The Parable of the Prodigal Son Talk 2: What happens when we sin?

Introduction

I spoke a lot last week about sin: what it is and why we do it. To briefly summarise: we all sin and sin separates us from God, because it is the very act of turning away from God and choosing our own way. The problem is not the precise nature of the sin: the problem is simply that we have turned away. In turning away, we have chosen separation from God.

This week, we begin to think more about what happens when we sin: the consequences of sin. I am not talking about punishment, or hell, or anything like that. The purpose of this talk is not to instil fear into anybody’s heart: rather, its purpose is to help us to think about what is really going on when we sin, as we all do—the spiritual consequences, if you like. This is perhaps to descend to the depths more than we are used to, or more than we are comfortable with but, as I said last week, we descend to the depths, knowing that we will travel home together, back to the home that is meant for all of us.

Our descent to the depths is not about becoming afraid or miserable about our very human natures but about understanding the darkness that we all have to face in our own lives. If we pretend that the darkness is not there, we will never truly be able to bring the light to the darkness because if we’re not willing to face the darkness, if we try to pretend that it doesn’t exist, those parts of our lives remain unexposed to the light of Christ. In other words, if we want to grow as Christians, we have to allow Christ into all areas of our lives. We face our darkness knowing that Christ is bringing his light into that darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Let us hear the Parable of the Prodigal Son again.

Reading of Luke 15:11-32
Talk

The younger son had left the abundance of his father’s house. While he was at the house, everything he needed was provided for him. It was a house that could afford to have servants. It was most likely a life of luxury. No doubt because of his father’s careful management of the household, the son had never known want.

But the son wanted his freedom. He wanted to live away from his father’s house and do whatever he pleased. We tend to focus on the restrictions on our lives, rather than the blessings that we have. The son, like all of us, and like everybody as they grow up, wanted to have the freedom to do what he wanted, without having to answer to his father, and so he took his inheritance and moved away from his father’s house, to live as though his father didn’t exist, to live as though his father was dead.

What the son didn’t realise, and what we so often don’t realise, is that any restrictions that the father placed on his son’s life were for his own protection, his own good. The father only ever wanted to keep his son safe. How many parents have used the phrase ‘I don’t want you to make the same mistakes that I made’? My mum certainly did. And how many children have said to their parents ‘but you did it when you were younger’ or ‘you just don’t want me to have fun’?

The son chose freedom and independence from his father. In the same way, in taking the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve, chose freedom and independence from the God who created them, having been deceived into think that they could become like God themselves. The problem was that it was the illusion of freedom: the freedom was not real. The son wanted to live as though his father was dead, as though he didn’t exist, but his father was not dead, his father was very much alive. He had given up the place that was rightfully his, in order to live the life he thought he wanted. He had effectively said to his father: ‘I don’t need you. I don’t need your advice. I can do this by myself.’

He squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need.

What he took ran out. He had chosen a life away from the abundance of his father’s house. His father’s hard work, his careful management, meant that the house would have a steady income. Money didn’t just land on the father’s lap: he had to work for it, he had to make wise decisions, he had to be sensible. The younger son had rejected this for the illusion of freedom. He wanted to enjoy his life but, without the discipline and hard work, the money ran out.

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

To fully understand what this means, we have to remember that pigs were seen as unclean animals: no self-respecting Jew would own pigs, let alone be a person hired to feed them. Essentially, for Jewish listeners, this was saying that the younger son had become lower than the low, more unclean than the unclean. To use a metaphor from the Indian caste system, he was lower than the untouchables.

He hired himself out. His rightful place was as his father’s son, safe and provided for in his father’s house. That was where he belonged. That was where he should have been. Like many of us, in chasing the illusion of freedom, he found that he had, in fact, found captivity: he had to hire himself out, making himself the servant of somebody else. His father offered him a life of safety, a life of plenty: he had chosen a life of poverty, a life of servitude. The son has become a slave. He thought he was finding freedom: what he had, in fact, found was servitude. He had substituted relationship and love for obligation and a loveless life. Nobody in this world he had chosen owed him any love: he had become a servant, rejected by any self-respecting people. He had substituted the love of his father for loneliness and isolation. No one gave him anything.

