“The Waiting Father,” a sermon preached at the Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church on September 28, 2008 by the Rev. Robert Lee Nichols, Jr., using the story of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15:11-32
Your concept of God will determine our entire theology – everything you believe. Who God is. Where God is. What God is. What God does. What God is like. Once you know this, everything else falls into place in the Christian life. The trouble is that all too often we have an inadequate understanding – and maybe even an altogether false understanding of God. Some see God as this great bearded man off in the sky somewhere – majestic, and yet removed, uncaring. So their faith is ruled by apathy or half hearted devotion. Some see God as like a terrible judge – don’t mess with me or I’ll zap you. And so their faith is ruled by fear and guilt. So, there’s a lot of duty and obligation to the Christian life – sort of like paying taxes. You don’t do it ‘cause you want to. You do it ‘cause you have to. And it’s not a lot of fun.
Jesus here in this parable absolutely pulls the plug on that kind of thinking about God.
Jesus is telling us we can throw out the window our old concept of who God is and what God is like. Forget everything you think you believe about God. It is wrong. God is far greater than we imagine.
We call the story the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Or sons, as both are prodigals in different ways. You may choose the one you are more like – the rebel or the conformist.
Yet, make sure you realize, this story is mostly about the love of the Father, the Father who waits patiently for his sons to come home. He is the central character. He has the spotlight. It is his actions that we are most interested in. Yes, the parable is told so we can learn what it means to be rebellious children. But first and foremost it is a revelation of the unbelievable love of this Dad. And the love of our Heavenly Father.
Both sons are prodigals. Both wander from him and from his love, though in quite different ways. The younger son is headstrong and selfish. He is the rebel who’s openly defiant. The older son sins in a more Presbyterian manner: decently and in order. Quietly defiant. Appearing so pristine on the outside but rotten to the core and dying inside. His separation from his Father is not geographic. His is an emotional divorce. Through pride. Through selfishness, Through an unwillingness to forgive. Through judging. He creates a spiritual distance just as real, just as powerful and just as irreparable as that of his younger brother.
There are three scenes to the drama. Scene 1: The Home Front
The younger son craves freedom and no restraint. There is a restlessness within him, the dissatisfaction of a discontented, disconnected soul. He craves something else, something more, something different, and this craving causes a pulling away from home, a separation, a tearing of the ties that bind. He has to get his way. He has to get away.
Rudyard Kipling, in his version of the Prodigal, described this attitude thusly: My Father glooms and advises me, my brother sulks and despises me, my mother catechises me, ‘till I want to go out and swear!
He decides to leave home. He goes to his father and requests his portion of the family wealth. You must understand that in an Oriental culture this is the unthinkable, the unspeakable. Kenneth Bailey, a Presbyterian expert in Middle Eastern culture says that for over fifteen years while living in that part of the world he asked people of all walks of life – from Morocco to India, from Turkey to the Sudan – the implications of a son’s asking for his inheritance while his Father was still living. The answer is always emphatically the same: The son is wishing his Father will die.
The conversation runs something like this:
Bailey: Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?
Answer: Never!
Bailey: Could anyone ever make such a request?
Answer: Impossible!
Bailey: If anyone ever did, what would happen?
Answer: His Father would have to punish him severely, of course.
Bailey: Why?
Answer: He wants to be rid of his Father for ever. This means he seeks his Father’s death.
The proper time for such distribution is, of course, when life draws to a close. The younger prodigal does not want to wait. He not only wishes for his Father’s death,
he treats his Father as if he were already dead. The symbolism in the parable is of
a profound break in the relationship between Father and Son, between God and us.
The boy is lost.
In a Middle Easter culture the Father is expected to explode in righteous indignation, righteous rage, and discipline the boy severely for the cruel implications of his demand. One of the most remarkable things about this story is that the Father grants the request.
If you want to be separated from me, take what is yours and go. It is difficult to imagine
a more dramatic illustration of the quality of the love of God which grants us the freedom to reject God.
The older son also receives his share of the inheritance. We expect him to loudly refuse – in protest against the implications of his brother’s request. We expect the older brother to be unwilling to share in this duplicity. His consent to the plan through his silence shows the break between him and the rest of his family. In this culture, the older son would naturally take on the role of the peacemaker, the reconciler. In the Middle East breaks in relationship are always handled through a third party. And that third party is selected on the basis of the closeness of the relationship to each side. So, in this case, the role of the reconciler is thrust upon the older son. But he is silent. And he benefits by accepting his portion of the inheritance.
What are his faults? There are three and they are all connected. #1 He is ungrateful. He is not thankful either for his father’s comradeship or the daily bounty of his home. #2 He is self righteous. Lo these many years have I served thee! He says. Dwelling on his faithfulness, he convinces himself he is taken for granted and ill rewarded. He is assured of his own virtue and believes there is scant room for improvement. #3 He is loveless.
