Northminster Presbyterian Church Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 6, 2016 :1-3, 11b-32

Prayer for Illumination Cause your holy Word to take residence in our hearts, O God. By the power of your Holy Spirit empower us to respond to your Word with our whole lives, In Christ’s name we pray.

Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3So he told them this parable: “There was a man who had two sons. 12The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

25“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

This is the word of the Lord—Thanks be to God!

The Prodigal

I don’t know about you, but every time I return to a passage of Scripture that I think I know well, and read it carefully, I see something new in the passage. Often it is truthfully something I think I have never seen before! All the pieces are there. They were there the last time I read the passage, but this time—this time—the whole picture is different. Somehow it is more brilliant. More colorful. There is a new pattern in the words that I had not noticed in earlier readings. It is like a…kaleidoscope: every time you peer into it and turn the barrel you see something new. The pieces are the same. The colors are even the same. But the pattern—the full image of the moment is a new vision. Scripture is like that. Scripture is new every time we return to it, because, I believe, we are different every time we open the Bible expecting to meet our Lord, the Word of God, in its pages.

Our Scripture for today, known as the Parable of the , is like looking at our life of faith through the kaleidoscope. We have all read this parable many times. We have had it read to us throughout our lives. We have studied it in Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, the Presbyterian Women’s studies, and in our own devotional time. We have heard numerous sermons on this parable. As soon as we hear those opening words, “There was a man who had two sons,” we know the rest of the story. Don’t we? It is about repentance and changing our behavior right? It’s really about the son who squandered his inheritance, isn’t it? Or is it? What does prodigal mean? Extravagance right? Do we know this story as we need to hear it today—at this time in our lives?

Let us consider the story again—the man had two sons. The younger son asked for his inheritance so he could leave home. He wanted to strike out for his own adventure. He wanted to see the world. He planned to make something of himself! He was not going to waste his life working on the family farm. Not him. No sir. He was going to become somebody. And asking his father for his inheritance was about the same as declaring that, to him, his father was dead. The relationship was over between them. No communication would be forthcoming. No memory sharing. No present, and certainly not a future, together. The father accepted the son’s desire for independence and granted his request. The father let his son go.

With inheritance in hand the son strikes out on his own, eager to put his mark on the world. Well, things did not go as he had planned, and between squandering all the money he had and the famine that broke out, he found himself hungry and destitute. So destitute, in fact, that the only job he could find was a job feeding pigs…a task this young Palestinian Jewish man found particularly humiliating. He had hit rock bottom. Realizing he would be better off working on his father’s land as a hired hand, that even his father’s servants faired better than this, he determined to return home and ask his Father’s forgiveness, hoping to be received, at best, as a servant. To be reconciled as a member of the family did not even enter his imagination.

On his return, his father saw him in the distance and ran to him. Scholars tell us a Middle-Eastern man would never have run to greet another. So, to run to his son was out of cultural character for the father. And before his son could complete what was surely his well-rehearsed contrition speech, the father ordered a party! A robe! A ring! And even sandals! Remember, in that day the servants wore no shoes. It was only the family members of the household who wore shoes. The father ordered sandals for his son who had come home. The father’s joy at the return of this son, whom he believed he would never see again, was so great he not only welcomed him with tremendous celebration, but he also welcomed him with the robe and the ring and the sandals, and, by so doing, brought him back into the family in full measure. He would have nothing to do with this young man’s return as a slave but was reinstating him to full son-ship. This, my friends, is prodigal reconciliation for one who had been dead in sin but now is alive in grace! The father had not given up on the son. He had remained hopeful that the love they had known would bring his son home again…an event worth celebrating.

And what about this extravagance of the father? Are we offended at his extravagance? The son had insulted his father, squandered his inheritance, and returned home in a humiliated state. One would think giving him a place to sleep and enough food for the day would be sufficient to answer his deplorable sin. We know, however, that this is not how God’s economy works. The Father is not meager. The Father’s gifts are abundant. This rejoicing required abundance—the best robe, the finest ring, the fatted calf. This is what is so amazing about God’s grace—it comes to us in the times we least expect it. It runs out to meet us. It comes in wealth far beyond our expectation. And, like the new image revealed to us in the kaleidoscope, it is colorful and brilliant and fresh in every way.

So, here we are at the moment of unbridled rejoicing over the younger son who has been found and reconciled to the family. But that’s not the end of the story. We still have to consider the older son. He is the one who remained faithful and stayed home and slaved away for his father while his younger brother wasted his inheritance. He is angry the younger son is being treated so well. How is it that grace can abound in a life filled with such profound sin as that of his younger brother? And, by the way, where is his party? He was the one who had remained faithful. Here is where those of us who have been in the church our whole lives must pause. Through the older brother we come face-to-face with pride, jealousy, anger, and self-righteousness. We, too, need to join the celebration rejoicing as the younger son is reconciled and the family is restored. We must be careful that we do not spend time wishing others would notice our own faithfulness and reward it with even a young goat if not a fatted calf. For all their differences, the brothers do have some things in common. Both brothers needed to repent. And both brothers were recipients of the father’s grace. Let us remember here that repentance is not a prerequisite for the father’s grace. It is not the confession that triggers the father’s love but the father’s love that triggers the confession. The young son knew the father’s love to be such that he could risk returning home. The older brother knew the father’s love to be such that he could even complain to his father and lay bare his heart’s resentment. What we see here, at this turn in our biblical kaleidoscope, is that Jesus’ emphasis is not on the sinners who need to repent but it is on the “Father, whose love is there for us to claim even when we choose to ignore it or to feel ignored by it. No matter which of these sons is our patron saint, the same loving Father waits for us to return, longs for us to see beyond our own limited vision, invites us out of our self-indulgence and/or our self- pity, and says, “Come home, come home to me, rest your anxieties in my love…come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”1

The Father loves and waits. The Father wishes no one to be estranged or shamed. The Father runs to us in Jesus Christ. It is the constancy of God’s love that makes it possible for us to want to come home….to come home where we are welcomed by a loving, determined, compassionate God whose expansive love reaches far deeper and wider and higher than our imagination. The prodigal is the One whose extravagance gave away his own son, Jesus Christ, in order to welcome us home and give us a place of belonging. The prodigal is the One who gives us reassurance that “you are always with me. Everything I have is yours” and then invites us into the celebration—with all its color and brilliance and abundant grace!

Thanks be to God!

1 As told by Peter Gomes, “It’s About the Father: The Prodigal Son,” in Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, San Francisco, Harper San Francisco, 2003, p. 236