Preached · July 19, 2015
Series · Helping People Find Their Way Back To God
Text · Luke 15
Welcome and Announcements
Good morning, everyone. It is good to see you here in the Tabernacle, down here in the thick of things in Arnold's Park. We are so glad that you are here. My name is Anthony Parrott. I'm the worship director here at Good News, an occasional preacher of the Word, and it is my privilege to continue on in our series this week. Over the past couple months, we've been in a series called Helping People Find Their Way Back to God. It's a mouthful, but it is important stuff. We have been taking a look at Jesus's parable that's sometimes called the Prodigal Son. We here at Good News like to call it the parable of the two lost sons, because we've been focusing on the rebel, the prodigal. But there's this other son who shows up at the end of the story, who has a very important part to play. And that's what we're going to talk about this week.
A couple things I want to ask you about before we do that, though. Number one, I hope you've had the opportunity to get a 10-10-2 card—ten minutes a day for ten weeks, praying for two people that you feel like need to find their way back to God. It could be some family, it could be some friends, a neighbor, a co-worker, someone that God has laid on your heart to pray for, for ten minutes a day, just praying to God, "God, would you help them find their way back to you." And kind of the scarier part of that prayer is, "And if I'm part of that, use me, God."
The second thing I wanted to ask you about: a couple weeks ago we handed out some Bob's gift certificates, five-dollar gift certificates to Bob's dogs down in Arnold's Park. And what we're kind of curious about is, how many people got one? What we're kind of curious about is what happened after we handed out those gift certificates. We haven't heard any stories quite yet, so we'd be really, really curious to hear maybe who you gave it to, what that conversation was like. If you want to, head to our website, drop us a line, an email, a phone call. We'd really love to hear what happened with those gift certificates. We'd appreciate it.
Judgment and Jealousy
So we are in the middle of the parable of the two lost sons. We've got this week, and then next week will be our conclusion of this series. But before we move forward, I want to ask you a question: have you ever been offended by someone else's fun? Have you ever been ticked off because someone somewhere out there is having a good time without you?
When you were a little goody two-shoes like me growing up, this happened a lot. One time my brother and one of his guy friends wanted to go teepee the house of this one girl. And you all know what I mean by teepeeing, right? Taking rolls of toilet paper, throwing them up in trees. If you've never heard of that before today, I'm sorry that I've corrupted you so. But yeah, my brother and his friend wanted to do this to this girl's house. And so my brother, because he wasn't a complete scoundrel yet, decided to ask Mom's permission. But—oh wait, hold on—Mom, because I guess she's just like this, said, "Yes, can I come with you?"
Now, I was invited as well, but because I have things like morals and principles and a giant stick up my you-know-where, I refused to participate in such debauchery and shenanigans. And so off my brother and his friend and my mother went to commit these heinous toilet-paper-related crimes, as I went to bed and refused to sleep, kept awake by my pounding sense of how much better than them I was. They returned late, flush with stories of how the cops came, how Mom stayed in the car and let them get handcuffed, but then eventually came out and explained to the cops what was going on, and the girl's parents came out and made them clean up the mess. And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that my brother's guy friend and that girl actually married and have a couple of kids now. So—great dating advice.
But I sat and I listened to these stories with two competing emotions: judgment and jealousy. "How could they?" judgment asked. But then jealousy chimed in: "How could they do this without me?" I feel like this experience is not all that unique. These two emotions, judgment and jealousy, can come really easily to you and to me. It feels really good to put someone in their place, to let them know that the way they think or behave or feel is not permissible. And it's really easy to slip into a mindset where everyone else's car or house or job or activities or spouse is better than yours—or worse. And though these two emotions sound contradictory, they're really not. Because I think we've all had the thought—at least I have—"I can't believe so-and-so spends their money that way. I can't believe so-and-so spends their time that way," and yet simultaneously also wished that I could do and spend and have those same things. Or, at the least, as we watch people have more fun than us, get more accolades than us, experience more apparent joy than us, we feel like we should be entitled to some of that joy and some of those accolades because we've been so good. We haven't broken any rules. We go out of our way to do everything right. How dare someone else have more fun than us?
