March 18, 2007, Lent 4

Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The Father who loves

Many preachers use this story to encourage people to identify with the various characters – are you the younger son who has strayed, the older brother who stayed at home, or the extravagant father who welcomes back the younger son. One commentator says the father is God, others say he is Jesus. One sermon I read said that Jesus is the younger son who strayed (came down to earth – had a great time until he fell from prominence to victim – then returned home to heaven.) Personally, I don’t think that analogy holds up.

Everybody who heard that story that day listened from a different point of view. We do, too we bring all our own stuff to this tale, and we hear it from our own preconceived agendas. It is a tale about love – about a father who accepts abuse from both his children and loves them anyway. It is about two brothers who are very different from each other, yet both are very selfish and very self-centered.

Jesus tells stories in response to the questions and attitudes of the people around him – to answer the questions and to speak to the attitudes. In this case the scribes and Pharisees have commented on the fact that Jesus associates with sinners and tax collectors – the lowest of the low. And to make it worse, he does not condemn them or tell them how bad they are. He doesn’t point out all the things they are doing wrong.

What Jesus does is to tell three stories – stories about being lost and found again. The first one sounds good to those of us who don’t know anything about keeping sheep. But the truth is that unless the shepherd had found a way to secure the 99 sheep before leaving to look for the one, when he came back he’d be missing more than one little lamb. Those sheep aren’t necessarily going to stay where he left them – they would wander off – or wolves or mountain lions or other predators would have found them and taken their toll. But Jesus is making a point, the point being that God doesn’t do what we would do in the given situation. We would stay with the 99 to keep them safe. God takes off to go looking for that one straying sheep. The sheep doesn’t know any better, can’t reason, so God goes after him.

Out of these three parables, the only one that really makes sense is the second one: The woman who sweeps the whole house until she finds the lost coin. Turn that into your billfold or purse or car keys and we can easily relate to searching frantically and rejoicing and being totally relieved when we find it.

But the son is another matter. Notice that the father doesn’t go running after the son. The son should know better – he has the ability to reason. The father lets him go. I don’t care how convinced you are that something is Biblically, fundamentally, or socially wrong – telling someone, hounding a person about it, isn’t necessarily going to convince them that they are wrong.

There are actually three levels of being lost here. Jesus starts off with the straying away that – I’ll have to admit, a lot of us do. It’s not unusual for young people to stray away from church and from God during their late teen years. I’m one of those. It’s not so much that we are being rebellious – in my case it was that I just had other things to do and – sleeping in was good on a Sunday morning.

And even after Sam and I were married, our routine was to read the paper on Sunday morning and just be together. There wasn’t anyone hounding us about how bad we were or why we should be going to church. Occasionally, God would remind us that he was there – but he didn’t press. I think Jesus knew that the scribes and Pharisees might be able to understand that, so he told the story now known as the Prodigal Son. This is a story in which the younger son doesn’t just stray away, but asks for his inheritance – an act tantamount to saying, “my father is dead – I have no family.” For that day, it was pretty much the ultimate rejection.

We can look at a modern day case – 25 year old Bart Whitaker took this a step further. He arranged to have his whole family killed so that he could inherit the family fortune of about a million dollars. Although he succeeded in having his mother and brother killed, his father survived the attack. In the trial, the father, Kent Whitaker, pleaded that Bart not be given the death penalty. And there are a lot of people out there that don’t understand how the father could not want revenge.

Unfortunately, we live in a revenge-driven society, and that’s why the church needs to look carefully at the grace and forgiveness that is paramount in this parable. The father has suffered rejection by the younger son. The son has gone off and done his own thing – with no thought about his father, or home – until – he ran out of money – and began to starve – and ended up in a pigpen – the ultimate disgrace for a Jew. Only when he hit rock bottom, did he begin to think about home and the benefits there. And he thinks, at least I’ll have food and a roof over my head if I go home.

One of my students in Huntsville complained that this young man is not remorseful and doesn’t deserve to be taken back. But the father takes him back anyway, and this is the message to the scribes and Pharisees – the father cares for all people - even the ultimate sinner who has rejected him. The father doesn’t lecture him, he doesn’t scold him, he doesn’t punish him in any way.

Now we come to the elder son. In our second lesson we are told that God is reconciling the world to himself. The elder son represents those of us who want to see justice and revenge in the world. The father goes to the elder son and loves him just as he loved the younger. He lets him know that he is loved also and invites him to come in.

And whether we are the younger son who has strayed away with a frivolous mind, or the older brother who has stayed at home with a hard heart - We are all invited to come into God’s kingdom - to be a new creation in Christ – and eventually the old will pass away and the new will flower and grow. And in the meantime, God will cover our sin with the righteousness of Christ until we are brought home to stay.

Please feel free to email me with comments at nan@doerrworks.com