Rev. Debbie Cato
Joshua 5:9-12 and Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32
Fairfield Community
Church
March 27, 2022
Let us Pray: God of open doors, we often long to come home to you, to love you , and to love ourselves, but we aren’t always sure how to get there. We know that we need you, but the road back to you is heavy with distractions. So, if we can dare to be so forward, we pray— reach into the cacophony of our hearts and minds and make yourself known. Quiet everything but your Word for us today. Leave us awestruck. Drown out the distractions. Come as thunder or come as a still, small voice; we don't care which, we just pray that you will come. Turn on the light. Speak through these words. Find the parts of us that are lost. With hope we pray. Amen. ( Rev. Sara Speed santifiedart.org)
Lost and
Found
You may
wonder why I read the first three verses of Luke and didn’t just start with the
parable. These first verses set the
narrative scene by contrasting Jesus audience into two distinct and opposing
groups - degenerate sinners and dutifully self-righteous religious
leaders. The sinners “listen” to Jesus;
the religious officials “were grumbling.”
These few introductory verses make the parables that follow – there are two other parables about being lost and found before the one we are focusing on today – a response to the complaints of the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. Both stories - one about the lost sheep and one about the lost coin; speak of the costly love on the part of God who is willing to expend any effort to bring back the precious lost one as well as the outrageous joy of finding what had been lost. As the third parable in the series, our story has the same point. God’s boundless efforts to seek out the lost can be likened to those of a father who pays a great price to get back his lost sons.
Jesus tells these three particular parables because he was making a habit of having celebration parties with all the ‘wrong’ people, and some people were ticked off. Throughout his teachings, and certainly in these parables, Jesus is NOT saying that such people were simply to be accepted as they stand. Sinners must repent. But Jesus has a different idea than his critics of what “repentance” really means. For the religious leaders; repentance is nothing short of adopting their standards of purity and law-observance. For Jesus, true repentance is when people follow him and his way. Big difference.
So let’s look at today’s parable. When the father divides the property between the two sons, and the younger son turns his share into cash, this would have meant that the land the father owned had been split, with the younger boy selling off his share to someone else. Someone else now owns a piece of the family land. The shame this brings on the family is added to the shame the son has already brought on the father by asking for his share before the father’s death – it’s the equivalent of saying ‘I wish you were dead.’ Yet the father bears these two blows without recrimination. The father agrees!
Now fathers just don’t behave like that! Already, before the son even leaves home, there is a clue built into the story - a mystery around the father’s behavior. Although in our culture, our children routinely leave home to pursue their future, in Jesus’ culture this would be seen as shameful - the younger son abandons his obligation to care for his father in his old age.
Regardless, the younger son takes his money and sets off for some distant land. His father’s greatest fears are realized as he squanders all he has on self-indulgent living. The situation of the younger son is exacerbated by a severe famine that breaks out. Having little recourse, he seeks out a farmer, who sends him to his fields to feed the pigs. To Jewish ears, this adds insult to injury. The son now debases himself further by living with Gentiles who keep unclean animals. But the son’s plight worsens still more. As his hunger mounts he would be happy even to fill up on the pigs’ fodder. But no one offers him even this.
Now initially, there is no repentance on the part of this young man. He isn’t necessarily sorry – he’s desperate. But being resourceful, the son devises a plan to save himself. There is no need for him to die of hunger. He remembers how well paid is father’s workers are. They always have more than enough food to eat. He knows he has lost his rights as “son” and so he creates a way in which he can become a hired servant to his father. I can picture him rehearsing his strategy as he walks toward home.
Now here is the startling twist. This father, who has been insulted and shamed beyond our understanding, is watching and waiting for his delinquent son’s return. For all we know, he stood and watched and waited every day that his son was gone. And when he catches sight of him trudging down the road, the father is filled with compassion. This is extremely unexpected behavior on the part of a patriarch who has been so grievously shamed by his son. A more expected reaction would have been for the father to slash his garments and declare the son disowned. Instead… he is longing for his son’s return and at the first sight of him, he runs to meet him. This father tosses any remaining dignity out the window when he takes to his heels as soon as he sees his son dragging himself home. And when he reaches his son, he grabs him, puts his arms around the boy, and kisses him.
Just as the son begins his rehearsed speech, the father silences him, not even permitting him to propose his plan to work for food. Instead, the father calls for the best robe, an expensive ring, and sandals to be put on him - symbols of distinction and authority. Not only that, the fatted calf is killed for a great feast. The feast is not only for the sake of the son, but is a gesture of reconciliation with the villagers. By accepting the invitation to the party, they signal their willingness to forgive the boy’s offenses and agree to reintegrate him into their community.
What brings about the possibility of reconciliation is not the determination of the younger son to turn his life around. The son’s hope was to be allowed to return as a hired hand, as a strategy for survival. Rather, it is the watchfulness of the father and his running to meet his son that brings him back into the family fold. The father is the one who absorbs the shame and hurt; the one who bears the cost of the ruptured relations with family and villagers, and the one who pays the great price to get his son back. It is his initiative and his doing that makes it possible for the young man to return to the family as a son, not as a servant. According to this parable, reconciliation does not come from a determination of the lost one to return and make amends, but only depends on his willingness to accept the costly love of the father who has spared nothing to win him back. The father’s joy is expressed in extravagant terms: “this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again!” This son of mine was dead but has come to life again. And he holds a party!
But this happy ending is not the conclusion of the story. There is more.
