A series of sermons on the parables of Jesus

The parable of the waiting father and his two lost sons

Luke 15:11-32; Hosea 11:1-4, 8-9

The "gospel in a nutshell"

The parable of the waiting father and his two lost sons has been called the "gospel in a nutshell". And since the gospel is like a rainbow that arches over our whole life and shines in many beautiful colours, we can only take one of the colours and look at it more closely.

Why?

Do we not wonder sometimes why God does not seem to interfere. Although we know that "God is love" and that love cannot do everything it wants to do; although we know that at the centre of our faith there stands a cross which shows that by worldly measures love is often a loser, we still want God to be strong in our terms. God the warrior, the triumphant hero, the "lord of hosts" is closer to our liking, than God the beggar, God the sufferer, God the crucified one.

Why? That is the question of Job who in spite of his good and pious life was smitten with illness, suffering and chaos. That is the question of Jeremiah who is called to a life in lonely sadness while the people celebrate in false optimism. That is the question of Jesus on the cross. Why has God in this moment when he needed him most left him. That is the question of Paul when he requests of the Lord that he may take an illness from him (2 Cor. 12:9f.).

And that is our question. How often have we prayed and hoped and worked with great honesty and diligence; and in spite of it, things went wrong. We have loved our children, we have protected them, we have tried to give them a good upbringing and education; and yet their way of life so often evolves different to what we thought and wished and prayed for. Why does not God, the almighty, the all-powerful, interfere and order things when order and authority and power seems to be so much needed?

May I invite you to listen into a story that has empowered and comforted people through the ages. They have found it to be a story that opened windows for them into the being of God.

Love and the search for identity

A father had a son! This son wants to get away from home. He wants to find himself. He is in search of his identity. He feels too restricted in the familiar environment of his father's home. Indeed, when we analyse his deeper motives, he wishes his father dead. It was unheard of in the ancient world to ask for the inheritance and the permission to spend what was valuable family property.

By all expectations, such a request would invite the wrath of the father and call for punishment.

The father did not need to meet his son's request; he did not need to let him go. In the time when Jesus told this story, the authority and power of a father, a patriarch we may call him, was much greater than it is today. The father could have ordered his son to stay at home. And certainly there was no need to give him the inheritance.

But the father lets his son go! He even transcends reasonable expectations. He gives the inheritance to his son, he does so before the time when it was really due and he lets him go.

The father does not use his authority and his power. Sometime, somewhere the father has made a decision to let love rule his being. And love cannot be authoritarian; love cannot be violent; love comes in the form of a beggar.

If he would have kept his son back with his authority and his power; and later when the son was in danger of drowning and getting lost in a strange and far country, if the father then would have ordered him back or would have gone to get him back - then he would have had his son at home. But he would not have had him as a son. The son would be physically near, but he would not be near to his heart. There would have been no relationship of love. The father knew this. And because he knew it, he decided not to use his might and authority, he decided to trust in the power of love.

He lets his son go. His heart bleeds. Love is patient (1 Cor 13:4). God waits. Love is always very expensive. Love opens up and tears many wounds into our lives. But because the father decided to stake his existence and his relationship on love, therefore his power can only be the power of love. With the ways of God, power is the power of love.

And the father's house should hear the laughter of a happy party again. There would be singing and dancing and celebration again.

The son, far away from home has spent all his money and he was in bad shape. He was in hell, a hell created by his own search for identity and freedom. For a Jew to enter the service of a Gentile and then feed pigs, the paradigm of an unclean animal - up to the present day Jews do not eat pork! - that was hell. Separation. Hopelessness. Abandonment. He who wished death upon his father was now himself in the fangs of death.

And in this situation it suddenly dawns upon him where his true home is; where he could find and realise his true identity. "He came to himself"! He began to understand that true identity is being in relationship to home!

And so he gets up and journeys toward home.

It is a difficult journey. It is a way full of uncertainty. Has the father burnt the bridges between me and him? Is the father still angry that I left him? Will the father accept me again? You see, the son does not know what went on and is going on in the heart of the father. He has not felt and he has not understood the painful decision not to use authority and power but to decide for love. The son does not even know what love is all about. He has only lived from day to day, from moment to moment.

