The Elder Son Returns
The Return of the Prodigal, prt. 5
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
March 13, 2011
Today we continue our series called Return of the Prodigal, based on Jesus’ parable in Luke 15. I want to start off with a provocative quote from Henry Nouwen. This series has been inspired by Jesus’ parable, by Rembrant’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son, and by Nouwen’s book, which was inspired by both the painting and the parable.
Nouwen says, “God’s love does not depend on our repentance, or on our inner or outer changes.” That almost sounds like heresy at first. It almost seems to say repentance is not important. But listen again. “God’s love does not depend on our repentance, or on our inner or outer changes.” Is it saying repentance isn’t necessary? Of course not. It’s saying that repentance is not what secures God’s love. God loves us before we repent. After all,
Romans 5:8 (NIV)
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
So this statement that seems at first to be a bit heretical is actually very, very sound. It is not our repentance that secures God’s love. And since God loves us before we have repented, he certainly loves us before we have made any inner or outer changes in our lives.
I could almost conclude the sermon right now. Because although we say God is love, it is an assault to our ears that God loved us, and loves us, in our sin. It doesn’t sound right to say that God loves us completely apart from any changes we might make. But it’s completely true.
Now here, at the end of the parable, at almost the end of the series, we are left hanging, and are presented with a choice. Jesus ends the parable without ever wrapping it up. We are never told if the older son comes around and pulls it together and joins his father and brother at the feast. We’re never told if perhaps he drops to his knees at some point and, like his younger brother, begs for forgiveness. This moment is pregnant with opportunity, and I think Rembrandt portrays that with the space he creates between the elder son and the father. You guys check out the painting while I read you something:
Luke 15:28 (NIV)
28 "The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.
Luke 15:31-32 (NIV)
31 "'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'"
We have to decide what happens here with the elder son. But here is what we know. Just like the father runs out to meet the younger son, he also goes out to meet the older one. He goes out to welcome back the son who has returned, and he goes out to plead with the one who is still lost, that he might return as well. The Father’s heart is for both of his sons. It doesn’t matter why they are lost. It matters only that they both return.
The Father’s words to the elder son are beautiful. Are they words you hear God speaking to you?
Luke 15:31-32 (NIV)
31 "'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”
How our lives will change as we increasingly come to hear God saying those words to us. “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” That is to say, all of God’s love is yours. All of God’s peace belongs to you. All of God’s joy is yours as well. All of God’s patience and compassion are yours. The Father graciously shares everything with you, and not only shares it, but considers it equally yours. This speaks of that condition of “unity with God” that the mystics are always seeking – the condition that John Wesley referred to as “Christian perfection.” This is the idea that God isn’t just letting us borrow his stuff. He considers it ours. That is the extent of God’s goodness and mercy. That is also, by the way, why God asks for our lives in return. God asks that we give him our lives so that he can give his life to us, which is infinitely better and richer and fuller.
Here I want to depart from the parable and especially from Nouwen a little bit to bring in something I think is really important. The father says, “you are always with me.” Taken literally, we see he’s referring to the consistency and faithfulness of the elder son. But there’s a sense in which the younger son, also, was always with him.
Luke 15:20 (NIV)
20 [the younger son] got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
The Father saw him while he was still a long way off. This implies waiting. The Father was waiting for his son, expecting his return. The younger son was never off his mind, never outside of his love and care. So the Father could have said to both the younger and the older son, “You are always with me.” Now if we are always with God, how is it possible that in this parable, there’s a sense in which both sons were NOT with the father? It comes down to this critical thing right here:
Colossians 1:21 (NIV)
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.
Where does this say we are enemies of God? IN OUR MINDS! Some people read this and think, “That means it’s not really real, it’s in our minds.” Actually, nothing is more real than something that is in our minds. As I have often said, if you wake up tomorrow believing you are a dog, you will bark, and eat off the floor, and fetch me my slippers. That you are NOT a dog will make little difference. You will act like whatever you believe yourself to be and this will determine your reality. Let’s look at this verse from Colossians in light of Christ’s parable. The younger son starts off at home. And he says to himself, “I’d be better off if I was outta here. I should leave. I’ll be happier someplace else.” At that moment, he became an enemy of his father in his mind. This became his reality. And because that was his reality, he drove a very real wedge between him and his father. He was an enemy of his father’s in his mind because of his own evil behavior and attitudes. It was in his mind, but it was real.
Now notice, it was not real to the Father. In other words, the younger son was not the Father’s enemy. The father still loved him, loved him even enough to give him his share of the inheritance and let him leave. But this condition of being an enemy of God is a condition of alienation from God in the human mind because of our own toxic and sick attitudes (sinful) and the actions that spring from them. It does not in any way make us enemies of God from GOD’S perspective. Your children can rebel against you however they want to, believing in their minds that you are enemies. This will not make them your enemy IN YOUR MIND, although you may be their enemy IN THEIR MIND. Make sense?
The same with the elder son. We see in the parable that he is alienated from his father in his mind. The younger son’s alienation began in his mind and led to physical and spiritual separation. The older son’s began in his mind and led just as surely to emotional and spiritual separation. But they are both states of separation, they both begin in the human mind, and they both keep us – in FACT – separated from God. But that separation does not happen from God’s side. God does not say, “Oooh, you’re sinning – I’m going to separate myself from you.” Our evil attitudes and actions separate us from a God who waits for us to return. When you read in the New Testament that we are separated from God because of sin, always keep this passage as the backdrop. Yes, we are separated, but not because God is cutting us off. God is inviting us, welcoming us, beckoning to us. But until we have a change of mind (what Jesus called “repentance”) and turn toward God, that separation will remain.
