“Lost and Found” (Luke 15:11-32)

 

One of my greatest delights in the church where I last served in Minnesota was to be part of a group of men who met faithfully every Wednesday morning for prayer, followed each week by coffee and conversation. Both the prayer and the conversation could be pretty free ranging at times. But I have to tell you that over the years that group was a spiritual lifeline for me.

One of the wonderful surprises for me in coming to All Nations five years ago was to discover that there was a similar group here—at least until covid struck. It even met on Wednesday mornings. One of the disciplines we have followed as a group has been to read chapter by chapter through a book that focuses on some aspect of Christian living.

A couple of years ago that book was a slim volume by the late Roman Catholic priest Henri Nouwen, entitled The Return of the Prodigal Son. In the introduction Nouwen tells how he went to the Hermitage, the world-renowned art museum in St Petersburg founded more than 250 years ago by Catherine the Great.

There Nouwen found a comfortable chair and planted himself directly in front of Rembrandt’s famous painting of The Return of the Prodigal Son. Before he knew it, more than two hours had elapsed. After a short break for coffee and conversation with the head of the museum’s restoration department, he returned for another hour until a guard and one of the cleaning ladies silently made it clear that closing time was upon him.

During those hours Nouwen carefully examined and meditated upon each of the figures in Rembrandt’s masterpiece, beginning with the younger son, then moving to the elder son, and finally the father. We don’t have the hours this morning that were at Henri Nouwen’s disposal in the Hermitage. It is a temptation to allow our familiarity with Jesus’ parable to cause us to skim though it quickly. But for the next few minutes I do want us to take some time to meditate and focus our thoughts on the three principal figures in Jesus’ beloved parable.

The Prodigal Son: Repentance

Let’s start with the son. To begin with, we need to remember that this story follows directly on from two others that Jesus had just told, about a lost sheep and a lost coin. As with the stories of the coin and the sheep, the parable of the prodigal son is also about being lost. But with the son there is a difference. The sheep and the coin were lost through no fault of their own. The sheep had been so busy munching on its own little patch of grass that it hadn’t noticed when the others had been herded back into their paddock for the night. And we would be silly to blame the coin for having been mislaid or dropped or whatever caused it to be missing from the woman’s purse.

But the case of the son stands apart. His lostness was not something that just happened to him. Rather, it was the direct result of his own rebellion and self-centredness. His demand to receive his share of the family estate amounted to treating his father as though the old man had already died. It was an act of consummate disregard for the feelings and the welfare of others. It is likely that his father’s assets were tied up in the form of land and livestock. Was the son really expecting his father to liquidate them and live on just a share of his income for the rest of his life?

Jesus doesn’t bother to delve into details like that or to psychologize. He didn’t need to. His listeners would have been filled with indignation at the brazenness of the son’s demand. And when the son ends up among the pigs longing to eat their slop, I can imagine them muttering under their breath, “Serves him right, the selfish twit!”

Indeed there would have been a certain justice to it if the story just ended there. The camera fades off into the distance with the son lying in rags in the filth of the pigs. But the son has a change of heart. Our Bibles say he came to his senses. Jesus’ words quite literally are, “He came to himself.” It seems to me that perhaps for the first time in his life the son was able to stand outside himself. He began to see himself objectively for the selfish, heedless good-for-nothing that he was.

(And here I can’t help but be reminded of those famous lines from Robbie Burns:

Oh, would some Power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us.)

However, if repentance is to be genuine, there needs to be more to it than that. It is not just a matter of gaining a new perspective. It is a change of heart and life. As Pastor Dave made very clear in his sermon last week (and here I quote): “Repentance is both remorse and changing our lives… Remorse is feeling badly for what we did … seeing things the way the offended person sees things. But repentance means that then we need to turn away from what we did. Remorse isn’t enough… We need to change.”

So it was that with a heart made heavy by the realization of his own waywardness and the hurt he had caused, the son swallowed whatever pride he still had left and began the journey home.

The Waiting Father: Reconciliation

At this point Jesus shifts the scene back to the family homestead. There we see the father, no doubt appearing somewhat older and wearier through the loss of his son. Perhaps he is a little stooped and frail. We can imagine him at dawn getting up and gazing with sadness towards the horizon where he had last seen the son’s departing figure.