William Barclay says:
Home is the place where we lay aside the mask which a hard world compels us to wear. Home is the abode of mutual confidence, the free outpouring of our inmost mind, where joys are doubled by comradeship and pains are halved by sympathy. But the elder brother, though always at home, was never at home. He was too convinced of his own merit, too critical of others, too fond of hugging his own supposed hardships, ever to comprehend his father’s grief for the lost, ever to comprehend the self inflicted wreck and torture suffered by his younger brother.
Two prodigals. Both portraits of despair.
Scene 2: The Far Country.
The younger prodigal gradually descends into a hell of his own making. Times are tough in this far away land. It is not the wonderful place he imagined. His money is soon gone. There is a famine in the land. And the text says, in its elegant simplicity: He began to be in want. He could no longer observe the Sabbath. He is employed by foreigners - Gentiles. His job is to feed the pigs, which is about as low as a child of Abraham could descend. And he is hungry. He longs to fill his belly with the carob pods which the swine ate. The wild carob has thorns and is used for firewood. It bears berries. But they are harsh and bitter and not fit to be eaten except in a time of extreme emergency.
And no one gave him anything. That simple expression pretty well sums up the misery.
This is a description of pure hell. When no one give you anything.
Freedom always has limits. Physical freedom has limits. You cannot negate the laws of gravity because you throw yourself off a cliff. Mental freedom has limits. A proposition cannot at once be both true and false. Moral freedom has its limits. There is a Moral Law. We may deny it, but wisdom is not one of our stronger suits. After all, when the red blood is dancing in our veins we must act! And that is what he did. He whirled along through happy days and busy nights until the fall. Barclay puts it this way:
Daily he was scattering the substance which not many weeks ago he had gathered. Living to gratify the moment’s whim is a scattering business.
It wastes talent. It disintegrates the will. It throws the imagination into fever
and chaos. It breaks the body. It leads by a descending avenue into wretched bondage.
Which is another way of saying that absolute freedom is the most wretched kind of slavery imaginable. Then you are slave to your every whim, your every impulse and desire. Then you are a slave indeed. The abuse of freedom is a folly which leads to damnation and ruin. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in want. The outer famine came to mock the inner one. So often nature’s moods seem to correspond to our inner temperament. He began to be in want. He descended into hell.
Then, in the midst of this hell he has created, He came to himself. Luke could have described his repentance in any number of ways, but this simple sentence has a brilliant economy to it that is so wonderful. He came to himself.
The great 20th century theologian Paul Tillich was once asked for a definition of “sin.” The offered a famous answer, if not strictly a definition, a great mental picture. He said, sin is a threefold separation. Sin is when we are separated from God, when we are separated from our neighbor, and when we are separated from our own true self.
He came to himself. And coming to himself, he knew he must be redeemed and reconciled and restored.
Scene 3: The Way Home
The younger son knows the inevitable response of his Father, the rest of his family, his friends, his neighbors in the village. He will be humiliated and disgraced. Punishment for sure. And shame. His mind races – the best plan he can come up with is to throw himself at the mercy of his Father and ask for employment as a hired servant. Forgiveness would be too much to ask. There would be no possibility of that. He could never expect ever to be treated as a Son again – but perhaps as a hired servant. That way he might begin to earn his way back into his Father’s favor.
He arrives at the edge of the town. His heart is pounding wildly in anticipation and in fear. What he finds blows him away. Astonishes him. There is no judgment. There is no shame. Instead of making his Son come to him and go through this ritual of asking forgiveness while the Father coldly decides whether or not to grant him any favor, this Father is out at the edge of the town looking for him, searching for him, longing for his return. And when he sees him this Father runs to him and embraces him.
There’s a great big hug like the best you’ve ever had. And tears. And laughter.
And there are no words reported – no words of acceptance and welcome. The love expressed is too passionate for words. Only actions will do. As one writer says, The Father substitutes kisses for words and replaces assertion with expression and eyes speak for the tongue.
They throw a party. A huge celebration. A feast for all the family and the entire village.
This is the unconditional forgiveness of God. This is grace. And the only response to such a grace is to forego pride altogether and accept this grace with thanksgiving and humility and joy.
This grace restores us to a proper relationship with our Father. This experience of restoration is an utterly overwhelming event. And we know we are not the cause of it, but solely the beneficiaries.
The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, and you and me, is the one who scours the hills to gather up his lost children – waiting and hoping – longing for our return. He is the one who would leave everything in order to secure our return. Give up everything. Everything. Even pride. He will wait forever, search forever, and welcome us with open arms.
This is the Father who would give even his Son to redeem us and bring us home.
Friends, this is the Gospel. This is the Good News. Praise be to God! Amen.