Author: Daron Lindemann
Last saved by: Barb Bartz

Our God Loves the Lost
Luke 15:1-3,11-32  +  Lent 4

We need to be refreshed, and renewed and reminded again and again and again for the simple reason: we forget, we lose our way. Sometimes we forget because we’ve lost ourselves in the mundane tasks of an everyday life that has filled our minds with all the many tyrannies of the urgent: gotta go, gotta see, gotta do. Sometimes we get lost in the swamp of despair. We’re discouraged. Life has dealt us a number of hard blows.  Things are not going according to plan - at least, not according to our plan. Sometimes we lose our joy because we’re scared. And there’s a lot to be scared of. Finally, sometimes, we lose our way because we’re just plain weary. We’ve been there, we’ve done that, and we’ve seen it all before. How many times do we have to discuss this point? How many times do we have to have this argument? How many times do we have to flog this dead horse? How many times do we have to show love to this so-called brother or sister of mine who’s been pretty unloving to me, and who’s said some really spiteful things?

We all get lost, sometimes.  Our hearts lose their peace and become restless because they drift away from the God who made us. We get lost sometimes and we can’t find our own way back home. That’s why we’re going to study this great chapter of Luke together once again this morning, especially the parable of the two sons. With this chapter, Jesus means to open our eyes so that we can look into the heart of God, a heart that’s all on fire with love for poor, lost sinners. In the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin, Jesus reminds us that our God is - above all else - a seeking God, a God whose restless love is constantly on the move, seeking, searching, and taking great joy over finding a single sinner who repents. In the parable of the two sons, Jesus pleads with us all - whenever and however we may lose our way - to find ourselves again in our Father’s eyes. Once we do that, we’ll know who we are and why we’re here, because the Father’s love transforms us.  We can sum the whole chapter up in this one great truth: Our God Loves the Lost.

We all know that Jesus is pointing his words especially towards a group that doesn’t see the lost the same way he does. The religious leaders of the land were upset because Jesus was welcoming notorious sinners into his fellowship. “How can such a man be considered a teacher in Israel? The man has no standards! He works with people who long ago showed clearly that they didn’t deserve to be a part of us. They haven’t kept the Law. They’ve broken the rules. Their lives are full of sin, and yet this fellow eats with them!” The three parables are Jesus’ reply.

Now the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin are Jesus’ way of portraying the Father in general as a passionate seeker of the lost. In them Jesus is saying: here is the Father’s heart, here is the Father’s work, here is the Father’s purpose in sending me into the world. But in the parable of the two sons, Jesus is trying to do something more. He wants to reach them, reach into their hearts and find them where they live. He wants to draw these grumblers to himself by telling them a story in which, really, we can all find ourselves; he speaks to them in a way in which, really, we can all understand. A story about a Father and his two sons who both got lost, each in his own way.

We know this younger son. We’ve all met him before at some point in our lives. Maybe a relative. Maybe a friend. Maybe someone we work with. And even if we’ve met him in no other place, then certainly we’ve met him in our mirror. At some point, some time, he was right there, staring out at us, if not because of our deeds, then certainly because of our thoughts.

He wants to live life on his own terms, the way he pleases. He’s into instant gratification. “Give me my share,” he says to his father. “I can’t wait till you die old man. I want what I got coming. I want it all, and I want it now.” And he’s not about to stick around the old homestead once he gets it. He wants to be free, free from restrictions and restraints, do’s and don’ts, free from having to explain himself to anyone else, free from all the smothering love and his father’s sad eyes looking at him over the breakfast table. So he packs up his things and hikes off “to a distant country.”

There he has things his own way, for a while. He plunges himself into a life of drugs, sex, and rock and roll, we might say, seizing every day and squeezing it dry. Then the money runs out. And hard times hit the country. And he’s forced to hire himself out to a wealthier man who sends him out to feed his pigs. He’s fallen about as low as any Jew could ever go. Not only does he tend pigs, but “he longs to fill his stomach with the pods the pigs were eating.” Do you get Jesus point? Even pig food looks good to him. By trying to break free he’s become a slave to wretched, unfulfilled desires for wretched, unfulfilling things.

It’s not everyone who’s granted an epiphany in a pigsty, but this younger son was. He’s given one of those rare moments of clarity that by the grace of God we each of us may have from time to time. He sees himself at last as he really is. “He came to his senses,” Jesus says, literally, “he came to himself.” “I have sinned against heaven” - defied the good God who made me, and against my father.” I’m no longer worthy to be called his son. But though I’ve lost my place in his heart, though he doesn’t - he can’t - love me anymore, he might at least tolerate me by giving me a place as one of his hired men. Even that would be better than what I’ve got now.

“You have created us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts cannot rest until it comes to rest in you.” That’s what St. Augustine once wrote and in so doing summed up the predicament not only of his world, but of our post-modern world. Desperate to find something that will last, people plunge themselves into everything.  They want to silence that craving voice inside that goes, “I want, I want, I want. . .” They try to drown the voice in endless sensations - riots of color, walls of sound, oceans of feelings. But nothing works, and in the end, they have nothing, they become nothing.  

We know this younger son. We know him well. We’ve seen him. We’ve met him all around. We’ve even found him inside our own hearts.

The older son, we also know. In fact, I must confess, when I was young, I saw myself more easily in the younger son. But the older I get, the more practiced I become in the art of religion, the more I see myself in the older man. He’s the good boy. The dutiful one. The obedient one. Of course his father loves him. He’s the one that didn’t run off. He’s the one that got up every morning, year after year, even though he didn’t want to. He milked the cows. He cleaned out the barns. He did all the dirty work, slaving away, doing all that was asked of him and more. It’s just typical of him that he’s out working in the fields when the young son comes home. Where else would you expect find him?