Imagine his surprise one morning when far in the distance he spots a figure that looks hauntingly familiar. Can it be? Are his aging eyes playing tricks on him? But as the figure moves closer all doubts are erased from his mind. Barely able to see though his tears, he hastily straps on his sandals, tucks in his robes and, as quickly as his stiff legs can carry him, he runs down to the road to embrace his son.

Helmut Thielicke was a great scholar and preacher of the mid-twentieth century. He maintained that the central figure in Jesus’ parable was not the son at all but the father. For the story is as much about reconciliation as it is about repentance. Imagine if the son had journeyed all that way only to be met with rebuff by his father: “You were my son but you are no longer. Go back to your reckless living and to your pigsty! It’s where you belong.”

If that were the end of the story, we could not deny its justice. But Jesus’ aim is not to give us a lesson about justice. It is to tell us about grace. The father is the God about whom we read in the book of Daniel: “To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him” (Daniel 9:9). And the prophet Ezekiel puts it even more passionately: “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:10-11).

So it is that Thielicke could write:

The joyful sound of festivity rings out from this story. Wherever forgiveness is proclaimed there is joy and festive garments. We must read and hear this gospel story as it was really meant to be: good news! News so good that we should never have imagined it. News that would stagger us if we were able to hear it for the first time as a message that everything about God is so completely different from what we thought or feared. News that he … is inviting us to share in an unspeakable joy. The ultimate secret of this story is this: There is a homecoming for us all because there is a home.[1]

The Older Brother: Recalcitrance

It’s all a wonderful story. And as those who have turned to Christ in faith we have the assurance of God’s full and free forgiveness and the promise of an eternal place in his presence. But wait! There is more to be told. Jesus hasn’t finished yet. In Rembrandt’s famous painting a tall figure stands off in the shadows to the side. His hands clasped, he looks down coolly on the scene that is unfolding in front of him.

He is the older brother.

He has been out working in the fields. In the distance he has heard music and dancing and joyful laughter. As he nears the house his nostrils are filled with the rich aroma of a fatted calf roasting on the spit. His outrage is such that he cannot bring himself to step through the door. When his father pleads with him to come in and join the party, his cool silence quickly explodes into a furious outburst. Years of pent-up anger and resentment pour out like a flood bursting through a dam.

At this point let’s take a moment to stand back from the story and look at it objectively.

Surely the older brother had every right to be upset. He had been a dutiful son for years and had never received a whit of recognition for it. Where was the fairness in that? Where was the justice?

Now if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that he has a point. And here I want to suggest that it is not the penitent son who is the central figure in Jesus’ story. Nor is it the forgiving father. Rather, it is this son, who stands outside the party room, his feet firmly planted, his arms firmly folded in a well-justified huff.

Why do I think he is the central character? Take a moment to look at Luke’s introduction to Jesus’ parables:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Do you see who Jesus’ audience was? It was all older brothers, people who had spent the greater part of their lives fastidiously seeking to live in obedience to God, right down to the minutest detail. If they weren’t the very definition of older brothers, I can’t imagine who is. And if I’m honest with myself, I am forced to confess that I am one of them too.

Yes, I will freely admit that I am a sinner. I acknowledge that my only claim on God’s salvation is by his grace and through faith in Jesus Christ. Yet I also have to confess that in the course of my years in the family of God I have in many ways adopted the attitudes and perspectives of an older brother. It’s not as though it’s intentional. For the most part it happens gradually and imperceptibly. But it happens none the less—so that I can become critical and judgmental in my attitude towards others, so that I am keener on justice and retribution than I am on mercy and reconciliation. And before I know it, I’m standing outside with my arms folded, while the party’s going on over there.

Yet the most wonderful thing of all is that Jesus leaves the parable open-ended. He does not consign the older son to living outside for the rest of his life in a perpetual state of indignation. It is as though Jesus is saying to all who will hear, “Now over to you…”

How subtly a religion of works can overtake the liberty of grace! How frighteningly easy it is to slip from being a younger brother to an older one! Yet the father’s invitation is there for us all. Is it any coincidence that almost the last words of the Bible are these?

