Startle us again, O God, with your amazing grace.
We come here today out of busy, noisy lives.
We come to be still together and to hear a different word.
So speak the word you have for us
and give us faith to know again your love for us and for all your children,
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Martin Marty is a distinguished historian and scholar. He writes a lot about a lot of topics: books, essays, columns. When the Wall Street Journal or the Encyclopedia Britannica need someone to say something that is sensitive and thoughtful about religion, more often than not they call Marty.

So two months ago, Marty commented on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (Sightings, 9 February 2004). He titled his column “Not My Passion.”

Marty doesn’t think much of the film—wonders why conservative Catholics and evangelicals who normally are opposed to violence in films find it fine if Jesus is in one and suggests that the preponderance of blood, gore, brutality, and torture is so overwhelming that the real questions—“What is this about? Why is this happening? What is going on here?”—get lost. He doesn’t plan to see Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. “In Holy Week,” Marty wrote, “I’ll be listening to Bach’s “Passion,” singing about “was there ever grief like thine?” but not in the belief that the more blood and gore the holier.”

So last week, as I was thinking about this whole big conversation and this sermon, I sat in my seat at Symphony Center to listen to George Frederic Handel’s Messiah, all two-and-one-half-hours of it (which means that it lasts about as long as Mel Gibson’s movie, if you add in the previews and the time you spend in line waiting for popcorn and a diet Coke). What a gift! What a miracle! It is strong and delicate, passionate and gentle, boisterous and quiet. Before the Hallelujah Chorus, near the end of Part I, there is an alto and soprano aria, “He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd.” It’s my favorite part actually. The two voices never sing together, but each beautifully, elegantly announces the familiar but amazing idea that Messiah, the one who died and rose again, the one who shall reign forever and ever, is like a shepherd who gently leads and feeds his sheep. It always gets to me—and it did again Tuesday night, and part of it, I think, was that the film The Passion of the Christ simply ignores, misses this point altogether: the shepherd finding the lost sheep, leading the sheep.

In fairness, Gibson does not set out to tell the entire story of Jesus. I wish he had. Because the whole story is important. In Braveheart, he tells the story of William Wallace, Scottish patriot and martyr, describes the political and social background, makes the English look at least as dreadful as the priests in the Passion but takes care of Wallace’s torturous execution in a few minutes, not two excruciating hours. Novelist Mary Gordon, a devout Catholic, writes, “If you take the Passion out of its context, you are left with a Jesus who is much more body than spirit; you are presented not with the author of the Beatitudes or the man who healed the sick but with a carcass to be flayed” (New York Times, 28 February 2004).

David Denby, in the New Yorker, observes that there is nothing in the movie of “the electric charge of hope and redemption Jesus brought into the world . . . none of the heart-stopping eloquence, startling ethical radicalism, and personal radiance.”

John Petrakis, writing in the Christian Century, said that while Gibson claims simply to be following scripture, he doesn’t use enough of it—no teacher, healer, no Good Shepherd, no God in the movie who follows the lost to the farthest limits of the sea and into hell itself, as Psalm 139 so beautifully announces, no prodigal father who simply will not stop loving and pursuing his children until they are safely at home again.

If I could know only one thing about Jesus other than that his death on the cross was somehow for me, it would be a story he told one day about God and about the human condition and what God does about it. It’s called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and he, the young son, gets all the press, but the subject is really the father. He is the real prodigal.

You know the story. Religious legalists have been criticizing Jesus for associating and eating with the wrong kind of people: sinners, tax collectors, outcasts. Jesus doesn’t argue. Instead he tells a brilliant little story about a man and two sons. The characters are unforgettable. The younger son does the unthinkable: essentially says to his father, “Old man, I can’t wait for you to die. Give me my part of your estate now”—which is what the father does. No questions asked. The young son takes the money and runs and spends it all on what Jesus delicately calls dissolute living. When the young man is broke, he takes a job feeding hogs, an abhorrent job for a Jew. And then “he comes to himself.” This is not great moral breakthrough. This is a hungry, exhausted boy who remembers where there are clean sheets and three meals a day. He rehearses his speech, crafts and refines it—“I’m no longer worthy to be your son; just treat me like a hired hand, but let me come home”—goes over and over the speech on the road until he comes within eyesight of home.

His father sees him coming. Actually the old man is out there every day, morning and evening, scanning the horizon, watching, waiting, hoping. He sees the unmistakable figure of his son, the walk, the carriage he knows so well, his child, coming home! And he does the most extraordinary thing, something his neighbors would regard as almost embarrassing. He hikes up his robe and runs down the road. In that culture, men of his station don’t run. They wait in dignified patience. This father is so overjoyed he runs. His son sees him coming, starts to make his well-rehearsed speech, but can’t get it out because his father’s arms are around him and his father’s kisses and tears of joy are on his cheeks. Finally he says it: “I have sinned; I am not worthy.” The old man doesn’t even hear it. He’s busy now, planning the celebration: best robes, ring, new sandals, fatted calf. “My son was lost and is found.”

The third character we recognize, oldest child, elder brother. I’m one. We’re the ones new parents practice on. We’re the ones who get to watch later while our younger siblings benefit from all the patience and grace and generosity and freedom our parents had not yet learned when we showed up and which we taught them. Most of our presidents were eldest children. Many ministers, too. Maybe it’s because we think we have to fix all the things our younger siblings mess up and break. In any event, this older sibling is a classic: hard working, responsible to a T. Maybe he didn’t see his brother return and the amazing encounter on the road. Maybe he did. He does what firstborns do: he keeps on working. But he hears the music and laughter now and it is too much for him. He can’t go in and join the celebration and enjoy the party.

And for a second time the father leaves the house and goes out to find a lost child: this one lost in his own self-righteousness and pride. “All these years I’ve been loyal and steadfast and you never gave me a goat.” But “this son”—notice the sarcasm, the hurt—“this son” of yours who “wasted your money with prostitutes.” He’s the one who brings up the subject of sex; the father ignores his speech as well. “Son, you are always with me; all that I have is yours. But we have to celebrate; your brother was dead and is alive, was lost and has been found.”

There is a startling concept of God in this story: a God who comes after the lost, waits patiently watching, but at the first opportunity runs down the road to welcome the lost home again, leaves the party to find and recover the ones who are in self-imposed exile. It’s a radical theology, but it is actually not new. It’s as old as the Psalter, Israel’s hymnbook. Jesus knew the Psalms: memorized them as a child, recited and sang them. He knew these amazing words:

In addition to a God of justice and righteousness, Israel experienced a God of unconditional love who never gives