WHEN WE FEEL WE ARE LOST
March 15, 2015
4th Sunday of Lent
1st Presbyterian Church
Pittsford, New York
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
LOGOS Choir
Open House at the Organ
CROSSROADS – Lenten Series
1
F
ather Murphy was a wonderful Irish priest but as he aged, he developed a loss of hearing. Members of his parish had become sympathetic to the situation and would write out their sins on a piece of paper before going to confession.
One day, parishioner Sean O’Reilly slipped a piece of paper to Father Murphy which read, “Two loaves of bread, a gallon of milk, a box of detergent and a pound of bananas.”
Father Murphy looked puzzled as he scanned the note, then passed it back to the Sean. Sean looked at the note, then exclaimed with horror, “Oh, no! I’ve left my sins at the grocery store.”
Well, where did you leave your sins? Where should we leave them? How can we be rid of our sins forever? The answer, of course, is repentance, which means, in essence, “turn around; go home.”
Repentance is what the prodigal son did. He turned around and went back home. That’s the best way to rid yourself of sin.
George Buttrick, one of the greatest preachers America has produced, has said that Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son captures “the essence of the Christian faith.” It is a story of repentance and forgiveness and grace. It is also, however, a story of self-righteousness, resentment and anger. It has a very familiar beginning, “There was a man who had two sons.” So, from the beginning, we are introduced to three characters.
The first, of course, is the younger son, the prodigal.
He is adventurous, rebellious and determined to learn life’s lessons by making his own mistakes. Many of us can identify with him. We’ve been there.
In Jesus’ story the younger son says to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate.”
Dr. Kenneth Bailey, who taught for years at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, writes of knowing of only one case in modern village life where this kind of request was made in that part of the world. An older son asked his father to divide the family inheritance. And the father, in great anger, took a stick and drove his son from the house, never to permit him to return again. All the neighbors in the village applauded. “Why?” asks Dr. Bailey. Palestinian peasants told him that in that culture a son would never ask for the inheritance early because it was to say to the father, “I wish you were dead.”[1]
So the father divided his property between his two sons and the younger one set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. When all his wealth was gone there was a severe famine in the country, and this young man descended into trouble. He was hungry. So he hired himself to a local farmer who sent him to his fields to feed pigs, which is about the most disgusting job in the world for a good Jewish boy. He was so hungry, Luke tells us, that he would gladly have eaten the pods that the pigs were eating.
Finally, Luke tells us, “He came to himself.” He headed back home with his tail between his legs.He was hungry and hurting andHome started to look awfully good. However, was he truly penitent or was he simply posing, play-acting, so he could worm himself back into his father’s good graces? We don’t know. This is a parable and not a real life incident. There was no follow-up story done by the evening news. We can only imagine that he is headed home for good. Or maybe not!
Some of you may have encountered a person who early one became involved with substances and addictions that seemed to have taken control of their behavior and decisions. Truthfulness is one of the early qualities to fade. Many parents today know what it is to have a child return home after a period of testing and searching. They are apologetic and vow to do better and then not only leave again, but steal something on their way back out the door. Agonizing parents ask, “How many times am I supposed to forgive? How many times do I let him come back home?”
Some prodigals repent many times, but never really come home.
