03/25/01 More Joy in Heaven 01/08

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

"Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

Luke 15: 7.

Last Sunday our theme was the rather somber, "Repent or you will all perish" based on Jesus’ response to the insinuation that those who had died violently had been punished for being greater sinners than all others. I said, but perhaps not clearly enough, that we can only accept that we are sinners if we know that there is forgiveness, admit we are sick only because Jesus wishes to make us well again. Today we have one of the best-known items in the gospels, the parable of the Prodigal Son, and it underlines and underscores the overwhelming precedence of forgiveness and grace over indictment and condemnation in the teaching of Jesus. Because of this supremacy of grace we can confess our sin without despair. God waits eagerly for us to come home from the far country, runs out to meet us when we come, and throws a party to celebrate our return. "There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over nine-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

The parable in question is traditionally known as the prodigal son, but recently other titles like "the two sons," or "the gracious father" have been suggested. The behavior of its protagonists represents attitudes of soul that we all recognize, and we can learn important things about the dynamics of the spiritual life if we pay attention. There are three protagonists, the son who liquidates his inheritance and spends it in a far country on what the KJV calls "riotous living;" the son who stays at home and helps his father to run the estate; and the father who welcomes the returning son and takes the other son for granted.

Recent interpretations make much of the second son, the one who stays at home and resents the good treatment the prodigal gets from their father. He represents the spiritual state of self-righteousness and exclusionism. We all suffer from this affliction; we can all remember times when we have felt the unfairness of the good fortune of others, especially if they are our siblings. "Mom always preferred you to me," is a cliché of bad movies and bad books. We feel bad if someone else enjoys an undeserved advantage. This spiritual sickness is called envy, and it is universal. We rationalize it by claiming that their good fortune is undeserved, assuming that we are more deserving than they.

The deeper assumption is that the only legitimate good fortune is deserved good fortune. Last week we saw the negative form of this assumption that the only legitimate misfortune is deserved misfortune and that we can estimate the degree of sin by the severity of the misfortune. Remember what Jesus says about that form of the assumption? Nobody deserves anything good; if history ran according to deserts we should all perish spiritually if we do not repent. So we are face to face with what traditional theology calls grace, and our parable is one of the great parables of grace.

Our parable is a great parable of Grace; that is why I think the traditional title, the Prodigal Son, is best. It is about the overwhelming precedence of God’s love over his wrath, the joy in heaven over one sinner who comes home. Therefore, let us concentrate on the younger, prodigal son, who went away and came home again. These are the points we may notice:

Firstly, he freely chose to leave his father and go to a far country. His father did not force him to stay home but even provided him with the means to survive on his own. This is the first level of grace. Even when we choose to live apart from God, in the spiritual far country, God provides for our life. The theologians call this "general grace" or "the grace of creation;" Jesus has it is mind when he says in the Sermon on the Mount that God makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on everyone, the just and the unjust alike. There is a goodness in all things that does not deny itself to anyone. We may live without a conscious relationship with God, and even prosper in this world, experiencing no disasters, and dying at a ripe old age in our beds. We may gain the whole world…and lose our own souls.

But these resources are finite and limited. We see something of the physical finitude of general grace in the phenomena of scarcity and disease in the world, and the erosion of the ecology under the pressure of human population and human greed. The prodigal son, however, is speaking of spiritual capital under the symbols of physical means. Living far away from the father and seeking all his satisfaction in the fleeting pleasures of this world he finds himself in poverty, a starving swineherd, so hungry that he eats the same food as the pigs. The delights of this world disappear suddenly and leave him starving in the mud. This is the inevitable spiritual outcome of a life lived far away from the father, because the vanities of this world do not feed the soul, rather they drain and exhaust it, and we can only postpone, never escape, the day of reckoning, the moment when we count the cost and pay the price. (Some of us face a dress rehearsal of that day each year on April 15). I recall the last words of Cardinal Woolsey, Henry VIII’s chancellor before his beheading, " If I had served my God half as well as I have served my King I would not now be left so alone." The things of this world sooner or later leave us alone, and we find ourselves starving in the mud, or feasting at the table of God.

Life away from the father drains and exhausts our souls because our soul lives by the relationship with God. God created us for fellowship with himself; the food that nourishes our souls is fellowship with God. Every other relationship and satisfaction is secondary to this relationship because God has made us for himself. Our souls feed on the divine; nothing temporal nor material can satisfy them. We need the bread of heaven, the real bread of the Lord’s Prayer, for which we pray every day. The human soul by nature feeds on the divine and if it is deprived of that food it starves.

The prodigal son sits starving in the mud and then he comes to himself. A moment of grace occurs and makes it possible for him to see his plight clearly and to see what he has to do about it. We call this prevenient grace. More specific than general grace, it reminds us of who we really are, sons and daughters of the father, and that we can return to the father. Prevenient grace brings the lost soul to him/herself. What a telling phrase, "to come to oneself!" It implies that we have been away not only from our father but also from ourselves. We have lost our identity, we have become someone we are not. And that stands to reason because we are created as sons and daughters of the divine and the farther we stray form God the less we fulfill that identity and that opportunity. So the prodigal in the far country has virtually lost his identity, but not entirely. Grace is still able to remind him who he really is and to give him the opportunity to decide freely to return to his father.

Then occurs the most moving moment of the parable and the most explicit revelation of the nature of the divine grace. The father does not wait for the errant son to come all the way home, to knock on the door, to wait as a suppliant until his father is ready to see him. No the father sees him coming from a long way off and does something quite remarkable for a father in that society at that time. He runs out to meet his son, embraces him and kisses him. He seems not even to have listened to his son’s apology and request to be taken on as a hired hand. Immediately he says to the servants, "Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found (Lk 15:22-24). His son came home barefoot, hungry and in rags; so naturally he puts shoes on his feet, gives him a feast and clothes him in the best robe, and as an exuberance, a useless token of sheer affection and joy, he places a gorgeous ring on his finger.

Jesus is saying that God is like that father. He misses us when we are away and watches the road for our return. When we appear in the distance he sets his dignity aside and runs to meet us. There is not question of retribution, no standoffishness, no reserve, just the sheer exuberance of love and relief. "My son has come home; he was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found!"

Why then should we not come to ourselves every day and go home to our father. Rise up out of the squalor of our sins and the humiliation they bring upon us, and go home to a God who is watching down the road for us to appear. In some denominations, like the Methodists and the Baptists they end every sermon with an altar call, that is, a call for those who wish in penitence to return to God, to come forward and kneel at the altar rail and a confess their sins and confess their faith in the saving blood of Christ. We, of course, do that every Sunday here, when we come down the aisle to kneel at the rail and reach forth our hands and receive Christ into our bodies and souls. Imagine as you come forward, God the father running to meet you, hugging and kissing you, putting the best robe on you, and a lovely ring and fine shoes and then leading you to his table where he has spread a feast for you and has been waiting every Lord’s day all these centuries, just for you to come home.

"I will arise and go to my father and say, Father I have sinned against heaven and before you…There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents" This is the joy of the divine, that his children come home to him. And this is the heart of the miracle of grace, that at any time we may come to ourselves, rise up and go home!

Amen.