Fourth Sunday in Lent , 03/06/2016

Sermon on Luke 15:1-3, 11-32, by Hubert Beck

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” . . . .

And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me. And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! 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.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”

THE LONG-SUFFERING FATHER

Judgments Abound

It isn’t hard to find judgments running amuck throughout this parable. They abound right and left.

The younger son doesn’t know how good he has it in the father’s house. He judges the father to be too much of a fuddy-duddy and wants to break loose from the bondage of this old man who keeps too tight a rein on him. The father is judged by the son who tests his father’s will and, to his surprise, finds his father all too willing to accommodate his wishes.

Although it is not part of the story as we have it one can well imagine that this young fellow also finds his older brother to be a real stick-in-the-mud so devoted to work that he can’t ever stop for a moment of frivolity and fun. What a family to be stuck in!

The older son, however, is also filled with judgment over everybody from the father to his young brother.

On one level he is certain that the father is far too lenient with the young scoundrel who is his brother, giving him a small fortune of sorts and then letting him leave home even though he knows the rascal hasn’t the faintest idea of how to govern his money let alone his life. This older son was undoubtedly feeling how right he had been in this judgment when he hears all kinds of rumors drifting back from afar of what his brother is doing with all those funds. He finds good reason to judge his brother even more harshly still when he hears of his returning home. He is sure that his brother has not learned very much through this escapade – and is probably even now scamming his father at still greater length. So he refuses to have anything to do with him upon his homecoming.

Which, of course, raises to a still higher level his judgment of his father who was now celebrating his son’s return, receiving him without mentioning some sort of probation for this returned son to “prove him worthy” of all this hullabaloo being made over him simply because he returned home. But the celebration surrounding this young rapscallion when he returns for no other real reason than an urgent need for being rescued from a hunger unto death that had earlier forced him to enter the dregs of employment in a pigpen, the lowest of all jobs one could imagine, drives this older brother out of his mind. There is plenty of reason to be angry and to judge everyone in this crazy mixed-up family beginning with this no-good brother of his on through the father.

While he is on this train wreck of judgments this older son, reflecting on his life in this family, like the younger one, but in quite another way, judges his father as a skinflint who never thinks for a moment of some way to reward the faithfulness of this industrious and hard-working son who has “never disobeyed his father’s command.” How blind this old man was, overlooking the diligent conscientiousness of this sweaty son of his coming in from the far-off fields where he had been building up the estate of his thoughtless father. Yes, the father needed the sharp rebuke he gave him. “You never gave ME a young goat, that I might celebrate with MY friends. But when this son of yours came (whose disloyalty demands that his name should not even be uttered for he is only a “son of yours” who “devoured your property with prostitutes”) you killed the fattened calf for him.” Oh, yes, this “obedient son” is filled with vitriolic thoughts that had been harbored in his heart from long before that younger son left home much less now that he has returned!

What to do with judgments like these flying around all over the place? And what has all this to do with the allegations that had brought all this on in the first place? Jesus was “receiving sinners and eating with them!” we were told in the opening verses of this chapter – the verses that gave rise to three consecutive parables, the last of which is the one before us today. Horror of horrors! It is Jesus himself who is on the hot seat as the judgments in this parable fly all around him who told the parable! He was being judged with the righteous anger of those who had seen him violating every good manner – not to speak of every lawful action – with their own eyes!

Where Are We in the Parable?

Do you like to be judged? Do you ever feel judged? On what basis? Your size? Your intelligence? Your manner of dress? Your social status? Your mannerisms? Your intellectual or physical abilities? Your opinions? Your faith? Your political preferences? Or something else? If / when someone speaks a judgmental word to you, what do you do? Do you defend yourself? Do you use the “judgment” to evaluate yourself – and maybe make some changes? Are you offended? Do you get angry with the person judging you? Why?

I ask all these questions because they may give insight into what happens when we ourselves judge others and then act upon those judgments. The judgments we find in the parable are all judgments of the sort that we frequently make – sometimes involuntarily upon first meeting a person, sometimes based upon the way a relationship has developed, sometimes because of an insignificant action that caught us off guard and changed the way we looked at the person. It is surprising how many ways and on how many bases we judge other people. Usually we try to hide our judgments, keeping them to ourselves as private judgments. At other times they are expressed in a rude unmannerly way in spite of our attempts at hiding them. Worst of all are the times when we act upon them as though our judgment gave us the right not only to criticize the other person, but to either attempt to change him / her or, at our nastiest moment, attempt to humiliate the other (in a “kindly way,” of course!).

