THE LOST ARE FOUND
Luke 15
Betty Berghaus
March 18, 2007
It is testimony indeed to the Bible as the Living Word of God that we can turn to passages that we have known all our lives, and, yet, still find new understandings and glean new insights for our lives today. Most of us have heard the Parable of the Prodigal Son since we were little. It is a good story to tell in Sunday school. It is a good story to act out in plays and musicals. How could we possibly learn anything new about this very familiar story?
For starters, scholars are now referring to this as “The Parable of Two Sons” or “The Parable of the Compassionate, or Forgiving, Father” as they try to encompass the whole story. For there are two sons in the story, both with very different reactions, and there is one very compassionate father with love enough to embrace them both.
Scholars also look now at all of Luke 15 as one unit. There are 3 stories of “the lost” here. The three stories respond to the accusation, in verse 2, of the Pharisees and scribes, who grumbled, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” In response, Jesus launched into the three parables, one about a lost sheep, one about a lost coin, and then finally, the long, well-known story of a lost son. The story of the lost sheep appears also in Matthew’s gospel. The story of the lost coin and the lost son appear only in Luke.
In the first two short stories, one person pursues one lost item (a sheep, a coin). They search diligently, and upon finding the lost, call together neighbors to celebrate. The point is given in the last verses: “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:10)
Then Jesus launched into a long and involved story. “There was a man who had two sons,” he began. For centuries, we have ignored the other son. And indeed, the younger son, who demanded his share of the inheritance prematurely, does get the most “air time” in the story. Asking for his inheritance before the father died would have been like a slap in the man’s face, like saying that he was already dead. The father could have gotten angry and denied the son anything. But this father did not deny his son. In fact, he gave both sons their inheritance. And the younger son wasted the money away as quickly as he could. The words to describe his sins are distinct and telling – he “squandered his property in dissolute living” (v.13). The only work he could find was feeding pigs, and he even envied the pigs their food, as he had none. So he decided to go home and seek forgiveness. He rehearsed his forgiveness speech to his father as he walked. But he never got to finish his speech. The father saw him coming and ran out to greet him with hugs and kisses. He ignored the boy’s confession, and sent for a robe and ring for him, and sandals, re-establishing him as son and heir. Then the father threw a party to celebrate.
And that is where the second son came in. Even though he had also received his inheritance, he continued to work in the field, to keep producing and growing the family business. He heard the celebration and asked what was going on. A servant told him of the celebration for his brother who had returned. The older brother was immediately angry and stayed outside. But the caring father came out and embraced him as well and pleaded with him to come in. The father let the older brother finish his complaints about the younger brother. He did not deny him the chance to speak, as he had the younger son. But then he simply said, “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.” (vv.31-32)
If the story had ended after the younger brother’s return, if we had never heard anything about the other brother’s anger, it would have been another story like the other two stories, ending in celebration and joy at the return of one who had been lost, a sinner who had repented. The Pharisees and scribes listening would have gotten the point. But Jesus went on with the story. Here was the dutiful, obedient son. He resented his brother being treated so well when he had behaved so badly. The younger brother had not played by the rules, and yet had still gotten the rewards. That seemed unfair to his older brother.
And it may seem unfair to us as well. The oldest children of families probably understand this story best. They are usually the ones who try to please their parents, and they are often jealous of younger siblings who seem have it easier than they did. So maybe this is a story of sibling jealousy.
There are differences between this story and the first two lost stories in Luke 15. A shepherd was not a wealthy man, by any means. And this shepherd left the 99 sheep to go find the one lost sheep. He risked losing other sheep to find one that was lost. The woman who lost the coin also was not rich. That coin was so much more precious to her than a lost nickel might be to us. And so she searched for it until she found it. These were lost items, and the main character in these short stories actively searched for what had been lost.
But the story that we have always called the Prodigal Son is a story of a wealthy family with servants and a lot of land and resources. The father, though he may have mourned the lost (though we are not told that), did not search for his son. But he was waiting for him and saw him when he returned.
It is interesting that we do not learn in this parable the reaction of the older son to his father’s words. The story ends before we know if he shrugs his shoulders, hugs his father and enters the party, or if he walks away still in anger. Yet we do know that the father embraced the younger son before he could even finish his confession of sin. And we know that the father’s love and forgiveness extended to the resentful son as well. Thus is the love and forgiveness of our Father, of our God. The arms of our God are ever wide and welcoming.
