by The Rev. Dr. Max Lynn
SCRIPTURE READINGS 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Transcribed from the sermon preached on MARCH 27, 2022
The Pharisees and scribes were grumbling because tax collectors and sinner were coming near to listen to Jesus. So Jesus riffs off three parables. The parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the prodigal son.
In each case a person loses something, then finds it, then invites others to celebrate with them.
This parable is so amazing because. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we look like, we might find ourselves in any of the three positions.
Now if you come in this morning feeling like you jumped ship on those who loved you, acted despicably, selfishly, and it went wrong, and you lost yourself. If you are wondering whether or not you should dare to come in, show your face, and you are just hoping to get a scrap for your soul, then you are like the prodigal son. You are not alone. It is highly probable that a great number of us have been in that spot. Down and out with our heads between our legs, ashamed of our behavior and the consequences.
Now part of the story is that the prodigal son recognizes and admits his situation. We have to face what we have done enough to decide perhaps we ought to come back. But know this, God is not waiting for you to get all the way back. God comes out to us, joyous at our return. Basically, Jesus is stoked that tax collectors and sinners are edging in closer to listen to him.
And he is calling the Pharisees and Sadducees the stuck-up older brother. Now the problem with those of us who have read or listened the New Testament is that the Pharisees and Sadducees become the fall guys, the folks who are always blowing it, so we tend not to identify with them. But there is an identifying characteristic that jumps labels. Self-righteousness.
John Ortberg said, “One of the hardest things in the world is to stop being the prodigal son without turning into the elder brother.”
So, for instance if the Pharisees and Sadducees decided to come in and hear the word, we Christians might be tempted to be upset and look down on them. How dare they come in here. Of course, that is exactly what Anti-Semitism has done. Christianity, the little wayward brother of Judaism comes back home and discovers God’s gracious love and forgiveness, then decides to get back at his self-righteous big brother who wouldn’t come to the party. He gets on twitter: look at my big brother trying to come to my party all late, he is such a self-righteous excluder. Shame on him. Get lost big brother.
No that is not grace. When we receive God’s gracious love, we are a new creation. The perspective of those of us in the Church should always be that it is not our Church, it is God’s Church. God loves us. God comes out to us and throws a robe around us. Come on in, let’s have a party. You may not have been around for a while, but all the more reason to be excited at your presence. Now if e have known we are loved and have been around a while, we are ambassadors for Christ.
Matthew Henry wrote: “The prodigal came home between hope and fear, fear of being rejected and hope of being received; but his father was not only better to him than his fears, but better to him than his hopes.
The amazing thing about grace is that it is more than justice, more than what is fair. If received and understood, then we want to extend it to others. We go from position of the son to the father. We receive grace and see how powerful it is. Not only do we want to live a good life, a responsible life where we do what we say we are going to do and give what is expected, we want it to spill over, we want to extend the love that has been extended to us, to love as we have been loved, extravagantly. We want to be ambassadors of grace.
But the origin of grace is always beyond us. It goes through us, fills us up and spills over, but it is not ours. Even the ability to give and extend grace is a gift.
I saw this amazing movie on Prime on Friday Night called Mully. It is a dramatized documentary of Charles Mully. Mully grows up in a very poor family in Kenya. His father is an unemployed drunk who beats his mother. One day Mully wakes up and his family has left him. Now orphaned at age six he makes his way to Nairobi and becomes one of the hundred thousand orphans begging on the streets. He is starving. One day someone brings him into a prayer meeting, feeds him and prays with him. Work hard, have faith and God will be with you, the guy says. So he goes down to the rich part of town and goes door to door asking for work. Everywhere he is rejected. Finally, a woman takes him in as a maid and gardener. Eventually the woman gets her businessman husband to promote him and soon he is in charge of 80 workers. Mully saves some money and decides to go into the taxi business. He drives a taxi and gets another and another until he has a whole fleet of buses. He goes into the tire business, then the insurance business, the real estate business and then into distribution of oil and gas, becoming one of the richest men in the whole country.
Then one day he is in the bad part of town and some street kids ask him for money to watch his car. He refuses and goes on his way. He comes back and his car is stolen. He has many other cars so he gets another one and drives aimlessly until finally he has a break down. Parked by the side of the road he starts crying. He realizes he has switched from the role of the prodigal son to the older brother. God, tell me what you want me to do?
He talks to his wife Esther and decides he will stop working in business so he can help the street kids. They take in a few children, then a few more, and pretty soon it is chaos. They have so many they have to build housing and a school. He starts taking the kids to church, but the kids are hustlers and prostitutes. Everyone thinks he has gone insane, so the church elders vote to kick him and the kids out. Now Charles and Esther are the father and mother and the church is the older brothe.
They don’t have enough space for all the kids, so they move 4 hours into the dry wilderness, just during the time of a big drought. They make two different attempt to have a company come out and drill wells with no luck. The kids start to get typhoid from drinking bad water. Also they are running out of money. Finally, one night he has a vision and he and Esther walk out to a spot and God tells them to dig.
Since they had already had a giant drill attempt it, nobody wants to dig, so he gets his own sons to dig. Eventually they run into solid rock and ask their dad what to do. He says, God told me there would be water there so keep digging. Now they are pounding on rock with picks, barely making progress. Then one day pop, out springs water from the rock, enough water not only for drinking, but also for agriculture and fish farms and trees.
They develop an orphanage for 1,000 orphans. There is a lot more to the story, more than a few prodigal fathers out there and a couple of prodigal mothers, too but for our purposes, his prodigal father eventually writes him a letter saying he needs to see him. His father is in debt to the village, and they ask Mully what they want him to do with him. He says, do whatever you want. So, they start to beat his father. And for a moment he thinks, this is just what he deserves, this is justice after beating my mom all those years. But finally he can’t take it and tells them to stop. He pays his father’s debt. Eventually his father repents and stops drinking.
And here is the other kicker, the church changes its mind and welcomes the whole Mully family back, including the orphans. But don’t you know this, it was Mully who was the one to forgive the church. It was God who welcomed the people who called themselves the church back into the Church of Jesus Christ.
Let that sink in. Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.