Joshua 5: 9-12; Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-end
The tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus, and the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling.
+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In many ways, the whole drama of salvation history revolves around a simple theme: food.
In the biblical story of creation, God creates human beings, blesses them, that they might be fruitful and exercise wise stewardship over the whole earth, and says: ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed… and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.’
Human beings are first and foremost hungry beings, and the world is given as a glorious banquet table. Adam is placed in the garden paradise of Eden, and in the middle of it is set the tree of life, the fruit of which was beautiful to the sight and good for food. We must eat in order to live; we must take the world into our bodies, and transform it into our flesh and blood. We are what we eat.
The entrance of sin and death into the world is also presented in the story of creation as an instance of the wrong kind of eating. In eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve snatch and grab at God’s creation. They forget that all is gift, they forget that there is a divine gift-giver, and try to set up an autonomous existence, judging for themselves between good and evil.
But the divine gift is given again. Jesus is nailed to the tree of the cross, so that he might offer himself as our true food. The tree of death becomes the tree of life, as Jesus is crowned ‘King of the Jews’, and triumphs over death itself by the power of his indestructible life. And in his ascension into heaven, Jesus offers himself in the heavenly temple, so that by the descent of the Holy Spirit, we might receive his body and blood in the Holy Eucharist, as the food of eternal life.
Every time we eat this sacred meal we are given a foretaste of the future messianic banquet foretold by the prophets. Every time the Church gathers to celebrate this divine liturgy, there is a manifestation in time of the new creation that God will bring to earth, where all are invited to eat and drink at Christ’s table in the Kingdom of God.
So, when the gospels tell us that Jesus ate and drank with sinners, this is not just a bit of narrative padding, not something just to bridge the gaps between various miracle stories and teaching parables. In his eating and drinking with sinners, Jesus is proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has come near, and that the most unlikely of people are being welcomed in.
And the significance of what Christ was doing wasn’t lost on the Pharisees and the scribes. As Luke tells us, they were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
A good moment for Jesus to tell a few parables. But before he gets to the parable of the prodigal son, as our Gospel reading this morning is often known, he prepares the ground a little.
Who of you, he says, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not search until she finds it? And when that which was lost is found, is there not rejoicing and feasting? Just so, says Jesus, there is joy in heaven when a sinner repents and turns back to the fullness of life in God.
The parable of the prodigal son is a story of such repentance. Like Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden tree, the younger son disregards the relation with his father, and grabs at what he wants his father to give him. What happens next, as he squanders his property in dissolute living, is an icon of human sin: sin is exile in a distant country; it is famine and desperation; it is enslavement to the impulses and passions of our lower nature.
Now, it must be said that the younger son’s repentance is a little mixed. Yes, he rehearses his speech, that he has sinned against heaven and his father. There is a recognition of wrong-doing. But his turning back starts with the realisation that his father’s servants have it better than he does, as he looks enviously at the food of the pigs he is feeding. And so, it is fair to say that he returns home with mixed motives.
Regardless, even when he was far off, his father sees him, is filled with compassion, falls upon his neck, kisses his son, totally ignores the rehearsed speech, and instead puts on a glorious banquet with some fine clothing thrown in for good measure. This is not so much the parable of the prodigal son, as the prodigal father, who lavishes his son with yet more of his property, simply because he has returned home.
The older brother is outraged by all of this, and perhaps at this point in Jesus’s story-telling, the Pharisees and the scribes might have been feeling slightly uncomfortable. And this is where I want us to feel the challenge of this parable for ourselves this Lent.
It is unlikely that many of you are sitting here this morning having squandered your property in profligate and destructive living. If you have, you should probably come and see me after the service, and I will hear your confession.
It is far more likely that you and I are like the older brother in the parable. Assured and proud of our own righteousness. Envious of the blessings other people enjoy, and judgemental about their shortcomings. More interested in what God can give us than in God himself. Too concerned with placing limits on the kindness of God, and insisting that his blessings can only be enjoyed if someone or some group is excluded. These, too, are the ways in which we can be lost and stuck in sin ourselves.
The significance of the older brother won’t have been lost on the Pharisees and the scribes, grumbling about Jesus’s feasting with tax-collectors and sinners. Indeed, the whole parable has overtones of the Old Testament narrative of Joseph and his older brothers, who abandoned him for dead, only to meet him once again in a distant land at a time of famine, and take him back to their father, who exclaims, ‘My son Joseph is still alive’, and falls upon his neck. Jesus is asking the religious leaders of the time: what kind of older brothers are you going to be? Will you rejoice with God as he lavishes his riches upon those deemed unworthy? Or will you look for new ways to exclude?
It is all too easy for us to be blinded by our own pride and self-righteousness, and think that it is only other people that are the problem. But God wants to save us from these our sins too. And he will not let us go. For the parable of the prodigal father ends not inside with the feast and the rejoicing over the younger son’s return, but outside, as the father pleads with the older son to come in and join the party. For God is the good shepherd, who abandons the ninety-nine and goes looking for the one sheep, the one coin, and, as Jesus himself says, he will not stop looking until he has found what is lost.
+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.