“There was a man who had two sons. the younger one said to his father, ‘father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger Son got together all he had, set off for a distant country....”
The “distant Country”. The young man moved to a distant country because the stuff he had a yen to do was the kind of stuff that his father would not approve of. He would spend what resources his father gave him in the way that he wanted, and he would do it in the distant country.
You know that place, I’m sure. You have been there. Even if you’ve never left this country, you have been to the distant country. For the distant country is not a so much a foreign state as it is a state of mind. You go to the distant country when your mind becomes bent on doing what your Father in Heaven would not be pleased with, and when you do it with the stuff which he gives you, which is basically all that you are and have.
Yeah, you know about the distant country. You might actually be living in it right now! How can you tell? Well, citizens of the distant country have some very different customs and attitudes toward life, different than what you learned in the house of your father in heaven. If you are living there, you will have adopted some or all of their customs and attitudes.
Tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to give you a quick snapshot of the culture of the distant country, and you’ll see what I mean and you can come to your one conclusions about where you are now living: In the house of your Father, or the distant country.
In the distant country, its all about the self. The self is supreme. This is their “core value”. It controls almost everything they think, and say and do. The motto of the distant country is “what is in it for me?” In every conversation that they have, they always manage to return the conversation to the subject of themselves. In every action the take, they seek to gratify the desires of the self.
They do get married in the distant country, but only for selfish reasons. Their idea of love is one-sided. They deserve to be loved because they love themselves so much and everybody else must love them equally. They expect to be loved by everybody, but do not love anybody but themselves.
They also have children in the distant country, but only because it will help them to feel “fulfilled.” In the distant country, parents lose control of themselves at little league games because others do not seem to honor these little emanations of themselves.
Indeed, you have seen the distant country! It’s an ugly place. But have you seen it in yourself? All of us will see bits and snatches of it from time to time. That fight with your husband or wife. That cutting remark fired off at one of those little ones whom God has given us. If you look at what’s at the heart of these things you will find that almost every single time it originates from self infatuation. People simply do not give you the honor and respect that you believe you so richly deserve! Boo! Hoo!
That’s the distant country coming out of you! You have assimilated some of its customs. Actually, you were a natural born citizen. You were born sinful. The distant country was the nation of your birth. Your father in heaven, saw you and adopted you and made you part of his household and began to teach you his ways and his customs, which are better by far. But sometimes, everything around you and in you is beckoning you to return to the nation of your birth, to return and settle down in the distant country.
But you will not really like it if you return. As we learn in parable. For the time came when the wayward Son had spent everything---he used up what resources his father had given him and he found himself in want.
He ended up working for a farmer feeding pigs. To the Jews, who were his original audience, pigs were considered unclean, and to work in the service of pigs was about the worst job imaginable. To put it plainly, he was miserable. And his misery was of his own making.
There comes a time when a life of self-indulgence yields it ugly paycheck. The beckoning voice of the distant country, never tells you that when it seeks to claim you. It speaks of all the private fun you can have when you are away from your father in heaven. It trumpets the freedom to do whatever you want. And when you first arrive there, it seems like freedom of the most profound sort. But with time, you discover that you are actually enslaved, enslaved to your own sinful desires. Sin will own you and not only own you but destroy you and claim you for eternity.
Jesus says that the young man “came to his senses”. As he stood there in rags, fighting the pigs for their food, he came to the conclusion that maybe the distant country is not all its cracked up to be. Thoughts of home began to occupy his mind. He had to go back. But how could he after what he had done?
That’s another cute thing that the voice of the distant country does. Once it gets you, it does everything it can to keep you. And one of the ways it does this is by running down your Father in heaven. He and his home are said to be intolerant, mean spirited; incapable of accepting those who have lived in the distant country. Indeed, he does not condone or accept sinful behavior and attitudes, but he is always ready to accept sinners.
Consider the Father in the parable. It is quite obvious that the departure of his son effected him deeply. Like any good father, he couldn’t stop thinking about him, watching for him and waiting for him to return. When he actually did see him from a long way off he ran to him, threw his arms around him and kissed him. There were no lectures about how bad his son had been. The son didn’t need that at that moment. Obviously, he had already figured it out on his own. He was already broken and contrite; already repentant. What the son needed was a hearty, loving, welcome home. And that is just what the father gave him: A big embrace, a new set of clothes, and a big feast in his honor.
Home was much more than the prodigal had remembered or imagined it to be. There was joy, there was warmth, there was comfort, there was peace, and most of all there was forgiveness. Forgiveness even for him.
This is perhaps the hardest part of the parable to understand. Think of all the hurts that this father had to overcome. His son had asked for his inheritance before his father died! In other words, “Dad, that’s all you mean to me, you are as good as dead in my mind!” In other words, “I love your money but not you.”
Ouch! Most of us would not be too quick to give him anything more. He would have to prove himself even as he himself suggested. He would be like a hired hand, and then gradually, given lots of time, he would reestablish himself in heart and home. It would be a process; not a party. Most of us tend to agree with the brother who was dismayed by the father’s overflowing kindness. “Why are you being so nice to someone who hurt you so deeply?” We would wonder. Most of us, would have a tough time getting past all those hurts.
So How does our Father in Heaven get past the hurts? How does he get past all the sins that are fired of in his direction? How does he get past those times that we live and act as if he were dead and as if we ourselves were all that mattered?
He gets past it by separating us from our sins. And that he did through his Son Jesus. Jesus takes our sins to the cross where they are put down. This is how our Father in Heaven can say such things as “As far as the east is from the west, so will your sins be removed from you.” That is how he is able to say “I will remember their sins no more.” He has separated us from our sins. It is for Christ’s Sake that our father in heaven can be so magnanimous and so forgiving.
So what does this mean for you? It means that when you start to think that God can’t possibly love you because of what you’ve done, you’d be wrong. When you start to think that there is no return from the distant country, you’d be wrong. It means that in Jesus, all people have a way home. AMEN