From the start of the story, we are told that the father has two sons. So, what about the elder son? He too is lost, but in an entirely different way than his brother. When he hears all the noise of the celebration, he becomes enraged and refuses to go into the house. He is not happy that his brother is back. Again, the father does something completely unexpected. He leaves the party; he leaves his guests; and he goes out to the elder son – who should have been helping him host the celebration – and pleads with him to join in.
The jealously and resentment that fester in this son are evident in his insulting explosion, “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.
His
outburst reveals that, like his younger brother, who concocts a plan to become
the father’s hired hand, the older brother too thinks of himself as a slave to
his father – “all these years I have been working like a slave for you…. He dissociates himself from his brother by
calling him “that son of yours.” In his inability
to accept and celebrate his father’s graciousness, he is as lost as his younger
brother. Just in a different way.
Now let me just admit that I can relate to this older brother. I can understand feeling like I’ve followed all the rules, I’ve done everything I was supposed to, and I deserve redemption more than someone who hasn’t. I deserve the recognition; the celebration. It’s that “earning mentality” we have. And that’s exactly the mentality of the Pharisees and the scribes whom Jesus is gearing these parables toward. The Pharisees and the scribes followed all the laws, they worshipped in the temple; they maintained very strict purity in every aspect of their life. They were appalled that Jesus would welcome and celebrate with sinners and degenerates. They didn’t deserve it.
In his parable, Jesus points out that the father has not only been shamed by the younger son with his untimely demand for his inheritance and its subsequent loss; but the elder son is behaving in a disgraceful manner to his father as well. He did not act appropriately in helping to host the banquet and welcome the guests. He kept himself outside the embrace of his father with his joyless resentment and his attitude of slavish service. The father absorbs the shame from his elder son just as he has with the younger. As with the younger son, the father goes out to the elder and meets him in his lost-ness. He pleads with him, a most shameful scene from the perspective of a patriarchal world, where a father rules over his sons and commands their obedience.
Sinners and outcasts were finding themselves welcomed into fellowship with Jesus, and so with God, in a way they would have thought impossible. But whenever a work of God goes powerfully forward, there is always someone muttering in the background that things aren’t that easy, that God’s got no right to be generous, that people who’ve done nothing wrong are being overlooked. But through the generosity of the father toward his self-righteous older son, we sense that Jesus is not content simply to tell the grumblers that they’re out of line. He wants them to know that though God’s generosity is indeed reaching out to people they didn’t expect, this doesn’t mean there isn’t any left for them. If they insist on staying out of the party because it isn’t the sort of thing they like, that’s up to them; but it won’t be because God doesn’t love them as well.
The story is of course, unfinished. How will the younger brother behave from now on? Will the two sons be reconciled? We naturally want to know what happens next. Sometimes when a storyteller leaves us on the edge of our seats, it’s because we are supposed to think it through, to ask ourselves where we fit within the story, and to learn more about ourselves and our church as a result.
Where are you sitting in this story? Is it beside Jesus, as though joining Jesus in addressing these parables to critics, or is it among those being addressed by Jesus? Are you sitting among the tax collectors and sinners, wanting to be welcomed and forgiven in his presence; straining to hear about the outrageous love and overwhelming grace of God the Father? If you feel lost or alienated, or have hit rock bottom, it is the younger son who might draw your attention. For you, this parable offers an image of God as one who is watching, waiting, and always willing to run to meet you. When we’ve turned away from God’s family; when we’ve been self-indulgent and made grave mistakes, he will enfold us once again in his divine embrace. Not even the worst imaginable offense is an irrevocable obstacle to the constant and accessible love of God.
Maybe you are sitting among the Pharisees and the scribes – the church people, who are scandalized by the company Jesus keeps and the people we are called to welcome just like Jesus did? Perhaps you feel more like the elder son, trying to do what is right, week after week. For you, this parable invites us to consider whether our discipleship has deteriorated into an obligation that is marked by joyless resentment, especially toward those who seem to be benefiting undeservedly from all that God offers. The parable invites us to recognize the free offer of God to all; a lavish generosity continually offered by the one who is willing to pay the high cost to gather in all his children; none of whom have earned the right to this inheritance. To accept the love of a God who acts like this is not only to restore a right relation with God, but also to bring us into a reconciled love with all people as brothers and sisters in God’s family.
For anyone in authority – whether a parent, a boss, a council member or a pastor, (see I’m preaching to myself as well!) this parable speaks of the necessity of being willing to expend great effort, even being willing to endure humiliation in order to bring back those who are alienated. It asks a parent who has been deeply hurt by a son or daughter to relinquish their own pain and extend an offer of forgiving love. If you are a leader, Jesus’ parable asks us to put aside our own agendas, our own egos, our own needs and reach out to others – particularly those that are not a part of our favored group. In this parable we learn that restoring a right relationship depends on the godly person’s willingness to reach out.
Find yourself in this story and then listen to what Jesus is teaching you about the free, undeserved, gratuity of God’s love and how we are to love others.
Let us pray: “Holy God, help me remember that when it comes to the story of the prodigal son, I play all three roles. I can make the same mistakes, but I can also make the same gracious choices. Therefore, help me be like the prodigal son who was quick to apologize. Help me be like the older brother who aimed for righteousness, and help me be like the father who celebrated love at every turn. I can be all three. Amen.” Prayer written by Rev. Sarah A. Speed. santifiedart.org
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