St Luke 15:11-32/Micah 7:18-20/1 Peter 5:6-11
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
It is a story about grace; about the radical nature of Christ’s saving Gospel. This parable is less about the prodigal son or his older brother and more about the extravagant mercy and love of their father. And in this way the parable is not so much about you – whether you are the younger or the older son, for in truth you are both – but this parable is about God the Father and His underserved mercy shown to you in His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
Let’s be clear: initially both sons have it wrong; both misunderstand the nature of son-ship. To be sure, the younger son is an insolent little brat who wishes his father dead so as to claim the inheritance, to which he presumes he is entitled. He is not. His father owes him nothing. The older son is not guiltless, though. He measures his position in the family by his obedience to his father.
But son-ship comes neither by entitlement nor by merit. To be a son is to receive grace; it is to live in the love of the Father. It is written, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved (Eph 1:3-6).
And this outrageous reality of the Father’s love is sadly misunderstand in this parable. Jesus tells it in the broader context of two other parables: the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin; and this, the Prodigal Son. They are a triptych, of sorts. A three-tiered panel used by artists to depict three aspects of the life and work of Christ and His Church.
A famous one, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder during the Reformation, hangs over the altar at St Mary’s Lutheran Church in Wittenberg; Luther’s congregation. One panel shows several of the reformers at a baptism. Another the Last Supper. The center panel is that recognizable work of Luther on one side preaching, the congregation on the other hearing, and a giant crucifix between them, to which Luther is pointing and the hearers’ ears are fixed. This is what the Church is to be about: the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins by the death and resurrection of Christ.
And so these three parables – the sheep, the coin, and the prodigal – they highlight this work of Christ and His Church. For the parable of the Lost Sheep is about the Shepherd, Christ Jesus, who searches diligently for the one who went astray. Indeed the solitary sheep represents us, astray in our sin, isolated and alone, separated from the safety of the Good Shepherd and His flock, which is the Church.
But Christ mercifully and in love seeks out the bleating, helpless creature. She could not return on her own, she could not find her Shepherd. Yet indeed she knows His voice; so that when He calls she will follow. Thus Christ carries the fearful lamb on His shoulders, even as He shouldered your sin to the Cross, and brings her home to the safety of the flock and the joy of Himself and the other shepherds. So it is, says Jesus, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance.
And the parable of the Lost Coin is about the Church. The woman who lights the lamp of the Word, the light of the Gospel, and searches for all that are rightfully hers because they belong to the Bridegroom who is Christ. Again, you are that coin; more than a mere days wage, you are worth the priceless blood of Christ, with which He bought you; that is, ransomed and redeemed you. And so the recovery of the lost coin means joy and faithfulness. Just so, says our Lord, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Either panel on the sides, now the center.
And He said, “There was a man who had two sons.” And those two sons are standing before our Lord: the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling that He eats with tax collectors and sinners. They trusted in their own righteousness; in their status. They are the ninety-nine who need no repentance. But the tax collectors and sinners are the lost coins, the repentant sinners, who are found by Christ and by Holy Mother Church, over whom all heaven rejoices, and they feast with Christ at His great banquet.
And the argument is made that Jesus, the only Son from heaven, the true Son of the Father, is squandering His gifts; wasting them on tax collectors and sinners, on the outcast and rejected. But the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
So it is that the father in our parable divides his property between his sons and gives each their share. He grants the rude request of his younger son, for he knows that it will not bring him joy. This is a father who knows his sons; who knows how to discipline them. Moreover, he trusts that their heavenly Father who loves them and cares for them, will protect them, even when they wander far from home.
We lose sleep at night, not knowing why our children do the foolish things they do. Well we do know: it is sin. After all, dads, they are your children, you gave them life; and so they inherited your sin, on down from their first father, Adam. And just as Adam rebelled against God, so do we, and so do our children rebel against their earthly fathers, too. Like father, like son.
Indeed it is no different in the Church. How many children have been baptized here, given life by water and Word from this font, only to grow up and abandon the true Father and Mother, our Lord and His Church? They journey off, sometimes into delusion, sometimes into total unbelief, even while you sit here, as the father in the parable, praying for their return. This is why some say it is a waste of time and energy, of love, to catechize and instruct our children, to bring them to the Lord’s house to receive His gifts, to raise them in fear and admonition of the Lord. For they just leave. They squander it in the world.
But still our heavenly Father gives. This is the nature of God, He is the Giver who gives. Not because you have deserved it, not because you are somehow better than the prodigal, or better than those who have been baptized, but have wandered off. We are not. But your place in the house, your place at the table is not earned or merited. It is given by grace; by the mercy of the Father. Like Father, like Son.