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. (Revelation 22:17)

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[1] Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father, 29

“Creation—Who cares?” (Genesis 1:1 – 2:1)

It was way back in July 1925 that one of the most famous court cases in US history took place in Dayton, Tennessee. Known ever since as the “Scopes Monkey Trial”, it centred on twenty-four year-old John T. Scopes. He was accused of introducing Darwin’s theory of evolution while acting as a substitute teacher in a high school biology class. Unknown to him, his action was contrary to the state law of the time, which made it illegal to teach evolution in any of its public schools. Scopes was eventually acquitted on a legal technicality. But the case made headlines across the United States and served to fuel one of the most tragic church squabbles of recent times. The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy was an acrimonious division that continues in some parts of the church right down to this day.

As with so many of the quarrels that have divided Christians over the centuries, it has generated far more heat than light. It has wasted energy and resources that could have been directed to infinitely more useful and God-honouring purposes. And surely the only winner in it all has been the devil, who must rub his hands with glee.

One of the greatest casualties in this controversy is the passage we read from the Old Testament this morning: Genesis, chapter 1. Skeptics scorn it as a hopelessly primitive, pre-scientific description of how the universe has come into being. They point to it as evidence that serious science and Christian faith are incompatible. And I suspect that for many the result has been to regard what the Bible has to teach us about creation with a certain degree of embarrassment—to ignore it or leave it on the shelf to gather dust.

To my mind this is a tragedy of incalculable proportions. For the more I read from this first chapter of Genesis, the more I find myself in the presence of truths so profound I know I can never reach the bottom of them. But let’s give it a try anyway, and open our Bibles to Genesis, chapter 1, where we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

These first words of the Bible take us back to the dawn of time. Cosmologists debate as to whether that means ten or twenty billion years or something in between. But numbers and statistics are not the concern that lies behind them. Rather, it is to communicate the awesome truth that before anything existed, there was God.

It is hard—I want to say that for me it is impossible—to imagine complete nothingness, absolute emptiness. The closest our author can bring us to it is with the words “formless and empty”, utter darkness. It is a stark and chilling picture. Yet even in this utter void, God is present.

The ancient Hebrews were by and large a land-loving people. For them the sea was a place of danger and chaos—and this is surely the picture conjured up by the waters at the end of verse 2. Yet the author gives us the astounding picture of the Spirit of God hovering over it all. Biblical commentators have often commented that that same word “hovering” is used of an eagle in flight.

For a number of years our family used to spend our vacation on an island in St Margaret’s Bay. Needless to say, we shared it with a number of species of wildlife, including a family of ospreys. I remember many times looking up into the brightness of the blue sky to see one of those magnificent birds wheeling silently, seemingly motionlessly, above me, and never ceasing to be fascinated by it. So it is that the stage is being set. God is silently present and about to act to bring his creation into being. And it all happens with a word.

Into the unimaginable silence of complete nothingness God speaks: “Let there be light.” In Hebrew it’s just two words, yehi or. And with those two words the Bible tells us there was light. Creation had begun.

Science

What follows is not, as some maintain, a primitive myth. Rather, it is a carefully structured rhythmic exposition of God’s creative power. Each of the first six days opens with the phrase, “And God said…” And each closes with the words, “And there was evening and there was morning…,” followed by the number of the day.

Then look more closely and you’ll see that there is a correspondence between day one and day four, day two and day five, day three and day six. It has been observed furthermore that on the first three days God introduces order into the chaos, separating light from darkness, waters from waters, land from seas. Then during the second triad of days he fills the void, setting the sun, moon and stars in the sky, causing the waters to teem with living creatures, populating the land with animals of every description. We could go further and note that on the third and sixth day there is a double creation, followed by a triple action on the seventh.

Much more could be said here—and has been. Indeed scholars have devoted their lives to it. Whole books have been written about it. But it becomes clear that what we have in Genesis 1 is not a scientific, but a lyrical representation of God’s creative power. Yet, having said that, I am convinced that the Genesis account of creation opens the door to scientific exploration in at least three ways.

The first of them is by affirming the order that underlies the universe (quantum mechanics aside for the moment). That is, that God’s creation is open to our comprehension.

