Sermon – Lent 4 – "The Welcoming Father-Part #1" – 3/18/07
March 19th, 2007Click play to listen to the audio version of this sermon.
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If you’re going to play the game, you’ve got to know the rules. Every game’s got rules, some of them are written and some aren’t. It’s the unwritten rules that make playing the game interesting and a little tricky at the same time. When I was a marketing rep. with Armstrong World Industries, one of the unwritten rules was that everyone wore suits, not sport coats. It was all about maintaining a certain “image.” When I was with Armstrong, Apple Computer was just emerging onto the corporate scene and their image was jeans and t-shirts. It was hard for us ‘suit and tie’ types to have much respect for those ‘jeans and t’ types.
Even the Church has it’s “image” and if you’re going to fit the image you’ve got to know the rules of the game – both written and unwritten. The Pharisees were extremely concerned with maintaining the right image. They complained that Jesus was breaking the rules. He played by all the written rules, that’s for sure. But it was the unwritten rules that He refused to honor. And it’s always the unwritten rules that have to do with ‘image.’ If you can believe this, they were upset that Jesus was threatening the Church’s image. He not only associated with sinners, He ate with them.
Jesus responds to the Pharisees and in effect says, "You want to know why I eat with sinners, let me tell you…" And then he tells a series of four stories that make it very clear that this is not a game but a struggle between life and death. He tells a story about a father who is willing to throw image to the wind for the sake of his two sons. He’d gladly be “despised and rejected by man” to save his dear sons from death.
This morning, we consider the parable, which we call, “the prodigal son.” I think though, that that’s a bad title because it makes the villain to be the hero. A better title for this story would be, the parable of “the welcoming Father.” That focus’ our attention where our attention ought to be focused.
A. Give Me My Share of the Estate The story begins with an introduction of the main characters. “There is a man who has two sons.” Immediately, there is tension and drama in the story as the younger son makes a demand on his father, "Father, give me my share of property that is coming to me."
This may not sound so shocking to us in our modern western culture because we've figured out that it pays to transfer our estate to the children before we die to avoid inheritance taxes or to keep the nursing home from getting it. But in a middle eastern culture of Jesus' day this would have been disgraceful. The son was basically telling his father that he couldn’t wait until he was dead so he could collect on his inheritance. Any self-respecting father would have been expected to refuse the child, throw the kid out of the house with a good tongue lashing if not beating. You can believe that all the other father’s in the village were depending on this father to do just that lest their own sons get bad ideas.
B. Father Gives and Son Leaves But what does this father do? “And he divided his property between them." Why would he do this? There can only be one reason. The father loves the child and he knows that he cannot force the child to love him back. If he tries to force his son to stay, it will always be by compulsion and not by love. Always because he has to, not because he wants to. Always because of the law and never the gospel.
The father grants the request because he is willing to endure the agony of rejected love. The agony of rejected love is the most painful pain and agonizing agony known to the human heart. It’s far worse than physical pain. Why do you think Jesus is in such agony in the garden of Gethsemane and sweats drops of blood long before He endures any physical torture at all? And the greater the love, the greater the pain of love rejected. Every parent in the audience and every parent in this sanctuary is nodding their head in agreement.
The story continues. "Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey to a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.” This young man has an idea that life must be better apart from his father and away from his fathers’ house.
· He leaves because he finds life in his father’s house to be too stifling for his adventurous spirit. He’s an independent, self-thinker and he needs to be free from all of his father’s “thou shalls” and “thou shall nots.” There’s a lot of living to be done and wild oats to be sown and he is convinced that it must be lived and sown or he will die.
· He leaves because he has always been in his father’s house and always had the security and comfort of a father right at hand, to the point that he never realized that it could be any different. To the point that he never even realized he had a Father or that he his father’s son. I think we call that “just taking things for granted.”
· He leaves because there have been too many unanswered questions and too many seemingly irrational things happen for which his father is never willing to give a suitable explanation. At least not suitable to his liking. In fact, an awful lot of his “whys” were simply left unanswered as if he didn’t need to know. But he did need to know because after all, he’s an independent, self-thinker, capable of making up his own about things.
Here is a man who believes that there is more to life than his father can give him and who also believes that the real secret to life lies somewhere outside of his father’s house.
C. All He Has Is From The Father And so he sets out and goes. And it never occurs to him that everything he has, has been given to him by his father. His “clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, land, animals, and all he has” – all from his father. And he uses it all without ever taking into account the source “from whom all blessings flow” and to whom all thanks are due. He just figures its’ all his and sees no further than that.
