Nor will they protect us against tragedy, injustice, or the many normal losses of life. They won’t earn us a ticket into heaven, where admission is free for all. And, if we think that’s what they’re about and that’s why we do them, those practices won’t even do much for us—and might actually harm us.
If we think we have to earn God’s love and approval, chances are that we think the same about most things in life.
And if we think we have earned everything we have, we are likely to resent those we view as having gotten something for nothing.
All of which brings us not only to the somewhat-misnamed story of the Prodigal Son, but also to what I think is at the root of much of what is wrong in our country today.
Because belonging is a gift from God. Walking through this world as God’s beloveds is both gift and miracle. And walking beside each other in God’s world, where there is not only enough but more than enough for all, is the way things are supposed to be.
But virtually every human-designed system pits us against each other. We are taught to believe that there is only so much to go around—like pieces of a pie—and so, whenever someone else gets something, that means there is less for us. At the same time, we’re taught that life should be fair, meaning that if I had to work hard for what I have, you should, too.
Instead of seeking to understand other people’s experiences, we judge them according to our own. Instead of realizing how much has been given to us, we credit our privileged good fortune to our own efforts. And instead of cooperating with one another and supporting each other, we compete against each other. We forget that we belong to each other.
I ’m sorry to say it but, most of us are, at one time or another, the elder son in this story.
I’m sorry to say it, but our national politics reflect a similar dynamic.
Just as the hard-working, first-born son of the loving father resents his father’s celebration of the return of the no-good, disrespectful and desperate younger son, so many white people in our country today resent what they view as “unfair” DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs designed to level the playing field for women, people of color, the disabled, and queer folks. More than that, they resent the very people who they believe have gotten something for nothing or are somehow less qualified than the white folks who were born on third base.
Just as the elder son had seemed to lose sight of all the privileges afforded to him simply because he had the good fortune of being born first, the resentful class has forgotten all the public goods and institutional biases—public education, racism, the patriarchy, and generational wealth, to name a few—that helped make their success possible. When they sense that some of their built-in advantages are threatened, the leaders of the resentful class unite the less powerful members. They do this by distracting working class and struggling middle-class folks from corporate greed, tax breaks for the wealthy, and economic inequality that are actually hurting them. The ruling resentful folks unite the struggling folks around common enemies—immigrants, for example, or BIPOC and queer folks, trans women in sports, and DEI programs.
Like the elder son in the parable, the resentful folks then rise up and say, “But what about us? You’re putting undocumented immigrants up in hotels while we can barely pay our rent. You’re giving BIPOC folks extra attention while we muddle along. You’re spending money on foreign aid while the price of eggs keeps going up.
“We work hard and pay our taxes, but when these other folks come along, you roll out the red carpet.”
A more common, and also important, reading of the Prodigal Son story is to focus on the father’s no-holds-barred love for his wayward child, his unabashed joy as he runs down the road to embrace the one who humiliated him, his forgiveness that comes even before the prodigal recites his canned and manipulative speech, his pulling out all the stops to celebrate that the beloved who was dead had come to life, the one who was lost had been found.
Because so few of were raised with this image of God, it is only right to focus on this characterization of divine love. But the love in this story doesn’t stop there. God’s love is never limited only to the lost and the left out; it’s simply more obvious in those situations because it was so unexpected and is so clearly undeserved.
God’s love and mercy are also extended to the privileged, to the ones who’ve always played by the rules, to the insecure and bitter and quietly or not-so-quietly resentful ones who’ve gone through life thinking they had to wear themselves out being good.
I believe that like the wise and loving father in the story, God looks upon all her children and weeps as they call each other names and cast each other out. Some children entirely ignoring the others. Other children pointing fingers at the ones they think are getting something they don’t deserve, and pouting and yelling to God about “those children of yours.”
And God gently responds, “But everything I have is yours. Always has been and always will be. I am always with you. I would have happily thrown a grand party for you if you had only stopped trying to earn my favor for long enough to get in touch with your own needs and desires. And these siblings of yours—well, they were in dire need. And so I made sure they were taken care of. I welcomed them back into the fold where they should have been all along. The place you’ve always been. This place—here in my heart, healed and whole and loved without measure—where everyone belongs.”
Beloveds, God now calls us to share the gift of universal grace, love, and belonging with everyone—those who have been left out, and those who feel overlooked. God calls us not only to rejoice when all are included, not only to celebrate when all are lifted up, but also to work to ensure that all God’s children are showered with all that they need and more, and to praise God for giving all of us so much more than we “deserve.”
Because everyone belongs, and belonging is a precious gift.