The Two Lost Sons
So now, listen to the story that Jesus tells. To review, there was a father who has two sons, and the younger son goes to the father and says, "Let's go ahead and pretend like you're dead already. I'll take my inheritance now, please." So the father gives the inheritance, and the son takes it and squanders it in wild living. He finds himself in poverty, as low as he can go, and then he comes to his senses, goes back to his father, and asks to be accepted as one of his father's servants. So we pick up the story in Luke 15, verse 22. I don't have slides today, so you'll have to break open those iPhones or iPads, or, you know, real live Bibles. Luke 15, verse 22.
But the father said to his servants, "Quick, bring the best robe and put it on my son. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now is found." So they began to celebrate.
Meanwhile—and the story always gets good when there's a "meanwhile"—
the older son was out in the field. And when he came near to the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. The servant replied, "Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has found him, gotten him back safe and sound." The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out of the party and pleaded with the older son. But the older son answered the father, "Look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours"—the brother can't even bear to call him his own brother—"when this son of yours has squandered your property with prostitutes finally comes home, you killed a fattened calf for him." "My son," the father said, "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."
Let's pray. Almighty Father, we thank you for the stories and the parables of Jesus, your beloved Son—that your Son came, was born and lived this life and had this ministry in which he shows us and tells us and explains to us what your character is like, O God. And so, Father, as we come back to the scripture, we pray that you would open our hearts and open our eyes, God, that we may hear what you would have us to hear, that your Spirit would speak to us, God, that we would be changed for the better, transformed to the image of your Son. Father, I pray for all of these, my brothers and sisters gathered in this room and across churches in this area and in this country and in this world, God, that as we gather together on this holy day, Father, your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. God, where there is disease, would you bring healing? Where there is brokenness, would you bring repair? Father, we pray for the future of this church as we look at hiring new staff. God, would you be in that process? Would you bring who you want to bring? And so, Father, as we turn our attention to your word, may we be not only hearers, but doers. We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen.
The Actions of the Father
So, I have been forced into debauchery—do I dare let it go? You know, I went to college, and eventually that stick was removed from the you-know-where—now, forcefully, against my will.
So, if you've been to Good News for any amount of time, you may have gotten the impression that God's love for you and me is unconditional and boundless. That God's ability to forgive you and me has no limits—even when you're throwing toilet paper. God's forgiveness of you and me continues on, even if we ignore it, reject it, or spit it in the face. But inevitably, when Pastor or I or someone else preaches like this, the same kinds of questions come up, such as: "If God unconditionally loves me, does that mean I can do whatever I want?" Or, "What about the unpardonable sin? That sounds like a condition to me." Or, "What if I become a Muslim? Or a Satanist? Or—God forbid—a Democratic-socialist, pacifist, feminist fan of foreign films and French food?" Or, "Yes, I know that God loves me, but I still have to follow all these rules, right?" Or someone might say, "Yes, yes, I know God loves me, but God can't possibly love that person over there, can he? I mean, not until they get their life straightened out, right?"
And this is why Jesus's parable is such a work of timeless genius: because all of us either are or have been one of these two sons. The rebel, the prodigal, the one who runs away; or the son who stays, who keeps their nose clean, but is prone to be suspicious of everyone else. So, to help answer these inevitable questions, let's talk about the father for a few moments today. Let's talk about each of the father's actions throughout this parable.
