Luke 15:11-32... LOUDER THAN JETS

MEN'S BREAKFAST
16th September, 2008

St Bede’s Anglican Church in Drummoyne meets in a magnificent old building. It’s a 1930’s design, built with very solid dark brick; the place is toweringly tall-ceilinged, with a pipe organ that you almost need abseiling gear to reach. It was about half-way through a service there on Sunday when two other features became apparent.

Acoustics. And location. St Bede’s is right under a flightpath.

A big old 747 with a full fuel-load makes one heck of a din. And the noise inside a big old church just echoed and boomed around the high brickwork. It was like listening to a V8 in a washing machine. One of the skills you need at St Bede’s is the vocal power to out-shout a Boeing.

I love the picture we find in the Gospel of Luke – chapter 15 – of one man who would’ve shouted louder than a jet. The father of the Prodigal Son. He’s never joking when He roars in joy, “Let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” And here we are – a collection of sons who were dead, and are alive again.

It’s one of the best-loved stories in any of the Gospels, and rightly so. I think most of us can see something ourselves and our walk in that parable… sad and badly battered, finally remembering our Father and attempting to find our way to fall at His feet… only to realise that He’s already come running up the driveway to us, he’s scooped us up and kissed us, and in his great love and mercy and grace He lets the world know – loudly – that we live again..

We can feel the combination of humiliation and gratitude when we realise that. We know what it feels like to be given our lives back. We know that great and awful cost that Jesus paid so that we who were desperately lost can come back home with our Father.

When we step out the door this morning, we’re going to walk out and into a world of Prodigal Sons. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands… I think most of us can recognise some of them by instinct. We can see the great, great heartbreak when someone realises that they are sitting with the pigs, looking at the slops, wondering what happened to the world that they were enjoying so much of just a couple of weeks or days ago. We recognise them, and our hearts do go out to them, and we pray for them – even when there’s not much else that we can do.

Confession – I hate calling the parable “The Prodigal Son.” It’s about the only time we use the word prodigal at all. It means “The son who spent a lot,” and that’s true enough. But it doesn’t quite cover it. We’re almost too familiar with the story to realise what a horrendous picture He was painting.

When Jesus told this parable, he picked out one of the worst social situations that anyone in that day could imagine. This would be a disaster. A son – a younger son at that – actually had no right to ask for his share of that inheritance. He had a duty to his family. But this arrogant little upstart quite deliberately decided to shed himself of all responsibility. Get the old man to cough up his life savings, then simply walk out. This was a family’s nightmare. There would be shame on the family, that a son of theirs could do such a thing.

Because there would be no mistaking what the boy was doing. He was showing utter contempt for his father. There’s an obvious question for the father - what kind of son did you raise? A father of that kind of son really had only one option in the face of such contempt, and that would be to turn his back on the boy and disown him. Completely. That was understood, and – certainly in the society that Jesus was speaking to – it was the expected, respectable thing to do.

Even worse, the boy went to a far country – in with the Gentiles, in with the heathens. And he blew it all – the wealth of his father’s hard work. He blew it all to hell. Smoking it up, drinking it up, screwing it up. To people listening to Jesus, this son has pretty much spat in his father’s face, turned on his heel and walked.

Here’s the dangerous part. We live in a society that really encourages our young sons and daughters to follow this son. This is… pretty normal these days. It’s an expected story, and very much the Australian experience.

In one sense, it’s considered part of growing up. The Aussie rite of passage. Schoolies week. Three months in London that suddenly turns into three years of working in a pub to try to buy a ticket home. Moving out of home to get a party-flat and a Commodore ute and a job to pay for the beers…

I honestly think that the most dangerous part for us is how we look upon the Prodigal Sons (and Daughters) out there who are having the time of their lives. Especially when we’re doing it tough, especially since we’ve had to grow up a bit, especially since we’ve got kids and a hard job, and we can’t afford to play anymore… And, of course, we’re now good sons of our Father, so we can’t play like that anyway…

How easy is it for us to both quietly despise them and envy them at the same time? To wait quietly for them to have The Crash? Even though it’s happened to us, and we’ve had our Father run out to us and embrace us and kiss us… how easy is it for us to find ourselves with a heart like the older brother in that parable?

There’s a word in German that doesn’t really have an English counterpart. Schadenfreude. Look it up. Sound familiar?

I can guarantee you one thing. If we’re looking at someone with a heart like that, it’s going to be pretty hard to pray for them. It’s hard to pray for someone to be welcomed back by our Father when part of us feels that they deserve to stay with the pigs. It’s pretty hard to lay a table for them here when part of us actually still wants to be out there in that heathen place with them.

As we go out the door into the world of men, I want us to keep an eye out for those Lost Boys and Girls who haven’t come to grief yet, who haven’t had to hire themselves out to feed the pigs. Guard our hearts from thinking like men. Pray that we remember how to think like a rescued son. Pray that as we’re dealing with people today, that we’ll never think that they’re too far away for our Father to love. Pray that we’ll hear God shouting with joy in that great voice that’s louder than jets: “This, my son, was dead – and is alive again!”


Painting: Charles Mackesy, The Prodigal Son. Charcoal and gouache on board
http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425274646/132476/charlie-mackesy-the-prodigal-son.html