[Sermon Archive] - [Weekly Devotional Guide]
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This Week's Sermon The Fourth Sunday in Lent 18 March 2007 "The Father's Joy"
Soli Deo Gloria!
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This Week's Sermon The Fourth Sunday in Lent 18 March 2007 "The Father's Joy"
Soli Deo Gloria!
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It seems like a more and more common occurrence in our society that a distraught father goes on TV and pleads with all who will listen to help bring home a lost son or daughter. Just a few days ago, the father of a missing Georgia boy, Christopher Barrios, Sr., pleaded:
"Please bring my baby . . . anything you know . . . whatever . . . just relay it. Just help out and if you know somebody who's done something to my son, just turn him in, you know . . . I miss my son. I'm ready for him to come home. I don't know where he is and I wish I knew where to start looking for him, you know, but I don't and it's heartbreaking" [FoxNews.com, March 14, 2007].The story has ended sadly as the body of the boy was found just a few days ago. Parents of runaway teenage children plead for their sons and daughters to come home. They hope that the children will come to their senses and return home.
Lost sons and daughters cause parents unimaginable heartache. No matter what, the parents want these children back with them. It is where they belong. In some instances children were taken against their will by sexual predators, but in our Gospel reading we have a people who have deliberately wandered away from their heavenly Father. What occasioned this most well-known parable of Jesus? Listen to the opening words of the Gospel reading again:
"Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."" (Luke 15:1-2, ESV)Three parables follow those words, the first one the parable of the lost sheep, the second the parable of the lost coin, and the third, which most people know as the parable of the prodigal son. Yet, the parable is not really about the son who is the prodigal, but it is about the father.
There is a marvelous painting by Bartolomè Esteban Murillo [1667-70] entitled Return of the Prodigal Son. In the painting this son and the father are the focus. The son is dirty and dressed in rags and hardly dares to look at his father, but the father, dressed in his finery, has reached out to embrace this dirty, smelly son. The expression on the father's face is one of utter joy. His eyes are bright and wide. A smile has crept across his face. He is reaching down to embrace this lost son. Off to the side the servants have brought the festive robe and other items. The servants have a puzzled, yet pleased look on their faces. Off to the other side a servant boy is leading the calf to the kitchen with another servant who wields an axe with which to slaughter the calf. In the background stands the older son, the brother, whose facial expression reveals his displeasure at his brother's return. A picture here is worth a thousand words.
Front and center is the father. He is the center of the action, and why not? In the parable the father is God the Father in heaven. Through Christ he has called the lost sinners of Israel to come back to the Father. Amazingly, these people described as "lost," as in "lost and condemned persons," are found by Christ. Tax collectors and other sinners were people whose notorious lifestyle had made them outcasts in Jewish society. We would include those whose actions keep landing them on the front pages of the tabloids because of their outrageous immoral behavior.
At times, we have been this prodigal son. We have wandered far away from our Father's home.
"I have lived as if God did not matter and as if I mattered most."We have lived selfishly without regard to our Father and others. We have simply been consumed with ourselves. Getting what we consider to be "ours" has been all that has mattered. We have lived in "a far country." We have flaunted our Father's Law and shoved it back into his face. We have been openly disobedient. We can identify with the prodigal son in his open defiance of his father because we have often lived in that kind of open defiance, of doing what we want to do and not what God wants us to do.
At times we have been this older brother. We have not lived an openly sinful life. We have sinned secretly. We have lived so that others can see our so-called righteousness. We have been like the motorist who drives the speed limit when he knows that the State Police are nearby, but who speeds when he thinks nobody is watching. We have acted hypocritically, hoping to fool our heavenly Father into thinking that we are righteous, certainly more righteous than our prodigal brothers and sisters.
What does the father want to do to these two sons? Is it his desire to punish them? Nowhere does Jesus give us the idea that God the Father delights to punish his children. Throughout this Lenten season we have heard over and over that God does not desire our death because of sin, but that he wants us to repent so that we do not perish [Third Sunday in Lent, Luke 13.1-9]. God wills our repentance. In their rebellion-both sons are in rebellion against their father, though in outwardly different ways-they have resented their father. Yet, the younger son, when he has reached the end of his rope, resolves to go home, confess that he has sinned against God and his father, and plead with his father to be treated as the lowliest slave. From the highest place in the home to the lowest is what he will accept because his life has gotten so bad.
The older son simply does not recognize that he is in rebellion. He deceives himself and the truth is not in him. He does not confess his sin. He fails to recognize his sin. What is more, he resents his father's mercy to his younger brother. He despises both of them, his brother for his sins, and his father for his weakness in not punishing the younger brother.
This is the reason that the parable is really about the father, the reason that Murillo has him at the center of his painting: the parable tells us what kind of heavenly father we have. What does the father want to do to these two sons? He wants to forgive them! He wants to restore them! That is God's will for you, too. He delights to forgive. Our heavenly Father also wants to forgive you. He wants you to come to him in confession so that he may forgive you. He doesn't want to punish you. If that happens, it will be your fault because it is not his will to do that, but if you stay away from him, then your punishment will be your own doing. In the rite of Private Confession, the penitent approaches the pastor and says:
"Pastor, please hear my confession and pronounce forgiveness in order to fulfill God's will.""To fulfill God's will!" God wills to forgive you, and this he does for the sake of Christ. Jesus was gathering these lost sons and daughters and was receiving them. For this act of mercy Jesus was severely criticized by the Pharisees and scribes, these older sons who could not see the need to repent.
