Sermon

March 18, 2007

"Journey with Jesus:  To Reconciliation"

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

March 18, 2007

Mother Teresa died and went to heaven. God greets her at the Pearly Gates. "Are you hungry?" asks God.  "I could eat," Mother Teresa replies.  So God opens a can of tuna and reaches for a chunk of rye bread which they share.

While eating this humble meal, Mother Teresa looks down and sees the inhabitants of Hell devouring huge steaks, lobsters, pheasants, pastries and wines. Curious, but deeply trusting, she remains quiet.

The next day God again invites her to join Him for a meal.  Again, it is tuna and rye bread.  Once again, Mother Teresa can see the denizens of Hell enjoying caviar, champagne, lamb, truffles and chocolates.  Still she says nothing.

The following day, mealtime arrives and another can of tuna is opened.  She can't contain herself any longer. Meekly, she says: "God, I am grateful to be in heaven with You as the reward for a pious, obedient life.  But here in heaven all I get to eat is tuna and a piece of rye bread.  In the Other Place they eat like emperors and kings! I just don't understand."

God sighs. "Let's be honest," He says. "For just two people, does it pay to cook?"

Today’s scripture is commonly referred to as the parable of the prodigal son, but calling this story the parable of the prodigal son moves the focal point off center.  The focus of this story is the father:  “There was a man who had two sons.”   

Without question, this story offended those who heard it first, and I don’t believe that time has necessarily changed that.  This is an edgy parable.  The first edge in today’s message is the contrast between Jesus’ behavior and that of his critics.  Tax collectors (publicans) and sinners were not simply friendly folk who had been misunderstood.  Publicans had taken jobs with the foreign government that was occupying Israel, and those publicans made good money collecting taxes from their own people.  Sinners were persons who had been designated as sinners because their offenses had gotten them thrown out of the synagogues.  Jesus’ eating with those publicans and sinners was clear evidence that he accepted them.  The Pharisees, who were guardians of law and high standards of behavior, sensed the erosive force that would occur in not distinguishing between good people and bad people.  “Birds of a feather flock together.”  After all, doesn’t forgiving look very much like condoning?  Jesus’ critics, you see, were not villains; they were asking questions that many of us would ask today.

The prodigal son in the story corresponds to those tax collectors and “sinners,” who were all gathering around to hear Jesus.  In the eyes of the Pharisees, these people’s lives had been squandered by self-indulgence, self-importance, self-self-self.  Certainly, the prodigal son had abandoned godly living.  For the son to request inheritance from his father while his dad was still alive was tantamount to a death wish.  In essence, he was saying, “Dad, I wish you were dead.”  It’s clear that Jesus is painting a worst-case scenario, an extreme example.  The younger son leaves everyone behind, takes his money with him, and sets off for a distant country where he squanders his wealth in wild or riotous living.  He loses it all; a severe famine comes, and the prodigal needs some kind of job to feed himself.  The only job he can find is feeding pigs, and he is forbidden to eat even their food.  His only hope is to return home, even though he recognizes that his father may well have “cut him off” or disowned him.  Still, times are so hard that the prodigal son is prepared to work as a slave.

Throughout human history, there have been prodigals like today’s prodigal.  You may have been one of those prodigals or had one in your family.  It happens again and again, yet these are people whom God is calling, “The door is always open.”  “Forgiveness is always possible.”

God also calls the prodigals’ brothers and sisters.  There is a second son, and a second lesson to learn from today’s story, and that is that God’s people should not begrudge God’s generosity for even the most wayward of sinners.  If all Jesus wanted to teach was the possibility of repentance, he could have ended the story with verse 24 and never introduced the second son.  The story would have been complete.  No one would have noticed.  But there is a second son, and there is a second point.  Instead of rejoicing, as the father did, the older son complains, gets angry, refuses to go in, and whines about how he was the one who had “slaved” all his life, about how his faithfulness had never been rewarded with such a lavish party.  He distances himself from his brother; he speaks of him merely as “this son of yours.”  He wants nothing to do with the prodigal. 