Thus do we commend our erring brothers and sisters in Christ, our own dear children who have wandered off and squandered their inheritance, to the mercy of our Father, praying that He would use us to call them home. For that is what the younger son eventually realized; he knew he ought to go home, to return to the house of his father. It was when he hit bottom, when he wanted to eat the pigs’ slop, that he came to his senses. He remembered the mercy of his father and determined to go home.
But he still didn’t quite get it. He wanted to come back, but he thought he had to make a deal.
And this is how it is with those who have gone away from the Church, who have journeyed far from their Father’s House. They want to return; they desire to come back. But they think they have to make a deal; that they have to earn their spot back.
Have you not tried to do the same? Your absence from this place does not go unnoticed. And while you were gone for a time, sowing your wild oats, turning your back on your Father who gave you life, did you not feel the desire that you ought to come back, you ought to return to your Father? But in shame you thought you had to make a deal. You thought you had to get right with God before you could come home. You thought you had to earn your place at the table.
But it is not so. For here is the Father. And He is giving, continually giving out the good gifts of His love and forgiveness, His mercy and life. Welcoming home prodigals like you. For He who made you His children in the womb of Holy Baptism, calls you to come up here and eat the grown-up food; to take your place at the Table. And it is true that we wait to long to give the grown-up food to our children; withholding from them for too long that which is actually children’s bread.
Yet that is not our Father’s hindrance, but ours. He desires to give. And He gives freely. No deals. No string attached.
And so you come, falling on your knees and saying, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. And truer words could never be spoken. You are not worthy to be called sons; just as the prodigal was not worthy. But the God of all grace, the Father of all mercy, has given His own Son to die for you. And baptized into His death and resurrection, He makes you sons. Not by any merit or worthiness in you, but by His fatherly, divine, goodness and mercy.
For here, dear children, in the Absolution, He puts the robe on you once more; the baptismal robe of Christ’s righteousness. He embraces you in His forgiving love and welcomes you to the Table once more. No deals. No penance. No probation period.
For Christ Jesus, the only Son of the Father, is that fattened calf who has been slaughtered on your behalf. He went out from His Father as the prodigal. He brought down the inheritance of heaven and, in a way, squandered it. He came among the filth and slop of the pigs, to the depths of squalor, to seek you out.
And by His Blood, He has bestowed upon you the inheritance of heaven. He has given you the right to be called sons of God, His Father and your Father. Where once you were lost, wandering in darkness, now you are found, standing in the Light. Where once you were dead in your trespasses and sins, you are now alive in the mercy and life of God the Father through Christ Jesus. This is the completely illogical, wondrous nature of our Father’s love for us in Christ.
Yet there is more. The parable continues, challenging the two sons who hear it being told, and us for whom it was recorded. You have been restored to the family, made an heir of heaven, a child of God. But you are not alone. Your brothers are gathered about you. And some are still far from home, having wandered from the Father’s house, squandering His possessions. Pray for them. In love seek them out. For in the proper time, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, and establish them.
And how will you behave? How will you receive them? Like the older son, who thought his place at the table was earned? He was obedient. He never left. Yet he was as wrong as the younger son. His place in the father’s house was not merited. What did the father say to him? Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours!
But the older son held a grudge against the recklessness of the younger. And when their father welcomed him back no questions asked, he was outraged. He begrudged the father’s love because he thought himself more deserving of it than the younger son.
Have we not acted the same way? Have we not grumbled and complained that our long-time friends and family have left the church? That the “good-old days” are gone? All the while failing to rejoice with the new brothers and sisters who have been received by our loving Father? “Oh, I’m not going to welcome those new people, because I don’t know them. Why did so-and-so leave back in 19-whatever?”
Repent! While you stand outside and complain, God the Father is welcoming every repentant sinner. And at this font, pulpit, and altar, the Blessed Holy Trinity, along with the angels and all the faithful, are rejoicing over just one sinner who repents.
This is the reality of the Gospel in this parable; which is so central to Luke. It really is the summation of the Gospel, the central panel in the triptych. For the Son took the inheritance of the Father and threw it onto you. We were prodigals, and the sole-begotten granted us His inheritance, making you sons. Thus is it, like Father like sons.