Romans 11:28-29 (MSG)
28 From your point of view as you hear and embrace the good news of the Message, it looks like the Jews are God's enemies. But looked at from the long-range perspective of God's overall purpose, they remain God's oldest friends.
29 God's gifts and God's call are under full warranty—never canceled, never rescinded.
Look up every instance of the word “enemy” or “enemies” and you will see this point of view in all of them.
Now I kind of went off on a bit of tangent here this morning because of how important I believe this is. We tend to experience our separation from God as a punishment – that God has separated himself from us because he cannot look on sin. This sounds spiritual, but it can’t be true. The entire world, and every human heart, is sinful, and yet God is at work in this world. Heck, in Christ, God took on ALL the sin of the world, right?
So please know this morning that if you live with a sense of separation between you and God, that separation is coming from you and not from God. God waits for you to return, whether you are separated like the younger son was, or like the older son was. Either way, the Father runs to you.
And so we see in the parable how the younger son repents on some level. At least enough to return home to the embrace of the Father. But we never see how this resolves with the elder son. We don’t get to see his moment of repentance, or know whether there ever was one. But it doesn’t matter for our purposes. The point for you and for me is that that space between us and God is only there because we have put it there. One of the two sons has filled up the space between them by running to the Father. The other so far has allowed the space to remain, insisting on his rightness and all he deserves, lost in his bitterness and resentments.
But we know the Father loves them both equally. Nouwen writes, “He sees with love the passion of his younger son, even when it is not regulated by obedience. With the same love, he sees the obedience of the elder son, even when it is not vitalized by passion.”
Look at the language that is used here, as well. The older brother says,
Luke 15:29-30 (NIV)
29 But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.
30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
This son of yours. Not my brother, but your son. Parents, we’ve all done that haven’t we? When the kids are misbehaving, we’ll say, “Honey, come take care of your children!”
And then look at what the father says,
Luke 15:31-32 (NIV)
31 "'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'"
It’s as if the father is saying, “Don’t forget who this kid is. Yes, he’s my son. But he is your brother!”
Here we see how lost the elder son really is. In his eyes, in his mind, he is alone. He doesn’t have a brother, his father has a son. Nor does he really have a father – certainly not one that, in his mind, loves and cares for him. Nouwen writes,
Read underlined text on p. 82
I’m speaking now to the elder sons and daughters in the room. Most of us elder sons and daughters have problems with trust and gratitude. It is easy for elder sons and daughter to feel taken for granted. After all, there’s so much drama to being the younger son or daughter! They leave home, go off and do dramatic and stupid things, they get into drugs or sex or alcohol, then they come back and have these dazzling stories to tell, which make for these deep and impressive testimonies of being delivered from all these terrible things. What do we have to offer, older sons and daughters? After all, we’ve just pretty much been living here working the farm all along, doing what we’re supposed to do. And nobody notices, because everybody’s always tending to the younger sons and daughters. They run off and do the stupid things while we stay here and work the farm, then everybody swoons over them when they return. Feels that way sometimes, doesn’t it, elder sons and daughters?
Nouwen writes that it requires trust to let myself be found. “I have to keep saying to myself, ‘God is looking for you. He will go anywhere to find you. He loves you and wants you home. It requires enormous spiritual energy to believe that God wants me home as much as he does the younger son.”
I really identify a lot with this statement Nouwen makes, and probably most of my deepest spiritual issues come from difficulty in sustaining the energy that it takes to keep believing that God loves and cares for me. I know that is true of some of you as well. On the other hand, I am getting better at letting myself be found, better at learning how to keep believing and trusting. For some of us, that is just not easy at all.
As for gratitude, it is essential because it is the opposite of resentment. Resentment says, “No one notices me or cares about anything I do.” Gratitude says, “Heck, I’m just happy to be here.”
So this is the choice we elder sons and daughters must always make. Will we choose distrust and suspicion instead of trust? Will we choose resentment and brooding instead of gratitude? Nouwen writes, “Both trust and gratitude require the courage to take risks because distrust and resentment, in their need to keep their claim on me, keep warning me how dangerous it is to let go of my careful calculations and guarded predictions. At many points I have to make a leap of faith to let trust and gratitude have a chance.”
And so I speak this morning mainly to those who identify with the elder son, but I invite all to let yourselves be found – to risk believing that the father loves you and wants you home. This is not just about daily devotions and quiet time, it is about learning to live moment by moment in a confident trust in God’s presence and provision. Anyone seeking to do that is invited to send me a note this week, or call me, and we will talk about it. I want Wildwind to be characterized not only by the kind of teaching we do, but by direct spiritual guidance delivered to individuals who are seeking.
Nouwen reminds us that the cold light on the elder son’s face can become deep and warm – transforming him totally – and make him who he truly is: “The Beloved Son on whom God’s favor rests.” Do you experience yourself that way – as the beloved child of God on whom God’s favor rests? Or in your mind, are you an enemy of God? Because I can tell you this. God is no enemy of yours.
