HABITS OF THE HEART
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Texts: Luke 15:11-32
With apologies to Robert Bellah and company, I have borrowed for the title of this sermon the title of their ground breaking study, now almost 30 years old, of individualism and community life in the United States. (Truth be told, they borrowed the phrase from de Tocqueville, so you see everything old is new again.) The dictionary records that a habit is “an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary; a dominant or regular disposition or tendency; a prevailing character or quality.” It is something we learn and practice over time until it becomes “hardwired,” not unchangeable, but usually change only comes with time, conscious effort and maybe the help of a good therapist or support group. What we sometimes call second nature, habits function in our lives usually without any conscious effort on our part.
What drew me to this phrase is a rather literal application of it to the characters in today’s text. Each of the key characters – younger brother, older brother, father - is a product of the habits of his heart, one a callow heart, one a hardened heart, one a heart of compassion. What this magnificent short story does is allow us to look into these hearts to see if and how they reflect our own hearts and habits. What do we know of the callow heart – the immature heart that functions without any level of adult understanding or empathy, that is so self-absorbed that it trods clumsily over parent, sibling, community, way of life and faith tradition to get its own headstrong way? What do we know of the heart hardened by a life time of unrealistic expectations imposed by self and others and fear of the unfamiliar? What do we know of compassionate hearts given fully to forgiveness, grace and love, that reach out to draw us in, regardless of our condition when we enter their orbits? Do we know or have we been people like these?
The old adage says that “youth is wasted on the young.” Here he is, the handsome younger brother, the original party boy, the lover of freedom who has no sense of responsibility. Here he is turning his back on his father, his family, his friends from the village, the life of his community, the elders, the rabbi, the God of his forebears. He has no need for any of it. He is Peer Gynt, traveling the world to avoid taking responsibility for his life and actions; he is Peter Pan off to Neverland where he will “never grow up.” “Oh but dad, before I go, there is one thing. I need a little cash to pay for the trip and support my lifestyle. How about you divide up the estate now? Then I’ll just liquidate my share and be on my way.” Spoiled we might say. Ready to make his way in the world? Well, yes, if daddy foots the bill.
We know characters like this, people who have given their lives over to the pursuit of pleasure, good time guys, skilled at working people and systems to their own advantage regardless of the cost to others, especially those who love them. Addicts, get rich quick schemers, ne’er do wells, good for nothings, sinners all! They have tormented us, trying to work an angle, cutting corners, making promises they won’t keep, shirking responsibility, trying to charm us with their love of a good time.
We don’t really know what the prodigal does with his money, except that he spends it all and, in a delicious bit of synchronicity, he spends his last dime as famine hits Neverland. Wait! Isn’t Neverland supposed to be famine-free, recession-proof? Not in this story. He’s so hungry, he’s ready to eat the slop that comes to the pigs. He’s desperate, hurting, lost beyond his shallow imagining. The callow, careless habits of his heart have brought him as low as he can go. He has truly found his bottom.
Even when he comes to his senses, we don’t really know the depth of his transformation. It could be that it simply dawns on him that he can get a better deal back in his home village than he’s getting here in this foreign land. This cynical view allows for a change in perspective but not a change of heart. Or perhaps, in the immortal words of Robert Frost, he sees that “Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in.” (These words are uttered as Warren and Mary discuss the fate of Silas, the ancient and unreliable dreamer who moves in and out of their lives as a hired man. In the end, Silas comes “home” to them to die, for where else is he to go? He is completely cut off from his successful brother, the banker, and they have been kind to him.) Or perhaps the young man has a real, radical repentance, a true change in the habits of his heart as he takes stock of how low he has sunk and realizes the error of his ways. At a deep level he remembers what it is like to be loved and cared for, to be part of a family, a community, a culture, a faith tradition and desires at the very least to return to that environment even if it is as a hired hand.
Then, there is the elder brother. The text doesn’t say so initially, but you can imagine that he is not at all happy with this younger brother of his. They are not close; maybe they never have been. The elder brother is the faithful one, but perhaps he is also the fearful one. He is the one who does what is expected of him, though it may be because he is caught in a pattern of earning respectability through his commitment to conformity. His are the habits of a hardened heart. He has shut down large areas of his life in order to be seen and accepted as a good son, an upright citizen, a model landowner, a righteous leader in the community. He suffers from an ailment known as “Best Little Boy in the World Syndrome.” He always does what is expected of him and does it very well by public standards, but this is often a defense against anyone seeing what is truly in his heart. He uses the defense to cover thoughts and feelings that would cause his image to crumble in a quivering mess of common humanity. Maybe you identify with him to a large degree. I surely can. Maybe you share a similar role in your family. If not, you must have known characters like this – angry, surly, self-righteous, arrogant, judgmental.
