The Prodigal Son: Grief

Well, welcome to Christ the Redeemer.

My name is Russ Masterson, the pastor here at Redeemer.

So glad you're here with us this morning, whether you're here in person or we do have our live stream up and running.

So many, I know many of you are at home watching from your comfy couches, and we're glad that you're here with us, whether in person or watching live on streaming, or whether later on as it records, uh, we're excited to be one church, and we're excited to continue to say what we've always said, and that is when we're more broken than we originally thought, but we're more loved by God than we could dare to dream.

What good news that is for us to hear and rest in and grow in.

I have a couple of announcements just before we get into the sermon, and that is this week the elders decided on Wednesday evening that the Sunday after Labor Day, so the Sunday after Labor Day, we will welcome back child care and kids ministry for birth through second grade.

So the Sunday after Labor Day, birth through second grade, we will have child care and kids ministry.

We're hoping for third through fifth grade later in the fall, uh, but we're gonna do it phase by phase.

Uh so more details on that, what that Sunday will look like.

I know many people who have not yet come back perhaps will come back when that child care is available.

And we also know many of you that are watching at home, um, you're still gonna wait and watch online, and we understand that, and we're gonna continue to offer uh the online services and the online content for families and children all along the way.

Uh so no matter uh where you're at and your ability to get here or need to stay at home, uh we can serve you.

So more details on what that Sunday will look like, uh the details of the procedure for checking your kid in and health and safety and all that, more details will come in the next week or so.

As well, our student ministry is up and running, and Sam Rapp's doing a great job with that.

Tonight they have an outdoor uh party in our backyard tonight.

And so, if you need details on that, you can contact Sam Rapp.

Um, and they will begin to be able to meet indoors on Sunday evenings, uh, most likely using this sanctuary on Sunday evenings, so they can space out and be in here for their worship and fellowship times.

So that's the announcements I have at this point.

Uh, jumping into the sermon, we are in our second week going through the prodigal son story, looking at last week humility, this week grief, and then next week hope.

Humility, grief, and hope.

So, yesterday afternoon, after a bit of chores around the house, uh, I laid down on the couch to veg out, to take my you know, good Saturday afternoon nap, like so many of you like to do, and I turned the TV on and the PGA championship was on.

The golf tournament.

So, this is one of the four major golf tournaments of the year.

This is one of the biggest golf tournaments in the world every single year.

The biggest names in all of golf in the entire world are there playing.

I mean, huge money's on the line, right?

I mean, massive money is on the line.

So I tune in to watch, and I'm so happy, right?

And maybe you've been happy to be able to tune into the NBA or some sports or something like that, or maybe a concert that they figured out how to be able to do it virtually or how to do it with a drive-in or something, and then it's online.

And you're so happy that people have figured some of this out, right?

And at the same time, there's this part of you that's sad.

Because the digital fans in the NBA games are clever, but at the same time, there's this part of you that's like it's supposed to be a crowd of people there.

So here's the PGA championship.

Here's a picture of the PGA championship last year.

This is last year.

PGA championship last year, 2019.

And then here's a picture from this year.

Right?

And there's this part of us, they're so glad they're playing.

But the fairways and the and the T box and the greens are supposed to be lined with thousands of people when that four-foot putt is worth millions of dollars, and the guy chokes and the moan is so like, oh, you know, like we're supposed to, there's supposed to be thousands of people there.

And so there's this part of us that's so happy that we get to watch the PGA championship or the NBA game or the concert or you know, the musical or something, right?

Like we're so happy they figured it out, but at the same time, there's this part of us that's sad because it's not what it should be.

It's not what we want it to be.

And we can go ahead and go, maybe this whole sermon's just preparing you for college football season that's coming up because we're all gonna be grieving for what that looks like and that we can't attend.

And the point is this all loss, all loss, and all good that doesn't come and all change has to be grieved.

It all has to be grieved.

So this prodigal son's story, just to review it, we reviewed it last week, we'll review it again next week, just to catch everybody up, get everybody in the same place.

So there's a family, there's a father, two sons.

Father seems to be a pretty well-off guy.

The younger son, you remember, the younger son comes to the father, he says, Hey, I want my share of the inheritance, I want my money now, I know you're still alive, I want my money now.

So he gets the money, takes the money, heads off to a foreign country, and then he heads off and he starts spending that money.

He's having a great time, far off from the father in a foreign, far-off country, and he is having a good time.

He is partying up, he has lots of friends, and the money is flowing, and then the money's gone, so the parties are gone, and the friends are gone, and before long he's working on a farm, longing for the food that the pigs are eating, and it says nobody is giving him anything.

So he is feeling the weight of his mistakes.

He's feeling the weight of all the laws.

And then if we read Luke 15, it says he came to his senses.

He remembers his dad.

We read it last week.

Let's read it again, these four verses.

Let's read it again this week.

And he arose, this is Luke 15, verse 20, and he arose and came to his father.

Luke 15:20

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

And the son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven before you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for the son was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found, and they began to celebrate.

