Coming Home

From day one of this church, we've always said that we exist to call prodigals home

and to adopt the spiritually homeless.

Okay, but why?

Well, because the story of God and people can be told like this.

There was a father with two sons, but the younger son wanted to leave, to explore, to

attempt life on his own, to be adventurous, to take a risk, but it was contentious and

offensive because he wanted now what shouldn't be his until later when his father would eventually

die.

But the father, still very much alive, opened up the doors to the son's curiosity.

He gave him everything that he asked for, and the younger son left.

When the son had journeyed far, he found himself in a troubling space.

A pandemic had started taking lives, a recession had started killing jobs, inflation started

stealing money, and his own foolishness had squandered a fortune.

He was out, out of money, out of friends, and almost out of his mind because he started

working for minimum wage in a job that was siphoning off his soul.

And then he remembered his father's always had jobs, his father paid a living wage, his

father's employees always seemed content.

And so he changed his mind.

He would go home, but he was sure he would be dead to his dad.

So he plotted his plan.

He would grovel.

He'd bow, he'd beg, he'd say, just let me work here.

I'm no son, but I can be a good worker.

Give me just enough to give me a job.

And so he went.

When he could barely see the house, the father saw his son from a long way off, and the father

came quickly.

As fast as he could with these old knees and old feet, he ran.

And the son started in, but the father stopped him in his tracks.

Tried out, quick, give my son new clothes, give him new shoes, give him my ring.

Right now we have to give him a party.

And he did.

It was lavish and expensive.

He invited anyone who could hear, come, my son, who was dead, is alive again.

But as it turns out, not everyone was happy.

The older brother, the one that had never left, he was out working the land when the

brother returned.

So when he heard about it, about the party, his brow was still salty with sweat, his hands

and clothes dirty from work, and he was covered in anger.

He felt shorted because he came home every day.

He had never left.

He had never had such a party.

He wouldn't have even asked for something small.

When the father found his older son wasn't there, he went out to where he was to find

him.

The older son let him have it.

He unleashed years of resentment.

Why would you waste this on him?

Why would you welcome him back?

Why would you celebrate his failure?

When I've always been here, I have never left.

I have never failed you.

And the father who stopped one son's apology, listened as the other son spoke.

And then he affirmed him.

He agreed, you're right.

You have always been with me.

And everything that I have is yours.

But joy must not be buried because your brother, the one we were sure was dead, he's alive.

We have to celebrate.

So we exist as a church to call prodigal's home and adopt the spiritually homeless because

of this father, the father that gives one son everything so he could leave and gives

the other son everything as he stays.

We don't do our homecoming Sunday event that we had last week just so that we can have

fun and get to know each other, but so we can celebrate that God has brought us home.

To remind us to instill in our hearts and minds just what kind of father, what kind

of God we believe in.

So let's talk about that.

Let's open up our Bibles to the book of Luke.

And I know I just told the paraphrase of this story, but I want to read it word for word

from the scripture.

So Luke, we're going to start verse two.

Luke 15 starting in verse two.

If you don't have a Bible, we have them that are free on the bookshelf out in the lobby

we can download from any of the digital app stores.

Okay, Luke 15, we have a tradition of standing as we are able as we read the scriptures together.

If you don't mind.

Luke 15, I'll start in two and then jump ahead a little bit.

It says this, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners

and eats with them.

Now we'll jump to verse 11.

And Jesus continued, 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.

Not long after that, the younger son got together.

All he had set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.

He had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country and began to

be in need.

So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country who sent him to his fields

to feed pigs.

He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave

him anything.

When he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have food to

spare?

And here I am starving to death.

I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against

heaven and against you.

I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me like one of your hired servants.

So he got up, went to his father, but 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.

The son said to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I'm no longer worthy to call your son.

But the father said to his servants, quick, bring the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

Bring the fattened calf and kill it.

Let's have a feast and celebrate.

For this son of mine was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

So they began to celebrate.

Meanwhile, the older son was in the field.

When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.

So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on.

Your brother has come, he replied.

And your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.

The older brother became angry and refused to go in.

So his father went out and pleaded with him.

But he answered his father, look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never

disobeyed your orders.

Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

When this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home,

you kill the fattened calf for him?

My son, the father said, you are always with me and everything I have is yours.

