Sermon delivered by the Rev. Cristina Rathbone
Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ”
The Prodigal Son
It is one of the all time great stories in the Gospel, The Prodigal Son. Countless books and poems have been based on it through the ages, by both secular and religious writers, great paintings have been made depicting it – most famously of course, by Rembrandt, and, more modestly, every time I read it I am moved almost to tears…
It was only this past week, however, that I noticed the prologue to the story, the reason Jesus told it in the first place. Listen:
“Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near to listen to (Jesus). And the Pharisees and the Scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable…”
Once again, it seems, the pious, upstanding, and well-respected religious folks were complaining because Jesus spent ongoing and real time with people in the world who were openly and obviously NOT righteous or pious or well respected.
It’s a scene that plays out over and over again in the gospels. Squabbles about the type of people Jesus chose to surround himself with are recorded in both Mark and Matthew, and in Luke alone there are four separate stories about times in which Jesus is criticized for eating with sinners. This habit Jesus had of spending time with people most of the respectable world avoided was clearly something that rankled the religious authorities, and must also have been something that was central enough to who Jesus was as a teacher and leader and healer for the Gospel writers to record it over and over again.
It wasn’t occasional, in other words, this spending time with ‘the unclean’. Nor was it random, or by chance. So why did Jesus do it? I mean with all the good people of Israel to choose from, why did he intentionally spend so much time with those who were visibly broken, or fallen, or cast out, or – in one way or another – somehow failed?
Well, Jesus himself gives us the answer. In the gospel of Mark, after the Scribes and the Pharisees again ask why he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, he says, straightforwardly: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
I’ll read that again.
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
It’s the same with the story of the prodigal son too, right? The father has two sons – both of whom he loves. One, the older, is upstanding. The other, the younger, is a disaster. The older works hard in the fields, doing all he should, while the younger fritters away his inheritance on fast living and nonsense. Again, the father loves them both – adores them both – but when the wastrel, the younger one, finally comes to his senses and returns, full of regret and remorse and shame-filled repentance, the older one responds not with joy or relief but with bitterness and anger, and jealousy most of all of his father’s exuberant welcome.
Which of these is the sinner? The one whose faults are visible and known by all – including himself? Or the one who believes he is mostly doing things right and so has no need of help or a handout from anyone?
Both is the answer – don’t you think? Both the wastrel and the proud son are sinners, which is to say both the wastrel and the proud son are in need of tender mercy and love and embrace and welcome and hope. The difference between them then, these two brothers, isn’t that one is a sinner and the other is not. The difference is only that one knows he is a sinner; knows it with every bone in his body; knows it so deeply he can’t even bring himself to look at his father, or to claim him as father even; knows it enough to ask only that he be allowed back into the house as a servant. He is sick, through and through, he knows — and so he falls at the doctor’s feet and begs for help.
And the other? Well the other believes he is not sick at all, that on the contrary he is well and correct and upstanding. He believes he has done all he should do – and now all he needs is what is his by right. He needs no help he is convinced. And so he turns away from his father and his healing love, and even when his father comes running out to plead with him to return, just as he ran out to celebrate the return of his brother, he says – from the height of his righteousness – only: No.
And this, in the end, is what separates him from his father – not his father’s too abundant love for his wayward brother, as he believes (his father has more than enough love for them both), but his own lack of acknowledgement that he too needs that love – that he is as broken and lost and scared as his brother is – except on the inside.
And isn’t it the same with most of us too? I mean, aren’t we all riddled with brokenness of one kind or another – with greed, or fear, or lust, or anger, or resentment, or pride? It’s just part of the way we are made, I think, part of being human, part of being fallible, part of being finite and insufficient and afraid and lost a lot of the time. Because the truth is, I think, that we’re all a bit of a mess, deep down. Which means that Jesus’ deep and abiding love for the messy ones, like the father’s deep and abiding love for his prodigal son, is not some kind of dividing tactic, separating those who are floundering from those who are fine. Instead, it is a simple expression of God’s universal love for us all, just as we are. But God can no more work with those of us who refuse to acknowledge our need, than a doctor can cure a person who refuses to acknowledge he must become a patient.
Jesus wants to sit with and to welcome and ultimately to heal the Scribes and the Pharisees every bit as much as he wants to sit with and welcome and ultimately heal the world’s more obvious sinners. But they refuse to come in that’s the thing — to come in as sick ones I mean, to come in with humility and a shared sense of frailty with those whose brokenness and need for healing is not more real, but only more visible.
And so, in the end, it is they who lose out –just like the older brother who also looks down and measures and judges his younger sibling. He too is beloved of the father of course – beloved and more than that — heir to all he owns, but his pride cuts him off from the great, healing celebration of love and return that is life in the heart of the father. It’s so sad – isn’t it? And so unnecessary! Because mercy and the healing and new life that it brings is right here, open and available to all of us who believe we might need it. It is what Jesus came for — he tried to explain this to us every way he knew how, through his actions and his words and the company he kept and the stories he told and, most powerfully of course, through his death on a cross as well. The fact is there is no sin that is too big to be forgiven entirely and forever by the One we adore. No sin of commission, no sin of omission, no sin in broad daylight, no sin under cover of night.
We have nothing to be afraid of then – right? What was it Jesus said again? Oh yes…. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”