And isn’t that who we see when his father comes out to find his recalcitrant son, lurking in belligerent defiance, refusing to join the party? What comes oozing out is the venomous resentment that the elder brother holds, ostensibly toward his prodigal brother and foolish father, but more likely toward the cruel ways he has circumscribed his own life and freedom, trying to measure up to some ridiculous unreal standard of perfection in sonship. It is sad to hear that the elder brother has never allowed himself even a private party with his friends from the neighborhood. His brother has tasted so much of what life has to offer, anything that he greedily has wanted for himself; the elder brother has lived a life of resentful self-denial. But neither has found his true self. One has had fun; one has had none; neither has known joy. The habits of the callow heart and the habits of the hardened heart do not lead to life, certainly not in any abundance.
This brings us to the father of the compassionate heart. We can say with some assurance that the behavior of the two sons is recognizable behavior. It is the father, with the habits of the compassionate heart, who would have been an anomaly. No well-off Middle Eastern landowner would have given in so easily to his younger son. He must have sensed in the boy a need to find himself and was willing to let him go, even to finance his ill-advised adventures. These were surely acts of compassion and grace on the father’s part. The village, his older son and the rest of the family probably thought he was an old fool, maybe a little senile.
But what is even more remarkable is, at a crucial juncture in the story, to find him waiting and watching for the return of his wayward child. As Paula reminded us, for the younger son to ask for his share of the inheritance was akin to saying he wished his father dead. Surely once the boy had sold his share of the land and headed for gentile territory he would have been seen as dead by the rest of his family and village. But not to the father. Sitting there in the midst of the village with the other elders, he kept a look out for his boy. When he saw him approaching the village, ragged and dirty, he literally ran to greet him, covering him with kisses and tears of joy. Before the son could finish his confession, the father had called for robe, ring and shoes, all the symbols of sonship. Maybe the boy was genuinely penitent, maybe he just saw his father as a sentimental old fool who could deny him nothing, but the father’s actual love goes far beyond the son’s expectations.
Continuing to sacrifice his own honor and dignity, the father leads the boy through the village to the house and invites the whole village to feast with them in joy. He will not let the boy be humiliated, he will not hear the sneers and jeers of the villagers. His sheer joy in the return of his son trumps every other feeling and response. “…this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” There will undoubtedly be some reckoning later, now there is only joy.
The hard-hearted one just cannot grasp it. This is not what is supposed to happen. This brother really was dead to him. There was no place in his heart for him. And this foolish father of his, so sentimental, so soft-hearted, so quick to forgive! He was an embarrassment to his elder son and to everything he stood for. The boy would have none of it. But the father of a compassionate heart only knows how to go out into the road to greet these sons of his and draw them in. He pleads with the elder one to join the celebration. It must have cut the old man deeply to hear his son snarl, “…this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes…” Still, dad reaches across the anger and pain and resentment, “My dear, dear son. You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” One possible irony in this statement is that part of what this old man has is two sons and so the younger brother also belongs to the elder as well as to the father. “…we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
Habits of the heart. They are shaped by our experiences in living and we hold onto them for dear life. Here we see a callow heart and a hard heart contrasted. Luke leaves the tale unresolved. Is the younger son truly transformed? Does the elder ever join the party? Is the father’s compassion ever truly rewarded with acceptance? The gospel writer means for us to look at how we might identify with any and all of these characters to write our own endings for the story in the evolving habits of our hearts as we encounter the good news.
Take a moment to look into your own heart. What habits have you developed over a life time? How have they served you? How have they held you back? How have they led you astray? How have they built relationships? How have they shut others out? How have they enlarged your world? How have they hemmed you in? The power of this parable is the inexorable, inextinguishable power of love. The compassionate heart reaches out across all the habits of our hearts – loosening hearts that are bound, healing hearts that are broken, filling hearts that are empty, teaching new habits to hearts that are lost and lonely, confused and wandering, cold and fearful. This is indeed good news. No habit of the heart is eternal except the habit of love, manifest in the compassionate heart of God. All we need to do is turn toward those open arms to know how good it is to be home.