But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive

again.

He was lost and is found.

Let us pray.

God, I thank you that you are this kind of father.

And I pray that you instill that in our hearts today.

Whatever you have for us to learn that that would stick, that it would become a part of

the framework of our faith, that our faith would become stronger because we are becoming

more like your son, Jesus.

Amen.

Thanks, y'all.

You can have a seat.

So first thing is first, the only reason that Jesus tells this story and gives us this picture

of the father is because certain religious people were upset that Jesus was hanging out

with people seen as sinners.

Jesus tells this beautiful story to make it clear that people that have committed either

real or perceived sins are all invited home.

We probably all know at least one person that says that they would never darken the door

of a church because they're not good enough or they think they'd have to get their act

together or because they think the church would reject them.

But who told them that?

I have some ideas.

I think church culture told them that.

I think some church folk told them that.

Some people like the people that were upset with Jesus for hanging out with people they

thought were sinners.

But if you look back in the verses that we skipped before this parable, Jesus actually

tells two other stories that have the same point.

One is about a sheep that wanders off and one is about an extremely important coin that

a woman has lost in her own home.

In all three of these stories, Jesus makes it clear what condition God accepts us in

as a wandering sheep still far from home, as a coin hiding under a couch, as an adventurous

but offensive son that finds his way home for the wrong reasons, and as a resentful

child that never left and is angry at the Father's grace.

Let it be noted for the record that none of his examples are of perfect people.

Did you wander off?

God finds you.

Did you feel lost yesterday?

Do you feel lost right now?

God will look for you.

Did you run away?

God welcomes you home.

Maybe you never left, but you feel homeless in your heart.

God says everything he has is yours.

And there's a party to be had.

Every one of these stories ends with a party, with celebration.

Jesus describes the Father God as someone that is intrinsically capable of loving us,

no matter what we've done or where we have gone.

Stephanie Buchanan Crowder from the Chicago Theological Seminary wrote, God does not focus

on why or how the person becomes lost.

God rejoices and celebrates the individual's homecoming.

God beckons the lost one, come home to me.

And God challenges the community, rejoice and do not judge.

Let me jump back a second here.

Isn't this what a baby dedication is about?

That we will help guide our youth and we will always welcome them home no matter what?

That whether they stay here and become confused about what it means or whether they run away

and come back for the wrong reasons, that we will rejoice and not judge.

So let's spend some time talking about this Father.

Let's dig in to the character of this Father that Jesus is describing.

Because if Jesus tells us what the Father does and what He is like, He is telling us

to do what the Father does and what we can be like.

First thing is this, the Father, in this story, if you read it, the Father is unaffended.

The Father is unaffended.

He does not seem offended at all and this is big because this was without a doubt an

offensive thing for a younger son to do.

In first century Hebrew culture, for a younger son to ask for their inheritance, it was the

basic equivalent of saying he was ready for his father to be dead.

Dad, I really was expecting your life expectancy to be a little shorter.

I'm ready for my part.

But Jesus, if you read this story, Jesus dedicates zero time showing the Father being offended.

The Father's heart is unaffended.

Some years back, I remember feeling like God was telling me that if I, and I've said this

before, but if I really wanted to be someone that called Prodigal's home and adopted the

spiritually homeless, that I'd have to get a lot better at letting people go.

Because the God of this story that welcomes Prodigal's and adopts the spiritually homeless

is also the God that let that son go with absolutely everything that he asked for.

We spend so much time offended at the people that have left us that our hearts are unable

to welcome them home.

And I think it matters because how we send people off when we don't actually want them

to go can shape if that person really feels like the door will be open if they ever want

to return.

Does that make sense?

Jesus doesn't show us the Father kicking his son out in a fit of rage and anger.

He gives us one sentence, one sentence about how he sent his son up.

And so he divided his property between them.

That's it.

I wonder if maybe the Father isn't offended because he knows his son's heart better than

the son knows his own heart.

What do I mean?

Have you ever thought about how easily it is for curiosity and rebellion to be confused

with each other?

I'll say that again.

And maybe there'll be some hmm, oh after, okay?

Have you ever thought about how easy it is for curiosity and rebellion to be confused

for each other?

Oh.

