Love is at the
heart of the season of Lent. It’s at the heart of the biblical story. It’s a
story of just how much God loves us. As someone once said, “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
So, it’s only
appropriate that the first Sunday in Lent this year began on Valentine’s Day.
On one hand, we could say that it was just a coincidence that these two special
days would fall on the same day on the calendar.
But, on the other
hand, maybe it’s God’s way of reminding us, just in case we forgot, that we are
loved by God more than we can ever imagine. Because the truth is, there’s
nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there’s nothing we can do to
make God love us any less.
It’s like God is
saying to us, “I love you. Now, deal with
it!”
A few years ago,
Penny and I spent the beginning of Lent in New Orleans. We arrived on the day
after Mardi Gras! Now, who travels to New Orleans on the day after Mardi Gras? What
pastor travels to New Orleans and arrives on Ash Wednesday? This pastor!
Actually, Penny
was attending an education conference in New Orleans so I decided to join her.
While we were there, we visited parts of the city and were having a fun time
together, but not too much fun!
As we were
walking along one of the streets late one afternoon, we looked up in the sky
and noticed that some love smitten man had hired a pilot to leave a message in
the clear blue sky for his love interest to see. The message read in large
smoked filled letters, “I love you
Sarah.”
Other people who
were walking near us were noticing it as well. We all kept gazing at the sky
until the “I love you” message finally disappeared.
Penny was
thinking about how incredibly sweet that was for this man to do. All I was
thinking about was how this was going to make one heck of a sermon illustration
some day!
The timing of
that message in the sky wasn’t lost on me. It was the beginning of Lent and
somebody wrote an “I love you” message in the sky for someone to see. God is
writing an “I love you” message in the sky for each one of us during this time
of year as we reflect on God’s self-giving love through the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
If we open our
eyes, we can see that message of love being written as we journey with Jesus to
the cross and the empty tomb. Jesus is showing us just how much he loves us
through his prayers, his presence, his gifts, his service, and his witness.
And in turn, we
have been discovering what it means to respond to this love through the
offering of our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.
Today, we focus
on how Lent is a time to reflect on God’s gift of love for the world by giving
us the gift of salvation. Jesus was always trying to help people see just how
much God loved them.
Jesus showed us
God’s love in a variety of ways. In our scripture reading today, Jesus uses a
parable to describe just how much God loves us.
We often refer to
this parable as the parable of the Prodigal Son, but it really should be known
as the Parable of the Prodigal Father. You’ll see what I mean as we look at
this parable in greater detail.
Let’s first take
a look at the youngest son in this story.
The story begins with this son abruptly asking his father for his share
of the inheritance and he goes off into the wild blue yonder to live it
up.
And does he
ever! Loaded with cash, he wastes no
time in finding the nearest luxury camel dealer and five star hotel. A dream come true.
But there was just one problem. The money ran out. So he did the only thing he could do, just to
survive.
Irony of ironies,
he lands a low level job feeding pigs, which wouldn’t be a bad thing except
that such a job would be the last job that any self-respecting Jewish person
would ever think of doing.
But hey, what is
a Prodigal to do when the bank is sending overdraft notices every other day in
the mail?
But even this job
wasn’t helping him to survive, because the text says that the pigs’ food was
starting to look pretty good to him. We
are also told that outside of giving him a dirty low level job, nobody in that
country offered to help this guy out.
No
hand-outs. No social services. No United Methodist mission sites. Don’t
expect any hand-outs here.
It’s a hard
lesson for this young man. This isn’t
Israel, where the God of all creation calls upon his people to offer
hospitality to the stranger and the sojourner.
He’s living in a place with different rules. Different values.
There he stands,
leaning against the fence post, watching those pigs make their way to the feed
trough, and he starts thinking about his father, the father he left
behind. “Dad has some hired hands on his farm.
And at least they have something to eat each day.”
So off he heads home.
Rehearsing his speech.
“Dad.
I made a big mistake. I blew the
money you gave me, and now I can’t even feed myself. I know you have every right to send me away
because I’m not worthy to ever be called your son again. But please, let me at least work as one of
your hired hands. Yada, yada, yada.”
Those miles back home must have been some of the longest
miles he had ever walked. It’s funny how
those same miles didn’t feel so long when his pockets were full of fifties and
hundreds. Imagine his hands getting
sweaty and his heart beating faster as he approaches the family farm.
“Will dad even recognize me at first? I’ve lost so much weight. What’s he going to say to me? I need to speak first and tell him that I’m
sorry.”
And then he happens to look up, and in the distance he can’t
believe his eyes.
The scene now
shifts from the son to the father.
What the son sees
is something that very few sons would have ever seen in 1st century
Israel. It’s a picture of a father
running toward him.
No father in the
ancient world would have ever been seen running outside. It was against social custom. It would have been a sign of disgrace and
embarrassment for a father to do such a thing.
And yet, here
this father is running toward him. And not only is he running, but his arms are
open wide and when he reaches his son, he embraces him and gives him a kiss.
As the father
embraces him, this son tries to give the speech he’s been rehearsing the past
several miles, the speech about how he is not worthy to be called his son, and
how he’s sorry for the disgrace he has brought to the family, and then to beg
for his father to include him as one of his hired hands.
