Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 (The Message)
15 1-3 By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, “He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends.” Their grumbling triggered this story.
| The Story of the Lost Son
11-12 Then he said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’ 12-16 “So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any. 17-20 “That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father. 20-21 “When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’ 22-24 “But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time. 25-27 “All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’ 28-30 “The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’ 31-32 “His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!” |
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
To sum up last week’s sermon, if we have a choice between being vengeful or merciful, let’s choose mercy. If we have a choice between being just or being unjust, let’s choose justice. Because each of these positive choices we make does in fact change the world for the better. And in their totality, they help the Kingdom of God to inch ever closer to reality.
Today’s sermon is “Part Two” of this theme….
God does not call the perfect. God does not call the righteous. God does not call the powerful.
Well, actually, he does – but not primarily and certainly not exclusively!
God calls everybody; but the Gospel record makes clear that he especially calls the broken, the sorrowful, the outcast, those on the margins of society – all those people the Gospel lumps together under the heading of “sinners.”
We need to take a side tour here and get clear as to what that word “sinner” meant to those who used it in those days. The word was kind of a catch-all word to describe anybody who was poor, or ill, or deficient in some way.
If, for example, you were blind, it was because you, or your parents, or someone in your family, had done something wrong. So you suffered, and you deserved it. As we read in John’s Gospel, Chapter 9:3-5: “Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?”
Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here.” (The Message)
If you or a loved one suffered from leprosy, that was another sure and certain sign that you had gotten on the wrong side of God. The effects of leprosy were and are hideous; even today, when we know what causes leprosy – or Hansen’s Disease, as we now call it – it still occurs in 100 countries around the world. 75 new cases in children are diagnosed every day. If left untreated, it causes deformities and leads to a slow, lingering death.
Back in Biblical times, it seemed to truly come out of nowhere – there seemed to be no cause; it struck people of all classes and ages, men, women, and children alike; and there was no cure. It was terrifying.
And so people drew the only conclusion they could draw, and decided that these people had somehow incurred God’s wrathful judgment. They were packed off to colonies as far away from town as possible, where they were essentially just left to die. They were the original “untouchables.”
God had judged these people, pure and simple. That was as immutable a fact as that the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
But then along comes this Jesus of Nazareth and cures a leper. We read about this in Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 5, verses 12 through 16: “One day in one of the villages there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus he fell down before him in prayer and said, “If you want to, you can cleanse me.”
“Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘I want to. Be clean.’ Then and there his skin was smooth, the leprosy gone.”
Yes, that’s right – Jesus touched this man who had a contagious and incurable disease! Can you imagine the gasps of shock and horror from those who witnessed it?
“Jesus instructed him, ‘Don’t talk about this all over town. Just quietly present your healed self to the priest, along with the offering ordered by Moses. Your cleansed and obedient life, not your words, will bear witness to what I have done.’ But the man couldn’t keep it to himself, and the word got out. Soon a large crowd of people had gathered to listen and be healed of their ailments. As often as possible Jesus withdrew to out-of-the-way places for prayer.”
Pretty dramatic! Jesus came to upset the apple cart of convention. But he wasn’t finished yet!
Then there were those who were sinners because of the choices they had made, or of the circumstances they’d fallen into. These people were, if possible, held in even less regard than blind people and lepers. Among these people were the tax collectors.
Tax collectors were considered the lowest of the low. Not only did they cooperate with the Roman occupiers of Palestine, but they made their living by leeching off of their fellow citizens. If a person’s tax was, say, 10 shekels, a tax collector – depending on how greedy he was – might charge 15 shekels, or 20, or even more. A lot of the tax collectors got pretty wealthy that way. And they were roundly hated for it. As a group, they made Bernie Madoff look like a small-time operator!
There were others, too. Along with the tax collectors were people who deliberately and persistently stepped outside of the requirements of the law. Included in this group would be money-lenders who charged interest on loans advanced to fellow Jews. This was a clear violation of the law of God stated in Leviticus 25:36-38. Also in this group were those whom we might delicately call “women of ill repute” who made their living by their ill-gotten gains. They had sold themselves into a life of sin in deliberate disregard of the law of God. It should be noted, however, that women in that society had no rights at all – and if they did not have a father, or a husband, or a brother to care for them, they often had little choice but to take up that kind of life – for which the very society that gave them no other option condemned them. But nobody seemed to think in those terms in those days.
Except Jesus. And that’s what got him into such hot water with the powers of the day.
And now we come to the story of that wayward son. William Barclay is of the opinion that this story should never have been called the parable of the Prodigal Son, but rather the parable of the loving father, because that’s what it’s really about.
I like that point of view, because it changes our focus from the behavior of the son, even though he repents, to the father, who embodies grace, forgiveness, and boundless love.
Think about that father for a minute. Requests like the one his younger son makes of him were not unheard of, but they also weren’t common. The father is under no obligation whatsoever to grant this request, either, but he does. And by so doing, he runs the risk of looking foolish, not generous – at least, in the eyes of the Pharisees, and people like them. Yet the father ignores convention and takes that risk of being ridiculed, and gives his son the money. He probably knows that his son is going to waste it, but he does it, anyway. He does this simply because he loves his son that much; and, maybe, he figures that this is the only way the son will develop a sense of responsibility. And he does all this, even though it breaks his heart to see his son go away.
This parable is one of my favorites in the entire Bible. William Barclay says that this story has been called the greatest short story in the world (but he neglects to mention just who said that). I like to think that this story has changed lives. I like to think that it changed the lives of some of those grumpy judgmental people who first heard Jesus tell it. Maybe as they heard the words being spoken, they thought of their own kids – one red thread that runs through all of human history is that kids can be rebellious, from the first time a toddler shouts “NO!” to the teenager sneaking out the back door without permission, to … all the other ways in which kids can get into trouble. Maybe they thought about that, those Pharisees. Maybe they though back to their youth, when they were the ones doing the rebelling – and maybe then it dawned on them that their black-and-white way of thinking was a little too cut and dried, that maybe there was more to this subject of who was a sinner and who was righteous than they had thought.
Then Jesus drives the point home. He comes to the part in the story where that brokenhearted father sees his son ‘way off in the distance. He can hardly see who it is, but somehow he knows, he just knows, it’s his boy.
And he starts running! Now, dignified men in that day and age would never have done that. But he does. And by welcoming his son as lavishly as he does – giving him a ring, sandals, and a robe, all symbols of great favor – the father maybe even looks a little unbalanced, open to exploitation.
But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter a bit. His joy was real, it was overwhelming – his son, whom he had given up for lost, was back. Who among us would not do the same thing?
With this story, Jesus tells the Pharisees, he tells us, that nobody is beyond God’s love, God’s forgiveness, and God’s mercy. Not the tax collectors. Not the fallen women. Not the blind. Not the lepers. Not that relative you can’t stand. Not that neighbor you try your hardest to avoid. Not that boss who makes your work life miserable. Not that criminal who so richly deserves the fullest punishment the law allows. Nobody.
Of all the lessons we have to learn, this may be the hardest: That even those who are so far outside the bounds of human behavior – the Charles Mansons, the Hitlers, the Stalins – that they barely deserve to be included as members of the human race, are in fact still loved by God. And the fact that it is so hard for us is just another indication that we are not God.
But the good news is this: Even though we are broken and incomplete, which I would call a good working definition of what “sin” is (because all of our mistakes and bad behavior really stem from our brokenness and incompleteness), yet we can live lives that reflect, however imperfectly, the mercy, love, and forgiveness of God.
Let us, then, gives thanks for God’s mercy and try to do likewise!