I like to frame this part of the story as the son being adventurous and the Father opening

the door for his son to have options because the Father isn't offended by his son's curiosity.

Because very literally, this son could not have left without the help of his Father.

God does not give us options if he doesn't think we might use them.

This is important.

God isn't offended by your curiosity.

God is not offended by our curiosity.

God will know the difference between your curiosity and your rebellion better than you

will.

I'd be willing to say sometimes we think that we are rebelling and God is going, man, I

love this curiosity.

I love that you are wanting to be adventurous.

Let me give you everything you asked for.

He may know that it's not going to work out very well sometimes, but that does not mean

that he is automatically interpreting our curiosity and desire for adventure as rebellion.

I just don't think that Father God is as offended by people that walk away from him as people

think that he is.

Because he knows our hearts better than we do.

So the first thing here is that the Father isn't offended.

Second thing is that when the son returns, the Father sees him coming.

Why?

Because this kind of Father never stops looking.

Amen?

Amen?

This kind of Father never stops looking.

Now theologically speaking, we believe in an omnipresent God that is everywhere all

at once.

So there's really never a place where we are not seen or in view.

The psalmist says that if I rose above the heavens, if I sunk to the depths, that you

are there.

So technically we are always seen.

But that doesn't keep us from feeling like God has stopped paying attention.

Most of us have probably felt like God stopped paying attention.

At some point in our lives, sometimes we feel like he stopped looking for us.

Sometimes we feel that way when we've sinned.

Sometimes we feel that way just because we're human.

But this unoffended God never stops looking for us.

And I'd go a step further and say that this Father God never stops finding us.

Because his heart isn't full of frustration like ours.

God is not frustrated the way we are when we've lost something for the twelfth time.

Because he always knows where we are.

So third, I think it's also because his heart is full of compassion, it says that he sees

him and his heart was filled with compassion.

This word compassion literally means to suffer together.

I'm guessing that most of us didn't know that.

Compassion means to suffer together.

Other authors describe it in this way.

They spell it out a little bit more.

Compassion is the feeling that arises in witnessing another's suffering, not that motivates a

desire to help.

Compassion is an empathetic, emotional response to another person's pain or suffering that

moves people to act in a way that will either ease the person's condition or make it more

bearable.

You think about something called Compassion International.

Suffer together with those who need their burdens to be lightened.

See this in the Father.

You see it when he runs because he wants to as quickly as he can ease the pain that he

knows that his son is feeling.

But there's actually more.

So many parts of this story have so much more under the surface.

Let's know what Thomas Aquinas wrote about compassion.

He said, no one becomes compassionate unless he suffers.

See this Father is filled with compassion, yes, because he wants to end his son's pain

and because he has suffered with him.

Because this has been painful for him as well.

So let me circle back.

The Father is unaffended, but unaffended does not mean unaffected.

Just because he's not offended at what his son is doing does not mean that he is not

also affected by what is happening.

He is not indifferent.

He is not unfeeling.

This is something that is unique about the Christian God.

We believe in a God that can be hurt.

We believe in a God that can feel pain.

The whole crux of the story of Jesus is the idea that he is God and he can be killed on

a cross.

He is unaffected, unaffended, but he is affected.

He sees, he's compassionate.

So then he runs.

This is remarkably unexpected in this story.

To us, many of us have heard this before, it's no longer unexpected.

But if you were hearing this story from Jesus, it would be remarkably unexpected and this

is why.

Because it would have been completely undignified for a man of this Father's stature, a Father

wealthy enough to split his land and still have an estate that would support his family

and other employees.

It would have been out of the ordinary for someone like this to run at all.

But to run to a son that had sold off half his property and abandoned his family is completely

unexpected.

See, in the Hebrew culture of the Bible, a younger son could be expected to receive as

much as one third.

Sometimes if you've heard a sermon on this before, you would have maybe heard, well,

he didn't have anything coming to him anyway.

That's not true.

In Hebrew culture, a second son could be expected to receive as much as a third of the Father's

estate at the end of the Father's life or after his death.

Maybe money if the family had that kind of wealth, but most didn't have their wealth

in finances.

Their wealth was in livestock and land.

So for this son to ask for his inheritance would mean that the Father would have to split

the land, as Jesus said, and make his son owner of that plot of land.

I think that's clear.

