Luke 15:1–3; 11–32

4th Sunday in Lent

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." So he told them this parable: And he said, "There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.' And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate. "Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.' But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, 'Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!' And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'"

It seems like Jesus was always getting himself into trouble with the leaders of the church. But of all the things he did, one of his biggest flaws that drew the most criticism, was the crowd of people he hung out with. He had the habit of making friends with the wrong people; the poor, the lame, the sick, and the dredges of society. These people were obviously sinners and unclean people since God had not blessed them with health or material wealth. He also talked to people he shouldn’t have, like the time he sat at the well talking to a Samaritan woman. It was not proper for a man to even talk with a woman, much less a Samaritan. That was a despised race. They were clearly inferior to the Jews. They were low-class, the scum of the earth. It was not proper to be in their company. Even worse, Jesus received and even had meals with sinners, like publicans and prostitutes.

Now we must understand that having a meal with someone was not quite the same in their society as it is in ours. It was not a mere matter of going to McDonalds with someone. A meal symbolized the most intimate fellowship with your closest friends or relatives. It was not to be taken lightly. It was a sign of oneness; an expression of love of friendship, a sign of intimate communion. This was known as table fellowship.

But Jesus had eaten with sinners. He had table fellowship with people like Levi and Zacchaeus. He allowed prostitutes, like Mary Magdalene to touch him and pour oil on his feet. He received children and blessed them. He touched lepers and dead corpses. And his closest friends were Galileans.

Now in order to understand this, we have to think about all the people we look down on today. Perhaps it is the poor, the uneducated, the homeless, or people of other races. People we despise or think are inferior to us. Perhaps it is people with a particular handicap or disease, like AIDS that we avoid. Perhaps it is the drug addict, the prostitute or the homosexual that we are repulsed by. But it was precisely the equivalent of these people in that society that Jesus received as his friends and in fact, with whom he had table fellowship.

For many, this could mean only one thing. He was not a true prophet of God. A real prophet would have understood what kind of people they were and would not have associated with them. So on this occasion the Pharisees used this against him. It was their excuse for refusing to accept him as having come from God.

Thus in the audience that day, there were two kinds of people. The publicans and sinners who were following Jesus and the Pharisees who were criticizing Jesus for letting these people follow him.

So Jesus responded to the Pharisees with three parables. Yes, I said three. The first thing that we notice is that the verses in our pericope are not sequential. Some verses are left out. These verses relate two other parables. One that tells of a man who lost his sheep. When he found it he was so full of joy that he made a party for his friends and invited the whole community to have table fellowship with him. In the other, a widow had lost a coin. Upon finding it she too invited her whole town to table fellowship to share in her joy. Both of these parables speak of the unspeakable joy in heaven over each and every person who repents of their sin. Both of these parables express that joy in the terms of a celebration taking place with table fellowship.

Now we come to the parable in our text. A parable that really is a retort to the comments of the Pharisees. This is not merely a parable about a prodigal son, it is a parable about a father, his prodigal son and his elder son. It is a parable in two scenes.

In the first scene the only two actors are a father and his younger son. According to law, the first son received 2/3 of the fathers wealth. The other children and mother shared the other 1/3 of the estate. One day, this son asked his father for his share of the inheritance. This was a dastardly thing to ask the father, for it amounted to wishing that his father were dead. The very thought, the desire spoken here, shows just how radical a break there was between the son and the father. Though comprehensible in the minds of the Pharisees, what the son had done deserved the most complete rebuke and punishment. He should have been disowned and cast out of the family right on the spot.

But at least Jesus’ audience could understand what the son had done. Some of them may have secretly been wanting to get their hands on their own inheritance as well.

But what the father did was not comprehensible in their culture. Instead of disowning the son, he conceded his request without hesitation or even a rebuke. The outrageous love of the father was so remarkable that it was beyond comprehension by the people. He would have been considered insane by the standards of society. Such behavior was irrational. Such love was beyond their understanding. It reminds me of a person a few years ago in the south side of Chicago who was quite wealthy and decided to give gifts to as many people as possible during the Christmas season. She, I think it was a woman, converted several thousand dollars into $100 bills and went to a bar and was passing them out to the clients. She was arrested and subjected to intense psychological testing, just for wanting to do a kind deed. That is how the people of Jesus day would have thought about a father like this one.

In spite of the father’s love, the son takes his inheritance, leaves the country and squanders it, adding insult to injury. One can hardly imagine a son insulting his father more!

However, it didn’t take long for everything to go really badly for the boy. Soon he was in the most desperate of circumstances. He was on the brink of despair. It required the worst possible situation to wake him up to his desperate need and depravity. He was repentant of what he had done.

