Fourth Sunday in Lent — March 21, 2004
Christ Lutheran Church, Columbia, MD
Pastor Jeff Samelson
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
What Is God Like?
The Prodigal
R________ (Rejected)
R________ (Running)
R________ (Restoring)
W ________ (Waiting)
prod·i·gal adj
1. recklessly extravagant, spendthrift
2. giving or producing something in large amounts; lavish; luxuriant
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Word of God for our study this Sunday is our Gospel for the day, Luke 15:1-3, 11-32, as already read:
[ Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering round to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.”
Then Jesus told them this parable: …
Jesus continued: “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 and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he 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 son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 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. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 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.’” (NIV)
This is the Gospel of our Lord. ]
Dear Sons and Daughters of Our Heavenly Father:
The parable we just read is commonly called “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. That’s not very good name for it, or at least it’s not very accurate. Look at the definition of “prodigal” that I included in your bulletin: “recklessly extravagant”. Now, yes, that fits the younger son and what he did, but the story is about a lot more than that. There’s another reckless extravagance at work here. The real prodigal in this parable is not the younger son.
And that makes sense — because what Jesus wanted to illustrate for the Pharisees and teachers of the law was not what sinners are like, but what God is like.
Not that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were asking what God was like, of course — they assumed they knew everything already. But their attitude toward Jesus — and especially toward the “sinners” he welcomed and ate with — showed that their understanding of God was woefully inadequate. They really didn’t know God at all, and their relationship with him was broken, although they thought they were his favorites.
And so Jesus, demonstrating the grace that this parable illustrates, lovingly and patiently answers the question they didn’t know enough to ask: What is God like?
I think Jesus’ audience understood as well as you and I do that the father in this parable represents God. He’s the first person we meet, and the first thing we learn about him is that he has two sons. And then the younger of the two tells his father to “drop dead”.
Well, basically, that’s what his request means — he’s saying that he can’t wait any longer for his inheritance, and so he wants it now. He’s saying, “Dad, sorry, you’re no value to me alive — I’d rather you were dead, so I can get what’s coming to me. Since you haven’t done me the favor of dying yet, just go ahead and give it to me now and it’ll be all the same to me.”
Now think about that for a minute. What’s the real problem? As awful and greedy and selfish and hurtful as that younger son is being with those words, they aren’t the real or basic problem — they’re just symptoms of it. He wouldn’t be able to even consider saying such a thing to his father if there weren’t something more, something worse going on here. It’s not just that he doesn’t love his dad anymore — it’s that he has completely rejected him and wants nothing to do with him. The heart-wrenching problem here is that the father’s relationship with his younger son is completely broken.
Can you imagine treating your own father or mother this way? I hope not! But that, in essence, is what we say and do to our heavenly Father anytime we choose to go our own way instead of his — anytime we choose any sin — anytime we squander our money, squander our time, our opportunities, squander love. You see, the broken laws and commands are secondary — they’re symptoms of the bigger problem: our rejection of God. Sin is rooted in our desire to do our own thing and be our own person — we don’t want God interfering, and so we tell him we want nothing to do with him. We’ll get by just fine if he’ll just leave us alone.
That’s what Adam and Eve did, isn’t it? They took the fruit from the tree that God had told them not to take fruit from, but that first bite wasn’t the first sin — the sin was in their unbelief, their decision to follow their own will and desire instead of their Creator’s — it was their rejection of God.
And the amazing and reckless thing about it all is that God allowed and allows it, just as the father in the parable gives in and lets his son have what he’s asked for. The son may never return when he goes, but the father sees no point in refusing him or stopping him, because he is already lost to him. The relationship has been broken, and keeping him at home wouldn’t bring back the lost love and respect.
And although it’s not so obvious or easily seen, the older son is no better than the younger. His relationship with the father is just as broken. He doesn’t love or respect his father either — did you notice how he actually criticizes his father’s love for his brother? — “Dad, you got it all wrong — you don’t know what you’re doing!” — He makes his father come to him and plead, but he refuses to go in. In Middle Eastern society this would be unheard of — the son goes to the father, the son follows his father’s will — but not so here. The older brother is only concerned with his own position and power — he views his relationship with his father as one of obedience and reward instead of love and respect. And so he also is lost to his father.