Oh, and can’t you just feel his rage when he realizes that all he’s built his life on, all his past years of toil and sweat has been nothing but a cheat and a lie. Here he’s been working as hard as he can to maintain proper standards, to become deserving of his father’s love. And he thought he was deserving. But in an instant, it’s all swept away. A servant says, “Your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.” And in the background, the band plays on. You know why he’s angry, don’t you?

He says it: “all these years I’ve been slaving away and you never even gave me so much as a young goat to go out and have a good time with my friends. But this younger son of yours comes back and you kill the fattened calf for him.” Here I’ve been working as hard as I can to earn your love, and you give it away to slobs who don’t deserve it! What good is it? What good is any of it? You’ve made a mockery of my work. You’ve made a mockery of all standards of right and wrong, of good and bad.

Some get lost running from home. And some get lost without taking a step, staying right where they are inside their father’s house. What a danger this is especially for the faithful, the people committed to the church. It’s all too easy to begin to think it’s about our dedication. Our toil, and trouble. Our sweat and tears. We can so easily start to think it’s about how high we’ve keep our standards, how pure we’ve kept our doctrine, how zealous we’ve been for God’s cause. Not like some other churches, other houses, other people we could mention. When that happens, our spirituality revolves around ourselves, not God. We’ve become slaves again to the law. Slaves to our own self-centered religious ego’s. No longer free to love God. No longer free to love our neighbor. We lose the power to see in the eyes of the lost a neighbor in need of God’s love. We lose that restless love to seek the lost, born of our Father’s love for us.

There’s no one so lost as the one who thinks he never needed finding. When God’s grace no longer seems amazing to us, we no longer know grace. We know this older son, don’t we? Like Luther once said, “The gospel is a rare guest in a believer’s heart, whereas the law is their daily and familiar companion.

The only way to find our way back to freedom is to center ourselves once again in our Father’s eyes, find ourselves in our Father’s matchless love. The only one in this parable who acts in a way that is really surprising, the only one whose behavior isn’t predictable or recognizable in anything we know from our own earth-bound lives is the father.

Here’s a heart big enough for all the lost, however and wherever they lose their way. See how willing, how free, and how constant his love is. This younger son asks him, “Gimme my share!” and the father does not refuse him. If he cannot hold this boy to him by love, he will not force him to stay. We get some idea how big the father’s heart is when later we hear the words, “while he was still a long way off ” his father saw his younger son, trudging his sorry way back home. What does that tell you? Each day, and many times during the day, the father’s love drove him outside to scan the horizon, to look down the same road that took his son away from him. Day after day, month after month, year after year, nothing but disappointment. Yet the fire of his love is never quenched. The next day he will look again, constant in his hope that his boy will return.

And when he sees his younger son at last, he doesn’t wait for him to finish his journey. He runs out to welcome him. Even before his son finishes his little speech, “I have sinned against heaven and against you …” the father gathers him into his arms, and holds him tight and says, “Quick, the best robe, a ring of sonship for his hand, and sandals for his feet. A feast of celebration for MY SON, he’s home! The lost is found, the dead is alive again.” No son on probation. No, “Well, let’s take this slow and maybe we’ll see.” To his contrite boy forgiveness is immediate, full, and complete. No holding back. He’s son again with full honors. Welcome in his father’s house.

And when the older son refuses to come into the celebration, what does the father do? He goes out to where his son is, where he stands seething with rage. He bears his insults “all these years I’ve been slaving for you.” He gives an explanation that he really doesn’t owe: you are always with me and all I have is yours. Jesus is trying to melt the hard hearts of his critics, trying to get them to see the truth, to see things through his eyes - that they’re sinning against love and they’re speaking against grace. He’s going out to them and putting himself at their mercy, holding out his hands and saying, “Come in, come in to the celebration of grace; come in to the feast of those who once were lost, but now are found.”

Our God Loves the Lost. These are more than words. This is more than a pretty story. This is more than some sterile and abstract doctrinal discussion on the nature of God’s love and the meaning of grace. Jesus is God’s restless, searching, boundless, free, and patient love come down to earth. “Of the Father’s love begotten” from all eternity, he came down to find us, and set us all free. He came into the world, he came unto his own, and even though he knew the world would kill him, even though he knew his own - these men right in front of his eyes, his critics - would reject him and crucify him, still he came. He came to seek and to save the lost - you and me. And he would not rest until he found us. Until he’d paid the penalty for our sins and had won for us full rights as God’s own sons. And his love remains restless, ceaselessly searching for us and finding us again throughout our lives whenever we wander off or lose our way. Those he seeks for his own, he wants to keep his own. He found us when we were baptized, he calls out to us with his word every time it’s preached, and he celebrates with us the feast of his holy supper, the feast of those who once were lost but now are found. “You are mine again,” he is saying, “made whole in my love, and so my joy is complete.”

Our God Loves the Lost! Once that love finds you again, and seizes your heart, and refreshes your soul, you know who you are and why you’re here. These are not just words. This is more than a pretty story. This is not just some abstract doctrine that we can safely tuck away in some tiny compartment inside our heads. This restless love is a burning fire. It drives us out to help our neighbor find our Father’s joy. The love of Jesus shines through our eyes, energizes our hands, drives our feet onward until every last one of the lost might be found. That’s who we are. That’s why we’re here. The lost who are found become seekers, filled with the fire of the same restless love that found them. There is no greater purpose for our lives. No other mission for our church. Amen.