Q. What kind of firewalls have you built in your heart?

Q. How is a relationship with Jesus a metaphor or template for us?
 

Don’t you love San Francisco? I feel so lucky to live here and to daily be able to see the skyline, the bay, the bridges, the ships, the fog creeping in and out, and annually the fireworks across the water. I spent about ten years commuting by Golden Gate Transit to the Civic Center and to the financial district, walking the streets at lunchtime and enjoying the shops and restaurants, but that was thirty years ago in the early and mid-Seventies. It has changed, I know. I’m there infrequently now but many of you are aware every day of the growing number of people who are homeless and hungry claiming a corner or a doorstep to wait and hope that you will drop some coins in a cup. What do you imagine brought their lives to that place? We’re sure it would never happen to us but then I have to remind myself that I had an uncle who died on a doorstep in the Tenderloin many years ago. As a society we ring our hands about the growing rate of unemployment, the decline in public mental health services, the high cost of housing, and the increase in drug and alcohol abuse. What thoughts go through your mind when you see someone homeless or hungry? When one is trying to catch your eye here in Marin or in The City, what feelings surface for you – sympathy? Frustration? Anger? Fearful of out-of-town guests being bothered? The San Francisco Hotel Council started a controversial ad campaign this last Spring to discourage handouts. It connects the panhandlers to a range of sins from drug abuse to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. One poster features a tourist couple saying, "Today we rode a cable car, visited Alcatraz, and supported a drug habit." Do you think that is a realistic interpretation of the problem or is it a stereotype and a scare tactic? Our reflection this morning is another in the series of "Squirmin’ Sermons" so the question today is, "How does your faith call you to respond to people who approach you with their needs?" From what we know of Jesus, what do you think he would do and what does that mean for us, his disciples?"

The person who submitted the question asked it in this way: "What kind of firewalls have you built in your heart?" She was brave enough to sign her name to the question and explained when we talked that she helps people in many ways; offers food, gives money, supports programs but there comes a time when she just wants to say, "Get your act together! Stop drinking. Stop doing drugs. Stop feeling depressed. Lots of people have bad luck but you are only given one life. Make the most of it. Find a job! Buck up, Buckwheat!!" She knows that our faith encourages us to love and forgive but there are times when she just shuts down and finds that a firewall is growing in her heart. She just can’t put another dollar in the cup. She suggested the example of the Prodigal Son story thinking that the forgiving father was just a little too generous.

We heard a portion of that story. The older brother worked his tail off for years, pulling the load of two brothers helping his father while the younger one wasted away his inheritance on women and booze. After a period of time spent in the Biblical equivalent of San Francisco’s famous strip joints on Broadway, there was a famine in his adopted land and the prodigal brother was forced to survive by feeding pigs, ritually unclean animals, and longing for a bite of the cornhusks left in the pig’s pens. Taking responsibility for his actions and knowing he had given up all rights to his place in the family, the young brother swallowed his pride and slowly trudged home skinny and shoeless hoping only for some work and a place to sleep and eat, like one of his father’s hired hands. Then, we are told, "While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity." Why pity? The son had treated his father and family as if they were dead, had taken a portion of the family wealth and abandoned them, traveling far away to another country. As the father grew older and the work became harder, family members probably grumbled to each other that the strong younger son wasn’t there to help when they needed him. It is understandable that firewalls would have developed in their hearts, protecting themselves from the hurt he had caused. Yet that day, while the older brother was still working hard in the fields as he had done all his life, their father spotted this wayward one when he was still far away, welcomed him home and showered him with gifts: the best robe, a family ring, sandals, the fatted calf, and a huge celebration party. It simply was not fair!! Do you think he deserved that kind of response from his father? We don’t know if the older son eventually let down his own firewall and consented to join the party or if he went off to his room to lick his emotional wounds and plan his response. What would you do?

Two weeks ago, the Fourth Monday Book Group discussed a reflection on this passage by the French priest Henri Nouwen from his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son.1 In that study group of ten or twelve people, coincidentally all were oldest siblings except one only child. You can be sure that much of that evening was spent focusing on the reaction of the older brother to whom many of us were quite sympathetic. We weren’t particularly proud of it but most of us recognized our desire for a world that was fair, by our definition, a world we could trust, a world where bad behavior was punished and good behavior rewarded. Just out of curiosity, how many of you are the first born in your family?……..

As I discussed this passage with the person who posed today’s question, she wondered what happened after the party. How did the son behave the next day or the next week? His father didn’t ask for or expect a verbal apology. It seemed just a little too easy for him to be welcomed back into the family. Have you ever had that experience of helping someone, giving them a chance, and they have blown it, at least from your prospective? We feel they let us down. We feel used and manipulated when all along we are trying to be good followers of Jesus Christ and help a person in need. We are hesitant to help again. For some of us the firewalls we build up are not there to protect us from strangers seeking handouts on street corners but from family members or close friends. When our own child or spouse or friend needs money or housing or forgiveness, we want to be able to help them but after one or two or three disappointments, we hesitate to help again. It hurts us when we realize we are putting boundaries between the ones we love and ourselves because our help is not used in the way we think it should be, when we feel like it is squandered, when we feel that we have been used.

Jesus told this parable of the Lost Son to the rule-keepers, the legal beagles, the Scribes and the Pharisees who were complaining that Jesus was breaking the religious laws. He had been seen welcoming and even eating with tax collectors and sinners, the lowest of the low, the dirtiest of the dirty. The father welcomed his rule-breaking, pig-feeding lost son back home and even prepared a feast and sat at the same table with him. He also welcomed the other lost son whose sins weren’t quite so obvious and assured him that he was just as loved. If this is a parable about God’s forgiving love for all sinners, even you and me, could it be that God is foolish, a pushover? Is this co-dependency? Does God need to learn about Tough Love if God really wants to change human behavior?

Lets look at this from another perspective, through a story from the Gospel according to John. Though she didn’t mention it, I wondered what today’s questioner would think of this model of God’s love. The story is of a sick man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, a pool known for its curative powers.2 Crowds of sick people were there, blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man had an illness that had lasted thirty-eight years and when Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had been in that condition for a long time, he said, "Do you want to be well again?" "Sir," replied the sick man. "I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed; and while I am still on the way, someone else gets down there before me." Jesus said, "Get up, pick up your sleeping–mat and walk around." The man was cured at once, and he picked up his mat and started to walk around.

These stories offer us two of many different models of God’s love for us. They are ways for us to be in relationship with Jesus that can be reflected in our lives with others. The first is the unconditional love of the father for the sons, forgiving past behaviors - a love that heals the situation and through that love welcomes the lost ones home. The second is a love that enables others to do for themselves, that commands the lost one to use all in their power with God’s help to heal the situation without waiting for the actions of others.

Our scripture that Doug read from First John asks, "How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the worldly possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but refuses to help?" That question makes me squirm because I know that my many worldly possessions are only on loan to me and yet I find myself hesitant to give up what is "mine" to share with those in need.

Now its your turn. Under what conditions do firewalls grow up around your heart – firewalls that separate you from your loved ones or from portions of God’s humanity?

How is your relationship with Jesus like a metaphor or template to help you to pull down those walls, if only brick by brick?
 

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Nouwen, Henri The Return of the Prodigal Son
John 5:1-9