Third Sunday in Lent, February 28, 2016 | 8:00 a.m.

Occasions for Celebration: A Sermon on the Prodigal Son

Nanette Sawyer
Minister for Congregational Life, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 32:1–7
Luke 15:11–32

Listen to what God is saying to us:
I am yours. You are mine.
You are the one who is held safe
and embraced in love from eternity to eternity. . . .
You are my child. You belong to my home.
You belong to my intimate life and
I will never let you go. I will be faithful to you.

Henri Nouwen

Chapter 15 in the Common English Bible is titled “Occasions for Celebration.” The original Greek New Testament, way, way back when it was written down, didn’t have chapter titles or section titles, so this title is an interpretation. It’s what a group of scholars thought would be a good title for this chapter: “Occasions for Celebration.” I think it’s a good title, too.

The chapter begins with this: “All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:1, Common English Bible).

In response, Jesus tells three parables about being lost. In fact, the Gospel of Luke shows us that there are so many ways of being lost. The so-called sinners and tax collectors are some of the lost ones that Jesus is drawing close to himself, but the Pharisees and the scribes, the legal experts, are also lost in their own way.

They have hardened their hearts toward Jesus, trying to set traps for him, like the lawyer who asked what he must do to be saved. He was the one we heard about a couple weeks ago, whose question elicits the story of the Good Samaritan.

In that story we learn about the priest and the Levite who walk by the beaten man in a ditch. They were lost too, in that their hearts were hardened toward the injured man.

Only the Samaritan felt enough compassion to put it into action. Jesus messes with all our categories when the bad guys turn out to be the good guys and we learn that actually there aren’t good guys and bad guys, just people who mess up and get second chances.

Which brings us right up to today and the stories about being lost and found again. These three parables tell of occasions for celebration, but they’re also about repentance, about turning heart and life back toward God. That’s what gets celebrated in these stories.

The first is the parable of the lost sheep. Jesus says to the Pharisees and the legal experts, “Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and you lost one of them. Wouldn’t you go looking until you found that one? And wouldn’t you invite your friends to a party and tell them, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost sheep!’?”

“In the same way,” Jesus says, interpreting that parable, “in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives.”

Then he tells the story of the woman who had ten coins and lost one. Wouldn’t she turn on a light and sweep the house until she found it and then call her neighbors over and say, “Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost coin!”?

“In the same way,” Jesus says again, “joy breaks out in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who changes both heart and life.” (Translations other than this from the Common English Bible say “one sinner who repents.”)

First one sheep out of a hundred is lost, then one coin out of ten, and now, one son out of two is lost. It’s a greater and greater percentage of loss. Jesus is building his case and implicating the grumblers who criticize him for welcoming sinners and eating with them.

The prodigal son goes so far away it’s as though he is dead. So when he finally turns his heart and life around, it’s truly another occasion for celebration. The beloved son comes back from the dead.

You might identify with the younger son if you’ve ever hit your own bottom. The story doesn’t tell us, so we can only imagine what it must have felt like to be so hungry you would want to eat what the pigs are eating in the field.

We can only imagine the shame he might have felt, having lost, by his own doing, everything he had, having squandered it.

What led him to leave his family, to go so far, far away? What caused him to splurge on extravagant living? Was it lust for experience? Desire for more, more, more? Was it arrogance or naiveté that made him think that his money would last forever?

Though it took some time, he found himself, eventually, in a place of extreme vulnerability—alone, starving. And maybe he was starving for love as much as he was starving for food.

There’s something about that extreme vulnerability that brings our attention in a more focused way to God. That’s been true in my own life, I know.

It’s when I reach my own limit and I can’t go on by my own power; it’s when I’m baffled or overwhelmed, afraid or ashamed—these are the times when my prayers to God become most focused and intense.

I become aware of how much I need God in my life. I need that powerful presence of love and grace to lean on, because I can’t keep going by my own power. Something like that happened to the lost son. He realized he couldn’t keep going by his own power. Your pew Bibles say “he came to himself.” I read from the Common English Bible which says “he came to his senses.” He realized that he needed his father, and he found that his father’s love was there.

Like the sheep and like the coin, this son has been found, but not because anyone went looking for him. In this case he changed his heart and his life and came home. “We must celebrate with feasting!” the father says. This is the third parable and the third occasion for celebration.

But unlike the sheep and coin stories, this story has an act two. In comes the older brother, filled with anger. He doesn’t understand the situation in the same way his father does.