So I don't want to project too much on this parable of the prodigal son, but I think it is safe to say that we understand the lavish love of the Father.

The way that we come into understanding of how lavish this love is, is because we are presupposing upon the Father that he had deep sadness and grief for the son leaving.

That's why we come in, that's why the parable even makes sense.

It makes sense.

This love is so lavish, this welcome is incredible, this embrace.

I mean, though the reason why the attributes there, the elements of that story make sense is because we are presupposing that the father would be in a position of deep sadness and grief.

Point number one is this we need to grieve what we lost, and the good that never happened.

So we need to grieve that which we lose, and we need to grieve the good that never happened.

I mean, when March 13th hit, our world changed.

Schools shut down, we went home, we stayed at home.

Like many of you and your work and your family situation and the school situation, I mean, our church staff, we went into overdrive of figuring out how to how do we keep this going?

What does church look like?

And what you know, what what happens, right?

Like we just went into overdrive.

We just started operating.

And I I don't think I really came up for air until like during my sabbatical break last month.

It felt like like week two of sabbatical break, I sort of realized I never felt any of that.

March, April, May, June.

I just I mean I just went into like operation mode, like like funk function and operate and execute.

But I didn't feel any of it.

And about week two of that break, I got in July, just to be able to start to feel, man, we lost a lot.

Like we lost a lot in March and April and May and June.

You lost a lot.

People lost jobs, health, maybe a family member, you lost money, you lost sports.

You you you lost maybe your graduation or to attend a graduation if somebody's important to you.

Maybe your wedding was slotted during that month that had to get rearranged.

Maybe you were gonna attend something, maybe you lost a trip.

Maybe you lost a party.

You lost being with friends, certainly.

I think it had been for me, it was like three months of not having sat in a restaurant, like how to eat in a restaurant the first time we went back to a restaurant.

You know, I was paranoid about everything, first off.

But there was also this I didn't realize how much like the loss of those months of some experiences that were just so normal before.

And I do believe, I do believe for many of us there are reservoirs of sadness, not just coronavirus sadness, but reservoirs of sadness, of loss, that are behind dams of execute, operate, function, busyness.

Last August we went up, usually pretty much every August, we go up to my college roommate John.

We go up to his lake cabin on Lake Appalachie.

So Lake Appalachie is a beautiful lake.

Here's a picture of Lake Appalachie.

Lake Appalachie is this beautiful lake in North Carolina.

Nobody's even heard of it.

It's just hidden away.

It's along the Hiawassee River.

And the Hiawassee River has some dams along it, and these dams, you know, basically dam up reservoirs or lakes.

And Lake Appalachie is a lower lake below the Hiawassee Dam.

Above that dam is Lake Hiawassee.

What my buddy John loves to do is we get up there and we, you know, tube the kids and do all that.

And then at some point he likes to take the boat up near the dam.

And he likes to get uncomfortably close to the dam.

So you're in the boat along the water, and there's this just huge dam in front of you.

Here's a picture of the Hiawassee Dam.

So you're on that lower lake, that lower section, and you're at this foot of this dam in a little, you know, little ski boat, and he likes to kind of laugh as I'm cringing because in front of us is this massive dam.

And what I know is on the other side of this dam is a reservoir of water.

And I'm still uncomfortable with engineering to a certain extent, and I know it's all engineered, but I also hear about stuff that breaks, and I don't want to be the one that's like 10 feet from the break of a reservoir like that.

And what happens with any dam, any reservoir, too much water ends up on the top side of that, and spillover occurs, right?

Spillover.

This is the image for our hearts this morning.

This is the this is a great image for the idea of grieving, the importance of it, because unaddressed sadness or hurt or loss.

A reservoir builds up inside of us, and spillover occurs.

Now that spillover is coping, is a counseling term for that.

It can look like anger, resentment, addiction, the lack of empathy, the lack of tenderness, tendency to withdraw.

Maybe some of those resonate to some extent.

Maybe all of us they resonate to some extent.

The good news is this.

There's another path.

The good news is this, we don't have to sit in that, in that coping and in that spillover.

Psalm 42, verse 5.

Psalms 42:5

Psalm 42, verse 5 says this.

Psalms 42:5

The psalmist is grieving in turmoil.

Listen to what the psalmist says to himself.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God.

So he's preaching to himself.

Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

Point number two is this.

We need to grieve our wounds, or we could say our losses.

We need to grieve our wounds as to be rescued and defined by God.

This is what the psalmist is doing.

The psalmist is processing his pain from a place of security, even while another part of him is experiencing deep loss.

Right?

In verse 5, that first part, he speaks to his pain.

So he's facing it, he's feeling it, he's acknowledging it.

And then he preaches the gospel to himself.

He preaches truth to himself.

He says, Hope in God, O my soul, hope in God.

And he reminds himself, he reminds himself of secure rescue and identity in the Lord.

My salvation and my God.

If you were alive in January of this year, uh Kobe Bryant passed away in January of this year.

It seems like a really long time ago, right?

I mean, when I went to look it up, I was like, that felt like three years ago at this point.

You remember he's one of the best basketball players of all time.