Number one: when the younger son asks for his inheritance—essentially saying to the father, "Let's go ahead and pretend like you're dead"—what does the father do? He gives the inheritance. He lets the son have his way. And that's the thing about God. He gives us this astonishing amount of freedom—freedom to mess up, to fail, to screw up royally. God doesn't really seem, at least in scripture, to be much of a control freak, or a taskmaster, or really all that much of an authoritarian. When God sets us free, we're really, actually, truly free. And we see this throughout scripture. In Luke 4, Jesus proclaims that he has come to proclaim freedom to the prisoners—you know, the bad people in prison. Or 2 Corinthians says, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom." Or Galatians 5 says, "It's for freedom that Christ has set you free." Now, many of us—and I can definitely be prone to this—think we have to qualify all of these statements, that somehow scripture doesn't really mean what it says, and we have to fix it somehow. So we add things to it, like, "Well, it's freedom—it's not freedom to sin, it's freedom not to sin," which sounds really spiritual. Or, "As Christians, of course we're free, but that doesn't mean we're free to do whatever we want." But Professor Steve Brown puts it this way: "If we aren't free to do what we want, then we aren't really free. Or if we are, it's a weird sort of freedom. If freedom doesn't include the freedom not to obey, then it isn't really freedom."
So we know that the father gives the son the inheritance. What else do we know? Number two: when the younger son is coming to his senses, he says, "Even my father's servants have food to spare." Later on, the older son is going to claim to have not gotten so much as a cheap piece of meat. But this sounds doubtful, considering the fact that the father is generous not only to his children, but to his hired hands.
Number three: we know that the father was waiting and watching for the son. Verse 20 says, "While the son was still a long ways off." Even though the son has rejected and spurned the father, the father has not returned the insult. Rather, the father was watching and waiting for this wayward son. Once again, this truth about God is seen throughout scripture. As I preached about several weeks ago, when Adam and Eve rejected God's truth for the lie of the serpent, God came searching for them. Jesus compares the father to a shepherd with a hundred sheep, but one goes missing. So what does God do? He goes looking for that one lost sheep, and rejoices when he finds it. He calls his neighbors and his friends and says, "Rejoice with me, I have found my lost sheep." I don't know about you, but I don't know what I would do if I lost a sheep. First, I'd be really confused how I got them all in the first place. And secondly, if one of my sheep wandered off, I would be more likely to say, "Good riddance, you don't deserve my sheep-love." And I'd call my neighbors and my friends to complain, not to rejoice. But the father watches and waits for the son and sees him coming a long way off.
Number four: the father throws the son a party, a lavish celebration. He throws the son—the wayward son, the rebellious son—a party. And I think it's important to note something here. This parable is usually called the prodigal son. When we now think of the word "prodigal," we kind of use it as a replacement word for "rebel," or "one who leaves their parents." But "prodigal," the dictionary definition, just means wasteful extravagance, or extravagant spending. And if anything, I feel like it's the father who ends up being the prodigal in this story. This is how Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it. She writes:
Out of everything we could say this story is about, why do we say it's about the wasteful extravagance of the younger son? Why is that the focus when it's not even that interesting? I mean, it's actually common for young people to leave home, waste their lives and their money for a bit until they have no other option but to come home to their parents they didn't treat very well when they left in the first place. Maybe we make this story about the wasteful stupidity of the younger son because there's a story we're all more familiar with than the alternative, which is this: if the word prodigal means wasteful extravagance, then isn't this really the story of the prodigal father? Isn't it wastefully extravagant for the father to give his children so much freedom? Isn't it wastefully extravagant for the father to discard his dignity and run into a street toward a foolish and immature son who squandered their fortune? Isn't it wastefully extravagant for the father to throw such a raging party for this wayward son?
I think Pastor Bolz-Weber may be on to something.
The fifth thing we know about the father: when the older son refuses to go into the party, what does the father do? He leaves the party and goes to the older son. This father knows no shame. He runs towards rebels. He leaves the very party that he's throwing to go after his son who's a wet-blanket, stick-in-the-mud, goody two-shoes. This father plays no favorites. He wants both rebel and righteous enjoying the same meal, sitting at the same table.
