INTRODUCTION
Today is the fourth Sunday in Lent, also known as Mothering Sunday. The Lectionary gives tow sets of readings for this day, and I have chosen to focus on those that relate to the fourth Sunday in Lent.
A Mothering Sunday service is being transmitted on BBC 1 at 11:45am this morning.
HYMN – Singing the Faith 186
1 Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!
Unnumbered blessings, give my spirit voice;
tender to me the promise of his word;
in God my Saviour shall my heart rejoice.
2 Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his name!
Make known his might, the deeds his arm has done;
his mercy sure, from age to age the same;
his holy name — the Lord, the Mighty One.
3 Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his might!
Powers and dominions lay their glory by;
proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight,
the hungry fed, the humble lifted high.
4 Tell out, my soul, the glories of his word!
Firm is his promise, and his mercy sure.
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord
to children’s children and for evermore!
Timothy Dudley-Smith (b. 1926)
Based on the Magnificat
Reproduced from Singing the Faith Electronic Words Edition, number 186
Words: © Timothy Dudley-Smith in Europe and Africa; © Hope Publishing Company for the United States of America and the rest of world. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
PRAYER
Eternal God and Father,
you are the source of all life,
the fount of all wisdom,
the well-spring of all grace.
Your days are without end,
your loving mercies without number.
We depend on you:
and we remember your goodness to us
and to those who have gone before us.
We tell your story in every generation:
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
God of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel,
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
God of a pilgrim people, your Church.
You are our God,
ahead of us, leading us,
guiding us and calling us;
you are the Lord God,
the all-wise, the all-compassionate.
To you we lift up our hearts
and we worship you,
one God for ever and ever.
Amen.
READING
Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32 (NIV)
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.”
Then Jesus told them this parable: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 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.
“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!’
“‘My son,’ the father 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.’”
SERMON
Prodigal Son, Forgiving Father, Angry Brother
It could be a plot straight from Coronation Street or Eastenders. A rebellious son who cons his father out of money and enjoys prostitutes, drinking and gambling; an elderly father who desperately wants his son to mend his ways and come home and an angry brother who doesn’t want anything to do with the sibling who has disgraced his family. Finally there is a cliff hanger ending leaving us wondering what will happen next.
It could be a soap plot, but it isn’t! It is one of the parables of Jesus; a parable that has been called the greatest short story ever written. It is a story that feels real and that could easily be told today in twenty first century Britain; the people in the story feel like real people and their reactions are true to life.
Perhaps we feel that we can identify with one of the three people in the story. This morning we’re going to look at the three people and what we can learn from them.
The Son
The first person to look at is younger son. He is selfish and self-centred. By asking his father for share of inheritance he was treating is father as if his father was dead. He had rejected father and his father’s authority over him. He had no thought for feelings of his father, he was only interested in pursuit of own pleasure. The younger son, we are told, then left his family and spent all his money on ‘dissolute living.’ We are not told exactly what his did. Most commentators suggest he indulged in drink and prostitutes, but whatever he did he clearly lived a sinful lifestyle. When his money ran out, he was forced to take job looking after pigs and was so hungry that even their food tempted him. Finally, he realised how far he’d sunk, he was about as low as he could get, and he decided to throw himself on his father’s mercy.
The younger son represents those who are lost in their sin, those who have no relationship with their Creator God because of their selfishness. The parable tells us how sin affects our relationship with God. Sin takes us away from God. In the story the father stays at home with his family, it is the younger son who goes off to enjoy a decadent lifestyle. When we sin, when we go our own selfish way, we open a gap up between us and God, but it isn’t God who moves away from us. God would never do that; he loves us too much. It is us, by sinning, who move away from God.
The parable tells us something else about sin, the effect it has on us. The son went away rich, having sinned against his father by demanding his inheritance. Then he continued to sin by enjoying riotous living. Once we start to sin, once we give in to temptation, it can be very hard to pull back. Often we have to reach rock bottom, as the son did, before we come to our senses.
The younger son had got as low as he could get. He was even thinking about eating the food of pigs and to even be associated with pigs was anathema to Jews. He realised the state he was in and resolved to go to his father, admit that he was wrong and ask to be taken on as a servant. So, he set off and we can imagine how slowly he walked, especially as he got near his home.
I remember when I was at school and got into a fight with a friend. A prefect caught us fighting and told us we have to go and see the headmaster. I don’t think I’ve ever walked more slowly than I did that day as I headed towards the headmasters office. Even when we know we have to do something unpleasant, even when we’ve resolved to do it, we put it off for as long as we can.
So, we have the son heading home, ready to confess all the things he’d done that were wrong, ready to throw himself on his father’s mercy. He is like us when we realise that we have been selfish, when we realise that we have gone our own way rather than God’s way; when we come to the point where we are ready to come before God and repent of our sins.
The Father
The father saw his younger son approaching and didn’t give him chance to reach home. The father ran to the son, put his arms around him and kissed him. The son confessed his sin an offered to be a servant. The father would have none of it; he forgave the young man completely and restored to him the status of son.
