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5/28/2018 0 Comments

The Prodigal Son And The Great Painter Who Painted It ~ Rev. Sandra Olsen, 5/20/18

Luke 15: 11-32
 
We are all accustomed to the metaphor of God as father.  Each week we say the Lord’s Prayer, which begins with the words Our Father.  But how often do we hear God referred to as Mother? Of course, all language about God is symbolic, since God is beyond all concepts and language, but certainly mother and father are major forces in human life, so it should not surprise us that these images have brought people closer to God. I came across a poem recently, portions of which read: 
 
I cry out without a sound to Him I’ve been
told is there,
But my soul yearns for something more.
He knows my pain, yes,
But so does She.  And
A mother’s pain
Needs a mother’s comfort.
 
In both Matthew and Luke, Jesus, when weeping over Jerusalem, the city that rejected the prophets and would eventually kill him, referred to himself as the mother hen, longing to gather her brood together under her sheltering wings.   In Genesis, where God is sometimes referred to El Shaddai, usually translated as God Almighty, scholars say that the word Shaddai derives from the word, shad, which is a woman’s breast, the place where a baby is cuddled and nursed.  Some years ago, when I was visiting France, I was in a cathedral---I cannot remember which city it was, and this massive wooden pulpit, was held up by a statue of a nursing mother.  Now this was a Roman Catholic Church, but as a Protestant who sees the pulpit as the central symbol, I was blown away by that image: the place where the word of God is pondered, interpreted and preached, upheld by a nursing woman.
 
Now let’s change directions.  Take a look at this copy of one of the greatest paintings ever painted: Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son.  You heard the story.  This younger son, in asking for his inheritance basically told his father, “I wish you were dead.” Such a request was beyond all decent convention.  And then he goes out and lives a life of dissipation until he is broke and is hired to feed the pigs—for a Jew that is the lowest of the low.  And so he returns home, falls at his father’s feet and begs for forgiveness.  I am unworthy to be your son, he confesses.
 
Now take a look at the father: He is an old man; his eyes look almost blind.  He wears a huge red cape, wing like in its ability to gather and protect the son under its folds.  Now look at the hands. Those hands mesmerized Henry Nouwen, one of the great spiritual teachers of the 20th century, who died in 1996.  When Nouwen went to St. Petersburg, to the Hermitage Museum, where this painting is, he sat and stared at it for over four hours.  And he could not take his eyes off those hands.  Of course the father in this parable is a metaphor for God, but in those hands, Nouwen said we have the hands of both a mother and a father.  Let me read to you what Nouwen wrote:
 
The father’s left hand touching the son’s shoulder is strong and muscular. The fingers are spread out and cover a large part of the prodigal’s shoulder and back.  The hand seems not only to touch, but also to hold.  How different is the father’s right hand!  This hand does not hold or grasp.  It is refined, soft, and very tender.  The fingers are close to each other, and they have an elegant quality.  It lies gently upon the son’s shoulder.  It wants to caress, to stroke, to offer consolation and comfort.  The father in this painting is indeed God in whom both manhood and womanhood, fatherhood and motherhood are fully present.
 
The parable tells us that the father ran to meet his returning son, and indeed in the Bible there are stories suggesting a God who searches for the lost---the lost sheep, the lost coin.  But Rembrandt choose to paint not the movement of God, but rather the stillness of God.  “What I see, Nouwen wrote, “is God as mother, receiving back into her womb the one whom she made in her own image. The near blind eyes, the hands, the cloak, the bent over body, they all call forth the divine maternal love, marked by grief, desire, hope and endless waiting.  God has chosen to become linked to the life of her children.  She has freely chosen to become dependent on her creatures, whom she has gifted with freedom.  When they leave, she grieves; when they return she is glad.  But her joy will not be complete until all who have received life from have returned home and gather together around the table prepared for them.” 
 
Rembrandt, by the way, painted this painting as an old man.  Though he had enormous success early on, living a life of luxury, it all came crashing down.  He lost his wealth; he lost two wives, two mistresses and four children; only one daughter survived him.  And yet his losses did not disillusion him.  In fact, some say his losses had a purifying effect on his artistic sight.  He began to regard humanity and nature with an even more penetrating eye, no longer distracted by riches and outward splendor. And it was then, and only then that he could paint what some say is the masterpiece of his life, The Return of the Prodigal Son.”  Shortly after its completion, Rembrandt died.  And we are left with a gift that invites our reflection and our gratitude as it leaves us with many penetrating questions one of which is:  Who is God for us?  
 

 
Luke 15:11-32
11 Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with[b] the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’[c] 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25 “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father[d] said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But 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.’”
 
 
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    About Our Pastor:

    I am very happy to be here at the First Church of Christ, Congregational in Unionville, CT.  I arrived here in July, 2017, and have been warmly received.  This is a wonderful church community.  I have been an ordained minister for over three decades now, and I consider it a great privilege and challenge to be called to serve.  Before coming to Unionville I served churches on Long Island, Middletown, CT and then ten years in New Haven, Center Church on the Green.  My home is in Middletown, where I live with my husband, Donald Oliver, who is a professor of molecular biology at Wesleyan University.  We have four grown children, two boys and two girls and three granddaughters, the youngest born on October 3, 2017!

    Before moving to Middletown in 1991, I lived in Stony Brook, Long Island for nine years, where I served a small church part time and also worked as a chaplain in various medical settings. My experiences as a chaplain made a very profound impact on me and changed me as a minister.  I saw people break under the weight of their burdens, so I don’t believe it is ever helpful to tell suffering people that God never gives burdens that cannot be borne.  God does not send burdens; life just is; life just happens.

    My growing up years were spent mainly in (suburban) Buffalo, NY, though I also lived in Jacksonville for three years during the turbulent civil rights years in the 1960’s.  The experience of being a “Yankee” in the midst of entrenched resistance to civil rights certainly made a deep impression on my young mind and spirit.  I was sometimes viewed as an “enemy,” an outsider, who was trying to impose a whole new set of rules on a culture not interested in changing.  I did not understand why I was being personally blamed for this, but the experience was character building.


    ​I grew up as a pretty liberal Presbyterian, and my childhood memories of church and Sunday school are positive ones.  I was taught that God is love and God’s love is for everyone, including people of other religions or no religion at all.  God’s love was big enough to hold everyone, I was assured, so it was quite a shock to see many “good” members of our Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Florida, totally opposed to integration and the passage of Civil Rights legislation.  When I asked my parents why, their response was, “Change is painful.  None of us likes to change.”

    I went off to the University of Chicago in the late 60’s, and like many students of my generation, I was swept up in the protest against the Viet Nam War as well as the civil rights campaign and the women’s movement.  The assassination of Martin Luther King erupted in flaming riots as National Guard troops descended on our campus.  The summer of 1968 brought the Democrats to Chicago for their convention with more protest and riots.  Church and God seemed both remote and irrelevant, and I recognized with a pang of regret that I no longer believed in God.

    After graduation from college I earned a Master’s Degree in teaching, but after teaching for three years I decided it was not my call.  Eventually I found my way into Boston University’s School of Theology.  I went not because I was deeply spiritual, but rather because I was curious.  I had found my way back to church, but it was the Unitarian-Universalist tradition, where all your answers are questioned, including belief in God.  Somewhere in college my belief in God had died, and I wanted to know if or how it was possible to THINK about God.  I wanted to know if it were possible to maintain intellectual rigor and honesty, while also embracing faith.  Where else to go but to a school of theology?    I was not disappointed.  I loved my studies and the questions theology asks and the answers it struggles to offer.  I was inspired by the theology of Paul Tillich and the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resisted the Nazis and paid with his life.  I loved the never ending quest to know and understand, and the deep need and yearning to relate that knowledge and understanding to faith and the actual conditions of life.
    ​
    After graduation from Boston University, I was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist Association, though I was already beginning to consider returning to my Christian heritage.  I moved with my family to Long Island in 1983 and served a church (part time) as well as worked in various hospital settings.  I also pursued a Doctor of Ministry Degree at the Roman Catholic Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York.  The sole Protestant in the program, I was challenged and stretched by not only my colleagues and professors, but also through my exposure to Catholic thinkers such as Karl Rahner, Walter Kasper and Bernard Lonergan. 

    While working as a chaplain in the midst of great suffering on a burn unit, a neo-natal intensive care unit, a neurosurgery unit and a state mental hospital, where the deepest questions about life, death, and hope are not theoretical but actual, I finally decided to transfer my ministerial standing into the United Church of Christ.  In the context of so much suffering, the God who suffers and yet also loves and forgives was the God who captured both my heart and mind, the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ. 


    We human beings are all on a journey, and the paths before us are many and diverse.  The Christian path has been the one I have chosen to walk, and I have found it leading to full and abundant life.  But I also realize there are other paths, asking different questions, offering different answers.  We need such diversity to challenge and enrich us and also remind us, “Not all who wander are lost" (Tolkien).  The great physicist, Albert Einstein once said, “Our situation on this earth seems strange.  Every one of us appears here involuntarily without knowing exactly why.  To me it is enough to wonder at the secrets.”

    I hope you will pay us a visit at First Church in Unionville.  Come, and wonder with us.  With all of life’s struggles, hurts and sorrows, it is still a beautiful world.  Come and give thanks to God with us.

    ​Yours in Christ, Sandra Olsen

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