The Older Son
But how many of us are too much like the older son? Instead of relishing in and enjoying God's grace, God's unmerited favor towards us, we instead are offended by it. We find it odious and untrustworthy. Like the older son, we spurn the ones that God forgives, because they might be good enough for God, but they certainly aren't good enough for us. This older-son mentality can rear its ugly head in a variety of ways. It might be when we want to cut people off from our community, our church, our small group, our families, because their mistakes offend us. It might be when we find ourselves offended at anyone else's expression of freedom or joy or relaxation. It might be when we compare ourselves to others and somehow, some way, we always end up looking better and being more righteous than anyone else we know. It might be when we imagine God is constantly on the lookout for our mistakes, and so we walk around with this constant sense of shame and condemnation, and we are all too eager to pass them on to anyone else who dares come near.
Here's the thing about the older son. Some of you might be tempted to commiserate with him, finding the father's actions unfair. The son accuses the father of never even giving him a cheap piece of meat, much less throwing him an extravagant party. Well, let's go back to the beginning of the story, in verse 11.
There was a father who had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, "Father, give me my share of the estate." So the father divided his property between the two sons.
All of a sudden, the older son's claim seems strange, because the older son has had just as much freedom, just as much riches, just as much liberty as the younger son. The younger son squandered it by living selfishly, self-centeredly, and sinfully. But the older son has also squandered his freedom by living as if he had none—by ignoring the inheritance given to him by his father, by treating the liberty and the wealth that the father had given to him as if it didn't even exist. The younger son lived the lie that freedom exists only for our own selfish gain. But the older son also lived a lie: the lie that God's kindness towards us and the freedom that he gives isn't really as good as it seems. The younger son at least had the good sense to come home. But it's the older son who is now refusing to go inside.
Now, rebels in the room, prodigals—we've been preaching for you for the past few weeks. This next part is for the older sons and daughters in the room, the non-rebels. So if it doesn't make much sense to you, that's okay. Older sons and daughters, fellow older sons and daughters: our self-righteousness, our self-appointed positions of deciding who's in and who's out, of choosing whose sin is worth posting on Facebook about, our refusing to rub elbows with people who behave or think or act differently than us—I need you and I need me to know that that is just as heartbreaking to the father as the mistakes of the younger son. God's love, God's unconditional, unbreakable love, does not rely on or depend on our ability to dish out guilt and condemnation, either on our brothers and sisters or ourselves.
The Only Force That Transforms
The love and freedom that God gives is itself transformative. It wasn't the older brother's condemnation and party-avoiding ways that brought the younger son home. It was the knowledge of the father's love and seemingly reckless generosity. Fear and guilt and condemnation may make people obey for a little while. It may make people keep their nose clean briefly, but fear and guilt have absolutely no power or ability to make people holy like God is holy—no power to sanctify, to forgive, and to transform people into the very image of God. But love—love so amazing, so divine—that is the only force in the universe that can draw people into union with God.
Steve Brown tells the story about Abraham Lincoln. And like most Abraham Lincoln stories, it may or may not be historically accurate, but it still gets the point across. So we'll say it's a parable about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln went to a slave market, and there he noted a young, beautiful African-American woman being auctioned off to the highest bidder. So Abraham bid on her and won. He could see the anger in the young woman's eyes and could imagine what she was thinking: "Here we go, another white man who will buy me, use me, and then discard me." As Lincoln walked off with his property, he turned to the woman and said, "You're free." "Yeah, what does that mean?" she replied. "It means that you're free." "Does that mean I can say whatever I want to say?" "Yes," said Lincoln, smiling. "It means you can say whatever you want to say." "Does it mean," she asked incredulously, "that I can be whatever I want to be?" "Yes, you can be whatever you want to be." "Does it mean," the young woman said hesitantly, "that I can go wherever I want to go?" "Yes, it means you are free to go, and you can go wherever you want to go." "Then," said the young woman with tears in her eyes, "I think I'll go with you."
Jesus's parable of the prodigal father and the two lost sons ends ambiguously. The younger son is inside, and the older son has refused to go in. How do we respond?
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
