Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord,
The story of the prodigal son, his father, and his older
brother, is the most famous of Jesus’ parables. It’s full of meaning. It
describes personal relationships and some folks say it reveals the spiritual
problems of entire nations and civilizations. At the same time, it points to
the cure for illnesses of the spirit: God’s everlasting love for the people he
created.
We’ll focus on the father this morning and look at him from
two angles, as a Christian parent and as a representative or symbol of God’s
love in action.
The father certainly had his hands full. One son squandered
his inheritance in riotous living, while the other was humorless and
self-righteous. The father knew their ways of thinking well and knew what their
errors would cost them. Their problems were basically spiritual; their hearts
were turned away from the truth. The father didn’t reproach either one of them
or himself nor did he blame the world for bringing him a load of trouble that
he couldn’t resolve. He waited on the Lord in trust and knew that God would
act. His joy at the youngest son’s return was really a celebration of heaven’s
way of dealing with the world: God brought a wandering sinner back to his
senses. The father’s waiting and hoping received their reward.
All parents have many joys and apprehensions in common.
Christian parents have a different point of view from others and extra
resources to call on. They’re like the father in the parable. They make sure
their youngsters gain a good understanding of Christian teaching and how Christians
behave and they point them to the Lord for forgiveness and encouragement.
Christian parents also cling to the Savior’s forgiveness themselves, because
forgiveness from the Lord restores effectiveness and keeps us from dwelling on
our shortcomings. The father in the parable was strong-minded in Christ, so he
could rejoice when his son came home.
He was also experienced at waiting on the Lord. He may have
known by imagination what his son was passing through, but at the same time, he
knew that he had given the youngster a solid grounding in the Bible’s teachings
about repentance and faith. He trusted that after riotous living had brought
him to disaster, his son would reach out for the help he needed. The father
knew that the Holy Spirit works to bring people from sin to righteousness, and
so he waited. Waiting tests us; it strengthens our faith. The waiting of
Christians teaches us to form the habit of turning to God. He sustained Adam
and Eve during the time of troubles between Cain and Abel; he strengthened
Jacob as he learned about the escapades of his sons; he comforted David after
Absalom took a bad turn. He brings all Christian parents steady faith and
balanced joy.
We can’t talk about the father in the parable without
mentioning his love. When he decided to marry and raise a family, he made a
decision to provide for his children as best he could. He didn’t change his
mind. His firmness of commitment came from a loving heart. He didn’t disown the
son who sought a life of debauchery nor did he lash out at his older son who
believed he could do no wrong. Paul’s words about love apply to him. He was
patient, kind, not jealous or irritable or resentful. He was self-giving and
didn’t insist on having his own way. These well-known words of Paul lived in
his heart: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.”
These qualities come from faith; families that live by them
are most likely to stay together. Christian families have an advantage. I’ve
been impressed by the strong family feeling I’ve seen among Lutherans. Our
people are in contact with God’s love. He encourages us to trust that his
blessings will continue.
We see that that the traditional supports for families that
we grew up with are weakening. Laws have changed. We’re encouraged to put money
and status and possessions in first place. Our sources of entertainment don’t
always hold up good models. We can’t say what the future will bring, but God
does know. He will support and nourish his community of believers who will
stick with him by faith. He will teach his people how to cope and how to wait.
He will comfort and strengthen everyone who turns to him.
These reflections bring us to larger questions that come up
when we think about this morning’s parable. Somebody said that the younger son
stands for the whole of western society today. Every nation and every culture
is said to be fleeing the spiritual home that the loving Heavenly Father has
created for us. We might say that the older son, too, resembles a lot of
people. How many of the world’s troubles come from folks who have an
exaggeratedly high opinion of their own merits? If this observation is just,
the Lord must be highly displeased, though not with his church, where people
wait patiently to obey his will and to receive his blessing.
The Lord said to his people through Moses: “I have set
before you this day life and good, death and evil. Choose life that you and
your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and
cleaving to him, for that means life to you and length of days.” God offers
abundance and life everlasting through faith in him. We know that many refuse
his offer. Rather than accept life with a vision of meaning and hope, human
flesh loves to drift from one event to another. It is our nature to want to
maximize pleasure and profit and to look on ourselves as unjustly injured if we
feel deprived. How much the condition of human nature must grieve the Lord.
A worldly mind in his place would destroy the world without
a second thought because we humans have made such a mess of things. Jesus doesn’t
behave that way. He goes by a different method. He’s like the father in this
morning’s parable. He is patient, forbearing, and full of love. He plants
strong seeds of faith by the words of Scripture and the work of the church. He
uses people like ourselves who quietly and humbly set an example of love for
our neighbors. He then waits for the seeds that we plant to bear fruit. He
forgives over and over and rejoices along with his angels whenever a sinner
comes to his senses. And turning to God is the normal, sensible thing to do. A
Christian thinker once wrote: “It is a sound rational act to turn from sin, its
curse and doom, to God, pardon, and salvation. The real turn to God occurs in
the depths of the soul…. Much about it is mysterious, for it’s like a spark of
new life that has come into a dead heart, a sudden pulse of vitality, where all
was lifeless and still before.”
Paul wrote that God’s way is foolishness to worldly minds,
especially the method he used to achieve salvation – the suffering and
humiliation of the cross. The father in the parable must have grieved over the
way his sons conducted their lives. he must have had his hours and days of
suffering, but he didn’t turn against either of his children. Jesus grieved in
a greater way during his time of suffering, but he didn’t turn against
humanity. He patiently endured suffering at the hands of idiots, who twisted
the laws to serve their own purposes and who resorted to human strength to
fight the will of God. Human strength is a shadow, though, next to God’s
patient ways of working. His so-called foolishness – which the father in this
morning’s parable represents – led to the glory of resurrection and the
redemption of the human race from the clutches of Satan.
God’s response to the charge that western civilization has
become like the two sons in this morning’s parable is to be like the father –
holding on to the truth, but loving and patient at the same time, not giving up
easily on anyone and shutting the door on no sinner who repents.
He calls his faithful people to help him, and it’s they who
carry the burden of civilization. They bring God’s values into the world around
them. St. Peter’s people are like that – like the father in the parable. We may
feel beleaguered at times, a minority pushed to the wall, but we don’t give up.
We remember that one candle can brighten a whole room. The point is not that we
feel comfortable or well-adapted to the world, but that we’re servants of the
Lord, willing to wait and to bring his kind of love to the folks who come our
way.
This doesn’t mean that we approve of wrong-doing or take
part in it, but we live by God’s truth in patience and love. We teach God’s way
by word and example to folks for whom we have responsibility; we’re quick to
forgive and rejoice at signs of repentance. We reproach and encourage. We bring
our own sins to the foot of the cross every day.
In this way, we help the Lord build up and strengthen our
families and take part in Jesus’ work of restoring and refurbishing the world
around us. We’re like the father in the Lord’s parable, whose mind even in
times of crisis was never far from his heavenly home.
Jesus wants us to find encouragement and hope in this
morning’s parable. The Christian way of faithful waiting on the Lord, which our
people practice, is the best way. Faith brings confidence and confidence brings
joy. This is what our Lord wants from us – trust that he became man, that our
sins are forgiven, that he has saved us, and that he has prepared a home in
heaven for us. Like the father in the parable, we rejoice that he finds the
lost and saves the wandering. Also, like the father we respond gladly when he
calls us to help him. In His name, we give thanks. AMEN.
The peace of God that passes all understanding
keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. AMEN.
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