For there is no god like our God, who pardons iniquity and passes over transgression. He does not retain His anger forever. He delights in steadfast love. For Christ Jesus, the true Son, has trodden our iniquities underfoot. He has cast all our sins into the depths of the sea and drown them in Holy Baptism. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
It is a story about grace; about the radical nature of Christ’s saving Gospel. This parable is less about the prodigal son or his older brother and more about the extravagant mercy and love of their father. And in this way the parable is not so much about you – whether you are the younger or the older son, for in truth you are both – but this parable is about God the Father and His underserved mercy shown to you in His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
Let’s be clear: initially both sons have it wrong; both misunderstand the nature of son-ship. To be sure, the younger son is an insolent little brat who wishes his father dead so as to claim the inheritance, to which he presumes he is entitled. He is not. His father owes him nothing. The older son is not guiltless, though. He measures his position in the family by his obedience to his father.
But son-ship comes neither by entitlement nor by merit. To be a son is to receive grace; it is to live in the love of the Father. It is written, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved (Eph 1:3-6).
And this outrageous reality of the Father’s love is sadly misunderstand in this parable. Jesus tells it in the broader context of two other parables: the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin; and this, the Prodigal Son. They are a triptych, of sorts. A three-tiered panel used by artists to depict three aspects of the life and work of Christ and His Church.
A famous one, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder during the Reformation, hangs over the altar at St Mary’s Lutheran Church in Wittenberg; Luther’s congregation. One panel shows several of the reformers at a baptism. Another the Last Supper. The center panel is that recognizable work of Luther on one side preaching, the congregation on the other hearing, and a giant crucifix between them, to which Luther is pointing and the hearers’ ears are fixed. This is what the Church is to be about: the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins by the death and resurrection of Christ.
And so these three parables – the sheep, the coin, and the prodigal – they highlight this work of Christ and His Church. For the parable of the Lost Sheep is about the Shepherd, Christ Jesus, who searches diligently for the one who went astray. Indeed the solitary sheep represents us, astray in our sin, isolated and alone, separated from the safety of the Good Shepherd and His flock, which is the Church.
But Christ mercifully and in love seeks out the bleating, helpless creature. She could not return on her own, she could not find her Shepherd. Yet indeed she knows His voice; so that when He calls she will follow. Thus Christ carries the fearful lamb on His shoulders, even as He shouldered your sin to the Cross, and brings her home to the safety of the flock and the joy of Himself and the other shepherds. So it is, says Jesus, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance.
And the parable of the Lost Coin is about the Church. The woman who lights the lamp of the Word, the light of the Gospel, and searches for all that are rightfully hers because they belong to the Bridegroom who is Christ. Again, you are that coin; more than a mere days wage, you are worth the priceless blood of Christ, with which He bought you; that is, ransomed and redeemed you. And so the recovery of the lost coin means joy and faithfulness. Just so, says our Lord, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Either panel on the sides, now the center.
And He said, “There was a man who had two sons.” And those two sons are standing before our Lord: the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling that He eats with tax collectors and sinners. They trusted in their own righteousness; in their status. They are the ninety-nine who need no repentance. But the tax collectors and sinners are the lost coins, the repentant sinners, who are found by Christ and by Holy Mother Church, over whom all heaven rejoices, and they feast with Christ at His great banquet.
And the argument is made that Jesus, the only Son from heaven, the true Son of the Father, is squandering His gifts; wasting them on tax collectors and sinners, on the outcast and rejected. But the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
So it is that the father in our parable divides his property between his sons and gives each their share. He grants the rude request of his younger son, for he knows that it will not bring him joy. This is a father who knows his sons; who knows how to discipline them. Moreover, he trusts that their heavenly Father who loves them and cares for them, will protect them, even when they wander far from home.
We lose sleep at night, not knowing why our children do the foolish things they do. Well we do know: it is sin. After all, dads, they are your children, you gave them life; and so they inherited your sin, on down from their first father, Adam. And just as Adam rebelled against God, so do we, and so do our children rebel against their earthly fathers, too. Like father, like son.
Indeed it is no different in the Church. How many children have been baptized here, given life by water and Word from this font, only to grow up and abandon the true Father and Mother, our Lord and His Church? They journey off, sometimes into delusion, sometimes into total unbelief, even while you sit here, as the father in the parable, praying for their return. This is why some say it is a waste of time and energy, of love, to catechize and instruct our children, to bring them to the Lord’s house to receive His gifts, to raise them in fear and admonition of the Lord. For they just leave. They squander it in the world.
But still our heavenly Father gives. This is the nature of God, He is the Giver who gives. Not because you have deserved it, not because you are somehow better than the prodigal, or better than those who have been baptized, but have wandered off. We are not. But your place in the house, your place at the table is not earned or merited. It is given by grace; by the mercy of the Father. Like Father, like Son.