Secondly, by refusing to ascribe names to the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies, the Genesis account of creation was declaring that these were inanimate bodies. Other ancient civilizations saw the stars and planets as divine beings, possessing a power of their own to affect human life. But the Bible will have none of that.

Thirdly, as we move into chapter 2, we find God parading his creatures before the man to give each of them a name. And that process of cataloguing and naming goes on into our present day, whether it be in the realm of subatomic particles, as yet undiscovered stars, or living beings. Surely this is much of the work of science in bringing understanding and meaning to the world we inhabit.

And so, while Genesis is a pre-scientific document, it is not as some argue, anti-scientific. To the contrary, I think we can rightly affirm that Genesis opens the door to scientific inquiry.

Art

One of the mental images that I take away from Genesis (and I am prepared to admit that this may be fanciful on my part) is of God as an artisan. In my mind’s eye I have a picture of God coming to his creation each day and adding a much-needed detail—dry ground and seas, flowers and fruit on this day, sun, moon and stars on that, fish and sea creatures on the next, animals on the next… And each day, we find God taking a moment to look at what he has done, and declaring, “It is good.”

Five times we hear it said, “And God saw that it was good.” We hear it twice on the third day, once on the fourth day, once on the fifth day, and once on the sixth. Then, after all has been created and his work is complete, we are told, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

Now the word “good” in Hebrew can have a variety of meanings. It can mean good in the sense of good for something, useful. It can mean morally good, righteous. It can also mean aesthetically good in the sense of pleasant, delightful or beautiful. And I can’t help but thinking that that sense is at least part of what is meant when we read each of those five times, “And God saw that it was good.”

God takes delight in his creation—in its beauty, its majesty, its complexity. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” says Psalm 19. And in the gospel we find our Lord Jesus speaking lyrically about the flowers of the field, “that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these” (Matthew 6:29).

And so I believe that this first chapter of Genesis begins to lay a foundation not only for investigative science but also for artistic endeavour and for the appreciation of beauty wherever we find it. Creation calls us to stand in awe at the vastness of the night sky, at the whir of a hummingbird’s wings, at the colours of an alpine meadow, and to declare, “It is good.”

Stewardship

All of this brings us to a third lesson that this first chapter of Genesis leaves us with. It comes to us on the sixth day of creation and it has to do with your and my place within it.

In verse 26 we hear God declare, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule … over all the creatures…” And again in verse 28 we are told that God blessed humankind and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Perhaps like me you have heard environmentalists rail against these verses, claiming that they have provided justification for an uncontrolled exploitation of the bounty with which God has surrounded us, denuding the earth of its resources. But a careful reading of Genesis 1 reveals that that just is not so. Indeed, if anything, just the opposite is true.

So what does it mean for us to rule over all creation? German theologian and ethicist Helmut Thielicke taught that we can only properly understand our rulership over creation when we place it within the wider context of God’s sovereignty. He wrote, “We are not to rule and subdue the earth because we stand above the other creatures, but only because we stand under God and are privileged to be his viceroys.”[1]

The contemporary American Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann goes a step farther and places our rulership of creation within the context of Jesus’ teaching:

The dominance is that of a shepherd who cares for, tends, and feeds the animals… Thus the task of ‘dominion’ does not have to do with exploitation and abuse. It has to do with the securing of the well-being of every other creature and bringing the promise of each to full fruition… Moreover, a Christian understanding of dominion must be discerned in the way of Jesus of Nazareth… The one who rules is the one who serves. Lordship means servanthood… The human person is ordained over the remainder of creation both for its profit, well-being and enhancement. The role of the human person is to see to it that the creation becomes fully the creation willed by God.[2]

So it is that Eugene Peterson in The Message renders these verses, “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself.”

The point comes through even more clearly when we look at God’s command to fill the earth. The verb for “fill” here has a secondary meaning of fulfilling, bringing to completion. And so part of our calling is to continue God’s work of creation, to enhance its riches, its beauty and its immense variety.

Our gracious God has placed into our hands an enormous gift in his creation. May we never cease to wonder at its vastness and complexity and to be awed by its beauty. And may we be faithful to his mandate to care for it and to tend it until the day when all creation is brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

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[1]     How the World Began, 67

[2]     Genesis, 32-33