Sermon Tone Analysis

15 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 So he told them this parable: 4 “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.

6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’

7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

15 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 So he told them this parable: 4 “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.

6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’

7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

15 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 So he told them this parable: 4 “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.

6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’

7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

The Parable of the Prodigal and His Brother

11 Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons.

12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’

So he divided his property between them.

13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.

14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need.

15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.

16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.

17 But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!

18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”

’ 20 So he set off and went to his father.

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’

And they began to celebrate.

25 “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing.

26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on.

27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’

28 Then he became angry and refused to go in.

His father came out and began to plead with him.

29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen!

For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.

30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’

”

The lost Lego piece

Legos are big in our house these days.

Building, play-acting, imagining, tearing apart, and repeat.

Many individual pieces that together, make intricate, detailed wholes.

I don’t know much about losing a coin or drachma or a sheep or even having my son run off with his portion of the inheritance — but I do know about losing a lego.

Exonerate Asher — this is my issue.

I get obsessive about that missing piece.

How do the other pieces feel while I’m looking for the one?

What about all the replacement pieces I could choose (albeit difference colors, not part of that set…belonging somewhere else…)?

The joy of recovery.

The joy of wholeness.

The Prodigal Son and Many Tellings

Bet you’ve heard a sermon this text before, or read a book or studied this yourself.

The Prodigal Son.

An iconic parable, a wisdom parable of the grandest nature in the Christian tradition.

Hearing multiple tellings/interpretations of the story with hiring the INN director years

A rich text, a revealing text, a text that illuminates that vantage point of the interpreter.

Are you the Prodigal son? Do you resonate with his free-spirited, defiant, go off and see the world kind of way?

Have you wandered off and found yourself coming back home?

How were you received?

I wonder if those of us who resonate with the son may sometimes have a sense of dissonance with this passage — the return did not go as planned.

It wasn’t a full restoration.

Maybe you have been marked with the status of “not-quite-welcome anymore.”

We’ll come back to that.

Are you the Father?

Have you had the opportunity to extend this kind of radical welcome home to someone?

Or can you immediately picture those people in your life’s story who have played that role to you or others?

Are you the Older Son? Have you lived a faithful life, never really stepped out of line, always looked after what was given to you and not asked for much?

Have you watched the prodigals running off to live it up and held envy or voyeuristic curiosity?

Have you wanted that life, but known better?

I resonate with the Older Son a lot.

And not only the envious side — though that’s the quickest connection point most folks make.

But also the affirmative side, when the father comes to him and says, “hey, I’ve always put my trust in you, my gifts have always been yours.

so let’s celebrate the one who returns, but never forget that you’ve always been in my house.”

The older son is like the pieces of the Lego set that have always stuck around.

They didn’t go running off down the heating vent or into the couch cushions.

They stayed with their set, rather than stepping out to philander with the new blocks in town.

They’re those classic square blocks that always held the cornerstone of the wall and never really stepped out of line.

Ok — all of this to say that the story of the Prodigal Son is ripe for us to identify with, to place our own human struggle and story in line with.

I invite you to do that as you consider this text in the days to come.

Find yourself in it — All of the characters, in my opinion, have a sense of hopeful resolution — there is welcome and grace and home for all of them.

Look for it.

But today, I want to take us up a level and look at all of the characters as a unit, as a working system, as the whole Lego set — unique members of a body who need each other and need each member to receive full restoration and grace.

The Lost Ones - Parables

Jesus tells this story among a couple of other parables — one about lost sheep, another about lost coins.

While the meanings are rich and multivalent, I want to pull out something important from them that must be heard by our community.

For our ears, I hope we hear the Prodigal Son story as a story of radical welcome and radical grace.

Grace and welcome so radical that they should make us uncomfortable, make us squirm a little bit.

Grace so profound, welcome so immense, that in this little family unit, we see a picture of the restoration of all humanity and the loving welcome of God that is extend past all sin, through all brokenness, driving through all pride and unmasking all that we hide behind.

The problem the Prodigal Son faces is that his imagination for what the world could be like is misshapen.

He expects he can go out and run the town and live it up and that his material wealth will take him where he needs to go.

And it does, for a bit.

But when the money runs out, his imagination problem shifts toward how he thinks about the abundant riches of his family.

In vs. 17, he “comes to himself.”

(I don’t really think he’s in his “right mind” then, either, but yet another delusional state) - “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger.”

He thinks — alright, I’ve messed this part up, so I’ll keep going and change who I am and become a servant of my father’s house.

Pause there — this kid, taking his father’s inheritance, had for all intents and purposes cut himself off as a living member of the family.

He says, thank you very much Dad, I wish you were dead and I’d like to be cut off too, but with a full purse, mmkay?

He is dead to his family.

So his imagination for restoration or what’s possible is stunted.

And rightly so — that’s how it would have been in this kind of social structure.