The latest Sermon

Isaiah 55:8-9, Luke 15:11-19

Rev. Ellen Campbell Gardner

Dear Lord, open us to your Word and your way, Amen.

So, I think that we can identify, or at least we know, we at least will admit we know, somebody in our lives or around us that we would call a prodigal son, a prodigal rebellious son. Our culture really lifts up the rebellious son, doesn't it? And our text helps us to see in this transitional moment, because you're in a transitional moment, aren't you? The gospel realities and answers to the prodigal rebellion in other people, but especially in our own hearts. And I think that's very helpful, not only for us, and not only for the people we meet, but for the people that God wants to call into your midst. So that when they get here, they feel comfortable, and they know that they are not strangers, but that just like us, they are encouraged and invited home. I had this one man come to my first call, and he said to me, you people at this church, I won't see what you're all hypocrites. I said, you're absolutely right, we are. And there is room for you as well. You know, it's awfully easy to call people, to label people, isn't it? The reality is that all of us are broken by sin, and all of us are in need of grace. 

 Last week, we spoke about the nature of this word prodigal, didn't we? We said that it meant spendthrift, that it meant exuberant, extravagant, overly indulgent. We identified the first case of prodigal behavior in our story, and that was the father. When he abandoned the expectations to the response of the day of how a son was supposed to act, and he fulfilled the younger son's scandalous, scandalous request, remember? Ken Bailey, any of you remember Ken Bailey? Ken was, he was the child of missionaries in Egypt. He grew up in Egypt and in Palestine, before it was called Israel, and he was a missionary in Lebanon during the Civil War. He was teaching at the American University, and this is what he said about  the father. The actions of the father are unique, and they're marvelous, and they're divine actions. They're not done by any earthly father in the past. They were the actions of a father willing to endure the agony of rejected love.  

As any real parent will agree, the greater the love, the greater the pain when the expected love or respect is not offered back or accepted. What the father has offered, and we talked about last week, is the ultimate freedom that you have in grace. It's the extravagant freedom of rejection without retribution.  

It's the overindulgence of love that acts not out of pain, but out of acceptance. It's the spendthrift love that allows the son to break with the father and the family and even the community unmolested, or in the words of Romans 1, God gives them up to their sin. Hurt and anger processed into grace, remember we said is unmerited favor, undeserved favor, instead of final judgment. 

So, in our text today, we're going to understand the wisdom and the love of the father to allow this in his son. Because the father knows the prodigal rebellion that his son is exhibiting, and he knows that it will only bring judgment and rejection, but he knows as well that this childish behavior will bring, will not bring what his son wants. And he knows as well that the only way for his son to understand that is to probably go through the pain of what that prodigal rebellion will bring. And so he loves his son enough to allow his son to make bad choices. So there are a couple lessons. The first lesson, the father is allowing this son to turn his back on the family and to disrespect. He's allowing that to happen. Two, he is allowing the community to turn against his son too. Now if you're a parent, you know that you probably want to protect your child and you probably want to protect them against the community, but the father doesn't do that. He allows the younger son to gather all that he had for the journey. And that means that his son, as we said last week, probably took all of the things that the father said are yours and he took them into town, and he sold them for a fraction of what they were worth. His son's poor impulse control allows his son to taste the results of that kind of rebellious behavior. And this is what, it occurs to me, the son's haste to make the money and get where he thought he would find his greatest happiness, he leaves a lot on the table. And what he leaves on the table is representative of his father's life. And he just leaves it on the table. 

 Lesson two is that the father allows him to taste the realities of his rebellious nature. Lesson three, he moves, the Scripture says he moves to a faraway country with people that he doesn't know. He is moving away, that means from his Jewish faith to a Gentile faith. And it's not a Gentile faith like us. It is a pagan world that he is moving to. His compulsive behavior and his overactive tendency toward independence. I want what I want when I want it. I'm, you're not the boss of me, I know better than you. It leaves him without the foundations of life that have absolutely been his identity forever. He is in a foreign land.

The fourth lesson is a famine hits and he literally now has nothing. As he spent all the money, he spent it on all these friends. And when he has no money left, he has no friends left. And he has no way to earn it back because he's in a foreign land. And nobody likes a foreigner. And he still doesn't seem to have learned anything from his poor choices because he doesn't go home, does he? He goes to another Gentile and gets a job. And that person hates him so much, that person wants to get rid of him too. So, he knows he's Jewish and he puts him in the charge of the pigs. If you know anything about the Jewish culture, you know that to this day they don't eat pork. And not only that, but he hates him so much that he won't give him any food. And he won't even let him eat the food that the pigs are eating. His life is a mess. His rebellion has brought him to a place where there doesn't seem to be any next steps.

 And the Pharisees and the sinners that Jesus is speaking to, you remember? He's talking to the Pharisees and the teachers. They've said, why are you eating with sinners? That was the beginning of what we talked about last week. They both understand the ruin that this boy has brought about on him. And they feel justified that he deserves everything he's getting. But either way, the results of what he's living wasn't the prodigal grace, but the prodigal ruin, right?

