Prodigal Responding
Cornwall/Montreal
February 19, 2005
We all know the story of ‘the Prodigal Son’. Today, I’d like you to put yourself in the position of the younger son, in this story and consider the response to the openhearted and openhearted response of your father. You know the story- you find it in Luke 15, and can review if you want. Here was a son who really worked at breaking the relationship he had in the family- he worked hard at being obnoxious and rude, in demanding his share of the inheritance prior to his father’s death- he was impatient- unwilling to wait. Then he roared out of there and headed off to live his own life, likely thinking he had enough to last a very, very long time. But, as it turned out, he spent extravagantly and, likely, foolishly. I’m sure he gained a lot of ‘fair-weather friends’ along the way, and that they helped him to spend his money, so that before too long, he had nothing. He had to go to work- to real hard and demeaning types of work in order to have enough to eat. This drove him to examine himself and he came to an incredible realization- he had a ‘voila’ moment. He realized that even his Dad’s servants had more than enough to eat. With this realization and the personal humbling he experienced, he decided to swallow his pride and return home, as a servant- not as a son. So, he prepared a speech for his Dad, which, he hoped, would allow him back into the home. (Can’t we all remember some time when we had to have a ‘speech’ for Dad?)
Meanwhile, back at home, his father had been in deep mourning for the loss of this younger son. Every day, he went out on the road and looked for him, hoping for his return. He prayed for his return. He longed for his return, and one day, all this anticipation and hope was rewarded. He knew his son- his way of walk and stature. He recognized him on the road, he thought. At first, no doubt, he shook himself to be sure he wasn’t just seeing things. But, he wasn’t. He ran to meet his son and with his arms wide open, he embraced his son and hugged him to himself. They cried together, but, then, his son started to say something and tried to establish himself as a servant and not a son. The father would have none of this and cut him off midstream- he wouldn’t listen to this line of reasoning- it wasn’t what he could or would accept. This was his son, and that was that, so he ordered the biggest party the family had known in a long time, and began celebration for the son who returned.
Can we even begin to feel what happened here- oh, we can ‘know’, but to ‘feel’ at our depths is where this story is to take us? Can we begin to go there? The son thought he deserved to be only a servant- he thought he had ‘blown it’ as far as being part of the family. He knew what he had done- he knew how he had thrown away thousands of dollars and he knew that he hadn’t honoured his father in some of his behaviour, so he knew his father would be more than justified in even sending him away. He fully expected that he might not be received, but hoped to be, at least as a servant. But, this! What an incredible response! His father didn’t even listen to him, and he was glad, for once, that his father didn’t listen to him. The result was so much more than he could have imagined. He didn’t imagine there would be a party in his honour, but that’s what happened. Can we put ourselves there, even a little bit?
This is, perhaps, the greatest of Jesus’ stories to tell us about the Father’s love for us. Notice the context- Lk.15.2, 7, 10- it’s all about the way God receives…US! This is how God receives you and me. Have you ever gone off from the Father? Have you ever taken your inheritance and used it inappropriately? Have you ever tried to do on your own, without getting advice from the Father? Have you ever gone off and willfully or willingly sinned after He received you when you were converted? Have you ever been the ‘lost child’ of God, the Father?
Of course you have…and so have I! This is OUR story- an incredible story that is so very hard for us to accept as our reality.
How many of us feel ‘unworthy’ before God? How many of us feel that God has every reason to send us away from the family? How many of us feel that we have let God down? How many of us feel that God doesn’t have to put up with our doubting and unbelieving and our lack of regularity in personal devotional time with God? How many of us know that we are ‘the lost child- son/daughter’?
The answer is “All of us!”
But, as the lost son, we’ve been received back, and are received back every time! There is no time when we are not received back. There was the time of our conversion, but, then, there was yesterday, too. Likely, there has been today, too. And we have been no different than that son. When he came home, his motives were mixed at best. His heart was… “not churning because he had broken his father’s heart. He stumbled home simply to survive. His journey to a far country had left him bankrupt. His days of wine and roses had left him dazed and disillusioned. The wine soured and the roses withered. His declaration of independence had reaped an unexpected harvest: not freedom, joy, and new life but bondage, gloom, and a brush with death. His fair-weather friends had shifted their allegiance when his piggy bank emptied. Disenchanted with life, the wastrel weaved his way home, not from a burning desire to see his father, but just to stay alive.” So, writes Brennan Manning in “The Ragamuffin Gospel”. Is this not precisely us so often- we return to God from superstitious feeling or just to save our skin, but He, with wide open arms, receives us, every time!
This story says so much to us:
“…rumors spread that a certain Catholic woman was having visions of Jesus. The reports reached the archbishop. He decided to check her out. There is always a fine line between the authentic mystic and the lunatic fringe.
““Is it true, m‘am, that you have visions of Jesus?” asked the cleric.
““Yes,” the woman replied simply.
““Well, the next time you have a vision, I want you to ask Jesus to tell you the sins that I confessed in my last confession.”
“The woman was stunned, “Did I hear you right, bishop? You actually want me to ask Jesus to tell me the sins of your past?”
““Exactly, Please call me if anything happens.”
“Ten days later the woman notified her spiritual leader of a recent apparition. “Please come,” she said.
“Within the hour the archbishop arrived. He trusted eye-to-eye contact. “You just told me on the telephone that you actually had a vision of Jesus. Did you do what I asked?”