The brothers rip back the veil we usually hold over our judgments on the Father! Think about that! We rarely are bold enough to say it in so many words, but haven’t we all wondered about (and been willing to quietly criticize) God’s strange sense of “fairness,” e.g.? Do we not get terribly upset over the many obvious “injustices” in the world? Why do the “mean ones” so often get the upper hand over the “good ones”? Or, to put it in another and quite daring way, why doesn’t God protect the “good ones” and put blocks in the way of the “evil ones”? Why do little innocent children contract all kinds of terrible diseases or become the victims of those who mistreat them? If the Father wanted to, he could put a stop to all that, couldn’t he? What is the matter with him, letting things like that happen? Time after time the “unfairness” in the world disturbs us no end and, although very quietly and sometimes almost unwittingly, we judge the Father for letting things happen that any good Father would not let happen. He should stop this happy-go-lucky thoughtless son from leaving home. He certainly should not give him the means to do so!

More than that, while we are at it, why does God offer forgiveness to the most unlikely people? Why doesn’t he dish out a bit of justice rather than offer so much grace to people who surely do not deserve it? Why does he eat with sinners, thereby either accepting them on their terms or, at least, refusing to judge them? We may as well recognize our outrage and say it out loud, “The Father sometimes acts like he doesn’t know what he is doing. He gives the inheritance to a son he knows will squander it and then takes him back as though he does not reckon anything against the young scoundrel. And why does the Father not scold that older brother who acts so unlovingly toward his brother who has returned home instead of reasoning with him, pleading with him to come in and join the celebration. After all, the one who was considered all but dead has come back to life!”

The story is shocking, to say the least, and even downright offensive to any decently righteous-minded reader. The Father throws a party for one who has, so to speak, returned from the dead – and he pleads with the older brother to put the past into the past and celebrate the present instead of sulking and pouting and accusing and judging his young brother. (And, let us be very aware, Jesus was really telling this parable to reveal the mindset of those who are represented by this older brother!) Why is the Father so open to lovingly receiving the most unlikely people you can imagine? The elder brother can’t imagine that even though he is really that “unlikely person” of whom Jesus was speaking for he could not tolerate eating with sinners! But neither can we fully imagine why the Father does such outrageous things as to receive those who are, themselves, “sinners,” (worse even than we are, mind you!) to be honest. We think the Father would do far better to put the young fellow on probation to see whether he can truly shape up or not and give that older brother a good dressing-down in the hope that he will recognize what a blessing he has had, living with a father who has always placed everything in his household at the disposal of this older brother.

Alongside those judgments – perhaps because of them, for, after all, the father was judged by both brothers in their own way which resulted in their own parting of ways with him – we find in this parable the many ways we judge our brothers and sisters around us, as we noted earlier. But in all this we overlook a vital component of the story – the heart of the story, for that matter.

The Only One Who Can Rightly Judge is a Great Deal More Long-Suffering Than We Think He Should Be!

During all the time we see judgment coloring the entire landscape of this story, there is one whose judgment is constantly held in check! The father himself, the primary cause of all this disruption so far as the two brothers are concerned, manages to maintain a very equitable comportment in this story. He doesn’t question the younger son’s will to take his share of the inheritance and leave home. He neither scolds him when he returns home nor does he require of him a period of testing concerning why he wants to return home. In fact, he doesn’t even permit his son’s confession to be heard as the son had intended it to be. When the older brother begins his sulk the father doesn’t belabor his reason for pouting. He makes it plain that he wants the son to come in and celebrate with everyone else, but he doesn’t force him. Nor does he reprimand him for his unwillingness to even so much as name his brother – or even recognize him as his brother – when he refers to him as “this son of yours.” The father is still on the wrong end of this brother’s judgment! But the father does not judge the pouting son so far as we are told..

Isn’t the father’s patience with both of the brothers a marvel?!?!? How many of us would remain calm and serene in either of these situations? Surely we would warn the younger son off of his dangerous course of action by his following the option he had made. Surely we would have questioned the authenticity of his plea for mercy (which, remember, he never even permitted to be heard) as though possibly he was only scheming and scamming the father, for he had surely shown in the past that he was not above that! (Some interpreters of this passage think this was really the case, in fact!) We would have gotten very troubled to the point of being agitated with the older brother’s sulking refusal to even enter the house where the celebration was taking place.