But for the son to leave, it's not always completely obvious to us that for the son to leave, well,

you can't leave with land.

You can't put land in your pocket and then go buy things with it in a far off land.

Now can you?

No, for the son to have left, he would have had to sell the property that his father had

just given to him and most likely to someone else.

If the son had stayed, the family estate could have at least continued to operate as one.

But when he leaves, the Father doesn't just lose his son, he loses legacy.

He loses stature.

He loses a bit of the honor that comes with being someone that owns that much land in

a community.

So it is remarkable that a man affected in this way would run to a son that has insulted

him in this way.

But we've established this Father is unaffended and he is full of compassion.

So there's actually another reason that he runs.

Author Kenneth Bailey explains that if a Jewish son lost his inheritance amongst Gentiles,

which is what this story describes, right?

Takes his money from his Jewish family, his Hebrew family, he goes off to a far off land

which always meant Gentiles, meaning non-Jewish.

And it very clearly says that he lost everything.

In this culture, if a young Jewish man took his inheritance and lost it amongst Gentiles

and then returned home, it was custom for the community to perform a ceremony called

the Kesezah, where they would break a large pot in front of this son and they would yell,

you are now cut off from your people.

And they would turn him away.

The community would reject him.

So why did the father run?

For love?

Yeah.

Out of excitement that his son had returned, yes, because his heart is full of compassion

because he has also been in pain, yes, but also to protect him from the community, to

save him from further rejection, to keep the community from saying, you can't be here.

Man, if you wanted to boil down why I wanted to be a pastor in this community, that's it.

Just run.

When you saw someone just starting to come home to run, to get to them first, before

an overbearing judgmental community could get to them and break a pot and say, you are

cut off.

I think that's what we're supposed to be.

I think we're supposed to do what the father does.

Because this father, when he gets to him, when he has gotten there first, it says that

he embraces him.

It says that he hugs his son.

It actually says that he threw his arms around him.

In older versions, it says that he fell on his neck.

No, the father didn't trip.

Fall on someone's neck means to embrace them heavily.

Jesus is intentionally making this homecoming sound as dramatic as possible.

Like other parts of this story, there's actually a deeper reason for this as well.

See, this parable, this story wasn't new for Jesus.

I know, gasp, oh, Jesus told a story that he didn't make up.

See, there are actually 4,000 Jewish parables that are recorded that we know of from the

hundred years before Jesus and the hundred years after the life of Jesus.

When rabbis and teachers of the law, what they would do is that they would take a common

story or parable and then they would put their own twist on it to make it their own, to make

the point that they wanted to make it.

In this case, Jesus is telling a story that they already knew.

They'd heard this story before, but the records show that when other rabbis would tell this

story, when the prodigal son, having lost everything in the land of the Gentiles, had

come home, the rabbis always made it clear that the son was rejected not just by the

community but by the father or that he didn't make it home because he had died.

It was a cautionary tale.

Don't run from God.

Don't leave home.

When Jesus is telling this story, listen, the teachers of the law, the people listening,

they think they know how this story ends.

Everything is the same up to then.

Oh yeah, I've heard this one.

There's a guy, he's got two sons.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Yep, he split up everything he had and he gave some.

Oh, yep, that idiot's son ran off with all that.

Oh, yep, he ruined his life.

Oh, oh, can't wait for the best part of the story.

They thought they knew what was coming and when Jesus gets to the part where the father

is supposed to throw him out, instead he throws his arms around him.

Imagine you're hearing a story that you've heard a hundred times and that happens instead

of what you expected.

Instead of kicking him out, he clothes him.

Instead of spitting in his face, he kisses him.

Instead of banishing him, he takes a ring and he puts it on his finger saying, you are

now fully my family again.

Can you imagine that then he throws a party?

This son that took a third of all the father had and lost it comes home and is given more.

He's given more.

People that are afraid that people are going to take advantage of God's grace do not understand

God's grace.

I think that anytime we read a parable, any parable, maybe especially this one, we should

ask where we fit into this story.

Who are we?

Because in this story, Jesus makes it perfectly clear where the stodgy religious folk are

and where they fit.

This may come as a surprise to you, but what he says is that they belong to.

Because after all of this, he doesn't end the story where it normally ends.

