A Sermon by Pastor Fran for the 4th Sunday in Lent
Out in the town of
Today’s gospel is about forgiveness, a quality singularly lacking in that little story. The parable of the prodigal son is one of the most familiar and most loved stories of the New Testament. You all know it. The younger son asks for his share of the inheritance, takes off to a distant land, blows all his money on dissolute living, and hires out as a swineherd. He eventually comes to his senses, goes back home, expecting only to be treated as one of his father’s hired hands, but is received in great love and celebration as one who was lost but now is found.
Throwing a shadow over this otherwise happy reunion, however is the older brother. He doesn’t approve. And he has a pretty good case, doesn’t he? His younger brother has prematurely broken up the family property, wasted it on the worst kind of behavior, made himself ritually unclean by his association with gentiles and, even worse, his job looking after pigs. And now when he comes crawling home broke, he is received like a returning astronaut. The father kills the fatted calf and throws a big party. The father had never done that for him, the older brother. And he had always been the faithful one, the one who stayed home and stayed out of trouble. It isn’t fair, he complains. And we can agree with him. But that is just the point.
This parable that Jesus tells isn’t really about family matters; it’s about the love and mercy of God. God is represented here, of course, by the father. And the father acts not out of justice or fairness, but rather out of mercy and forgiveness, out of what the church has called grace. This story of the prodigal son is one of three recorded here in the 15th chapter of Luke. The other two are about the lost coin and the lost sheep. A woman finds that she has lost one of her ten silver coins. She turns the house upside down until she finds that lost one. A shepherd losing one of his hundred sheep will leave the other 99 behind and go and seek out that single one that is lost. All three stories emphasize the value in God’s eyes of the one sinner who repents and comes back to God, the one person that is lost and is then found. God, Jesus tells us, is much more concerned with inviting us back, with redeeming, us than with judging or punishing us. The elder brother in us says, “but that’s not fair.” And of course, it isn’t. It’s loving.
It is much like another parable that Jesus told, the story of the laborers in the vineyard. In that story God is represented as the owner of a vineyard who goes to hire workers to bring in the harvest. He hires a crew at six in the morning and sets them to work. Then at noon, mid-afternoon, and again almost at the close of the day, he hires others and sends them out also to work in the vineyard. When they are all done, the owner angers most of the workers by paying them all the same, regardless of when they started. The six in the morning people say it’s not fair. We worked all day and you are paying the latecomers just as much as you are paying us. And it, of course, isn’t fair. But Jesus tells that story, again, to emphasize the mercy of God, a mercy that wins out over judgment and condemnation.
Lent is a good time to remember, however, that God’s mercy was not achieved by God winking at our sins or by God simply saying that our sins don’t matter. God cannot deny his own nature, a nature which includes pure truth and virtue. Our sin alienates us from such holiness and that sin must be atoned for, paid for, if you will. So God sent Jesus to die for us, to take upon himself our sins, to pay the price we cannot, to redeem us back from the debt of our sins. All we need do is accept in faith what God has already done for us.
We call this mercy and love of God grace, the free gift of salvation, given to us not because of our worthiness but given to us instead because of the love and generosity of God. It’s so simple! We don’t have to be good enough. We never would be anyway. We need only accept in faith what God so wants to give us.
You know, it’s odd that we all have trouble with this central message of the gospel precisely because it is so simple. Now Ironwood used to be a mining town. Let me share a little story that has to do with mining that can maybe help put this in perspective.
A pastor named G. Campbell Morgan was once approached by a man who said he would give anything to believe that God would forgive his sins, “but [the man said] I cannot believe He will forgive me if I just turn to Him. It is too cheap.”
Dr. Morgan said to him, “You were working in the mine today, how did you get out of the pit? He answered, “The way I usually do; I got into the cage and was pulled to the top.”
“How much did you pay to come out of the pit?”
“I didn’t pay anything.”
“Weren’t you afraid to trust yourself to that cage? Was it not too cheap?”
The man replied, “Oh, no! It was cheap for me, but it cost the company a lot of money to sink that shaft.”
At that point the man understood that the grace of God is just like that too. It is cheap, indeed, free to all. But it cost God dearly to bring us salvation and to haul us up out of the pit of our sins.
Off in that distant country the younger son came to his senses and went back home. He didn’t expect much. Just the chance to earn a living as his father’s servants did. Instead he was welcomed with the greatest joy. So it is ever when a sinner turns in repentance to God. So it is when we confess our sins and accept God’s promise of mercy and grace. We who were dead are now alive; we who were lost are now found. AMEN.
