Contrary to the title, "Sherry Baby" is not a movie about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. My husband, Sam, and I rented it recently, hoping for a little relief from the rigors of the week. We thought it might be a comedy–or better yet, a movie with lots of seventies music. Do you remember Frankie Valli singing "Sherry Baby" in his high falsetto? We thought we were in for a fun night.

Instead, we began to watch a movie about a Prodigal Daughter coming home after serving a prison term for drug possession. Her older brother, Bobby, has dutifully and lovingly cared for her little girl while she was away in jail. The father enters into the movie and slowly we begin to realize why this daughter had to leave home and suffer such despair in the world. We also begin to realize why the Elder Son has chosen to be dutiful and plodding.

The themes are universal. Sherry is beautiful and passionate, but also vulnerable and suffering. She has seen the world and it has hurt her. Her brother has stayed home all this time, dutifully living his own life, but raising her little girl as well. Bobby is quiet and reserved, unable to talk about his feelings or communicate his hurt and his own suffering. They love each other, but are unable to reach across the Great Divide of family hurt, sibling rivalry and resentment of the life the other has chosen.

Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son unearths an ancient story for many families and many relationships. Last week, I talked about the Younger Son, the freedom he experienced, the drive he felt to leave home, and his anxious return upon realizing that the world was a tough and sorrowful place. In a sense, his story is the easy one to tell. There is gambling and lust, drunkenness and free living. Like Sherry, it's a wild ride with many highs and crushing lows–it's colorful, passionate and dramatic.

The other one is more difficult to get a handle on. Silent and dutiful, he's never left home, never seen the world and never left his father's side. He's been working for his dad for years, rarely going out on a Friday night. Life is about obligation and loyalty, duty and respectability; there are no wild dreams of freedom, no drugs, no sex, no rock ‘n roll. He's done everything right. People respect him. His Father counts on him. He's decent, hard working, law-abiding and totally accountable. He's like many of us who are the oldest child.

But then all hell breaks loose. When his younger brother hits the driveway to the house, he watches as his father runs out to greet him with unabashed joy and heartfelt welcome. The Elder Son is overwhelmed by the power of his own jealously and resentment. He learns that beneath all that duty and righteousness, his soul is about the size of a clenched fist. Bitterness and resentment explode all over the careful life he has built for himself.

It would be too easy to say that the Father was filled with compassion for both his sons. It is more complex than that. How do we welcome someone home who has never left, but at the same time has been smoldering in anger and self-righteousness? How can there be room for joy and gladness in a life filled with jealously and rage? Is it possible in this kind of life to let go of judgments, self-righteousness and the need to be good, rather than whole?

Even though the Elder Son never left home, he desperately needed to come home and he needed his family more than he was able to admit.

I have been reading Dreams from My Father, Barak Obama's first book. His father and mother were separated when he was a small boy and so he never really knew his dad. He heard stories and was given some pictures, but his father remained a mystery to him for many years. In the early stages of his adult life, Barak had a dream of his father, a dream that set him on a journey to the discovery of himself. Like the Elder Son, Barak spent many years becoming a dutiful son to a father he never knew. After the dream, he saw for himself what had been missing in his life.

Here is the dream:

"I stood before the cell, opened the padlock and set it on the window ledge. My father stood before me, with only a cloak wrapped around his waist. He was very thin, with a large head and slender frame, hairless arms and chest. He looked pale with black eyes luminous against an ashen face, but he smiled and gestured for the tall mute guard to stand aside.

‘Look at you,' he said.

I walked up to him and we embraced. I began to weep.

‘Barak, I always wanted to tell you how much I love you,' he said.

He seemed small in my arms now, the size of a boy.

I awoke weeping, my first real tears for him–and for me, his jailer, his judge, his son."

These are the words the Elder Son could not hear. "I always wanted to tell you how much I love you." When we are full of duty, obligation, we are susceptible to missing the love and grace that is present for us in those who love us. At first, we might think that the Elder Son is ignored, but the Father misses him at the party and comes out to find him, sitting outside, filled with anger and resentment, and urges him to come in. "‘Son, he says, ‘you are with me always, and all that I have is yours."

The Elder Son needs to be found and led back into the house as well. Will he respond to the Father or remain stuck in his bitterness?

We can hold out hope that he found his way through his heart to be led back home again. My imagination tells me that the Father was no dummy, at some point he consulted the Mother, and another fatted calf was killed, another party was held and the sons were reunited with each other and the rest of the family.

Let's return to "Sherry Baby" for a moment. At the end of the film, Sherry finally understands that if you love somebody, you've got to express it and let them know it. All of us believe somewhere in the farthest reaches of the heart, that we are unlovable. Both Sherry and Bobby wondered if they were loved at all. Sherry tells her brother that she is grateful for him and he lets her know that he has always been on her side. There is reconciliation and mutual forgiveness between them. Each realizes they are loved.

We hear the words of those fathers, who struggle, like all of us, to love:

"Barak, I have always wanted to tell you how much I love you."

"You are with me always; all that I have is yours."

We cling to the mystery that God in infinite compassion has always loved us and is always waiting for us to come home.

Amen.