Lent 4
Sermon preached by Revd Sophie Young
The Prodigal Son/ The Loving Father
Families can be places of joy and life and love as we know, but they can also be places of pain and suffering and discord: and we see all of that in the family at the centre of today’s gospel reading. Luke puts this parable of the Prodigal Son as the third in a set of stories that Jesus is telling to emphasise God’s joy of finding what was once lost.
Firstly, there is the shepherd who loses one of his sheep. He has 100 and leaves the 99 to find the one lost one. When the sheep is found, not only does the shepherd rejoice, but he calls others to rejoice with him and share in his jubilation. Secondly there is the woman who loses 1 of her 10 silver coins (the stakes are slightly raised here, we’ve gone from 1 in 100, to 1 in 10), and when she finds the coin, she too invites all the neighbours and friends to celebrate with her! And lastly, we have today’s gospel reading: the parable of the Prodigal Son (the stakes even higher now, not one of 100, or 1 of 10, but 1 of 2 precious sons is lost). And, on the prodigal son’s return, the father calls for a homecoming party with the fattened calf and best robes …again calling friends and neighbours to share in the joy. It seems that what Jesus is expressing is that God’s joy of finding what is lost is so abundant that it can barely be contained: it must be shared, and there is an invitation to join in with his joy!
And this joy, that comes from seeking, and finding, and restoring what is lost, is the heart of the gospel. It is what God is about. God is an active seeking God who reaches out in Jesus to bring back the lost world. A God who made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that we could be reconciled to him and be righteous in his sight. Not because we deserve it, but because he seeks us, he longs for us to come home to him, and so when we do, like the father of the prodigal son: he rejoices. And his joy is so great, he wants to share it, for everyone to know and join him in celebrating. So, here is an invitation for each of us, not just to return to him ourselves, but to rejoice in one another’s return, too.
This, though, is not always an easy invitation as we see in the case of the older brother in today’s parable. And we can see why, can’t we? From his point of view, his father’s response to his brother’s homecoming seems deeply unfair. The older brother has been devoted, hard-working and loyal, yet his wayward younger brother returns home from squandering his inheritance and shaming the family to be received by his father not with punishment, or humiliation, but with great joy! The younger brother cannot even complete his rehearsed confession before being drowned out by the compassionate embrace of the father and subsequent preparations for a feast to celebrate his homecoming. And this abundant joy is offensive to the older brother, this show of grace makes no sense and seems deeply unfair to him. And it is. But this, this, is what makes the gospel the gospel, it’s unfairness: this is what makes it good news. The good news is grace: it is getting exactly what we don’t deserve.
And it is similar examples of grace, of unfairness, that also offended the pharisees: who were part of the audience to whom Jesus was telling these parables. He is telling these stories in response to their grumblings about his eating with tax collectors and sinners, practice that they deemed disrespectful, and as a danger to the moral fabric of their neat, religious community. Not only was Jesus eating with sinners, he was openly welcoming them, making a point of including them where they had previously been excluded. And he was doing this to
bear witness to the extravagance of God’s grace. Not to God’s fairness, but to his grace: a grace that does not exclude but includes, that does not reject but restores, and that reflects the love of a compassionate God that rejoices when a sinner, any sinner, no matter what the depth or breadth of the sinning – of you, me, our neighbour - returns to God, accepts the invitation to come home: when one who has been lost is found, when a person experiences the truth that there is no place too dark or too shameful to return from, and to be met by God’s abundant grace.
The younger son, the sinners at the table: they are experiencing this truth, but for the pharisees and the older brother, it is an uncomfortable truth.
I wonder if as you heard the story of the Prodigal Son today you identified with one of the characters? It’s easy with this parable to take sides, almost subconsciously, and to adopt either the position of the younger relieved son, or the older angry son. It is easy to get stuck in a mindset that says where there are winners there must be losers, and we must pick our side. In our wider faith we can take this stance too: pitching the law against grace, jews against gentiles, poor against rich, sinner against saint, and here in today’s story… older son against younger son: but this is not God’s way.
The embrace of the younger son, contrary perhaps to popular perception, does not mean the rejection of the older son. God’s love is not either/or, it is both/and. His love of sinners and tax collectors does not negate love of pharisees and scribes. BUT…the challenge for the older brother, as for the pharisees and maybe for some of us, is getting our head around a father who loves each of us whilst ALSO loving others so different from us.
You may be sitting there thinking well I have been law-abiding, responsible, obedient all of my life, or you may be sitting there thinking ‘well if only people knew what I have done, where I have been, my shame’…..and God says to you, either way: I love you, and he invites you to be part of his family.
So, I wonder if….just for a moment…. rather than thinking about this parable as The Prodigal Son, we can think about it as The Parable of the Loving Father. A father with two sons: both of whom he loves very much. Both of whom have things to learn about him, and his love for them as very different people, with very different pasts? Both of whom he values equally as part of his family. And, just as he allowed himself to be shamed - and even shamed himself - by throwing his dignity to the wind for the sake of reconciliation with his younger son in front of friends and neighbours; so we hear towards the end that he does the same for the older son too. The father, in the gaze of friends and neighbours, leaves the party which he is hosting to plead with his elder son who is refusing to come in and be part of the celebrations. It is the older son, in the end that is lost, invited to restored relationship and who he is pleading with to return home.
Families can be hard work. But we see in the father here a reflection of God’s love and grace and compassion, and a reflection of his deep desire for restored relationship with each of us, our siblings, neighbours, friends and strangers: regardless of our past. Whether our past has been reckless and shameful, or honourable and obedient: God seeks relationship with us and invites us to be part of his family.
But then what? Do we just sit and enjoy family life together, comfortable in the knowledge we are in, safe, restored? No: it is way better than that. We get to become part of the mission of an active, seeking, loving Father, and to be his ambassadors in the world. To share what we know and have experienced, and to point others towards relationship with him and his church.
And so what about the church, this, us, family? Well, of course it can be challenging from time to time, and you might look across the pew and think God, really, him or her too? Given what they’ve done and where they’ve been, and how they act, and how much they annoy me? And, God looks right back at you and says yes, him and her too, and you. You are family, and you are my family and I rejoice in you all.