Funeral for Hannah Burns – Luke 15:11-24
The Prodigal Son is one of those stories in our Bible that lots of people know, even those who aren’t people of faith. It has been interpreted many ways over the centuries, wondering just what horrible sin it was that the son went and did in his “dissolute living,” as the scriptures call it. Was Hannah caught up in this sort of cycle? Did she walk off with her father’s inheritance, metaphorically speaking? Did she squander what she had? Is that what’s going on here?
I think it’s important that we name the elephant in the room. Hannah was twenty-one years old when she died, too young for anyone, whatever the circumstances. Tara should not have to bury her daughter. Russell should not have to bury his daughter. Kaelynn should not have to grow up without her mother, nor Robyn live without her presence in his life. None of us should be without her. But her life was claimed by drug addiction, a disease that does not choose certain people over others. People of every shape, age, gender, color, economic status, family environment, all of them find addictions in their midst.
We cannot blame Hannah. We may want to, but it isn’t fair to do so. There are so many people in our society who look at addictions as if they are the result of some immaturity or foolish decision-making on the part of the addicted. All this is untrue. Hannah died because of an illness, as surely as if it had be cancer or heart disease. What’s more, she was doing all the right things in order to manage her illness. She’d just graduated from a rehab program where she’d been seven months. She was winning. She was succeeding. And that is when the enemy makes its strongest attack. She did not die because she was weak. She died because she was so strong.
If we cannot blame Hannah, perhaps we can blame ourselves. Some of us will look inward, trying to figure out what we could have done differently, how our actions led to this outcome. Others will blame one another, saying it was someone else’s fault Hannah’s life turned out like this. But all of that blame is misplaced, too. The reasons Hannah turned to self-medication are complex, and do not belong to any one person. But the reasons she died from it are no one’s fault. Addiction is a disease, pure and simple, and it is incurable.
It is a very human tendency to want to explain this as if Hannah were the prodigal daughter here. As if she somehow squandered her life in ways that we should be ashamed of, that showed a failure to keep it together, that revealed that something was wrong with her. But this isn’t who Hannah was. If we hear a reflection of her in the Prodigal Son, we’ve missed something important.
Because, in a way, the story isn’t really about the son, is it? I mean, we follow him, watch him take his inheritance and spend it all, sit with him beside the pigs wishing for even their food, running back home to try to win a place among his father’s servants. But we never really hear what happens to him in the end. Does his father give him a place at home, taking his son back in just as it was in the first place? Or after the banquet celebration, does he find himself working alongside the servants? Or is the best his father can give him simply a bunch of advice: “Your inheritance is gone, and I cannot support you any longer. I love you, but you must go make a living somewhere else.” We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. Because, ultimately, this isn’t the story of the Prodigal Son. This is the story of the Lovesick Father.
Once there was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to their father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” It was a cruel request, which could have been worded more clearly, saying: “I don’t want to wait until you die; give me my inheritance now.” But the father did as he was asked, and divided his property between his two sons. He watched his younger son gather all he had and take off for a distant country, wondering if he’d ever see his son again, and his heart was broken. For a time, the father fell into a deep depression, but time heals all wounds, and eventually he was able to go on living without his son. One day, far off in the distance, he thought he saw his son at the end of the road, and he ran out to meet him. But it turned out to be a neighbor coming home from the market. Another day, he spied a young man at the end of the road, and taking it to be his son, he took off running. But this too turned out to be someone else. Still, he did not stop loving his child, and wishing for him to come back. Then one day, he saw a man wearing rags, coming up the roadway. Surely this could not be him! But the father ran out just the same, with the same hope in his heart, and this time, it was indeed his very own child. He did not care why his son was dirty and unkempt. He did not care what happened to his inheritance. He did not want to hear excuses and reasons from his son. He simply wanted to see him, and embrace him, and love him, and celebrate that this son who was lost was now found.
It is amazing to me: I have not spoken to a single person who knew Hannah, who did not describe her by saying, “If you wanted a prayer answered, you asked Hannah to pray for you.” Admittedly, it’s the sort of story you would tell a pastor. But over and over again, in practically the same words, from disparate parts of her complicated family life. There must be some real truth in it. What you need to understand about prayer is that God answers them all. Sometimes the answer is no, and sometimes the answer is different than you’d expected, and sometimes the answer is, “If you’d just get out of my way, I’d take care of that.” But they always get answered, no matter who does the praying. Which is to say that if Hannah was someone you’d turn to in your time of need, it doesn’t reveal something special about God’s relationship with Hannah. It reveals something special about who Hannah was.
Hannah didn’t have an easy life—though that’s something you could say about just about anyone, in some way or another. But this beautiful little girl who grew up wearing Amish dresses and looking for a simpler life did, indeed, live a simpler life. Because rather than becoming marred by the conflicts and challenges she faced, she lived in a way that expressed love to everyone around her. That’s the impression I get from all the stories I’ve heard. The stories of how she loved that person everyone else hated. The stories of how she could always find the good in people. The stories of how her love was constant when everything else would be shaken.
Jesus tells us that, in order to experience the Kingdom of Heaven, we need to become like children. We need to have a simple faith that trusts that God will take care of us, that sees value in everyone, that does nothing but love. This is the kind of life that Hannah, who did not live long enough to become anything beyond a child, typified and exemplified, and it is what, I hope, she will be remembered for. And if we are to learn anything from her life, if we are to properly honor her and commemorate her and make sure that her death means something, we too will try to learn how to love, simply, without complication, letting go of our own desires and living in healthy ways and valuing other people as highly as ourselves.
In the Gospel story today, Hannah is the father. She is the one who, no matter what the reason, would always find herself running to the end of the road, to surround people in her love. This is what Hannah’s life was about. It was to teach us that at the end of the road there is always a loving Father ready to embrace us, and love us, and celebrate our return. The love that Hannah gave, the love that Hannah taught us about, as wonderful as it is, is only a pale shadow of the love God has for you. It is a love that cannot be disrupted. It is a love Hannah is now caught up into, and which awaits all of us, not only at the resurrection, but now, in our lives, today. There is nothing, not any kind of dissolute living, nor blame-placing, nor broken relationships, nor worries about what kind of a parent we have been or will be, nor despair, nor grief, nor death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation that will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.