The Promise of the Road Home
Luke 14: 11-32
Good Morning. This fourth Sunday in Lent invites us to a new reflection, a reflection on how we relate to each other and to God. Our Gospel story of the prodigal son suggests the question. If we are saved, why are we lost much of the time?
As the preacher, I’m presented with a puzzle. Who in this story is the real prodigal? How did this family end up so dysfunctional? What’s the deeper lesson for an oft marginalized community like ours.
This parable is about one son who discovers his father’s love only when he walks away from it. The same parable is about the father’s love becoming a crisis for the other son; the son who thought he had it all figured out. How can two brothers live in the midst of the same family experience; one of them in crisis and the other one enjoying a moment of great love and affirmation?
OK that’s the sanitized summary. This parable is also longer than most of Jesus’ stories so what do we make of that? Apparently the lesson of the story is really important to God. So much so that Luke situates the parable of the lost and found son right after the parable of the lost coin and the parable of the lost sheep.
So does it mean we are lost and God wants us found? Or does it mean that we are already found, found by God and that lost ness may just be a figment of our own perspective.
Any of us who read this story may think of our own parents. Many of us have or had wonderful relationships with our parents and just as many of us have strained or yet unhealed unresolved relationships with our mother or father. Some of us may be in the same boat with our heavenly parent. Or at least we worry we are.
That’s what makes this either a comforting story or a painful reminder of a homecoming we fear may never happen. It tells the story of two siblings living in the same circumstance but with different perspectives of that family.
So which son is really the prodigal? Son #1 or son #2?
Son #1 was an impatient brat who thinks he knows everything. He isn’t content to wait for his inheritance until his father dies. He wants it now and he wants to party. In first century Palestine this means he was behaving as if his father were already dead which is an enormous insult to the father.
What’s just as dysfunctional is that the father lets him get away with it. Daddy gives him his money and brat boy moves out, blowing his inheritance on fast living. Before long he’s broke and broken; there’s a recession in the land and jobs are scarce. He needs a job so this Jewish boy gets a job on a pig farm. That’s not exactly kosher employment.
He’s pretty hungry so even the pig pods are looking mighty tasty, but he can’t even get his employers to give him the pig pods to eat.
This is what the recovery community calls “hitting bottom” amen?
He’s still resourceful so it occurs to him that the hired hands back at his father’s place are eating better than the pig pods he can’t get so he drags his sorry self home, throws himself on the mercy of his Father and asks if he can work as a hired hand. This is not an act of true repentance but desperation. So off he goes. He’s ready to admit that he is powerless and that he needs help.
And then there is verse 20 of our scripture. “But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion, running to him and kissing him”. Do you see what was happening? The father was holding watch, waiting, alert to any sign that his beloved child would return. You have to be a parent that has ever longed for a wayward child to have that verse pierce your soul.
And then again, there are those of you who wish your mother or father were waiting for your return because you would run to them and embrace them if you thought there could be a happy homecoming.
For some of us, the story can’t resolve, not because wanted to leave but because we’ve been cast out. Why? Because you claimed who you are. And that was the right thing to do, the courageous thing to do. There may never be a homecoming with your birth family that you can imagine from where you sit today. So this is what I want you to hear as we continue the parable of your heavenly family. You are not lost to God. You did nothing valid to be lost to your birth families. That grave injustice was not fair. Listen as the story continues.
Our first son finds his way home and the father orders a robe and a ring and has the fatted calf killed; the one that’s been waiting for just such an occasion. The party would be perfect if the other son were as happy to have his brother return as the father was. But no. The elder brother walks in on the party and asks one of the slaves what’s up. The slave tells him that baby brother is safe, sound and home. “Your father has killed the fatted calf. Get on in there and party with your family dude”. Then daddy comes out to bring the brother into the festivities. But the elder brother flies into a jealous rage and tells off his father. “Listen. I’ve worked like a slave for you. I’ve never disobeyed. I’ve never left. When I’ve had parties right here, you’ve never even gave me a goat. You didn’t even call Pizza Hut for me and my friends! But when “THIS SON” of yours comes back after devouring your property, you kill the calf and call the caterers. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll skip this party thank you!”
Whoa. Have you ever said something so thoughtless that you couldn’t take it back? This too was an act of great dishonor to the father. Luke leaves us guessing, leaving the story unfinished.
What we do know is who the real prodigal is. Prodigal means prodigious and prodigious means extravagant. The father loved his sons prodigiously. He says “Son you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. Son 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.”
Truth is son #1 was lost, son #2 was lost and so was the father. And now we have all been found and that’s worth killing the fatted calf for and getting out the good dishes!
Rev. Nancy Wilson reminds us that MCC is a church of the de-churched and the un-churched. We were lost and we have been found. So much so that as a denomination and a movement we have turned lost ness into a vocation to lost people. That’s why MCC exists. We are no longer de-churched. We are no longer un-churched.
For us the parable of the prodigal son is not about lost and found but found and lost. From God’s perspective, we have always been found. We have been found through the birth of Jesus Christ. We have been found by God at our baptisms. We have been found by God when we cried out for grace. God finds us each Sunday in the cup and in the bread of our communion table. We have been found by this church, this family and through MCC, our global family.
That younger son left in a huff determined to find his own way on his own terms. We know all about that. And the older son can’t bare to think that the Father’s love extends to his brother in Christ. Doesn’t that remind you of the religious right? They are certain that God’s love is in short supply and they are wrong! It is not in short supply. God’s love is for all his children. It always has been. It always will be.
And so Jesus tells us on this fourth Sunday of Lent, tells us three times how much the lost mean to God! We are not lost. We are found. No matter how far away we are from God, God is never far from us. There is always the promise of the road home. We have chosen the right road.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see. Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. ‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
And so we reclaim our holy identity and we take our place in blessing others, sharing the story of God’s prodigious and extravagant love for each and every one of us, secure in the truth of God’s words, “You are always with me and all that is mine is yours”.
And all God’s children said…Amen.