But his repentance was not true repentance. He was repentant only because he had gotten himself into trouble. Much like a person who commits a crime and gets caught. He might be repentant because he got caught, without being repentant of the actual thing he had done.

Such was the boy’s situation. His plan was to go home and try to make amends by working off his debt. This again was understandable by the culture of his day. That was the normal way of doing things. You had to strike a deal with the person, make amends, work of your debt. It was law instead of grace. It wasn’t about forgiveness, it was about getting paid back.

So the son returns home. But before he got there, before he had a chance to confess his wrong, before he could offer a payment plan, his father ran out to him, threw his arms around him, kissed him and received him back as his son.

Once again the father had committed an outrageous act of unconditional love. The culture would have understood making a deal, but such unconditional receiving of his son back into his place of sonship was irrational. He should have been committed.

When the son did get a chance to confess his sin, he finally understood what forgiveness was all about. He repented in the true sense of the word. He understood that he had nothing to offer his father. He could not work off the debt he owed. There was no work that would have adequately compensated for what he had done, rather, he had already been unconditionally received back into the family. It was that outrageous love and grace of the father that caused him to repent without trying to pay back or work off the offense. It is that outrageous love and grace of our heavenly father that results in our repentance.

The profound act of repentance is not only the awareness of our depravity and sinful condition, it is the result of the love and grace of the Father and his willingness to receive the repentant sinner into the table fellowship of his kingdom. This parable is the proclamation of the mercy of a loving father made manifest to the repentant sinner no matter how sinful he has been. It is for this reason that Jesus comes to dine with publicans and sinners.

Then the father ordered the fatted calf sacrificed and prepared a banquet for the entire community because his lost son had been found; his son was dead but was now alive. In the language of baptism, we die to our sinful man and are made alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore it was necessary to celebrate. Just as Jesus said that it was necessary to celebrate in the presence of the bridegroom. For there is joy which comes from the experience of salvation coming through Jesus Christ which incorporates us into the everlasting table fellowship with the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. This parable is an invitation to fellowship with God, an invitation accepted by repentant sinners but rejected by the proud, the arrogant, the self righteous Pharisees the world over.

It was to this crowd, the Pharisees and all who in their pride refuse to celebrate on account of the forgiveness of people they despise and look down on, that Jesus told the other part of the story. In scene two, the only actors are the father and his elder son.

For while the prodigal son represents all of us—the sinner, the outcast, the disgusting, loathsome dregs of society—the elder son represents the Pharisees—the proud and the arrogant who do not rejoice in the salvation of others. This son was angry at his father for expressing love and grace. While they could identify with the other two parables, they could feel joy at finding a lost sheep, or discovering lost money, they could feel no joy in finding a lost human. As a poet once said: “Will you share in the communal joy over the prodigal’s return? If not, why not? If you were able to feel the joy of the shepherd and the woman, why are you unable to feel the joy of the father? Do you get more excited about money and animals than about people? Why are you not able to participate in the divine necessity to rejoice?”

But the son was angry about the feast. The ongoing feast at which Jesus is the host and in which his gracious love and mercy are offered in his body broken and his blood outpoured. Jesus was sacrificed by his father, like the fatted calf, for the sins of all prodigals and all elder brothers.

The father then invited the elder son into the feast. But the son, instead of accepting the invitation, insults the father in front of all his guests. The relationship between this son and the father was just as radically broken as it had been between the father and the prodigal.

Then the father does a third act of outrageous love. Even in the face of such an insult he was not deterred. He calls his son “child” and reiterates his status in the family as a son. He assures him that his inheritance is secure. He unconditionally accepts his elder son, without judgment, criticism, rejection, only an outpouring of love and explains again the reason for the celebration.

It is the Eucharist joy. The son was dead and now came back to life in baptism, and it is now necessary to celebrate the Eucharist joy. The same divine necessity as the death and resurrection of Jesus stands behind the necessity of the celebration and joy at the Lord’s Table. Jesus death and resurrection is seen in the fatted calf sacrificed for those who are lost and dead but who are now found and made alive through baptismal incorporation into the Christ.

Will the elder son come to his senses and accept the invitation to the feast? Will he too repent because of the unconditional love and grace of the father? Jesus didn’t finish the story. The story has not yet ended. It is still being played out. God is still waiting to see how you will respond to his invitation. Will you reject the loving invitation and turn away from the eternal feast and table fellowship of God? Or will you understand his grace and love and thus repent of your sins, of your pride and arrogance, and believe that you are forgiven and restored to the full sonship of God?

Amen.