That is so often precisely what we get when we sin: loneliness and isolation. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we find that we hide in the bushes: we are ashamed and are afraid of God, and sometimes afraid of other people. We are especially afraid of people finding out what we have done. Like Adam and Eve, we realise that we are naked and so we hide.

I can share with you something of what it has been like for me. I can remember one time a few years ago when I had sinned. Without telling you what the sin was, because I put it in the healing hands of my confessor, who helped me to leave it at the cross of Christ, I want to tell you about a powerful experience I had.

I had sinned. I had wilfully and deliberately sinned and I could make no excuses. Some time soon after, I was in the Chapel of the Church I was serving at the time, sitting quietly, trying to pray the Daily Office. I sat with my prayer book, quietly reading the Psalms and trying to meditate on Scripture. It was as though somebody was clinging to my back and I could hear a voice in my ear. ‘Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are sitting here trying to be all holy when you and I both know what you have done?’ The same voices that had whispered seductively in my ear ‘go on: it’ll be fine’ had now turned and were accusing me.

Even if we don’t experience it as dramatically as I did on that occasion, when we sin, we all hear those voices of accusation. However you might want to interpret that, one thing I can tell you is that those voices did not come from God. When I confessed that sin, the voices stopped, and I felt so free that I wanted to skip. (I’m not a natural skipper!)

Do you know the Hebrew name for ‘the one who accuses’?

Like the son, who found himself destitute and having to hire himself out, we find ourselves captive to people and forces beyond our control and we find that having chased the illusion of freedom, to do what we like, we actually end up putting ourselves at the control of others. We find ourselves captive, when our rightful place is as free sons and daughters of God.

One of the biggest problems we face is that our temptation is to blame. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. We often seek to blame others for our own mistakes. How often have we heard or said things like ‘everybody else is doing it’ or ‘they made me do it’ or ‘I couldn’t help it’. We blame all sorts of things, people or circumstances, rather than accepting that it is our fault.

The parable goes on to say that the son ‘came to himself’, in other words ‘came to his senses’—more of that next week—but I wonder what he was thinking before that happened. I wonder whether he looked at other people whose lives didn’t seem as broken as his and somehow blamed them or resented them. I wonder whether he blamed his father. I wonder how long he tried to tell himself that things weren’t actually that bad. I wonder how long he tried to tell himself that he was only human and that this was normal and he shouldn’t beat himself up about it.

He had left his father’s house to live his life with the people outside. Perhaps their lives looked more attractive, more fun, or more successful. The trouble is that he did not belong to them and, when push came to shove, when the money ran out, they were no longer there for him and he had no choice but to hire himself out. The people he thought he’d be happier with ended up being the people who looked down on him and left him feeling isolated. They were the people who judged him and accused him.

This is what happens when we sin. This is what we choose when we turn our backs on God and consciously choose to do things that we know we shouldn’t do. We find ourselves hiding in the bushes, caught in all sorts of tangled webs. Even the little white lie we might tell to get out of trouble —which I used as an example of something we might consider a smaller sin—can lead to a whole complicated web of lies that end up beyond our control and we end up trapped.

We find ourselves so often trying to portray a version of ourselves to the world outside when really we feel like somebody very different inside. We so often put on an act, because we are afraid to let people see our true selves. We don’t want other people to know what mistakes we have made, what sins we have committed, because that would be too embarrassing and so, whatever the truth is, we try to carry on as though everything is ok. This is not who we are meant to be.

I had a conversation recently with somebody who was asking me about sin and confession. I explained that the problem many of us have is that, theologically and logically, we know that God can and will forgive anybody. The problem we have is that the guilt we so often experience is not logical. It is a matter of the emotions, of the heart, and we often need help dealing with that more emotional and illogical side of things. We need help untangling the web that we so often create for ourselves.

The son came to his sense and began to make the journey home. Many people would have been judging him. Many voices would have been accusing him. When he returned home, he heard an entirely different voice. More of that in the next two talks.