And unfortunate death, he was in a helicopter with his 13-year-old daughter.

He had four daughters.

He had grown into an incredible family man.

Incredible family man and dad, and he had four daughters, and then he dies in a helicopter crash on the way to one of his daughter's basketball functions.

I think it was a basketball function.

13-year-old daughter, six other passengers, six friends, and a pilot.

They all die.

And if you remember this back in general, I mean the world grieved.

I mean, it was all over the news.

Massive, massive outpourings of sadness and grief.

And it's not the only time where, like, an icon, I mean, people don't even know him, right?

Maybe you grieved, I don't know.

Maybe you loved Kobe, I don't know.

But it's not the only time that we get an entertainer or an athlete or just an icon, and then the world grieves.

People actually grieve and they don't even know him.

And I think it's because it taps into sadness that's already in us.

And that's a safe way for us to grieve, but we don't have to face any of the sadness that's already there inside of us.

And then to top that off, the death of someone like Kobe, I mean, it destroys our notion that we could like work our way out of loss or work our way into a position where we don't experience loss or sadness.

I read this on the Mockingbird blog this week about the Kobe Bryant death by Isabella Yosuko.

It says this.

She wrote this.

Bad things happen to good people all day long, everywhere.

There are entire countries, or American neighborhoods for that matter, full of beautifully fervent faithful for whom the rain never stops, whether it's the drudgery of poverty or famine or catastrophic war, persecution, or epidemic, still many live in a joy and surpassing peace that leaves comfortable and misguided missionaries slack-jawed with admiration.

Everyone has access.

Really, Jesus is a flower whom blooms brightest in heavy rain.

What the gospel offers is not a surefire way to avoid getting wet, but the promise of an abiding companion with a really big umbrella of inexplicable and unconditional love, peace, and grace, plus the promise of an eternity of rainless, tearless days.

So what she's saying is we all have sadness.

We all have sadness.

All of us need to grieve that sadness.

And the good news is, is the sadness is already there.

So I'm not trying to get you to like conjure up sadness that doesn't exist.

I'm just saying that which is already there, we need to process.

We need to grieve.

And we have an abiding commanion to do that, companion to do that.

Point number three is this as we come alive to the riches of God's love, and I think this is what the psalmist is doing in that Psalm 42.5, when he's able and he's secure enough to actually go face on and feel the turmoil inside of himself, but yet he can preach the gospel to himself.

I think this is what he's doing, is point number three.

As we come alive to the riches of God's love, we increasingly bring our woundedness to the Holy Spirit for healing.

Here's what that means.

The prodigal son would have come home.

He got embraced by the Father, that incredible love and welcome that just accepted him exactly how he was.

And then the party was thrown.

And now, if there's a part two to this parable, and if I got to write it, right, just for fun, say I just wrote it for fun, a part two, I think at some point, and I don't know how many glasses of wine they have to kind of loosen up their emotions, but at some point I think the two of them end up together and they're talking about what the last season of life looked like without each other.

And what they experienced, the loss they had.

They would begin to process, not to create sadness, but just to talk about the sadness or the loss that was already there that they had not processed yet.

And that's a healing process for us.

A lot of times it just gets covered up, dammed up, the reservoir builds, spillover occurs, we get angry, we get frustrated.

Lack of tenderness, lack of empathy, withdrawal.

But really, when we have those things going on, say you get angry, say you get frustrated, but say I get frustrated.

The question should be what did I lose?

What did I just lose that made me so angry?

Or what is the sadness underneath this anger?

What's what am I what am I actually sad about that would cause so much frustration?

What we get in this story is a son, a child that's so secure in the Father's love that what we hope for in part two of this parable, that we know is true in the gospel, is that we can risk being known to the Father.

We can risk being known to other believers and other people because we're so secure in the Father's love.

We can risk feeling our sadness because we know it's okay to be weak because we're already loved.

We're already secure.

I could say it this way, as we come alive to how sufficient Jesus is for us, so as we come alive to how good He is, completely good for us, for the fullness of our forgiveness, complete righteousness, all we need to be welcomed into the embrace of God, that we are God's beloved and is secure, and there's nothing to add.

As we come alive to how rich that is for us, that security creates a heart that doesn't have to pretend anymore.

So you don't have to pretend you're happy when you're sad.

You don't have to pretend that there's not a reservoir of sadness inside of you when really you need to feel it more and grieve it more.

You need to sit longer in it.

And what we get as Christians, what we get is we get secure identity in Christ that is so rich and so key and secure that we get to grow in emotional maturity as we walk in this world with him.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your goodness to us that grants to us such security and the riches of your love for us, that we can be like the psalmist and just acknowledge any pain or loss or sadness we have.

We can acknowledge that which we should have received and never received.

And we can say, Why are you so sad, O soul?

Hope in God that your salvation is in him.

Teach us what it means to feel our sadness and preach the gospel to ourselves.

Open our hearts even more to that which is in there.

The wounds and the Holy Spirit that is at work.

And help us rest in the great, the great truth that you love us perfectly while we are imperfect.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.