The Prodigal

That's pretty good. Thanks. When Hans just a moment ago talked about running away from God and being on a mission from God, I did happen to watch The Blues Brothers a couple of weeks ago. You remember that great film where nothing can stop them because they're on a mission from God.

Trying to come up with the title for tonight, I did think about the title Home and Away, you know that magnificent piece of Australian drama that helped Kate Richie gain a Gold Logie. I just checked on my phone a minute ago and it's run for 38 seasons, which I suspect it was running before some of you were born. But in fact, it's kind of the wrong title, Home and Away. It's kind of back to front. It should really be Away and Home. In fact, everything in this passage that Jesse read is kind of back to front. It's not the way you expect things to go. I did consider maybe we should start the service with the end and work our way to the beginning. That could be fun, couldn't it? I could walk in backwards, and Hans could finish with the welcome right at the end, because tonight everything is back to front compared to what you might think.

This is a super well-known story that Jesus told, and I want to suggest to you that this little parable Jesus told will turn upside down and back to front everything that we naturally think about God. God actually wants to tell us something tonight. Especially, he wants to overturn all those dull and boring ideas of a God who is only interested in law and order, who is only interested in marking your books, who is only interested in giving you what you deserve. And so, in a way, this passage is a little bit like a bomb which you might sort of hear ticking, and if it goes off, it will destroy all your misconceptions about God. And as the dust settles, you might catch a glimpse of the God who treats people with almost extravagant love and grace, almost scandalous generosity. So extraordinary is this God.

That's a bit of a challenge. Let's pray that God would help us to do that. Heavenly Father, we pray that as we come to the things that Jesus said, that we might have the ability to see really what he's saying and to maybe change our preconceptions about you and what you're like. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The passage is there, it's on page 1035 of the Red Bibles, if you've got it there, but if you haven't, that's okay. I'm going to take you through it. It begins in verse 11. Jesus says: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them".

We're introduced to a father and two sons, and it's the youngest son who says, "Give me." That's like his slogan, that's his war cry: "Give me". He wants his father to give him a share of his estate. Now, in our culture, that would be fairly bad. Imagine going up to your father and saying, "Dad, look, you're looking frighteningly healthy at the moment. I could do with a little more cash. What about you sell off the backyard, give me the money? With medical science, you know, you could live for 70 or 80 or 90 years, and by the time you drop off the perch, I'm really not going to be in any shape to use that money".

Now, in our culture that would be pretty bad, but back in that culture, it would have been much worse. It would have been inconceivable. In that culture, it would have been like going up to your father and saying, "I wish you were dead". Jesus picks here the most horrendous act imaginable. It's not like the son wants a little bit of freedom. It's not like he's saying, "Hey, I want to set up my own business and I want to go off on my own. I'm hoping he could sponsor me here, the bank of mom and dad that kind of thing". He couldn't care less about the father, it's pretty obvious.

As soon as he gets the chance, he goes away and liquidates the lot, sells it, runs as far away from his father as he can. Doesn't want to know the father, doesn't want to live in the father's house, doesn't want to live under the father's authority or love. "Give me"—that's all he's interested in. I reckon this is one of the best descriptions you'll ever find of the word sin. It's either a nasty word or a naughty word today, we kind of laugh at it and things like that. But what it's doing here is it's actually a declaration of independence from God. It's a declaration of independence, but it's a bit more nasty than that because it still wants to use the resources that God gives.

Although God provides the food and the vegetables and the meat in terms of animals, and the water and the sunshine, the oxygen for photosynthesis to give us the things we need, we still kind of go, "Look, aren't we so clever? Aren't we clever the way we've made ourselves and the way we've made this whole society that supplies what we need".

You can kind of imagine this son, can't you? He's down in Egypt or wherever, and he's driving around in his GT Camel, or his Camel M3 with twin overhead door handles, picking up these impressive ladies and saying to them, "My daddy paid for this". No, I don't think he would have. I think he would have been pretending it was all him. He doesn't really care what the father thinks. He doesn't say, "What would the father like? What would warm the father's heart?". His whole attitude is summed up in the words, "Give me".

Throughout the story, the father represents God. That's fairly clear. It's a parable, it's this representation here. And it's the same with us: unless God makes a radical change in us, we frankly don't really care what God wants. And this man here, the young man, the son, is kind of all shriveled up in his own selfishness and turned in on himself.

So what he does is he heads off to the big city and he has a good time. And the Bible's pretty honest about this. It says it is possible to live independently of God for a while, and it might be fun for a while. But for this man, this young man, it all suddenly falls apart. There's a famine, there's an economic downturn, whatever you want to call it. He loses his money, and once he loses his money, his friends disappear—the so-called friends. And he's got no work, and he's hungry. The only job he can find is feeding pigs.

Now, I'm told that's not actually a bad job; I don't think I would like to do that particularly, but I'm told pigs are very clean animals apparently. But you've got to understand this religious connotation to this because this is a young Jewish boy, and here he is, and his job is to feed the pigs. And pigs, in their system of thinking, are unclean animals. So there's religious significance to his predicament. This kid's kind of hit rock bottom; there's nowhere else he can go.

