I’d like to begin this morning where I left off last week. The story is called the prodigal son – prodigal meaning Recklessly wasteful.
It is a story of homecoming. I don’t need to tell you how the story begins. When we leave home, it is a denial of the spiritual reality that we belong to God with every part of our being. In our leaving, we chose to live as if we do not yet have a home and must seek hard to find one.
The voice of God still calls out to us as his children, “you are my beloved one, upon whom my favor rests.” Yet I can quickly grow deaf to the voice that calls me beloved. I have left the only place I can call home to seek one where none exists.
And then there are other voices: parents, teachers, peers, but most of all the mass media. While these voices seem harmless or even helpful, but when I have forget the voice of my father, the other voices easily begin to dominate my life and pull me into that distant country, a world that rejects everything that was considered holy at home.
For the younger child, the question is simple: to whom do I belong? Do I belong to God, to the World, to myself? The lostness of our contemporary society can only be described by the word “addiction” Our need for home causes us to seek it in the world’s keys to self-fulfillment: the accumulation of wealth and power, attainment of status and admiration, lavish consumption of food and drink, sexual gratification that fails to distinguish between lust and love. These keys are inadequate substitutes for the home we need. Yet as long as we cling to them, we like the younger son will be lost in a fruitless quest for home in that “distant country.” I am the prodigal every time I look for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
Yet there is another prodigal! There was also an older son. How can his story be one of homecoming, for he never left home? While he did all the things a good son was supposed to do, inwardly, he grew farther and farther from his Father.
It is this second prodigal that is the hardest to spot, for he or she looks like a growing, vital Christian. They go through the motions, they look the part, but inside, behind the facade, they are hurting, isolated, and cold.
Outwardly, this person is the model Christian: obedient to both the word and Christian duty, but inwardly, the love and joy that once came from serving has become a yoke of unhappiness and chains of oppression. Service has become slavery, and they are no more at home than the younger child who has wondered away into overt sin.
This person is characterized by judgment and condemnation, anger and resentment, bitterness and jealousy. And the lostness of this older child is harder to find because it is hidden deep behind the elaborate facade they have erected. It is almost impossible to detect because it is so closely wed to the desire to be good and virtuous. Yet the key is the lack of joy.
Unlike the younger son, the fate of the older son’s is an open-ended -- Does he trust in God’s all-forgiving love enough to return home? And if he does, how does he find his way back?
For the younger son, the way home is clear.
1. Come to your senses. The prodigal had to come to his senses. Only when he realized the true poverty of his existence (no money, health, honor, self-respect, reputation . . .) was he willing to consider returning home. For him it was a decision between life and death. (Judas and Peter -- both rejected Christ; one chose death and one chose life.)
2. Seek forgiveness. Whatever you have lost, you are still the Father’s beloved child. The younger child must decide if he or she will allow God’s forgiveness and if they can forgive themselves.
For the older son, the way is equally clear.
1. Allow God to change your heart. See in Luke’s Gospel, the older son cannot return on his own. Unlike the younger son, the father went out to seek him. We cannot change ourselves; we must instead allow God to change us--to soften my heart and make me into his image. And that, saints, requires us to trust. Trust is the deep conviction that the Father truly wants me to come home.
2. Chose to love everyone. The ones to whom we bear resentment are often the marginal of society. Christ taught us in the Beatitudes what God’s attitude was in regards to those who are marginal.
3. Accept the Father’s invitation. The father’s love heals our inner-darkness. Are we willing to step into the light of God’s love and reclaim the rich heritage which is ours to claim? Hear the words of the Father again, “My child, you are always with me, and all I have is yours.” The father divided his goods to them.
4. Beware of the voice of self-rejection. While God calls us home, the darkness within us continues to call out to us. It says, ‘God isn’t really interested in you . . .he just takes you for granted. Besides, you aren’t what you appear to be . . .” At some point, we each must chose to disown that voice and claim for our own the beautiful truth that GOD LOVES ME.
5. Practice the discipline of gratitude. Be thankful for what God gives you. Look for ways to rejoice and praise him. Our gratitude will help us silence the voice of our own darkness and help us focus on the voice of the father that calls out to us . . . can you hear him this morning: You are my beloved. I love you! Won’t you come home?
Will you come home today?