When we try to put ourselves into the place of the various people set before our eyes and ears in this parable, we find ourselves to be one of the two brothers, but we find it hard, when we are absolutely honest with ourselves, to be in tune with the Father. We may admire him. We may consider him wonderfully marvelous and commendable. We may hold him up as a magnificent example of what a father should be – or of what we would like to be ourselves in our better moments. But we have a very difficult time likening him to what we would have done if we were in his shoes.

The Point of the Story Now Comes to Light

Dare one think that the Father has none of these thoughts at all? Dare we think that his outer comportment is devoid of some of the same judgments that his two sons have exhibited? The “secret” of the story does not lie in that kind of faultlessness. In fact, if he never got perturbed by the way his sons had acted he would have been nothing more than a stone-faced non-judgmental grimly grave non-involved “thing” in the story. Why would he have – why should he have – remained nothing more than an unconcerned, non-involved, referee between two competing brothers? He was, after all, their FATHER! He had sired them; he had raised and nurtured them. He had every reason to be concerned about them and their welfare. Because he was their Father.

He loved them as a father loves! His whole being was invested in them. That is the secret behind his long-suffering. He had many reasons to care deeply for each of them – and both of them. When they acted in ways contradictory – even conflicting – to that which he had worked so hard at instilling in them, they had to stand responsible for what they did. He did not force them to do what he knew was best for them. But that did not stop him from loving them, from being concerned about them, from being willing to give his very own self up in the face of the rebellious judgment that was taking place around him and between these brothers. Dismal though their chosen ways were, he would not stop them from being themselves!

Like God who created and nurtured and cared deeply about those whom he had created! Have you not yet seen God as the Father in this parable? Is he not the heart of this story and we those whom he loves even though we have set out on our own dead-end paths – sometimes as wanderers away from him and sometimes remaining with him because we think he owes us something for sticking around? He did not step between our first parents and the wretched choice they made. Nor does he step between us and the pitiful paths we choose every day.

That does not mean he cares the less for us. That does not mean that his heart is not broken to see us who were meant for such a marvelous end going in quite other ways and traveling other paths leading to self-destruction when he has provided means for instructing us in his own way through his word and providing the perpetual nearness of his Spirit who would gently lead and guide us into the paths for which we were intended.

He who made us is willing to do anything possible to reclaim us from our waywardness. He called upon the heart of his heart, his only Son, to break into this terrible cycle of sin and death by becoming one of us whom his Father loves so intensely, calling through him to us who have gone to our “far country,” urging us to come home again where we will be received with the open arms of him who loves us so intensely. Yes, he called upon his Son, joined so tightly to the Father that they together would “receive sinners and eat with them.” to become the bridge back to him. He stands in the door pleading even with sons and daughters who are reluctant to join the celebration of reunion because of their resentment at such clemency as the Father clearly exhibits, urging them to come into the circle of welcome for all whom the Father invites, for they, too, are his children whom he loves.

So it has come to pass that the Father’s Son has taken a place in this sphere of our humanity, joining us in temptation and in faithful living, in the joy of a wedding feast and at the grave of a dear friend, in the enjoyment of life and in the torment of death, bringing to us the clarion voice of the one who wants to “run and embrace us and kiss us” while crying out to his attendants “bring quickly the best robes, and put them on these returning children, and put rings on their hands and shoes on their feet and bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for these, my children, were dead, and are alive again, were lost and now are found.”

And so he dresses us with the robe sewn in his death and resurrection by means of the waters of our baptism. He spreads out the celebratory feast at the table on which the body and blood of the finest lamb is set forth for us to eat and drink in the holy eucharist. He embraces us in our daily walk of life, holding our hands in times of trouble and dancing with us in times of rejoicing. He opens the door of the “place where he has gone to prepare a room for us.” He invites us to enter the home to which he comes alongside those who are coming out of the fields of their labor so that he can “take us to himself, that where he is we may be also.” It is a remarkable place, this home that is built at the end of our journey!

The Strange “No-end” of the Story

So what happened to the brothers in the story? Did the young son prove his mettle or did he still feel shackled by this father who rejoiced so greatly upon his return? Did the elder son ever come into the house and join the celebration?

We do not know, nor does Jesus even hint at what the answers might be. The only unwavering constant in the story is the Father. We know that he will be there no matter what or when or how the brothers “finish” this story.

So we look to the long-suffering Father, giving thanks for his love, his patience, his grace, his imperturbable and never-ending care for us. Of that we can be sure.

The only thing necessary to complete the story is to follow the brothers as they take up from the open-ended story with their own continuing life.

And, of course, you are one or both of the brothers, so only you can bring this parable to completion.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lutheran Minister, Retired Hubert Beck
Austin, TX, USA
E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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