Sermon Notes for the Prodigal Son and the Loving Father

2/12/2012  Sermon Notes for   Luke 15:11-31 

Notice that on the first 3 Pre-Lenten Sundays, the Gospel Lessons are each a Parable:  The Publican and Pharisee, The Prodigal Son, and the Last Judgment.

The fact that Tradition places 3 parables on the Sundays before Lent is intriguing to me because so often we see Great Lent as THE religious season of the year.  One would almost expect to find Gospels in which Christ COMMANDS us what to do.  Yet, instead we are given stories, parables to ponder not direct commandments.   Parables call us to reflect and meditate and think about what lessons are being offered to us.  It is not mere obedience to religious law that God wants from us, He teaches us how to change our hearts.  We can listen to the Gospel parables and learn what behavior to imitate and what religious behavior is not pleasing to God.   I think it is St. Mark the Ascetic in THE PHILOKALIA  who says fulfilling the commandments is one thing but virtue is something else.  Christ is teaching us to be virtuous not just obedient.

Interestingly the Lessons are almost in contradiction to the ideas of religious LAW, for note the heroes in each of the Pre-Lenten Gospels:  it is not the Law-abiding religious person.  In the Parable of the Publican and Pharisee, the Pharisee is clearly the religious person and righteous, but not the hero of the story and not the one who has God’s approval.  In the Prodigal Son it is not the son who stays home and is completely faithful to his father who is the hero, but it is the profligate prodigal who squanders his father’s livelihood (not just his wealth!) in frivolous partying with HARLOTS who is the stories hero.   And next Sunday in the Parable of the Last Judgment it is not the irreligious and those who ignore the 10 Commandments who are condemned in judgment, but those who failed to show mercy.   The Parables of the up-side-down Kingdom challenge our thinking about what is important to God.  God recognizes we are sinners and not perfect and so it is the penitent not the self-righteous who is commended to God and justified by God.  God not only desires mercy rather than Pharisaic faithful to law, but God practices mercy in judgment on those who have been merciful.

So before Great Lent we are taught important lessons by Christ in parables.  But why parables?

Matthew 13:10-17

Then the disciples came and asked him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answered, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says:

Prophet Isaiah

‘You will indeed listen, but never understand,

and you will indeed look, but never perceive.

For this people’s heart has grown dull,

and their ears are hard of hearing,

and they have shut their eyes;

so that they might not look with their eyes,

and listen with their ears,

and understand with their heart and turn—

and I would heal them.’

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.

The answer to the question about why are we taught in parables is that we might receive the secrets of the Kingdom of heaven.  Lent is not so much about self sacrifice as it is about opening our hearts and minds to receive the mysteries of God’s Kingdom.  We are to shake up our thinking so that we can be receptive to God’s message.

Christ quotes in explaining “why parables?” a passage from the Prophet Isaiah.  And here we see the nature of prophecy.  Prophecy does not predestine what is to happen.  The point of Christ quoting Isaiah is not to say “the inability of people to understand parables was bound to happen as Isaiah said.”  Rather prophecy is a glimpse into what might happen, but it is also a warning that it is not too late to change behavior.

Prophet Jonah

Think about the Prophet Jonah.  He reluctantly goes to Nineveh and warns the people that in 3 days the city will be destroyed.  But in 3 days the city was not destroyed.  Did Jonah lie to the Ninevites?  NO!   They heard his message and repented – their repentance changed the course of history.  The Prophet Jonah saw what was going to occur – where things were headed – but then the people changed their ways.

So too with Isaiah’s prophecy.  Isaiah foresaw a time in which people’s hearts, eyes and ears would be hardened to God’s Word.  A time when people wouldn’t listen to God.  Jesus quotes Isaiah not to predestine the people of His day to fulfilling the prophecy but to cause them to think again so that they would change their behavior and change history too.

The Parables of Jesus give us a glimpse at the Kingdom of Heaven, reveal to us the mysteries that are being laid open to us through Christ and through our following Christian discipline.   We have the change in contemplating the Parables to see and hear what God is doing in our lives today as we progress through Great Lent toward the great day of the final Resurrection.