The difference Jesus makes to relationship with God (Luke 15)

[adapted with permission from the 'Introducing God' course material]

Relationship with our Father
One of the things that I’ve learnt over the years through growing up myself and through being involved with all sorts of people as a pastor is how enormously significant for so many people is the kind of relationship that we had with our fathers when we were growing up.

For women as well as men, young people as well as old, it seems to me that if you can start to get an understanding about the relationship that a person had with their father when they were growing up, you’ve gone an enormous way toward understanding what makes them tick as a person.

For some people, of course, it’s about the positives that they saw in their father – the integrity and the consistency and uprightness that did more than anything else to frame the values that they grew up with and the sense of safety and groundedness that they took with them into adult life. For other people it’s a much less positive picture – it’s about capriciousness or remoteness or indifference or violence or impossible expectation; and in it’s own way that left a deep, deep imprint too. For most of us I think it tends to be a pretty complex mixture of both. But whichever way it is, most of the time the relationship – or the non-relationship – that we had with our fathers was an enormously significant factor in shaping the person that we are today.

Much more significant, though, is the relationship that we have with our Father in heaven – with God, and this morning I’m going to be talking about that relationship, and the difference Jesus makes to it. I’m conscious as I do that that for many of us those two relationships and the way that we feel about them are inextricably connected, so that if I say that God is our Father, you may find yourself thinking, “If God is anything like my father, then I want nothing to do with him.” If that’s the case for you – or even if you had a really good relationship with your earthly father – can I encourage you either way to try and start with a blank sheet of paper this morning, and listen freshly as Jesus paints a picture of real fatherhood – of the Father in heaven.

Jesus’ Greatest Story

We’ve been reading through these middle chapters of Luke’s gospel – that first century biography of Jesus – last week was chapter 14, and this week we’re picking up the story in the following chapter. Luke chapter 15 verse 1:

1 Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

There were two groups in Jesus’ audience. On the one hand, there were the tax collectors and sinners. And on the other, Pharisees and the teachers of the law.

The tax collectors and sinners were notorious people. They did an exposé in the newspaper a couple of years ago on who owns the brothels in our city. Well, the tax collectors and sinners are that kind of person. Colourful Sydney identities. The scandalously immoral and disreputable.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law are a very different group of people. They are the upright people. The righteous people. The Rotarians. The A-list of Jewish society. And Jesus tells a story – perhaps the greatest of all the stories that he tells - with these two groups in mind.

a The younger son’s declaration of autonomy 11-15
Jesus’ story begins in verse 11:

11 There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’

It’s an astonishing statement! The boy — he is a boy, probably a teenager, he has no wife — is essentially saying to his Father, “Give me the money now. I don’t think I can hang around any longer waiting for you to die.”

It’s an extraordinary declaration of autonomy.

It would be like one of your kids coming home from Uni one day - they’re sick of studying, the idea of getting a job is even worse so they come home one afternoon and they say to you, “I want my share of the inheritance now. You and Mum are practically empty-nesters now; I’m sure my brother can move out – why don’t you sell the house, move into something a whole lot cheaper and give me my share of the money now.”

It’s outrageous enough in our culture – but in the middle-Eastern peasant culture of Jesus’ day it would have been unthinkable. I remember a few years ago reading a book by a guy called Kenneth Bailey, who grew up in Egypt and Ethiopia, and then spent most of his working life teaching theology in the Middle East, in Lebanon. And he writes about this parable: “For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life, from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father was still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same... The conversation runs as follows: ‘Has anyone ever made such a request in your village? Never! Could anyone ever make such a request? Impossible! If anyone did, what would happen? His father would beat him, of course! Why? This request means - he wants his father to die!”

In hundreds of conversations there were only two exceptions. The first was the story of the eldest son of a Syrian farmer, who came asking for his inheritance one day, The father drove him out of the house and disowned him. The second occasion was reported by the pastor of a congregation of Jewish Christians in Iran. On one occasion one of the men of the congregation came to the pastor in anguish saying “My son wants me to die!”, because his son had come asking for his inheritance. Three months later, the father - who had previously been in good health - died. The mother said “He died that night” - the night that his son came asking for his inheritance.

That’s what the son is doing; he’s turning his back on his father and walking away; he’s saying that he’s happy to take the stuff that his father can give him, but who isn’t really interested in a relationship with him; and so he comes to his father and says, “Just give me the stuff now and I’m going.”