But the father waits. And what seems to be impossible in the Orient occurs when the son comes into sight at the horizon. The father runs - the philosopher Aristotle said: "Great men never run in public"; he embraces him; he kisses him. It was impossible that the father would do this on a road in the public. But love does not know any borders, any boundaries, and love breaks through all the accepted rules when it becomes an event. Reconciliation has become an event!

And so the powerlessness of the father, the power of love has finally proved stronger than all his authority and omnipotence. Love has become an event and so the son finds his identity, he finds his home in the arms of his father and there is reason, good reason, for celebration: "for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found".

Love and legalism

The power of love was to be challenged again. This time not by the search for identity, but by the power of legalism.

The father had a second son. He comes home when the celebration is in process, when all the new robes are being shown and the people are happy and joyous in their merriment.

The father could have used his authority and power again. He could have commanded his son to come home from the field. And when the son stands outside in great anger and doesn't want to join the party, his father could have ordered his servants to bring him in. He could have ordered his son to sit next to him at the main table.

But the father had decided for love, and love does not compel, love does not impose itself, love rather suffers. So, what does the father do? - "his father came out" and begged him to join the celebration. A lost son was found, a "dead" son has come to life again.. Come and join the celebration! Love begs, love beseeches, love entreats. We are reminded of Paul's tremendous statement when in 2 Cor. 5:20 he says: "We beg you, we beseech you, we entreat you for Christ's sake: be reconciled to God".

But the son could not understand the language of love. He was caught in the web of legalism. He was a bookkeeper at heart. And although he had probably heard about the grace of God, when matters actually touched his life, he could only think in terms of morality. And in terms of morality he is right. He had stayed at home; he had worked hard. No one ever killed a calf for a BBQ with his friends. And now this! Where is justice?

We do not know how this story ended. We do not know whether love triumphed in the life of this other son. We do not know whether a generosity of spirit ever conquered his anger so that he would understand that they simply "had to" celebrate when the lost son was found, when the "dead" son came to life again.

But then, we don't really need to know. Because ultimately the question is the question to us! Will you allow your life to be ruled by the heavenly father? Will you allow your life to be placed under the power of love which very often seems to be powerlessness in worldly terms?

The ways of God

Such are the ways of God. We must not forget who told this story. It is Jesus! Jesus has lived this story. In his life he brought to light the heart of the story.

It is strange that we do not or even can not bring together power and love. Our thinking is so determined by achievement, by progress, by the idea that you must be strong in order to be free, that we don't really believe that "the way of the cross leads home".

The patience of love

At the cross, the opponents and the mockers shout for God to demonstrate his power. If you are omnipotent, if you are almighty, bring your son down from the cross! But God is silent. It is the silence of love. It is the silence grounded in the very being of God, because the decision to let love rule his being implies self-limitation, and this self-imposed self-limitation was necessary to grant people freedom and choice.

The opponents of Jesus triumph! They think that history has given them the right verdict. They think that God is on their side and that Jesus has lost the conflict.

But love is patient. It waits and is silent, but it never gives up. Love has its own time table. As one of the saints of the church said long ago: "At the evening of this life we shall be judged on love" (the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross).

There is good reason for believing that! Out of the death cry of Jesus on the cross there came the powerful proclamation of the church: "The Crucified One lives!" Not that he leaves his cross behind him. But he lives on in the suffering existence of his disciples. He lives on in the poor and oppressed. He lives on in everyone who bases her life on love. Therefore Paul can say: "When I am weak then I am strong; when I suffer and am persecuted for Christ's sake then he, the crucified and risen Lord is manifest in my life."

Our existence is earthly and human and often very frail. But the miracle is that God does not abandon us, but God graces our earthliness and humanness and weakness with the assurance that love, his love, is stronger than anything we know - love is stronger than death.

Invitation

Dear friends, we do not need to give up or to give in, we do not need to be discouraged - even if sometimes the appearance is that God does not interfere, that he has lost his omnipotence. It only appears that way, because we are ruled by the idea that God must be strong in worldly terms.

God is God. He is ruled by love and that means that he will often appear to us as being powerless. We will often ask: "why"? But we do it in the deeper and underlying conviction that he knows better what is good for us. We should return to him and should allow him with his love to rule our lives. He who "is love" will not, can not, close his heart to us. He is waiting for us. And when we come, there will be celebration, on earth and in heaven!

Rev. Dr. Thorwald Lorenzen
http://www.canbap.org.au/parables.htm