It’s like one of Garrison Keillor’s stories told from Lutheran Pastor Ingqvist’s perspectivein Lake Wobegon. “Larry Sorenson was back at the Lutheran Church,” Keillor writes. “Larry the Sad Boy, who was saved twelve times in the Lutheran Church, an all-time record. Between 1953 and 1961, he threw himself weeping and contrite on God’s throne of grace on twelve separate occasions and this in a Lutheran Church that wasn’t evangelical, had no altar calls, no organist playing ‘Just as I am without one plea’ while the choir hummed. Larry Sorenson came forward weeping buckets and crumpled up at the communion rail, to the amazement of the minister, who had just delivered a dry sermon on stewardship, and who now had to put his arm around this limp, saggy individual and pray with him and see if he had a ride home. Twelve times. Granted,” Says Garrison Keillor, “we’re born in original sin and are worthless and vile, but twelve conversions is too many. There comes a point where you should dry your tears, and join the building committee and start grappling with the problems of the church furnace and the church roof and make church coffee and be of use, but Larry just kept on repenting and repenting.”[2]
Let’s assume the young man in Jesus’ parable is truly penitent. Let’s assume he’s ready to “join the building committee and start grappling with the problems of the church furnace and the church roof and make church coffee and be of use . . .” We can sympathize with him. He’s learned some hard lessons, but at least he is back home. Most of all, he’s learned how lonesome it can be when you turn your back on those who love you. He is headed home. He has done wrong. He has repented. Now he is headed toward the safety of his father’s house. The prodigal is the first character in this remarkable story.
The second character is his father.
The young man had rehearsed what he is going to say to his dad. “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 servants.’ 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.”
The father, of course, represents God. God in all His grace and love. Helmut Thielicke says this parable ought to be called the Parable of the Waiting Father rather than the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Everything depends on God’s grace.
In the magnificent Hermitage, the palace of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, Russia, there is a fascinating painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt called, “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” Some have called this work the greatest picture ever painted.
In Rembrandt’s painting based on Jesus’ parable, the son has returned home after wasting his inheritance and falling into poverty and despair. He kneels before his father in repentance, wishing for forgiveness and a renewed place in the family. Standing at his right is his older brother, who crosses his hands in judgment.
The most fascinating aspect of this painting is the portrayal of the father’s hands as he bends over to embrace his penitent son.It is said that the hands of the father were one of the last things Rembrandt painted just before he died.
The father’s left hand is not surprising. It is a strong, masculine hand, the kind of hand that you expect this farmer/father to have. But the right hand is much different. It is smaller. It is the soft feminine hand of a woman. Think of the significance of that one figure but with noticeably different hands one masculine, the other feminine.
Father Henri Nouwen noticed the difference between these two hands. He wrote a book also titled,Return of the Prodigal Son,in which he comments on Rembrandt’s painting. He writes: “As soon as I recognized the difference between the two hands of the father, a new world of meaning opened up for me. The Father is not simply a great patriarch. He is mother as well as father. He touches the son with a masculine hand and a feminine hand. He holds, and she caresses. He confirms and she consoles. He is, indeed, God, in whom both manhood and womanhood, fatherhood and motherhood, are fully present. That gentle and caressing right hand echoes for me the words of the prophet Isaiah: ‘Can a woman forget her baby at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne?’”[3]
We moderns are conscious of masculine and feminine images of God, but Rembrandt was hundreds of years ahead of us.
I thought of Father Nouwen’s analysis of this great painting when I read evangelist Franklin Graham’s story about his own return home after living as somewhat of a prodigal. He tells his story in his bookRebel with a Cause.
Franklin Graham is, of course, the son of the world’s most famous evangelist Billy Graham. By his own admission, Franklin was a rebel; in fact, he openly opposed every value and every virtue his parents stood for, including the Christian faith. He smoked, he drank, he cursed, he caroused; he did it all. But no scene in his book is more poignant than the day that Franklin Graham was kicked out of a conservative college in Texas for taking a co-ed off campus for the weekend and piloting a rented plane to Florida. He writes: “The drive home from Texas was dreary. Maybe by driving slow I was prolonging the inevitable; I would have to face my parents. I knew they had to be disappointed in me. I was! They had invested a lot of money in my education, and now I’d messed up.
“I drove through the gate and started up the road to our home, imagining the lecture my parents would give me. So many other times when I had come home I could hardly wait to say hello to everyone. But no joy this time. I felt so badly when I finally reached the house. Then I saw mama standing on the front porch and I wanted to run and hide in the nearest hole. It was one of the few times I can remember not wanting to look her in the eye.