How does the father respond? Verse 12 – the end of the verse: “So he divided his property between them.”

Look what the son does next. Verse 13: “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.”

It was six months of spending his parents’ money. Spending his inheritance on dance parties, recreational narcotics and wild women. Six months’ worth of schoolies’ week on the Gold Coast.

b Consequences of the younger son’s declaration of autonomy 14-16

But the money doesn’t last, and verse 14: “After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.”

The money runs out and suddenly the friends do too..

Verse 15: “So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.” Worse than that, verse 16: “He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.”

It’s rock bottom for a Jew to be working in a piggery. It’s beyond rock bottom to be wishing you could eat the pigs’ food.

c The younger son turns back to his father 17-19

And so he reflects on his situation, verse 17: When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”’

He’s really saying, “I’ve been ungrateful, I’ve been stupid, I’ve dishonoured your name, I’ve rejected any right to a relationship with you. I’m so sorry. I am turning back!”



d The Father welcomes his younger son home 20-24

What happens next? Verse 20: So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him.”

The Father saw him! The Father had been looking for him, and he saw him while he was still at a distance.

The writer Max Lucado writes of a woman Maria:

Maria and her teenaged daughter Christina lived in the countryside of Brazil. Christina dreamed of swapping her dusty neighbourhood for the excitement of city life. The thought horrified Maria, who reminded her daughter of the harshness of the street. “People don’t know you there. What would you do for a living?” Maria knew in her heart what Christina would have to do for a living. Then one morning Maria got up to find her daughter’s bed empty. She put clothes in a bag, gathered her money and ran!

On the way to the bus stop, she stopped at one of those booths, where you can take passport photos. She closed the curtain, and spent all she could on photos of herself. And then she caught the bus to Rio de Janeiro. When she got there she immersed herself in the red light district of the city – she searched bars, hotels, nightclubs... And everywhere she went she left her photo — taped to a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to the corner of a phone booth. And then her money and her photos ran out, so she caught the bus home.

A number of weeks later, Christina came down the hotel stairs one morning. By now, the excitement had long since worn off, and the dream had become the nightmare.

She got to the bottom of the stairs. And in the middle of the clutter of notices stapled onto the noticeboard she saw a familiar face – the photo of her mum. She walked across the room and took the photo, pulled it off the board. Written on the back were these words:

Whatever you have done, Whatever you have become, It doesn’t matter. Please come home. And she did.

The analogy is not hard to see, is it. Christina is like the younger son in Jesus’ story. Maria is just like the father. And if you or I have turned our backs on God, then like Maria to her daughter, like the father to the younger son, God says to us: Whatever you have done, Whatever you have become, It doesn’t matter. Please come home. Whatever you have done, Whatever you have become.

And look what Jesus says the father in the story does, as the son comes home — verse 20: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him.” And he cast aside all decorum and he ran, and he welcomed him and he threw his arms around him.

I remember seeing a sketch by Rembrandt at an exhibition down in Canberra a few years ago now, a sketch that he did for a painting of the return of the prodigal son. This is not the same sketch but it’s a similar one, also by Rembrandt.

In both of them. the thing that was really striking about the picture was the condition that the son was in. His clothes were wrecked; he was covered in filth from his job looking after pigs; his hair was matted; he looked barely human; as you looked at the picture you could almost smell him. And what does the father do? He embraces him and kisses him - he doesn’t hold back, or wait till he’s had a shower; and he gives him shoes for his feet and a ring for his finger and the best robe, and he welcomes him home.

The son has a prepared speech, and he beings to say it to his dad, verse 21:

The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned [committed autonomy] against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son…’

It’s the right words to say, isn’t it. It’s the words that we need to come to God with: God, I am sorry for saying that it’s my life! I’m sorry for all the tokenism and hypocrisy and half-heartedness. I’m sorry for all the times when I thought that life would be better without you than with you, the things I worshipped in place of you and the ways that I acted as if I was my own God.” It’s exactly the right kind of words to come back to God with.

What is astonishing is the Father’s reply. Verse 22: “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. ‘For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”

It’s marvellous, isn’t it! But there’s a problem. Remember, God is very much like the mother Maria.
Now when we see it on the Maria-Christina scale, it doesn’t raise a problem for us. But what if I give the younger son a name. Well, it’s you and it’s me.

But what if I said this prodigal son also includes, at least potentially, these ten men, featured in an article on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald a few years back.