And so my question is, how about you? Do you know any people who can't seem to get out of their way? Are you that kind of person? Do you secretly feel like it's good to be bad? I don't know what it is. It used to be Hopalong Cassidy, right? He wore the white hat. I think it was in the 60s, wasn't it, when they started wearing a black hat? The spaghetti westerns, where the bad guy now was the good guy. And now it is hard to find a movie where the good guy is really a good guy. The good guy always has a very bad past, or he has very bad tendencies, or she is not very nice, but has a good heart. Something has happened in our culture where we have lifted prodigal rebellion up as something that is okay. And this prodigal rebelliousness in the words of Isaiah, the 30th chapter, that we read last week, is unwilling to hear the instructions of the Lord and only wanting their way, not God's truth. Their issue isn't just about breaking the law. It's their desire to do unthinkable things. The deeply offensive actions that break family, and break community, and break relationships. And as a consequence, this prodigal rebellion is sinking deeper and deeper from going one bad experience to another. 

 And a lot of people just feel lost and lonely. And we're finding it's entering into the churches.

It's not that when you walk in these doors, everything changes. It's a self-inflicted rejection that our whole culture is experiencing. Dido put it this way, he said, they sought pleasure, but they find pain. They wish for freedom, but they get bondage. And here is where the hinge moment happens. Because Jesus sees things very differently, doesn't he? Jesus knows that the root of prodigal rebellion isn't just failure to do what the father tells the son to do, or the daughter, or you, or me. Sin is not just breaking the rules. Sin is putting a distance between us and our Heavenly Father. Living as if each one of us are our own gods, and our own saviors, and our own lords, and our own ultimate judges. 

 And it's rampant in our world today, isn't it? And we call it self-expression, but as often as not, it's just plain, ordinary rebellion and sin. And what begins for so many of the young sons of our day and time as self-discovery often turns into bondage, and it turns into addictions, and it turns into hopelessness, and it turns into suicide. Because we've forgotten that the truest identity that we have is not being rebellious, and being bad, or naughty, but being beloved sons and daughters of our heavenly father. 

 And so the younger son shows us how tragic this can be. The younger son, a Jew, wishing he were a pig. Because even the pigs ate and were satisfied. But his prodigal rebellion never leaves satisfied. None of our rebellion leaves us satisfied. So what does he do? He comes up with a scheme. I'll go to my father, and I'll say, father, and he kind of rehearses this, doesn't he? Father, I've sinned against you, and I don't deserve to be called your son. Make me your son. And what's so interesting about that is he's got no thought for the father, just for himself. So what does he do? He goes home. But the story is not over, is it? Because waiting for him, I mean, it's clear. The father has been watching every day for his son. 

He's not standing there to judge him. He's watching for him. And part of the reason that he's watching for him is because he probably has to go through the town to get home. And if he goes through the town and his father isn't watching for him, what's going to happen when the community sees him? Because they hate him. So the father does the unthinkable. He sees him in the distance, and he runs. He hikes up his clothing, and he runs, which was, again, an unthinkable thing for a father to do. And he grabs a hold of his son, and he kisses him. Can't you just see it? The son's like, Father, I've sinned against you, and the father doesn't care. He's just gathering him into his arms.

And this is what happened when God sent his only son. Because we had done horrible things. We had rejected the Father. We had spit in the face of God. But when we turned and were in danger and in trouble, and we wanted to come home, he sent his son so that we could. It's astonishing, isn't it, what God has done for us. And he lavished him with the best clothes and rings on his hand. And I almost had this vision of that beautiful rug going around his pig-splattered shoulders. 

 And this is the gospel message. This is the gospel you know. Or maybe I should say, is this the gospel you know? Is it? Is this the father you know? There's not a thing that any of us can have done that the father isn't waiting for us. That the Father hasn't sent the true son to make a way home for us. And this is a gospel that the world is aching to know. So you prodigal, rebellious ones, come home. In all of our lives there are things that we have done that we don't think we can be forgiven. Or somebody has told us that we can't be forgiven. And the Father is there saying, just come home. I'm watching for you.

Jesus is redefining the actions and the character and the definition of what it means to be a child of God. So what does this have to do with you? And that's what I want to end with tonight. If you don't live into this prodigal grace, then you're living in a prodigal rebellion. If you don't live into this prodigal grace, then what do you have to share with the people out there who are living in either prodigal rebellion or what we're going to talk about next week, prodigal resentment. And what we have is so good. 

 And nobody else is giving this to the world. The Muslims, they don't give it to the world. It's all about what they did. When you go up to heaven, Muhammad's there with God and he's tallying up your good deeds. And if they aren't greater than your bad deeds, you're not going to heaven.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters, they still believe that it's works righteousness. It's beautiful. It's the Old Testament. It's a part of who we are.  

But the prodigal and what Jesus is sharing is you can't come home and be a child without the Father. Don't just be a slave. And a lot of people in the church, they've come home, but they're slaves.  

And they think they have to be good enough. And the Father's saying, oh, get over here. And he's putting a beautiful rope of righteousness on our shoulders. And he's killing the fatted calf. And he's saying, I have been waiting. I love you. I am so glad you're home. True home. Look up, dear ones.  

The Father's waiting. He's waiting to welcome us all home. Amen.