Greg Jones, who is now the Dean of Duke Divinity School, wrote a major book on forgiveness in the mid-1990’s. In that book, called Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995), Jones points out that God’s forgiveness is most clearly enacted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Jesus’ death, he says, is the ultimate act of divine forgiveness “as a sacrifice, a judgment, that brings salvation through forgiveness…” In his resurrection, Jesus brings a “hospitality and forgiveness with a judgment that does not condemn but offers new life.” Thus, says Jones, Jesus inaugurates the Kingdom of God in a way that calls us to embody forgiveness. (Jones, pp.102-103)
As a people forgiven, then, we are also called to forgive. Those words sound so simple. But the act of forgiving can be so hard. There is usually anger involved, for one thing, or deep hurt, or both. And we, of course, have our pride. But there can be more involved. What if the other does not seek our forgiveness? What if the other is not at all repentant about what they have done? How can we forgive when they do not ask to be forgiven? What about the one who has abused a spouse or children? What about the drug dealer who sold drugs to our child? What about the perpetrators of the Holocaust, or 9/11? How do we forgive such unforgivable acts?
In his book, Greg Jones relays the story of Simon Wiesenthal, a Jew imprisoned in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Simon was assigned to work in the hospital that treated wounded German soldiers. One day he was ordered to the bedside of a dying German officer who wished to confess his regrets over what he had done to a Jew. Simon sat while the man told of all the Jews he had killed mercilessly, and watched as he wept. The soldier was most haunted by the faces of a family to whose home he had set fire. Simon waited until the man finished. And then he walked away. He told friends after the war that he was haunted by just walking away, but that he could not grant forgiveness for this man on behalf of the ones he had offended. One of his friends told Simon that he gave forgiveness and love by simply listening to the man.
Greg Jones acknowledges that there is such a thing as “righteous anger,” which reminds us of the “gaps between our commitment to the holiness of God’s kingdom and the often harsh realities that we and others have to struggle with each day.” “Anger can be legitimate if it is in the service of God’s inbreaking Kingdom,” says Jones, “but anger can also lead to sin, particularly if it is allowed to ossify into hatred and desires for revenge.” (Jones, p. 247) Sometimes we read in the news about the parents of one who has been murdered who have started organizations to help others to cope with the same circumstances. This is perhaps one way that anger can be used productively. But if those same parents continue to harbor and re-live the anger over the death of their child with each case that they help, the anger can eat away at them and destroy their happiness. If, instead, they turn from the anger and find some way to forgive the murderer, then their work can profit them and others.
The key to forgiveness, while it is a corporate act because it involves as least two people, may at times be a very individual matter in our own hearts, between us and God. When we cannot find resolution to a situation that leaves us angry and resentful, we may need to find forgiveness of a deeper sort within ourselves. If we leave anger and resentment to smolder, they will eat away at us and destroy us from within. Forgiving without resolution, without the two parties involved discussing the matter and making up, can be extremely hard. Yet it is essential for our health and well-being. Realize that such forgiveness takes time. It will not happen overnight. It may take years, with some kind of counseling, for us to really forgive someone who continues in the very acts that hurt us. It may take a “tough love” indeed to walk away from an offender, and to stay away, for safety’s sake, and yet to find some way in the heart to forgive what has been done and said.
The call to forgive, the example to forgive, comes from our Lord himself, in the stories he told, and in the actions he gave us. According to the Gospel of Luke, as he was crucified on the cross between two criminals, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) Rather than inflicting any violence or revenge to right an obvious wrong, Jesus died on the cross for us, so that he might rise and give us the ultimate victory over evil and death. His most unique forgiveness gives us a model we can never achieve, but one for which we strive. Remember that also in Luke’s gospel, the dying Jesus forgave the criminal beside him who was hanging on another cross. The man recognized and defended the innocence of the man beside him, and cried, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus replied, “You will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43)
Jesus was both human and divine. We are human, though made in the divine image, and hopefully with, as St. Augustine called it, a “divine spark” within us. But it is not as easy for us to forgive, perhaps, as it was for Jesus. Yet clearly it is our call as Christians to strive for that forgiveness. We have been the lost, the ones who have been forgiven and warmly welcomed home. And as the forgiven, we forgive others, perhaps over and over and over again, until we can begin to embody the remarkable forgiveness that has been given to us on a cross and through an empty tomb.
“Friends, hear the good news of the Gospel – In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.” Go and do likewise.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.