March 10, 2013 – Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Prodigality
4th Sunday in Lent – March 10, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Luke 15 is kind of the party chapter in Luke’s Gospel.
Jesus was apparently known as a party guy,
and here we have him tell three stories about reasons to throw a big party.
Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, the big charge against Jesus is that he has come
eating and drinking and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard,
aA friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Luke 7:34)
And at the beginning of chapter 15, the Pharisees and scribes grumble and murmur about Jesus, and as tax collectors and other unsavoury types come near to listen to him, they say,
This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.
So Jesus tells them a story.
Actually, he tells them three stories.
The first has to do with a poor shepherd losing one of his sheep,
and leaving the other 99 to go in search of it until he finds it and, when he does,
throwing a big party to which he invites all his friends.
The second has to do with a woman who loses a coin and does not stop searching for it until
she finds it, and when she does she throws a big party to which she invites all her friends.
And the third story – well, the third story is well known to us.
The third story tells of a father who has lost a son, and who – when he finds him –
throws a big party to which he invites all his friends and neighbours.
What is God like?
God is really into parties, according to Jesus.
God is into searching for us and waiting for us and scanning the horizon to watch for us,
longing for us to return to him.
Longing for us to return to his graciousness and mercy.
Longing for us to join him in his work of blessing and healing and loving and
setting free this whole world and every person in it.
And when this happens, when we return to God, apparently God’s response is
rejoicing and partying well into the night.
That, says Jesus, is what God is like.
Gracious beyond our imagining.
You would think that the younger son who goes away would know this.
Hasn’t he lived with his father his whole life?
I mean, really.
Yet, he harbours doubts.
When he first thinks about going back, it seems like the most he hopes for is
to be treated like a hired hand.
He never imagines he’ll be welcomed back into the fold.
And for good reason, I guess.
In asking for his inheritance before his father has died,
he is basically saying to his father, “Drop dead, dad.”
And yet, his father is gracious, and gives him his share of the inheritance,
except what it really says is, he have the younger son “his life,” literally: his “bios.”
And what does the younger son do with it?
He squanders it, he’s reckless with it, he is prodigal with it, he engages in “loose living.”
And then he falls on hard times.
So, right: when he thinks about coming back, his expectations are pretty scaled down.
Maybe, he thinks, if I come up with a really good speech that sounds really convincing,
my father will take me back on as a hired hand.
That’s about the extent to which he can imagine his father’s grace extends.
Boy, was he wrong.
The father waits and watches and scans the horizon for the son to come home.
And when he sees him, he runs – he runs! – to greet him.
No father in the middle east of that time would run to greet a son:
it was considered undignified and unbecoming.
Yet that is what the father does.
And as soon as the son sees his father, he begins to trot out the well-rehearsed speech,
but his father cuts him off, doesn’t want to hear it: he’s too busy ordering up the party.
The father’s graciousness and love was much larger than the younger son can imagine.
And, it turns out, it’s much larger than the older son can imagine, too.
It turns out that in this story, there are two lost sons, not one.
It’s not just the younger son who is in exile from understanding the extent of the father’s mercy,
it’s the older son as well.
The older son is also outside the house, you’ll notice.
He also needs to be invited inside by the father.
And again, the older son must surely be surprised by the father’s graciousness, even,
we might say, by the father’s almost debasing of himself.
It’s hard to hear the force of it, but no father would go out to invite his stubborn son in to
a household party.
And what it literally says is that the father “begs” the older son come in,
and it says that he did so continually over and over and over again.
This is a father who is willing to surrender his dignity for the sake of both sons.
Even though he has been treated with disdain by the first and with anger by the second,
this father’s graciousness is so big that he comes out to both and
seeks their return with all his heart.
He seeks their return to the house, to work together with him, in the family business.
God’s family business according to Jesus is bringing blessing and life to this world.
The triune God’s family business is sharing the life of the three with this whole world and
every person in it.
Jesus’s work is to invite us into that life.
Sometimes we waste what is given to us, and we are given so much.
A planet full of food.
A world full of wonder, full of light and grace and sound and music.
A world of snow and sand, and world of water and wonder, and world of sea and sky.
A world of fellow travellers, of human beings of infinite variety and gifts.
A world that has compassion in it and in which each of us shares in the dignity of the creator and
in which each of us has the capacity for empathy and for justice-doing.
A world in which each of us is a world unto itself of feeling and thought and consciousness.
What a world and what a life we are given, and it is all gift.
And yet, and yet, we squander it and are so in exile from our maker’s intentions for
community and harmony and celebration and mutual service.
And when we are not squandering, we are resentful over others who have found their joy,
resentful in being trapped into thinking that it is not all gift, but
that everything we have must be earned, and that others must earn it too.
So far in exile from what we have been made to be that we have lost the joy that the father has,
the great great joy that the father has in giving: in giving love, in giving acceptance,
in giving inclusion, in giving forgiveness, in giving ourselves to one another.
Truly, the older son is just as far from the father as the younger son ever was,
so unable to enter into the joy of the one returned.
If the older one ever comes into the party,
I like to think that the younger one has learned something and throws another party: a party for the return of his brother, who was just as far off as he was.
Only, Jesus doesn’t finish the story, does he.
If Jesus was such a great storyteller, why doesn’t he finish the story.
What kind of a storyteller is that?
We aren’t told if the younger son stuck around and shared in the family business
We aren’t told if the older son ever joins the party.
We aren’t told if they worked and toiled together in joy in the work of the father,
which is to love and be generous and celebrate gifts freely given and gratefully received.
We aren’t told.
But, as the preacher William Willimon observes, Jesus doesn’t finish the story because
This is the story that you finish yourselves.
And you are finishing it, he writes, even if you don’t realize it.
I’m betting that the one whom the father is awaiting, the one whom he is begging to come in
and party and be reconciled and work in the family business – is you.
There is one who names you, claims you, has plans for you,
waits or prods, invites or blesses you.
This one, sooner or later, will have you.
We, the lost, have been found. (Will Willimon at http://www.logosproductions.com/content/march-10-2013-what-god)
So come to God’s party.
Find the joy in one another that God intends for us in this community.
Join the family business of loving lavishly and graciously all whom together we encounter.
Come and celebrate. Come to God’s table. Come receive his life again. Come to the party.
And together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