“When I walked up to her, my body felt limp. I barely had the nerve to lift my head or extend my arms for a hug. But I didn’t need to. Mama wrapped her arms around me, and, with a smile, she said, ‘Welcome home, Franklin.’”[4]
Rembrandt knew that a gracious God could be portrayed as a loving mom or dad.
There has been a long-running controversy in Christian circles over inclusive language, especially for the person of God. God is spirit. Maleness and femaleness are characteristics of physical, created beings. God encompasses the best characteristics of both sexes. Most important of all, however, God’s character is one of unconditional love.
But there is a third character in the story, the elder brother.
His story is so different from that of his sibling. The elder brother didn’t go into the far country. He didn’t lose his inheritance, didn’t live among pigs. He stayed home . . . did what was expected of him. He was obedient to a fault. But listen to how he responds to his brother’s return: “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!’”
Notice how he refers to his relationship with his father. He says, “All these years I’ve been slaving for you . . .” Those are revealing words. Not “working for you” or “serving you” or “helping with the family farm.” No, he says he was “slaving for his father.” Pastor Tim Keller calls this “duty without beauty.” Notice how he refers to his brother: “But when this son of yours . . . comes home.” He can’t ever refer to him as his brother, but as “this son of yours.”
A long, long time ago when you were very young did you sing Sunday School Songs like, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world?" Or "Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he."
We sang songs like that most every Sunday and when Sunday school drew to a close the song sung was, "I was glad when they said unto me, 'Let us go into the house of the Lord.' I was glad when they said unto me, 'Let us go into the house of the Lord.'" I am not alone in this. Other pastors who have embraced their childhood anew can also relate to that march to worship singing,
"I was glad when they said unto me, 'Let us go into the house of the Lord.'"
Frankly, church could be long and dull, uncomfortable and boring, when you are in 2nd grade and truthfully lots of students were not glad to sing “Let us go into the house of the Lord.” They were sad. And when they got to be teenagers some became mad and if they were truthful would have sang, “I was mad when they said, Let us go into the house of the Lord.
It is true that some children find not just worship, but any gathering of adults to be tedious, lifeless, and dull. They probably didn’t invent that. They may have picked it up from adults around them who felt the same way but who learned politely how not to show it. Let’s not overstate the case here. Anthems soar, hymns can touch, and scripture and message can help us think, “I was glad I was here today in the house of the Lord.” But, joy can be elusive for some of us and we can be bothered when others have it and we don’t.
The father sought to set his older son on firmer, more joyous footing. “My son,” he 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.” Notice that the father reminds the elder son, first of all, that the prodigal is his brother! Sometimes that happens to those who are so eager to condemn those who are weaker and have given into temptation. They are still our brothers and sisters.
The elder son peers with critical eyes and a cold unforgiving heart at both his brother who has broken all the rules and his father, so eager to welcome his wayward son back home. The elder brother is spiteful, angry, and resentful. Some of us understand this. We wonder why God would bends over backward to welcome back the wayward and seems to ignore those of us who have always played by the rulebook. It is hard for us to accept that Jesus sees more hope in the much-deserved humility of the prodigal who was lost than the self-righteous indignation of his brother. And yet it is important that we do hear Jesus’ message.
We read this parable and consign the elder brother to the supporting cast, a minor character in the narrative. The truth is, Jesus may have intended for him to be the central character in the story. Remember to whom Jesus is telling this parable. It is the religious leaders of the day. The first two verses of the chapter tell us that. We read, “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”
The story of the prodigal is intended to give hope to the tax collectors and the sinners. But it is a devastating judgment on the attitudes and actions of the scribes and Pharisees. For you see, they are the elder brother in Jesus’ parable keeping the Law, but looking with disdain upon those not as righteous as they. I fear that this is how the church appears to so many in our society today who have consigned many within the church as smug, uncaring, unloving, unaccepting, boring, and joyless. Of course, they might assume those characteristics solely as an excuse so as to continue along some self-serving path whatever it is. But I doubt that they have assumed these negative images of us without some warrant.