Remember these guys? Kevin Crump, Allan Baker, John Travers, The Murphy brothers, Michael Murdoch, Steven Jamieson, Matthew Elliot. And across the top of the article, the quote from the Police Minister is:

‘These animals deserve never to see the exit sign at the prison gate’. The Police Minister says they are animals who should rot in gaol forever.

And God says: Whatever you have done, Whatever you have become, It doesn’t matter. Please come home.

Well, does God say that? Not quite. I understand the sentiments behind Maria’s note to her daughter, and yet there is a sense in which you can’t just say that. What we have done, does matter! The adultery — whether in action or thought. The theft, The lying. The stealing, The broken relationships. And all of those are just the symptoms of rejecting God, And rejecting God matters! God knows it matters.

And when God offers us forgiveness, when God asks us to come home, he doesn’t do it in a way that cheapens the reality of human evil. The forgiveness that God offers us in Jesus is costly forgiveness. And Jesus even when he tells this story here in Luke chapter 15, is on a journey on his way to Jerusalem, where he’s going to pay the cost of that forgiveness in his death on the cross.

In the death of Jesus, all the evil of all humanity from all time is focused, concentrated in on one point, one moment, one man.

The reason that God the Father can graciously forgive us like he does is that the man who told this story, the Lord Jesus — the one man who’s ruler of the universe — died to pay for our forgiveness. So now God might say to us – to us or to anyone who turns to him in repentance: Whatever you have done, Whatever you have become, It’s dealt with in Jesus, paid for in Jesus — forgiven! Come home!

e The elder son’s declaration of autonomy 25-30
Now, the father had an elder son. See verse 25: Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

The older brother became angry and refused to go in. And in a sense the elder brother’s position is very reasonable. Look what he says to his Father in verse 29: ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

I suspect many of us felt a little bit like the elder brother, just a moment ago. When I said that the death of Jesus was enough to pay for the crimes of Michael Murphy, Kevin Crump, Allan Baker, John Travers, if they turned to God in genuine repentance. And when we think that, even a little bit, we are like the elder son — so far from the Father’s heart.

f The Father’s answer: rejoice at repentance 31-32
We need to get over that, because listen to what the Father says to his elder son. Listen to what the Father has on his heart: verse 31: ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

The gracious God is the forgiving Father, and he pours out his heart to his elder son. And the elder son, who has lived at home all this time, has no idea what is going on in his father’s heart!

Jesus’ invitation to come home
And so Jesus’ story finishes with one son inside, celebrating. And the other son…well, we don’t know. Did he stay outside preserving his self righteousness, cut off from his father’s joy, sulking, or did he come in and join God’s party?

When Jesus told this story there were two groups in the audience. There were the tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. The tax collectors and sinners were notorious people.
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were upright, righteous, moral, religious people.

And I am sure that when Jesus told the story, he meant the tax collectors to identify with the younger son, who knew that he had done wrong. He asked for forgiveness. He was forgiven, because Jesus had died for him. He was dead and was made alive. He was lost and then was found.

And I am sure that when Jesus told the story, he meant the Pharisees to identify with the elder son: moral on the surface, but in their autonomous self-righteousness, so far from the Father’s heart. Really, in a sense, the audience that Jesus had back then as he told this story is the same audience that is here, 2000 years later.

You might identify with the notorious or you might identify with the moral. Both of them need to come inside with the father and share in his joy. If you are the younger son, will you stubbornly stay feeding the pigs, or will you come and ask for forgiveness? Will you be forgiven because of the death of Jesus, and come home to be with the Father?

And if you are the elder son? If in your autonomy you have no idea how you have offended the Father, no idea about how far you are from the father’s heart, the Father has the same message: come home. God the Father doesn’t ask, “What have you done?” God the Father welcomes people who turn back to him. You may be a spectacular rebel or just outside, sulking. Either way, you need to turn back, to come inside.

I want to lead in a prayer now. It’s a prayer that you may want to pray for the very first time this morning, just in the silence, repeating in your heart, between you and God; or it’s a prayer that you might want to echo back to God silently as a restatement of the things you said when you first came back to him months or years or decades ago.

Our Father in heaven,
Thanks for making the world and me as a part of it.
I am sorry. I have sinned not only against people but also against you.
I am no longer worthy to be called your child.
Thankyou that you graciously forgive.
Thankyou that your son Jesus died to pay for my forgiveness.
Please give me your Spirit to help me from now on to live in obedience to you.
Amen.