Notice the radical difference between the younger son’s decline to the status of a nobody and the extravagant welcome home.  It is that party which is so offensive.  It is as though the personal Hell the younger son had survived was not punishment enough; the faithful son should be able to rub it in.  The older brother does have a point:  of course, let the penitent come home.  Both Judaism and Christianity provide for the return of sinners - but to bread and water, not a fatted calf; to sackcloth, not a new robe; to ashes, not jewelry; to kneeling, not dancing; to tears, not merriment.  What’s the sense of lifelong obedience?  What’s wrong with a little pride for being faithful?  Who of you, if you were the second son, would attend that party? 

The most important character in the parable, however, is not the younger son or the older son.  Although most of us at one time or another can probably identify with one of the two sons, we, in fact, should be focusing more of our attention on identifying with and modeling the love of the father.  So the third lesson that this parable teaches is that God in God’s lavish love forgives the sins of both sons and wants us to do likewise.  It is not hard to think of close parallels to the behavior of the two sons in Jesus’ story.  It is more difficult, however, to think of someone who corresponds to the father.  We often hear of how lifelike parables are, and that is true, but usually Jesus’ parables contain certain details that turn out to be quite unrealistic, in order to show how God’s ways are radically different, and how his disciples’ ways should be radically different, from typical human behavior. 

This father behaves radically.  The very fact that he simply agreed with his younger son’s audacious request and divided his property sets him off from most parents in that world.  So does the fact that he apparently never stopped watching for the boy, so that one day as he is looking down the village road that heads into the countryside in the direction the son had gone – months, perhaps years earlier – he sees him from a distance.  In that culture, the norm dictated that a well-to-do, male head-of-the household, particularly an older man, was not to be seen running in public.  That was undignified.  This man is so overjoyed to see his son return home that he flouts convention, runs down the road, and hugs him tightly.  He continues his radical behavior when he interrupts his son’s prepared repentance speech and doesn’t even allow him to get to the part about coming back simply as a slave or hired hand.  It is obvious the father has never performed the Jewish ceremony of forever disowning the boy; quite the opposite, he throws a party!!  In grand style!! 

At the same time the father is equally solicitous with the prideful but whining older brother.  The older son could have been rebuked for his ungrateful attitude.  He had enjoyed his father’s wealth on a daily basis.  His standard of living day after day was better than the vast majority in his world, and yet the father pleads tenderly with him, going out of the house to the fields to beg him to come in.  Jesus says that the father repeated the same refrain to his older boy that he had applied to his younger one, “This brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” 

Today’s story is the story of a father who had two sons, loved two sons, went out to both, and was generous to both.  Jesus’ embrace of publicans and sinners does not mean that he rejected the Pharisees.  Ours is a “both/and,” not an “either/or,” God.  Our God is a God of second chances, AND a “both/and” God!  The parable remains tantalizingly and deliberately open-ended.  We don’t know how the older son responded.  We don’t know how long the younger son remained repentant.  Neither of those points matters.  What matters is how WE respond.  Today’s scripture calls upon us to answer the following questions:  Are there areas in which we need to repent?  Are there areas in which we may not be convinced that God will even have us back because of all that we have done?  Are there areas where we refuse to do the right thing because we refuse to forgive or because it would put us out of our comfort zone? 

If we can answer “yes” to any of those questions, then we are not reconciled.  There are churches whose members are not all reconciled.  There are families whose members are not all reconciled.  If we are not reconciled with someone in the family, the entire family is not reconciled.  If we are not reconciled with someone in the church, the entire church is not reconciled. 

There was a man who had two sons – one good and one bad, yet he never gave up hope and finally, in reconciliation, he did not distinguish.  On this fourth Sunday in Lent, make today a day of reconciliation.  God is longing for your return.  Amen.