In Jesus Holy Name March 14, 2010
Text: Luke 15:1-6 Redeemer
“In the Chaos of Life…. Hope and Direction”
“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus… and the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying… This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them….. so Jesus said… “let me tell you a story…”
In other words Jesus is saying, “You think you know God, but you do not. God doesn’t play by your rules. Here is what God is all about.” Let me tell you a story. “A father has two sons…”
In reality Jesus said to the Pharisees: “let me tell you three stories.”
The parable of the Lost sheep. The parable of the Lost Coin; then the parable of the two Lost Sons. (read the parables)
A shepherd pays a personal price to find and restore a lost sheep. The woman does the same for her coin. A father gives both boys the family inheritance early.
According to the 3rd parable the young son requests his inheritance while his father is still alive and in good health. In traditional Middle Eastern culture, this means, “Father, I am eager for you to die!” If the father is a traditional Middle Eastern father, he will strike the boy across the face and drive him out of the house. This is an outrageous request. The father is expected to refuse.
The father grants the youngest son his request, but it also means the older son now receives his share as well. “The father divided the property”. The father allows the younger son to exercise his freedom of choice/his free will. What does the Father now own? (nothing)
The inheritance is substantial. This is a wealthy family that has a herd of fatted calves and a herd of goats, and house servants. We can see that the house includes a banquet hall large enough to host a crowd that will eat an entire fatted calf. Professional musicians and dancers are hired for the banquet.
The younger son gathers together all he has and converts it to cash. He is selling part of the family farm. He leaves with a pocket full of cash, which he did not earn. The family breakdown becomes public knowledge. The culture did grant the father the right to divide the property but to sell the property before the father’s death is an offense and the family is shamed.
The younger son’s “ban” from the family and the community is more comprehensive than the Amish “shun”. When shunned an Amish person can at least eat at a separate table. The first century Jewish shun was a total ban on any contact with the family or community. In the “far country” the Jewish boy lives among Gentiles…
He is accused of loose living. He wasted his money. He went to all the nightclubs. He went to all the parties. When you have money you have fair weather friends. And so for a while he lived it up. But there came a day when he reached into his pocket and there wasn’t anything left. He could not return home. He has broken the rules. He needs a paying job just to have something to eat. Chaos is now his lot in life. When we find ourselves in a “chaos” there is hope that we too will find our direction “home”. Humility came to the younger son in the midst of chaos.
Becoming a pig herder, does not work. No one gave him anything. “As he worked feeding the pigs he longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating…” Ever been near a pig sty? His cloths stank. He is fed but not paid. The prodigal son decides on one last option….He could not ask to be accepted into full son ship again…but he could live better, even as a hired hand. It is the memory of a good father that beckons him back home.
His one hope is that his humble speech will touch his father’s heart as he seeks to be wage earner to pay back the lost inheritance. He is returning empty handed. He has shamed his family; his father… the painful road back is endured for one reason. He is hungry!
Rev. Kenneth Sauer of Newport, Virginia tells the story of an incident that happened at a church in he once served.
In this church there was a very strong Christian, someone we might call a “pillar of the church”. She was someone who the rest of the congregation strived to imitate. She knew her Bible. She lived an exemplary life.
A member of the church, a young man, contracted
AIDS. He was able to hide it from his fellow church members for quite a while until, one day; he had to go to the hospital.
In the hospital he fell into a coma.
When he awoke, this woman, this “pillar of the church” was holding his hand. “I can’t go back to church,” the young man told the woman. “I’m too embarrassed, they would not accept me.”
The woman just smiled and said, “Oh, yes you can come back, and when you come back you sit right next to me.”
The father knows his son will fail. He waits day after day, staring down the crowded village street to the road in the distance. The father plans to reach the boy before he reaches the village. The father sees the son “far off”. He picks up his robe and runs to embrace his son.
Traditional Middle Easterners wearing long robes do not run in public. The father runs. Overwhelmed the son cannot even blurt out his prepared speech. He only declares that he has sinned and is not worthy to be called a son. He does not know how to mend the broken relationship between a son and a father. The father knows....He embraces his son.
The “father” is a symbol for God. Jesus is saying. “Remember God does not play by our rules.” He offers grace. God’s grace comes first and then we can respond. Amazing grace.
In the Old Testament, which the Pharisees know quite well, God the Father is the “good shepherd” who goes after his lost sheep. (Psalm 23… the Lord is my shepherd…” In Ezekiel God refers to himself as the Good Shepherd who will “search for the lost sheep”. (Ez. 34-35) Jesus takes this known symbol for God and quietly transforms it into a symbol for himself. Didn’t Jesus say in the gospel of John, “I am the good shepherd”?