No sooner has the
son said these words, that the father is yelling out to have someone quickly
bring a robe – the best robe they have, and to bring a ring – and some
sandals. All symbols of forgiveness,
restoration, and reconciliation.
This part of the
story reminds us of the story of Joseph from the Old Testament, when Joseph
went from being a prisoner who had absolutely nothing to becoming one of
Pharaoh’s top officials.
Remember when
Pharaoh gave Joseph his own ring and gave him garments of fine linen, and put a
gold chain around his neck?
For the Jewish
people, that was a story of restoration.
By God’s grace, Joseph was able to rise to this high position under
Pharaoh, and would later end up saving his own brothers from a severe famine in
the land, the same brothers who had sold him into slavery from the
beginning.
Joseph, who was
lost, was found and restored to his family and his father, Jacob.
Jesus, in telling
the story of the Prodigal Son, is tapping into one of the great truths in the
Bible – that God loves us more than we can ever imagine.
And when someone
is found and brought back to God’s family, there is great rejoicing, the best
party you have ever seen.
After the
Prodigal son returns home, the father spares no expense in celebrating the
homecoming of his son. The fatted calf
is killed. They get the best DJ in town. And before you know it, the party is on.
We heard about
the son who squandered his share of the inheritance, forsaking his family, all
for a brief taste of the good life. This
is why this parable is known as “The Prodigal Son” story.
The word,
“prodigal” means “wasteful.” It means “overly extravagant.”
But this parable
should be known as “The Prodigal Father.”
Talk about being recklessly extravagant!
His youngest son has disgraced the family, depleted the family reserves,
and now has the audacity to return home.
And what does
this father do? He spares no expense in
throwing an outlandish party for his son.
And he evidently doesn’t take into consideration how his oldest son will
respond to this preferential treatment.
What kind of father is this who would go to such extremes?
There’s only one
word to describe this father. He’s just
as reckless as his son. Impulsive. Wasteful.
Extreme. He’s a prodigal father
who gives us a picture of our prodigal heavenly father who will spare no
expense in showing us just how much we are loved.
A couple of years
ago, I attended a wedding brunch at an upscale restaurant with the groomsmen
and the father of the groom. There were probably fifteen of us ordering off the high priced menu. We were all prepared to pay for our own meals, but the father of the groom asked for the waiter to bring one check. He was going to cover it.
As we were
leaving the restaurant, I thanked the father of the groom since I know he had
already helped with a lot of the couple’s wedding expenses. As he started
toward his car, he looked back at me with this great big smile on his face, and
he said,
“I love my son so much. Moments like this
don’t come around very often.”
Jesus didn’t just
tell us this parable to show us how much God loves us. He showed how much God
loves us when he died on the cross for our sins. Jesus was the embodiment of
God’s love for the world.
God gave us the
greatest gift of all when he sent us Jesus. And like the prodigal father in the
story, Jesus offers us his amazing, over-the-top, outlandish, and extravagant
love even though we don’t deserve such love.
This outpouring
of God’s love is at the heart of why we are invited to offer our gifts to
Christ and his church. Our gifts are in response to the reckless and
extravagant love of God.
When we embrace
God’s over-the-top love in our lives, it makes us want to offer our very best
gifts to be a blessing to others. What does it mean to offer our gifts in
response to God’s extravagant love for the world?
I have a friend named, Stan. Stan is a
retired United Methodist pastor who now lives in Michigan. He shared with me
how some folks in his family who aren’t tithers to the church just can’t
understand why he and his wife would even think about giving 10% of their
income to their local church each year.
To them, that money could have been
invested in other ways over the years to make even more money. Stan and his wife see it very
differently. They believe that by being
generous givers to the church, he and his wife, are rich in a different way, a
way that is distinctive and set apart from the rest of the world.
In the eyes of his family, their
commitment to tithing their income and giving 10% of their income to Christ and
the church over all these many years is still viewed as wasteful.
The bible says that they are just being
“prodigal” with their use of money. Prodigal, like a prodigal heavenly Father
who gave everything he had to bring salvation to the world, even his very own
Son, who died on a cross for our sins.
I served a church that was conducting a
large capital campaign, much like the one that we are getting ready to launch
here at our church. Phyllis was a faithful member of that congregation. She
served as the church treasurer for a number of years
During the early part of that capital
campaign, she, along with the other leaders in the church, were invited to write
down on a little piece of paper, an amount that they thought would be a
reasonable amount to give to the campaign over a three-year period. They
weren’t asked to include their name, just the amount they thought they would
probably give to the campaign.
Phyllis told me that she wrote down a
number that she felt was pretty generous. But the more she thought about what
she should give, the more she thought that number needed to be a lot
higher.
As she reflected on her many
blessings, what the church meant to her, how her relationship with Christ was
such an important part of her life, she ended up giving a much higher dollar
amount toward the campaign.
Someone would say that Phyllis was
wasteful. Others would call it, just being “prodigal.”
John
Bunyan, the great Christian writer from the 1600s once said, “A man there was, though some did count him
mad, the more he caste away, the more he had.”
As we prepare for the launch of our
campaign which is only a few weeks away, I invite us to reflect on this story
of the Prodigal Father. What does it
mean for us to put Athens First with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our
service, and our witness?
Let’s
pray the prayer we have been invited to pray during this season of Lent. It’s
found in your bulletin.
Dear God, what would you do through me to accomplish your
will in my church? Amen.