Now the older brother was a picture of the self-righteous Pharisees and teachers of the law. Jesus was telling them that they were far from being God’s number one sons, as they thought they were — instead, they were as lost as the tax collectors, “sinners”, and Gentiles — because they knew nothing of God’s extravagant love, and they had rejected him as their father. And the older son is us, too, anytime we slip into thinking God owes us something for … being here for him every Sunday, or for all the things we do for him; or anytime we believe that we’ve got it in good with him because our family isn’t as messed up as someone else’s, or because we’re just plain better than other people. All that, too, is rejection of God.
And so what does this parable tell us first about what God is like? It tells us he’s a rejected God. That’s what we do to him, that’s what we’ve made him. The Lord is a rejected God.
Alan was a pretty normal boy from a medium-sized town. And he loved his dog. Alan had been after his parents for a dog since he was five, and on his ninth birthday they finally granted his wish. He named the dog “Rover” because he’d always thought that was about the best name a dog could have. And he loved that dog as much as any boy ever loved a dog.
Every day when he got home from school, Alan would take Rover out into the yard to play. It was the favorite part of his day. By the time he was ten, his mother regularly shouted herself hoarse calling for them to come back inside so Alan could do his homework.
And then one day Alan came home from school as usual, put his books down as usual, and took Rover out to the yard as usual. A friend came by and called Alan over, and while they chatted and laughed, Rover chased squirrels, as usual. But soon Alan couldn’t hear the dog’s barking anymore, and when he turned around, Rover was gone.
You can imagine what happened next. Alan ran all over the yard and all over the block calling out Rover’s name. “Here, boy!” echoed halfway across the town. Once his mother figured out what was wrong she put Alan in the car and they drove up and down every street in the neighborhood, looking, calling, and hoping.
They didn’t find Rover. Alan could hardly eat his dinner that night, and the next few weeks weren’t much better. He missed that dog as much as any boy ever missed a dog, and he never stopped looking for him. Every weekend his parents drove him to the pound to see if Rover had shown up there. He even started reading the local paper to see if they had any news of his dog. Weeks passed, but Alan refused to give up hope.
And then one day when Alan was walking home after school, kicking rocks and taking his time, unwilling to face his dog-less house and yard again, something at the far end of his street caught his eye. Immediately, instinctively, he knew what it was, and he started to run. His backpack was slowing him down, so he dropped it in the street. His hat blew off and ended up in somebody’s front yard. Alan ran two and a half blocks at full speed, and could barely gasp “Rover!” as he scooped his dog into his arms and hugged him tight.
Rover was full of mud, half-starved, and probably full of fleas, but Alan didn’t care. He’d found his lost dog. Rover was coming home, and that meant everything to him.
If you’d asked Alan later why he ran so far and so hard to get his dog, he probably would have looked at you funny. The answer was obvious — he loved his dog, and it didn’t matter what he had to do to have him home again.
God loves you infinitely more than any boy ever loved his dog.
Now, you might not ask the father in our parable why he ran so far and so hard to meet his son, but if you were one of his servants, or a fellow villager, you might wonder how he could behave that way. The father was obviously a wealthy man. He would have been one of the elders of the town — a man with a reputation to protect and standards to uphold. You can be sure everyone in the village knew what kind of disrespect the younger son had shown him before he left, and if anyone had seen the son before the father did, they would have assumed the son would have a high price to pay for that disrespect before his father would even acknowledge him as his son.
But the father didn’t care what anyone else thought. He didn’t care about protecting his pride or his position. He only cared about one thing — getting his son back. And so he ran. He ran to welcome and embrace his lost son, and he ran to cover his half-starved, unwashed, bum of a son with kisses. Because he loved him, and nothing else mattered. The son that had been dead to him was alive again — the one who was lost had been found.
To the Pharisees and teachers of the Law who assumed that God only stays close to those who through their own efforts stay close to him, this picture of how God treats sinners would have been shocking. We sometimes forget how radical this parable is. Jesus was revealing something important about what God is like: our God is a running God.
That’s another way of saying that God loves us with a recklessly extravagant love. There are no limits to it, and he’ll do whatever it takes to bring it to us. In fact, he already has done whatever it takes — he gave his one and only Son to be our Savior. The Son of God ran to earth to be born of Mary. He ran every day of his life, tirelessly obeying every one of God’s laws in our place, because as sinners who rejected God we could never give him the obedient perfection he requires for eternal life. Jesus ran to suffer and ran to die in our place, to take the punishment for our sins and withstand the pains of hell so we wouldn’t have to. And Jesus even ran from the tomb on Easter morning so that all who put their trust in him could have eternal life.