The Pharisees have complained that Jesus “welcomes and eats with sinners.” Jesus replies with these there parables in effect saying: “Indeed I do eat with sinners. But it is much worse than you imagine. I not only eat with them, I run down the road, shower them with kisses, and drag them in that I might eat with them! By the end of the story the father does what Jesus does. Amazing grace.
Joy returns to the Father’s heart. A banquet is prepared. A ring is put on the son’s finger. The boy was lost and has been found. Who found him? The Father! Where did he find him? At the edge of the village. As the shepherd went searching for the lost sheep, and the woman searched for the lost coin, even so the father went down the road to find his son.
This is the love that God has for each of us. What does Paul write in Ephesians 2? “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world…. But because of His great love for us God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead… it is by grace you have been saved.”
Jesus knows the Pharisees are like the older son. They become angry and refuse to go to the party. They do not like the fact that God has different rules. The older son refuses to participate in the banquet because he knows his brother has been restored… a ring has been placed on his finger. The finest robe is brought. The older son is angry at his father. This is a public insult.
A cultural equivalent might be the case of a son in the West who has a heated public shouting match with his father in the middle of a wedding banquet after a large family wedding. The older son now has a broken relationship with his father. What does the father do? He goes out. He reaches out.
The older son’s response is left open. Did he go to the party? Did he rejoice?
God is on a never-ending search for the lost and missing. God is like a shepherd looking for a lost sheep, a woman searching for a lost coin, God invites us to rejoice – “rejoice with me, for what was lost has been found”.
The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way. “God … grants to us the perfect righteousness, satisfaction, and holiness of Jesus Christ, as if we had never ever sinned or committed any sin…”
When Jesus visited the home of Zacchaeus in Jericho, Luke records Jesus. “For the Son of man came to seek and save the lost.” That was his mission. That was his purpose. The Pharisees were the spiritual leaders… God has invited them to pursue those who are spiritually lost.
When Adam & Eve were lost, God came looking. God came searching. He found them hiding and afraid. In both the O.T. and N.T. we encounter a God who is on a mission to seek the lost and redeem His people. The central act of God in the O.T. is the Exodus, a divine intervention into human history to free His people from slavery. The decisive act of God in the N.T is the divine intervention of God into human history at Bethlehem to free us from slavery and sin.
God rescued his people so they could be his partners. They were chosen to be the “priest of God” representing him to the whole earth.
Listen to the words of I Peter 1:3-5 ……… and promise. Romans 5:1-2, 6 …… for what purpose?
I Peter 2:9-12
Yes, we live in the post modern world, a world filled with people who are insecure about their eternal destiny. We are surrounded by people who have been told “there are no absolutes.” They are lost
The salvation of God has come to us so we can pass it on to others. “The church was created to be the people of God to join Him in His redemptive mission.” to seek and save the lost. The church was not created to serve itself. Jesus did not say: “For God so loved the Church…. God so loved the world….The Church is the Bride of Christ, designed for reproduction, accepting people whom God brings to our doorsteps.
Only 49% of adults in America belong to a Christian Church. Today, 149 million “unattached to Jesus” Americans await an invitation to know more about Jesus and His secure offer of eternal life. (The story of member of our church and a co worker who is “Sikh” and both attend a Christian funeral… the first for the Sikh….he had questions and the discussions began. God at work...)
In this 15th chapter of Luke, these three parables are well known. Jesus told these parables in response to criticism from the Pharisees. The Pharisees truly believed that a person could be saved and earn God’s love by keeping the commandments. “The Jewish rule book was quite clear about Jewish religious behavior. Rabbis do not eat with people of the land who do not keep Jewish law. “Judaism had developed a system of legalism which made religion into a matter of keeping a balance sheet, a statement of debits and credits in our dealings with a righteous God. Rabbinical Judaism declared a man or woman righteous if his/her merits out-weighed his/her transgressions. If a person tried hard, but didn’t have enough good merits he or she could draw upon a credit amount of merit piled up by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others.” People were hungry for a relationship with God. They flocked to the words of Jesus for He spoke of God’s love, God’s grace for sinners.
Every act of charity, almsgiving and piety had credit value and if your good deeds outweighed your bad deeds you would be acquitted on judgment day. We still know people who think the same.
Right now, in America, there is a spiritual hunger. This spiritual awaking lacks Christian content. Left to their own imagination people will devise all sorts of crazy stuff about God, from New Age crystals to seekers of knowledge and self-enlightenment.
God is calling us listen for the voices of those calling out of the darkness, seek the lost and rejoice when the lost are found.
Note: many thoughts and facts come from a Christianity Today article from October 26, 1998 by Keith Bailey"