The older brother thinks he has earned and protected something that his younger brother has squandered by gobbling it up, by devouring it.

In the beginning of the story, when the younger son asks for his share of the property, and he uses a Greek word that means “substance” (ousias). He basically asks for his stuff.

But when the father divides and gives property to the two sons, he uses a different Greek word meaning “life.” He gives them both his life (bion). He gives it to both of them.

When the younger son squanders it, he uses the word for stuff, substance(ousias). He doesn’t call it his father’s life.

But the older son uses the word for life when he asserts to his father that his life has been gobbled up by his younger son.

Apparently the father did not feel devoured or gobbled up. He was filled with a full and flourishing life, enough vibrancy to give of himself abundantly into these relationships with his sons. He gives without holding back.

There is an abundance and a joy that the older son cannot let himself experience. Although he has been physically present with his father, he may actually be lost in a way that is even harder to recover from.

What does he really want? Does he want stuff? Or does he want life? Is he worried that now that the second son is back he’ll lose even more of his inheritance? Does he truly resent his father for not giving him a goat to eat at a party with his friends?

Henri Nouwen wrote an entire book on this parable, and he describes the situation of the older brother in this way: “Returning home from a lustful escapade [like the younger son did] seems so much easier than returning home from a cold anger that has rooted itself in the deepest corners of my being. My resentment is not something that can be easily distinguished and dealt with rationally. It is far more pernicious: something that has attached itself to the underside of my virtue” (Henri Nouwen, Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 75).

Resentment attached to the underside of virtue. That phrase is so powerful.

The older son is virtuous, but attached to the underside of his virtue is his resentment, his anger, his sense of entitlement, and his lack of forgiveness.

The father actually begs him to open up, to join the celebration of life and relationship. While the younger son found himself, in a sense, and brought himself home, the eldest son needed the shepherd to go after him; he needed the woman to light a lamp and sweep the floor looking for him like a lost coin; he needed the father to beg him to be part of the celebration of life.

Sometimes we are like the elder son: there is a lack of freedom in us, an unhappiness or a resentment, that drives us to judge and harm others because we are trying to divide the world into good and bad, and we are trying to think that we are on the good side.

But there is not a good brother and a bad brother in this story. Both have their weaknesses, and both are loved beautifully by their father.

In Nouwen’s book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, he writes about the famous Rembrandt painting of this scene. He describes the vibrancy of the painting and how there is light in both the sons’ faces, even the older son, although the elder son’s hands are in darkness. We don’t know what he is going to do.

Nouwen was able to see the actual Rembrandt painting in the museum where it is housed and to sit with it over the course of a day. He describes the play of light and shadow over time.

Nouwen said,

Sitting there, I realized that the light became fuller and more intense as the afternoon progressed. At four o’clock the sun covered the painting with a new brightness, and the background figures—which had remained quite vague in the early hours—seemed to step out of their dark corners. As the evening drew near, the sunlight grew more crisp and tingling. The embrace of the father and son became stronger and deeper, and the bystanders participated more directly in this mysterious event of reconciliation, forgiveness, and inner healing. Gradually I realized that there were as many paintings of the Prodigal Son as there were changes in the light.” (Nouwen, pp. 8–9)

This phrase really captured my attention because of how it seems like a metaphor for our whole lives. I have the audio version of Nouwen’s book, and when I heard this phrase, I had to push pause and write it down. There are as many paintings of the Prodigal Son as there are changes in the light . . .

We too are in a continual process of being changed by our circumstances, by the play of light and darkness in our lives. We are, at different times, the younger son or the older son.

But always we are being called by God to come home, and at any moment of any day we can remember that and turn again toward God, who loves us and welcomes us.

And that is what Lent is for. To turn and return to God. To repent, to change our hearts and lives. We can do it any time. But that is what Lent is for.

The painting by Rembrandt and the story in our Bible both try to make us feel the human truth about the characters and about ourselves, who are listening to the story or looking at the painting. The truth is that things keep changing. Morning becomes afternoon becomes evening becomes night. Our light can become darkness, and our darkness can become light. Our virtues can be compromised by something attached to their undersides. Our duty can become resentment or anger if we are not attentive.

And now, during Lent, we are dousing a candle each week, and the darkness of the season is growing. But those lights too will turn. On Easter they will turn and the light will leap out of the darkness. And Life will leap out of the tomb.

But through it all, God is always calling us home. Home to love, home to forgiveness, home to compassion, home to ourselves, where we dwell deeply connected with God, who calls us beloved.

May we all come home to that healing and transformative love. Amen.