The younger son had rehearsed what he would say to his father. He would confess and then he would plead to be treated like a slave, but that never happens. On what basis does the father forgive this younger son? On the basis of his promises to do better? No. On the basis of his earning his way back into the father's good graces? No. He cuts him off after he confesses! He does not put him on parole. The father forgives him out of his own grace and mercy. The father suffers in himself the punishment that these two sons deserve! He absorbs it all himself. He does not extract any payment from them. Indeed, how could this younger son repay everything that he had wasted? Our heavenly Father acts like this father in the parable. He has laid on Christ "the iniquity of us all" [Is. 53]. The Father does not set up parole for our rebellion, but he offers up his only-begotten Son instead, this innocent Son who has done no wrong, who has kept the will of the Father perfectly. HIM he punishes in our place! It is pure mercy, pure grace, pure love.
I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord,Did you hear those words, "lost and condemned?" Did you hear also "with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death?" That's what it cost your heavenly Father to bring you back to himself. He simply does not pretend that there is no payment because there is. In the parable the Father disgraces himself in the eyes of all because he takes this prodigal son back. He disgraces himself by not punishing the older son for his rebellious hatefulness.
who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death,
that I may be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness,
just as he is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.
This is most certainly true.
"That I may be his own, and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness." Did you hear those words, too? That's restoration! That's what your heavenly Father wants for you and for every other sinner in this world. This is what happens when he gets you back through Holy Baptism. St. Ambrose said:
"Rise and run to the church. Here is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He who hears you pondering in the secret places of the mind runs to you. When you are still far away, he sees you and runs to you. He sees in your heart. He runs, perhaps someone may hinder, and he embraces you. His foreknowledge is in the running, his mercy in the embrace and the disposition of fatherly love. He falls on your neck to raise one prostrate and burdened with sins and bring back one turned aside to the earthly toward heaven. Christ falls on your neck to free your neck from the yoke of slavery and hang his sweet yoke upon your shoulders." [Ambrose. Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 7.229-30. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Luke.250].
But in coming to him as this younger son has, with nothing but shame and hoping only for mercy, you shall indeed find the Father's welcome. You shall find again his embrace and his kiss. And you'll find it every time you return to him in true repentance and faith. You'll find it through the one whom the Father has placed here to speak forgiveness and restoration to you in Holy Absolution. You'll find it also as his appointed servant distributes into your mouth the true body and blood of Christ himself.
At the end of the parable of the lost sheep Jesus said:
"Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." (Luke 15:7, ESV)And at the end of the parable of the lost coin Jesus said:
"Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents." (Luke 15:10, ESV)The lost son has returned and what does this father do? Lay down all sorts of conditions for the lost son to observe? Does he give him more restrictions? The younger son thought that would happen and he is even ready to accept that punishment in exchange for being home. But it does not happen. Something unexpected happens. The Father begins to celebrate! He is so happy to have this wayward son home alive and well that celebrate is all that he can do. He doesn't put the son on parole, sternly warning him not to do it again, but he dresses the son in all of the clothing of an honored guest! He puts the best robe on him and puts the signet ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. And he slays the fattened calf in a celebration so grand that it defies description. There is joy in this Father's heart and eyes. He smiles on his son, now restored to full sonship. Everything the Father does he does in celebration that he has his son back. The wayward son has been absolved, and the father's absolution means that the past has been forgotten.
Isn't that exactly what God the Father does for you? Doesn't he receive you again for the sake of Christ? Doesn't he absolve you? And if he absolves you, it means that he no longer remembers your sins. He no longer brings them to his remembrance. So it is that the prophet Isaiah comforts you with these words:
". . . for you have cast all my sins behind your back." (Isaiah 38:17, ESV)The prophet Micah tells you what God does with your sins:
"He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea." (Micah 7:19, ESV)In Christ your sins are put behind God's back where he no longer gazes on them or remembers them. In Christ your sins are cast into the depths of the sea where they can no longer be retrieved or seen or remembered. There remains only the joy of the Father's forgiveness through Christ.
And the celebration continues every Sunday as we celebrate the feast of salvation, this Sacrament of Christ's body and blood. Here you are fed heavenly food. Here you receive once again the Father's forgiveness through his only begotten Son, Jesus. Here Jesus receives you and eats and drinks with you. Here is fellowship with the Father in heaven. Here is fellowship with your fellow forgiven sinners. Here you enjoy the Father's lavish kindness and mercy. Join in "The Father's Joy!"
How wonderfully the hymnwriter summarizes for us [Today Your Mercy Calls Us, LSB 917]:
2 Today Your gate is open,
And all who enter in
Shall find a Father's welcome
And pardon for their sin.
The past shall be forgotten,
A present joy be giv'n,
A future grace be promised,
A glorious crown in heav'n.3 Today our Father calls us;
His Holy Spirit waits;
His blessèd angels gather
Around the heav'nly gates.
No question will be asked us
How often we have come;
Although we oft have wandered,
It is our Father's home.Text and Music: Public domain