Thus do we commend our erring brothers and sisters in Christ, our own dear children who have wandered off and squandered their inheritance, to the mercy of our Father, praying that He would use us to call them home. For that is what the younger son eventually realized; he knew he ought to go home, to return to the house of his father. It was when he hit bottom, when he wanted to eat the pigs’ slop, that he came to his senses. He remembered the mercy of his father and determined to go home.
But he still didn’t quite get it. He wanted to come back, but he thought he had to make a deal.
And this is how it is with those who have gone away from the Church, who have journeyed far from their Father’s House. They want to return; they desire to come back. But they think they have to make a deal; that they have to earn their spot back.
Have you not tried to do the same? Your absence from this place does not go unnoticed. And while you were gone for a time, sowing your wild oats, turning your back on your Father who gave you life, did you not feel the desire that you ought to come back, you ought to return to your Father? But in shame you thought you had to make a deal. You thought you had to get right with God before you could come home. You thought you had to earn your place at the table.
But it is not so. For here is the Father. And He is giving, continually giving out the good gifts of His love and forgiveness, His mercy and life. Welcoming home prodigals like you. For He who made you His children in the womb of Holy Baptism, calls you to come up here and eat the grown-up food; to take your place at the Table. And it is true that we wait to long to give the grown-up food to our children; withholding from them for too long that which is actually children’s bread.
Yet that is not our Father’s hindrance, but ours. He desires to give. And He gives freely. No deals. No string attached.
And so you come, falling on your knees and saying, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. And truer words could never be spoken. You are not worthy to be called sons; just as the prodigal was not worthy. But the God of all grace, the Father of all mercy, has given His own Son to die for you. And baptized into His death and resurrection, He makes you sons. Not by any merit or worthiness in you, but by His fatherly, divine, goodness and mercy.
For here, dear children, in the Absolution, He puts the robe on you once more; the baptismal robe of Christ’s righteousness. He embraces you in His forgiving love and welcomes you to the Table once more. No deals. No penance. No probation period.
For Christ Jesus, the only Son of the Father, is that fattened calf who has been slaughtered on your behalf. He went out from His Father as the prodigal. He brought down the inheritance of heaven and, in a way, squandered it. He came among the filth and slop of the pigs, to the depths of squalor, to seek you out.
And by His Blood, He has bestowed upon you the inheritance of heaven. He has given you the right to be called sons of God, His Father and your Father. Where once you were lost, wandering in darkness, now you are found, standing in the Light. Where once you were dead in your trespasses and sins, you are now alive in the mercy and life of God the Father through Christ Jesus. This is the completely illogical, wondrous nature of our Father’s love for us in Christ.
Yet there is more. The parable continues, challenging the two sons who hear it being told, and us for whom it was recorded. You have been restored to the family, made an heir of heaven, a child of God. But you are not alone. Your brothers are gathered about you. And some are still far from home, having wandered from the Father’s house, squandering His possessions. Pray for them. In love seek them out. For in the proper time, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, and establish them.
And how will you behave? How will you receive them? Like the older son, who thought his place at the table was earned? He was obedient. He never left. Yet he was as wrong as the younger son. His place in the father’s house was not merited. What did the father say to him? Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours!
But the older son held a grudge against the recklessness of the younger. And when their father welcomed him back no questions asked, he was outraged. He begrudged the father’s love because he thought himself more deserving of it than the younger son.
Have we not acted the same way? Have we not grumbled and complained that our long-time friends and family have left the church? That the “good-old days” are gone? All the while failing to rejoice with the new brothers and sisters who have been received by our loving Father? “Oh, I’m not going to welcome those new people, because I don’t know them. Why did so-and-so leave back in 19-whatever?”
Repent! While you stand outside and complain, God the Father is welcoming every repentant sinner. And at this font, pulpit, and altar, the Blessed Holy Trinity, along with the angels and all the faithful, are rejoicing over just one sinner who repents.
This is the reality of the Gospel in this parable; which is so central to Luke. It really is the summation of the Gospel, the central panel in the triptych. For the Son took the inheritance of the Father and threw it onto you. We were prodigals, and the sole-begotten granted us His inheritance, making you sons. Thus is it, like Father like sons.
For there is no god like our God, who pardons iniquity and passes over transgression. He does not retain His anger forever. He delights in steadfast love. For Christ Jesus, the true Son, has trodden our iniquities underfoot. He has cast all our sins into the depths of the sea and drown them in Holy Baptism. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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