All because our God is a running God. He runs to us to welcome us home, because there’s nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy to be called his sons and daughters — he has to do it, and he has done it. He ran to us, gave us faith, saved us, and washed us clean, though we deserved none of it. That is radical — to know that our salvation is not dependent at all upon us or our own works or choices — but that’s the Lord’s amazing grace. Our God is a running God.
But it doesn’t end there. The Lord’s lavish love for us is also pictured with his treatment of his lost son. Notice how the son never has a chance to make his offer to be one of the hired men — it would be pointless anyway, because the father was determined to have him back as a son. The broken relationship was repaired, and his status in the family, the house, and the village was restored. No price to pay, no conditions to meet, nothing held back — because the father loved his son.
To get an idea of how radical a situation this would have been in that time and place, imagine that you are the former owner of one of those beautiful mansions out on Brighton Dam Road west of Clarksville. Former owner, because you had to sell it and move into something smaller to pay off the debts and fines your company incurred when your son, who had been your vice-president of finance, started selling off millions of dollars in company assets and keeping the proceeds for himself. He ran afoul of the SEC, the IRS, the FBI, and maybe a few other agencies, and he’s also afraid your other son, the vice-president of operations, might be out to kill him, and so he’s been hiding overseas somewhere for the last two years.
Now imagine that you discover that he’s blown through all the money already, and you find out where he is, and you go there to find him and bring him home. And when you do, you make him vice-president of finance again. With no conditions, no questions asked, and no repayment demanded. What would people call you? Reckless. Extravagant. Foolish.
But that is how God loves us, and as Paul reminded us in our second lesson today, the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom. And the foolishness of the cross — that reckless extravagance of God’s grace — isn’t only about forgiving our sins and declaring us “not guilty”. It is also about restoring our broken relationship with God our Father, making us his beloved children and faithful servants.
The message there is that our many sins and frequent rebellions don’t mean we have to do penance. We don’t have to remain outside the family or house of God until we’ve made up for them. God has restored us — we are perfect, holy, and righteous in his sight for Christ’s sake. Which means that we can say goodbye to all our squandering sins of greed and impatience, of lust and selfish ambition — whatever it is that we have chosen to do that God has said not to do. We don’t have to sin anymore, and we don’t want to, because we’re back home again with our Father, and he loves us.
That’s what our Lord is like. He is a restoring God. (A restoring God.)
There’s a lot more in this parable — enough to fill a month of Sundays. But there’s one more thing that we see about God here. And we see it, somewhat ironically, in what’s missing.
Take a look at the end of our parable of the prodigal. Do you see what’s not there? (pause)
What’s not there is a conclusion. There’s no ending. We don’t see what the older brother does or says after his father pleads with him to come in and join the celebration over his brother’s return. Which means that the father is waiting. Waiting. Just as he eagerly ran to meet the son who had gone away and been lost, he patiently waits for the son who had stayed put and been lost. He waits for his son, and you know he will wait as long as he can, because he loves him.
And so we see also that our Lord is also a waiting God. He’s patient with us — with all people — because he loves us. There’s a limit to his patience — he won’t hold the door open forever — but he will wait as long as he can, because he loves us.
And what is he waiting for? He’s waiting for those who have rejected him and his love to come in — to repent. He’s waiting for them to love him — to stop keeping him at a distance, and stop pretending that obedience is a substitute for faith and respect.
And for those who already belong to him, God waits and wants us to be like him, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 — “Be imitators of God … as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1, 2). Which means God’s also waiting for us to love our brothers and sisters as he loves them, and to rejoice with him when they are restored to him and the family of God — no matter what they’ve done or left undone, no matter their background, race, income, personality, intelligence, education, or appearance. We love as God loves, because he loved us first.
To Jesus’ enemies, that idea was radical. To Jesus’ friends, like us, it’s life-changing. But God’s love is like that. It’s reckless. It’s extravagant. It’s prodigal.
And so we have to celebrate and be glad, because you and I, and our brothers and sisters, were dead and are alive again. We were lost and now we are found. We have a prodigal Father, and we are his beloved children. Rejoice! Amen.
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1) Amen.