He's hungry, he's thirsty, he doesn't have a lot of money anymore. It says he's like a servant to some particularly non-Jewish group of people. He's hit rock bottom, and Jesus says he comes to his senses. And he remembers something. That's often what happens when you come to your senses—you recall something which is a moment of salience when you realize something about your past that's significant. And he remembers that back at his house with his father, even the servants have food to spare. That's how generous his father is. His dad is so generous that even the servants have extra food.

And he thinks to himself, maybe what I can do is I can go back and be a servant. Maybe my father will allow me just to be one of his slaves. Now, how will the father treat him? It's hard for us because we know the answer, right? We are familiar with the story, we know the answer, and so we're a bit immune from the answer. But just for a moment, try and forget about the answer. From the setup, how should the father treat him? [The son] couldn't care less about the father. [He] only wanted the money his father had. He ran off when he could. He spent everything that his father gave him. He's been really unspeakable, hasn't he?. And you know, in real life, it's pretty hard to come back to that situation. It's not easy in real life to come back if you burn bridges behind you.

So what's the father's reception going to be? This is magnificent. Look at verse 20: "While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him".

Ever wondered how the father saw his son from such a way off? He must have been looking. I could imagine every day he would go out, stand on the veranda of his house, and look out and wait and wait to see whether his son might come back. And perhaps one day he's there on the veranda, and he sees way in the distance a figure badly decomposed coming down the road towards him, and he realizes it's his son.

And what is the emotional response of the father? It says in the text the father is filled with compassion. It's the word there in the original for being like moved in your guts, filled with compassion. It's the word that refers to the sort of sorrow when you see the way someone has really damaged themselves. And it's not just a little bit of compassion and a bit of, "Huh, I knew he'd come back, I knew that self-centered little brat would come sniveling back." No. There's no anger, there's no bitterness. There is just compassion. And he runs to him.

This is something a Middle Eastern man would never do. Middle Eastern men are very dignified; they walk very smooth and quiet and slow. A Middle Eastern man, especially dignified, they would never run. And yet that's what he does.

He runs to him, and he throws his arms around him and kisses him. And you see what this is saying to us: God is so overwhelmed with joy and excitement when even the most self-centered person comes back to him, even if it's just because they've got no other options.

And the son starts to make a speech about what a rat he's been, and the father cuts right across it. In verse 22: "Quick! Get the best robe and put it on him, get a ring for his finger, get sandals for his feet. Kill the fatted calf". That's something you would do if royalty turned up at your house—the very best animal we've got. We're going to have a feast.

It's a beautiful picture of God, isn't it? Sometimes it's hard to believe it, but dare to believe it. This is the grace of God, which is scandalous; it's extravagant. Jesus is painting for us a picture of God, a portrait of God, which is just beautiful. In fact, the only place you see a better picture of God, a more beautiful picture of God, the only time you find that is when you see what God had to go through to welcome people like us, people like this son.

It's when Jesus goes to the cross—that's what God had to do to welcome people like us. And Jesus pays so that we can be welcomed and embraced. That's the way God treats people when they come home. It's a lovely picture of God who treats people with almost scandalous generosity when they turn back to him. God is not interested in your performance; he's interested in you. That is the wonderful message of the Gospel, the good news. If you think you're a bit of a loser, if you think you're a bit of a lost cause, you are just his cup of tea. God has sent his only Son so that you can be welcomed and embraced. He delights in forgiveness and mercy.

And the message is clear, isn't it, that you need to come home. Sometimes that's not always easy to do, to come home, because it assumes you've been away, and we don't like the thought of being away. And it's not easy to admit that you're away or to admit that you're in the far country—a long, long way away from the Father. It's not easy, but you need to know that God welcomes you no matter what.

I heard a story which I'm going to relate to you, a story that came out of South America, came out of Brazil. I'm just going to say this to finish. There was a little village in Brazil, and in that village lived a woman called Maria and her daughter Christina. Christina was about 18, and she was pretty bored with life in the village; it was not the most exciting place. And she wanted to go to Rio, the great capital city of Brazil—bright lights, excitement. And her mother said, "Don't go, don't go". And one morning she left.

Days led to weeks, and her mother heard nothing from her. So her mother decided, "I'm going to go after her". The mother, Maria, got together all the money she had and she bought a bus ticket to go to Rio. While she waited for the bus, she went into one of those photo labs and took hundreds of photos of herself. She got to Rio. She spent a few days looking for her daughter. She ran out of money, but before she left, she put up these pictures of herself all around the city, and in some of the sleaziest places you could imagine in Rio.

And as it turns out, Christina had gone downhill from bad to worse. She'd run out of money. She was hungry, and you'll do anything to get money when you're hungry. For Christina, that little village seemed very attractive. And one morning she walked down the stairs of this sleazy hotel that she was staying in, and she saw on the notice board this photograph of her mother. And the image burned into her. She picked it up off the notice board and she turned it over, and on the back it simply said this: "Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn't matter. Please come home".

And she did. It's a good story, isn't it? But much, much more wonderfully, isn't that what God is saying to us in this story? "Whatever you've done, whatever you become, it doesn't matter. Please come home". It's the story of the prodigal, maybe the most famous story Jesus ever told. "Whatever you've done, whatever you become, doesn't matter. Please come home".

Why don't we pray? Let's pray. Our God, we find it hard not to misunderstand you. We find it hard to grasp your amazing grace easily. And we ask tonight that you would convince us of this, enable us to be renewed by this knowledge of how kind and generous and reckless your grace is towards us, and that being grasped by this, we would be changed.

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