Aren’t we all this independent man? Don’t we all live our life as if it were ours to live as we choose; never pausing even for a moment to consider that all we have is from the Father? Never stopping to remember or never wanting to be reminded, “everything you have is a gift from the Father, who gives you all good things from His gracious hand.”
Is it any wonder then, that we too, like this young man, are always setting our sights on some distant horizon far removed from right where we are right now in our daily callings and daily vocations, believing that our true satisfaction and contentment in life lies somewhere ‘out there’ in a “far country.”
D. He Begins To Be In Need All of this, the father knows, but you know how kids are. You can’t tell them anything. Sometimes they’ve just got to learn for themselves. "And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need."
Yet he still fails to make the proper connection between His contentment and His Father. His pride will not allow him to admit that he made a bad decision and went down the wrong road and that he was never so happy as when he was with his father. No, he too has an image to live up to. It’s the image of Adam who believed he knew better than his father.
So what does this good Jewish boy do? He goes to work for "a citizen of that country." Which sounds innocent enough until Jesus throws in the gory little detail that the citizen of that country is a pig farmer. And this good Jewish boy goes to work tending the pigs. And all of a sudden, those tax collectors whom Jesus eats with look like saints by comparison.
Let's just pause for a minute here before moving on to notice that when Jesus responds to the Pharisees, "Let me tell you why I eat with sinners," he doesn't create a picture of a "Sunday Sinner." A “Sunday Sinner” is someone who isn't sure what to do with that moment of silence during the “confession of sins.” Notice, Jesus doesn’t say, “these sinners, they’re really not that bad once you get to know them.” No, Jesus paints a pretty desperate picture of a truly pathetic human being … and just maybe you're beginning to think that there is room in this picture for you too.
E. Hits Rock Bottom Eventually, inevitably, the young man hits rock bottom. "He was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.” He had longed to be out from under his Father’s thumb, and now he finds himself a slave of a foreigner. He longed to be free of his claustrophobic life in His Father’s house and now finds himself penned in a pig sty. He was sick of his father’s food and longed to eat more exotic food from other tables and now longs for pig food.
F. His Plan to Save Himself His pride is crumbling but it goes deep and is not easily uprooted. He has yet another plan for how he might save his life and his face at the same time. “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”
He figures He’d fill out an application for whatever work might be available around his father’s house and in that place where it asked for “references” … he would put his father’s own name. If the plan worked he’d at least have something to eat and a roof over his head. He’d save up his wages and before you could say, ‘compound interest,’ he’d be able to leave his father’s house and strike out on his own again.
G. The Fathers Response So there’s the scenario as Jesus sees it. And with that, we come to the crucial moment. How will the Father react to His Son? Will He punish Him for His “sin against heaven and earth?” Will he slam the door shut in the Son’s face and disown Him because “he is no longer worthy to be called his son?” Will He refuse to acknowledge him and treat him as if he were dead?
And the terrible answer to all these questions is…”YES!” This is precisely what the way the Father responds to His Son. The Father punished the Son with the full measure of His wrath and anger. He handed His Son over to the executioner and had Him flogged unmercifully until His body was a mangled mass of flesh and blood. And then He had His Son nailed to a cross and left to die. And when, from the cross, the Son pleads for His Father’s mercy, the Father slams the door shut and refuses to acknowledge Him and leaves His Son whimpering a pathetic, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
And your Father in heaven, sees all of this while you were still a long way off, (in fact, He saw all of this from eternity before the creation of the world,) And because He sees this, He runs to you, and being “filled with compassion” for you, embraces you in His loving arms. And there is laughter and crying and hugging and kissing and the angels in heaven are singing and dancing.
And the Father clothes you with His righteousness and puts the family ring on your finger and shoes on your tired feet and peace in your hungry heart and joy in your weary soul and prepares a banquet for you of the finest meats and the best of wines and let the celebration begin with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, for “this my son was dead and is alive again; was lost and is found.” Conclusion And the son is you and the father is Jesus. And it’s all about image. For what kind of father would he be if you didn’t risk everything to bring you home again?
Related Entries:
» The Season Of Lent» Sermon Index – Lutheran – LCMS
» Sermon – Ash Wednesday – "The 40 Days of Lent" – Hebrews 3:13 – 4:6 – 2/25/09
» Sermon – Lent 5 – "The Welcoming Father – Part #2" – Luke 15:1-3, 25-32 – 3/25/07
» "The Sign Of Jonah" – 6 Sermons on Jonah for Lent
» Sermon – Ash Wednesday – 3/1/06