He says, people like you, they're out hard working in the fields.

You've never left.

You've given everything you have every day.

He says, the father has something to say to you as well.

And in the reading of this story, the father doesn't go out and chide him.

The father doesn't go out and slap him.

The father doesn't tell him, get back to work, you good servant.

No, he says, he affirms him.

He further affirms his identity.

He further says, yes, you are my son.

Yes, you have always been here.

And yes, everything I have is yours.

He just tries to change his mind about how he should think about his brother.

In the life of any church, a church that is as good or bad as you think it is, there are

always going to be these two kinds of people in that church.

The people that come asking for more, that someone thinks are undeserving, and the people

that think they've given too much and have not been given anything in return.

And the father will always be there trying to remind us who we really are, who you really

are.

You are my child.

You are here.

Everything that I have is yours.

It's just we don't know how to do that sometimes.

We don't know how to accept the words of God the Father in our ears saying, I have everything

you need.

Everything I have is available to you.

All of who I am is yours.

You belong.

Not because of how hard you worked or how quickly you came back when you made a mistake.

You belong because you are mine.

So, as we normally have to ask, we have to, well what do we do with any of this?

And Greg's really emotional today.

I suppose I should do something.

First thing is this.

If I could encourage you to do anything, you got to be ready to run.

I mentioned in a past sermon, oh gosh dang it, that this summer Wallace got hit in the

face with a baseball.

I was during an All-Star game and I was coaching and so I was over by the dugout and it happened

and you heard the sound and it was dramatic and later, I don't remember if it was that

night or if it was the next day, but Wallace said to me, dad, when I got hit, you ran really

fast.

Listen, he didn't say this because he didn't think I cared or that I wouldn't run.

He said it because he knows that my knees always hurt.

He said it because he knows that I can't really run anymore.

And yet he saw a father run to him as fast as he could, regardless of the pain.

Listen as Christians, as a church, I don't want people to just be grateful that we welcome

them home.

I want them to notice how fast we accept them, how fast we run to them, how we ignore their

apologies, how we hand them identity.

It means that, I pray that for those who have ears can hear, it means that some of us are

going to have to grow into deeper levels of grace to learn how to accept people that you

were always taught to reject and to accept them quickly, without question, without apology,

without expectations.

Second, I just wrote hugs.

For some of us, nothing feels more affirming than a hug.

When I was a child on Sunday morning, there was a few people that would always give me

hugs.

Rosalie Stair, LaVon Williams, not my family, and yet my family in Christ every single Sunday,

all ages.

I didn't ask for these hugs, but they gave them to me anyway.

Some of us, there's nothing more affirming than a hug.

And I get it.

Some of us, we don't like to be touched.

That's fine too.

Maybe at the end of this service, maybe some of you need to hug somebody.

Maybe some of you need to realize that you've never been embraced inside of this building.

Sure, you've been accepted.

You know, someone like, oh yeah, I'm kind of friends with that person.

Oh, I kind of know that person.

But maybe you just need to be hugged.

Maybe you need to be embraced.

Maybe you need someone to fall on your neck so that you really know that they're happy

that you're here.

So if you can, let's offer someone that affirmation that they belong, that we're in this together,

that they are family.

And the last thing is I want to encourage you to be a part of a community table and

to invite someone to that space that doesn't know yet what it means to be family.

A community table, they're going to start up in a couple Sundays.

We're going to have a few of them, two on Sunday nights, one on Wednesday night.

It's just a very social opportunity to talk to each other, talk a little bit about God,

to eat food together and to get to know each other and to learn that you really are a part

of this family.

There's sign up sheets out in the lobby.

I encourage you to look at those.

If you have any questions, put them in your connection card.

I encourage you guys, be ready to run.

For some of us, be ready for a hug after the service is over today.

For others of us, sign up for something like a community table and you know what?

I'm going to go a little deeper into what it means to be a part of this community, to

get to know each other.

Because I want us to understand that the point of all of this is for us to be a church like

the Father is a Father.

So welcome people home.

Let's pray.

God, I thank you that you, again, are the kind of Father that you are, that you love us,

that you have compassion for us, that you run to us, that while you always see us, you

still seek us.

I pray that our hearts would seek you and that we would feel found like true children

of your family.

In the name of Jesus, amen.