The father, as I’m sure you all know, represents God who is our Heavenly Father and Mother; who loves us so much that he is just waiting for us to come back to him and will rush to meet us when we do. God does this because God loves us with a love that completely eclipses all human love. As soon as we turn to God he showers us with the extravagance of his love. Charles Haddon Spurgeon put it this way in one of his sermons on ‘The Prodigal Son’:
“Oh, how God loves sinners! You who repent, and come to Him, will discover how greatly He loves you. There is no measuring the love He bears towards you. He has loved you before the foundation of the world, and He will love you when time shall be no more. Oh, the immeasurable love of God to sinners who come and cast themselves upon His mercy!”
As a Christian I love hearing the stories of those who’ve repented and given their lives to Christ. One story that moved me was that of Nicky Cruz, whose story is partly told in “The Cross and the Switchblade”. Nicky was a member of a New York gang for whom violence, casual sex and drug dealing were a way of life. He was, by his own admission, evil. He was perhaps as low as a human being can be. Then he went to an evangelistic crusade given by David Wilkerson and gave his life to Jesus. A few years ago Nicky Cruz came to the UK to tell his story and I went to hear him. This man had been bad, even evil when he was young yet as he spoke I could see the love of Christ shining in his life. Nicky spoke of how God had welcomed him with open arms and had discovered just how much God loves him.
Those who emphasise the wrath and anger of God, whose picture of God comes largely from the Old Testament, need only to look to this parable to see how wrong that picture is. Yes, God is angered by sin because of its effects on the beautiful universe he created, because sin destroys lives and hopes and dreams; but God loves the person who sins and desires nothing more than that the sinner turns to him in repentance. God is just waiting with aching heart for the sinner to repent and turn towards him again. When that happens, God reaches out in love, to embrace the repentant sinner and shower them with his love.
The Brother
A third person now comes into our story, the eldest son. The eldest son had remained at home with his father; he had not demanded his share of the inheritance and had worked hard. We can easily imagine his anger when he sees his wastrel younger brother treated like a king when he had nothing to show for all his hard work.
Not only that, everything that his father had left was the brother’s inheritance and now his younger brother, who had wasted his share, was getting even more!
The older brother supplies the real punch line of the parable. It is Jesus response to the Pharisees who were so focussed on the wickedness of the tax-collectors and sinners, and on Jesus eating with them, that they couldn’t see the love of God at work in Jesus’ life. These people were being healed and changed and their lives were being transformed and all the Pharisees could see was sinners to be avoided at all costs.
I would also suggest that for us today the older son represents those in the church who have maybe been attending their church for years and resent newer members gaining positions of authority and influence that they think should belong exclusively to long serving members. If you think that isn’t you, just ask yourself for a moment how you’d feel if somebody who had been a member for only a few months was appointed as a Church Steward over somebody who has faithfully attended church for many years. There is a little of the elder brother in all of us.
I’m ashamed to say I’ve been guilty of this myself; I’ve been that older brother. A few Christmases ago our then minister at Poulton Methodist Church decided to invite one family each week to light the Advent ring. The four families chosen were all new to the church in the past few months. The Minister was absolutely right to choose them and yet I will confess I felt resentment at the time; my family had attended that church faithfully for years and never lit the Advent ring: why hadn’t we been asked?
There is a little of the older brother in all of us and the older brother needs to repent and seek forgiveness every bit as much as the younger brother. In the parable the older brother showed he had no real respect for his father, refusing his plea to come into the party.
Conclusion
Who are you in this morning’s parable? Are you the elder son who needs a change in attitude so that you can accept the wonderful and sometimes seemingly incredible love of God? Are you the father in the story, ready to forgive others their sins even as God our Heavenly Mother and Father forgives us our sins? Or are you like the younger son, looking back on a life of sin and knowing that it is time to come before God in repentance and seek the forgiveness he is just waiting to give you; so that you can come home to a restored relationship with him; just as the prodigal son’s relationship with his father was restored.
Like any good soap opera episode, the parable ends on a cliff hanger, will the older son hear his father’s wisdom and forgive his brother? We will never know!
What we do know is that we all need to seek God’s forgiveness sometimes and that as God is willing to forgive us, so we must be willing to forgive each other.
HYMN– Singing the Faith 503
1 Love divine, all loves excelling,
joy of heaven to earth come down,
fix in us thy humble dwelling,
all thy faithful mercies crown.
Jesu, thou art all compassion,
pure, unbounded love thou art;
visit us with thy salvation,
enter every trembling heart.
2 Come, almighty to deliver,
let us all thy life receive;
suddenly return, and never,
never more thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
serve thee as thy hosts above,
pray, and praise thee, without ceasing,
glory in thy perfect love.
3 Finish then thy new creation,
pure and spotless let us be;
let us see thy great salvation,
perfectly restored in thee:
changed from glory into glory,
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise!
Charles Wesley (1707–1788)
Reproduced from Singing the Faith Electronic Words Edition, number 503
BLESSING
May the road rise up to meet you;
may the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
may the rain fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again, may God hod you
in the hollow of his hand.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment