The Third Sunday after Trinity (Trinity 3)

(Audio)

Luke 15:1-10; 1 Peter 5:6-11; Micah 7:18-20

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“This man receives sinners and eats with them,” grumbled the Pharisees and the scribes. It’s not only that they didn’t like the people Jesus ate and drank with, but they were beginning to seriously not like Jesus either. “Those people are sinners,” they thought, “and Jesus chooses to eat and drink with them and not us? There is something seriously wrong with that man. He must be a sinner too!”

It was in response to this complaint of the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus told three parables (Luke chapter 15) about something, or someone, that was lost and was then found: The Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son (The Prodigal Son). When each of these lost things/persons were found, Jesus said, there was rejoicing in heaven. And rejoicing in heaven brings rejoicing on earth among those who love God and, as a result, love their brother and their neighbor, sinners all.

The Parable of the Lost Sheep is patently outrageous. “What man of you,” Jesus posits to the Pharisees, “having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?” The Pharisees had to be thinking to themselves, “No one would do such a thing!” When sheep are in the open country, that is when they need a shepherd the most! There are dangerous predators in the open country, and food and water can be difficult to find. Sheep need a shepherd to defend them and protect them and to guide them to green pastures and clean water. No shepherd wants to lose a sheep, but he’s not going to put the ninety-nine he has at risk to find one that has wandered off. It’s simple economics.

Ah, but the parable isn’t about economics, is it? Of course not. It’s supposed to offend our pragmatic sensibilities. The truth of the matter is that the ninety-nine are just as lost at the one. The ninety-nine are in the open country, surrounded by both physical and spiritual dangers. You are amongst the ninety-nine right now in this valley of the shadow of death you know as the world and your life in it. Jesus says, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” NINETY-NINE RIGHTEOUS PERSONS WHO NEED NO REPENTANCE??? You know that there is no such thing, but all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is none who is righteous, not even one; not you, not me, and not the Pharisees and scribes. That is Jesus’ meaning.

The Pharisees and the scribes, however, believed that they were righteous, that they kept God’s law and commandments, and that they were superior to the obvious and notorious sinners Jesus kept company with. The truth is, of course, that the Pharisees and scribes also are sinners, that we are all sinners, and we alike are lost until our Good Shepherd finds us and forgives us and restores us to His Father. Heaven rejoices at each and every sinner who repents. We are all sinners, and we are all lost, but the Gospel Good News is that our Good Shepherd Jesus came to seek and to save the lost! Only the lost can be found! Only sinners can be forgiven!

Jesus’ Parable of the Lost Coin makes the same point, but it condenses things down from 1 in a 100 to 1 in 10. The stakes are bit higher now, for each of those ten coins equal a day’s wage. Thus, the urgency in finding that lost coin becomes more palpable and meaningful to us. Once again, there is immense joy when the lost coin is found, and Jesus says once again, “there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

From 1 in 100, to 1 in 10, and now to 1 in 2: The third parable Jesus teaches in response to the grumbling of the Pharisees and scribes is the Parable of the Lost Son (The Prodigal Son), which is actually not appointed to be read today. Nevertheless, it is the coup de grace and arguably the most sublime and profound of Jesus’ parables. Permit me to summarize the story:

There was a patriarch, a wealthy landowner, who had two sons. The younger son asked his father to give him his share of the inheritance now. This would have been a scandalous and egregious offense for at least two important reasons: First, the son was essentially saying that his father was dead to him, a horrible lack of love, respect, and honor towards his father. Second, the younger son was also displaying a lack of love and respect towards his older brother, who would rightly be the first to receive the inheritance. And, of course, the lack of love for both father and brother betrays a lack of love for God the Father of us all. For all this, the younger son has received the epithet “The Prodigal Son,” and we can well understand why. However, I maintain that it is not the younger son who is the true Prodigal in this story, but rather the father.

Even more shocking and scandalous than the younger son’s request is his father’s response: The father gives the younger son what he asked for, and he gives the inheritance to his older brother as well who, at this time, seemingly knew nothing of what was transpiring. No patriarch of this man’s standing would do such a thing! By all rights the younger son would have been disowned and banished, and likely even killed! But this Prodigal Father does the unthinkable, the unimaginable – he gives the inheritance to both of his sons, undoubtedly with great sadness, and he waits, and he watches patiently with longsuffering endurance as the story plays out.

Quickly, the younger son liquidates his assets and journeys far from his father, his brother, his home, and his people and squanders everything he has on riotous, self-indulgent pleasures and living in a pagan land. When he finds himself penniless and destitute, he hires himself out to a pagan employer who sends him to tend his swine. Still, the boy is so hungry that he is reduced to eating the food intended for the pigs. This would be rock bottom for anyone, but the meaning for a Jewish audience would be uncleanness, depravity, scandal, and offense of the highest imaginable proportions. The boy was completely and utterly lost; he might as well be dead.

But we often must hit rock bottom before we are brought to our senses. Sometimes it is good and holy Fathering to let our children lie in the beds they have made for themselves. The boy remembered his father, his goodness, kindness, and love. He would repent; he would go back home, confess his sins, and offer to work for his father and pay him back. A great plan, except he was wrong to believe that he could pay back his debt. What he wasn’t counting on was grace. He still didn’t love his father, his brother, or his God, and so he couldn’t imagine the kind of love his father was prepared to shower upon him.

Before he got to his home his father saw him coming. How long was the father watching and waiting, hoping, and praying? All the time his son was away, after all the evil he had shown him, he still loved him, was watching and waiting, hoping, and praying for his return. And when he saw him, this prodigal father once again did something that was unexpected, improbable, and scandalous to human reason – he ran out of the house to his wayward son, embraced him, put the family ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, a robe on his shoulders, and he ordered his servant to go and slaughter a fattened calf and prepare a feast because his son was lost, and now he is found; he was dead, and he is alive. There was no working for his father, for his father had fully restored him as his son with all benefits and privileges as if nothing had ever happened at all. He could never repay the debt. He could never right the wrong. He could never heal the wound. Because of the love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness of his father, he didn’t have to. He was lost, he has been found. He was dead, he is alive. End of story, for the younger son.

Now begins the story of the older son, and we come full circle back to the Pharisees and scribes and their complaint about Jesus eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. Hearing the noise of a party, the older son inquired what was going on. When he learned that his younger brother had returned and that his father was throwing a feast to celebrate, the older brother was furious…, with 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!” This statement reveals that the older son did not love the father any more than the younger son did. In fact, the older son resented his father. He only served his father and stayed at home so that he could one day receive the inheritance, and the sooner his father was out of the picture the better. He didn’t love his father, he wanted to party with his friends; and he didn’t love his brother and couldn’t care less that he was back home and restored to the family.

The older son in Jesus’ parable unmistakably represents the Pharisees and the scribes who had no love for the people they were called to shepherd, tax collectors, sinners, people just like you. Further, they had no love for Jesus, but they resented him, envied him, and hated him. And they had no love for God the Father; they resented his commandments and felt them a burden to fulfill, so they interpreted them in a way that would make them look good in the eyes of men and yet still be unfulfillable by others, thus securing their self-righteousness, power, and prestige in the eyes of men.

Of course, the father in Jesus’ parable is God the Father of us all. Both sinful, unloving, and the unmerciful sons in the parable find their antitype in Jesus who perfectly loved, honored, and obeyed his Father and perfectly loved and laid down his own life as a sacrifice for you whom God the Father loves so much that he gave his only son unto death on the cross to restore you to himself.

“Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot.”

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.