““Yes, bishop, I asked Jesus to tell me the sins you confessed in your last confession.”
“The bishop leaned forward with anticipation. His eyes narrowed.
““What did Jesus say?”
“She took his hand and gazed deep into his eyes. “Bishop,” she said, “these are his exact words: ‘I CAN’T REMEMBER.’”
This is you and me, constantly. This is the ‘lost son’, precisely.
So, where does this take us? This is the question. How grateful do you believe that son was? How did he respond after that incredible reception and party? How did he live within the new relationship within his father’s home? You can be certain that he responded, as a result of his prodigal father’s response! His father responded with open-armed graciousness, without condemnation and criticism or judgment.
This is the context in which we understand such as:
Ro.12.1- what does this mean to us now?
Ga.5.1- RSV- “For freedom Christ has set us free…do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Let’s read back and forward from this:
4.29- an incredible reality that we’ve experienced and continue to experience. We used to put a lot of stock in some actions, as necessary to ensure our position with our Father- rigorous Sabbath keeping, incredible (and, often, embarrassing carefulness about clean meats), fastidious tithing. Now that we don’t see these in the same vein, some persecute, ridicule, and criticize us.
5.4- impact of this is incredible. If the son is only a servant, earning the father’s response, there is no more grace.
v.7, 8, 9, 13. The power of these verses is so very great and impels us forward to greater expression of gratitude. How many times a day do you think the lost son thanked his father for his graciousness? How much do you think his conduct showed his gratitude? Was he more grateful or less than prior to his time away?
What about us? Remember our carefulness in so many ways, when certain activities were demanded or required? What about, even, such a season as this- Lent- where people are required to give up something- why? What about the need for regular confessions to a priest- why? Is this what response to grace leads to? No! However, response to grace will lead to heart-felt response.
I’ve been musing a great deal, over the past couple of months, about a question-“ Is less more, really?” Over the past few years, I’ve read, often, about how the western church- us- needs to learn from the church in Africa and Asia. After one chapel at camp in Korea this year, one young lady expressed her appreciation for the chapel, and my message. She said that she missed her church- she told me that they have church on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday and that she feels like she is not part of the church if she misses any one of the services. There is zeal and a genuine devotion that I saw there, and I learned from the church in Asia. We can hardly expect people in church once a week, and people don’t seem themselves as uninvolved if they’re/you’re not in church each week- once a week!
In our western church, we’ve tripped, or slid, into a heresy that ‘less is more’. And we’ve gone there, too. It used to be that we were incredibly careful about Sabbath and didn’t miss a service- now we’re not careful about any particular time of worship and we miss regularly and have the audacity to say that ‘we’re more spiritual, really. I don’t need to be in a church to worship God’- God doesn’t agree, but we’ve bought that idea from some around us. Under grace, do we not seek more and more prodigal times and ways to worship God? Do we not become more open to more, rather than less, as the spirit of grace draws us toward expressions and times that we would never have even considered as reasonable under legalism, but which we know are, now?
We used to give greatly- maybe from requirement- hopefully from desire to give- but now, our churches have to struggle financially and our Councils have to worry about being able to do the work of the church- why? And we’ll make excuses about giving ourselves in more areas and not just money, and the like. Are we really more spiritual? Is our response prodigal? Or are we falling into a heresy that less is really more? Are we justifying ourselves- exalting ourselves, rather than exalting Jesus in our midst?
The lost son, we call the prodigal son, but, really, the father was the prodigal one. Prodigal means ‘lavish or extravagant’- and the father exemplified that, so the son followed in that path. The story is about the lost son and how he is received- but it’s also about the prodigal father, to which the lost son gets to respond. We see, in the story, how the legalistic minded son responded, and have to think about what response Jesus wanted. This would come from the lost son, now found, and responding to his father’s response to him.
How prodigal are you in responding to God? How lavish and extravagant are you in your worship of God- in your times, faithfulness to these times, and expressiveness from deep within your heart? How prodigal, lavish, and extravagant are you in your caring for your own health, not just with not eating certain meats, as in the past? You are to understand what your body/temple needs and respond to that; it has nothing to do with certain meats anymore, though. How prodigal, lavish, and extravagant are you in your giving to your God- in your being a true living sacrifice and in your setting up all your life for God’s use? Are you a minimalist in giving and helping your church to become a force advancing the kingdom of God? The church can only do and support what it is able to do and support. Oh, we’ll step out in faith, too, without question, but the Councils have to seek to be responsible and to be in faith- it’s quite a line to determine?
I believe that the ‘less is more’ idea is a heresy that is comfortable in our western church where we really want to cater to ourselves and our selfishness and our own comfort. We need to learn from the international areas where Jesus and God’s Spirit are breaking in, and in the primitive faith, we are seeing genuineness that we are now ‘too good for’. We’re a new church, really, and don’t have to fall into the same ruts. Let us be careful. We come from an incredible background- a good one, from which we learned so much and we don’t have to throw out the lesson with the tool. Just because the law is no more valid does not mean that the lessons of the law and the object of the law- Jesus- should be pitched. Let us be careful to reject the ‘less is more’ heresy, and seek, in all areas of our devotion, to express more generously from our hearts- generous to God and neighbour- as Jesus’ law demands.
