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In churches around the world, and also on Sing For Joy every week, Bible stories and music form a kind of partnership that helps the stories speak in ways that words alone cannot. One good example of this partnership awaits us in March when the Gospel reading for the fourth Sunday in Lent is the story of the prodigal son. The bare bones of that story can be told with just words, but music is often like the breath of the Spirit, enabling the bones to live, enabling the story to sing.
For example, the story raises a question that music responds to better than words: Does this story prove or disprove the old saying: “You can’t go home again?” On the one hand, the prodigal certainly does go home. That seems to be the basic point of the story. On the other hand, the home he comes back to is something different from the home he left. Now, he is both welcome (in the heart of his waiting father), and not welcome (in the heart of his brother). He is back at the same address he once called home, but in a deeply personal and profound way, it isn’t the same home anymore.
And it isn’t just the older brother who is different. When two people, or two families, or two communities are reconciled to each other after a period of alienation, their relationship is not the same as it was before the alienation. Yes, we say, their relationship has been restored, but we also know that using those words isn’t entirely correct, because being forgiven is not the same experience as not needing forgiveness in the first place. Being reconciled is not the same as never being estranged. Being found is not the same as never being lost. The prodigal son, as well as his family at home, were changed by his long separation. When he returns to his family, he cannot simply return to his old relationships. His experience in “a distant country” where he “squandered his property” means that a new relationship with his family is required. If going home means having to pretend that no estrangement has taken place, then one cannot go home again. Pretense is no homecoming. But if love has power to open the hearts of both the prodigal and his family, then he can indeed go home again.
But all of this is so much better expressed by music. Think of the most well-known “prodigal son hymn,” Amazing Grace. It can be sung with penitential sorrow or deep joy, or both at the same time. It has the feeling of coming home again, and the feeling of being home for the first time, of being welcomed as you are, yet changed for the better at the same time. It expresses eloquently those mixed feelings that words stumble to express.
Grace means that one can go home again, and find when one arrives that though it is indeed home, amazingly, love has also made it new. Sing for joy.
Peace be with you,
Pastor Bruce Benson
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