The Parable of the Prodigal Son talk 4: the Father's love

Introduction

I feel like we have been on a rather deep journey with the Parable of the Prodigal Son. As I keep saying, it has been something of a labour of love for me and I hope you have enjoyed these talks as much as I have enjoyed preparing them.

I have spoken about the nature of sin, the consequences of sin, and the very normal and human journeys that many of us have taken in our lives, often away from God, whether we have always realised or not that this is what we are doing.

In last week’s talk, I spoke about the process of making the journey home. For many of us, when we find that we have strayed, that we have sinned, it can be extremely hard to swallow our pride and make the journey home through the gifts of the Sacraments that Christ gave to his Church. Baptism, for those not already baptised, is the gift of being cleansed and being able to start again. The Sacrament of Reconciliation, or Confession, is the gift given to the Church for those who are baptised who have strayed, as we all so often do.

We have spent much time reflecting on our side of the story: our sin, repentance, and coming home. Today we turn our attention to God on what God is doing when we stray, when we sin. We will look at a few parts of Scripture to help us think about this. Ultimately, it is, or should be, more about God than about us, if we really seek to go deeper in our journey of faith.

Ultimately, God needs to become the very centre of our lives, rather than the centre of our lives being ourselves, our own desires and temptations.

Reading of Luke 15:11-32

Talk

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.

We often think of repentance as an instantaneous moment but it is, in reality, more often a journey home that we have to take. This is not because God needs us to do anything before God can forgive us: rather the journey has more to do with our own states of being and needs than God’s. Let us remember that God doesn’t need anything from us. If God needed anything from us, then God would cease to be God. We, however, need everything from God.

Because I am so passionate about the Sacrament of Reconciliation, I absolutely believe that it is an essential part of the life of the Church. It is perhaps Christ’s greatest gift to the Church, to those that are baptised, but it is one that the Church—at least the Church of England—makes so little use of. I think that this is because we misunderstand so much about it.

For some people, it is because we see it—wrongly, in my opinion—as Catholic. In one sense, it is Catholic in the true sense of Catholic, meaning universal. It is a gift to the universal Church and, as I mentioned last week, even the very Protestant Book of Common Prayer emphasised the importance of self-examination and receiving absolution after the laying bare of one’s sins by some learned minister of God’s Word.

For others, it is perhaps a sense of pride that stops people making use of it. The sense that we don’t want to tell anybody else the things that we have done wrong. It is pride that gets in the way of coming home. The sharing of sins to a priest in Confession is not about the priest knowing your secrets; it is about naming those sins through which process they lose their power over us.

For others it is a kind of intellectual or theological argument that we go through. As I had argued before I personally discovered the treasure of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we argue that we have only one mediator between us and God, Jesus Christ, and don’t need any further mediators. But we forget that Christ gave authority to his disciples to absolve sins. Why did he do this? I think the answer is that he knew that we would need it. It is the process by which we ‘set off’ home and I have never found something that works so powerfully to release me from the mistakes that I have made.

While he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion.

Part of our fear with the whole subject of repentance and confession is that we sometimes fear that perhaps the things we have done are too bad, beyond forgiveness. We have sometimes spent so long hiding in the bushes away from God and from each other that we really fear coming out in case God is really angry with us.

What the Parable of the Prodigal Son teaches us is that God see us while we are still far off. The ‘while he was still far off’ is important because it teaches us that God’s heart is to forgive us and welcome us home. God is not waiting for us to get home: God is already waiting, already looking for us. God never stops looking for the lost. God’s compassion is limitless. God looks at us and our lives and is filled with compassion.

I like to picture the father in the parable at the gate, constantly scanning the horizon to see whether his son is coming home. Perhaps the father would have been entitled to be angry with his son and completely disown him. After all, the son was the one who decided to take what was to be his and leave home as though his father was already dead. Nobody could have blamed the father for being angry.

The father is, of course, a metaphor for God. When we really think about the things we have done wrong, we too have to admit that God has every right to be angry with us. God is perfectly and justly entitled to be angry and punish us. It is what we deserve because so often we stray from God and go our own way.

We don’t like to talk about the wrath of God. We avoid talking about it. But, if you think about it, justice demands that our sins be punished. Justice demands that people face the consequences of their sins. The more I have reflected on sin and judgement, the more I have come to believe that it is not so much that God punishes us as much as it is we ourselves who choose this separation from God, in which there is no eternal life. It is not God’s choice but ours.

Because we all tend to have that sense of justice, we look at the evils of the world, or the sins and crave justice. We crave punishment for the sins of others. When we look at the horrific stories in our news, we want the perpetrators to be punished. We want justice. Perhaps this is why we sometimes think that God will punish us. If we become aware of our sins, then we realise that God has every right to punish and so we come to God on our knees seeking to be the least in the Kingdom of God.

he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him

What actually happens, as the parable illustrates, is that the father rushes towards the son, even before he has made it all the way home and embraces him. This is what God does to us when we take those first steps towards God. God runs towards us and embraces us. God does not wait for us to sort things out, or get everything in our lives right or perfect. God runs to us, exactly as we are, when we begin to make that journey home. More than that, God puts his arms around us and kisses us. It is almost as though we had never run away. Except that the fact that we have run away means that the Father’s love for us is much stronger because he simply wants us to come home.

⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

This verse from St Paul’s letter to the Romans tell us that God acted for us ‘while we were still sinners’. In other words, while we were still lost in our sins, God did what was necessary for us to come home. God does not wait for us. God acts while God is waiting for us to make that journey back towards God.

¹⁸ Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.

This verse from Isaiah 1 shows us something more of God’s heart. There is an acknowledgement that we have done wrong. There is an acknowledgement that we have sinned. Our sins are like scarlet. You cannot hide scarlet: it is there for all to see. It is one of the most powerful and vivid colours that our eyes are very quickly drawn to. We cannot take them away ourselves. We cannot take away the stain of sin: the scarlet stain. God’s promise is that if we come to him, they shall be white. We will be made clean and whole. We will be made as soft as wool.

²⁵ I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. ²⁶ A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

These verses from Ezekiel 36 show us that God himself will do the cleansing. More than that, he will replace our hearts. Our hearts that have sometimes grown so hard towards God will be made soft. This means that we may be prone to tears as we reflect on our sins and what God has done for us but that is absolutely right. You cannot reshape stone: all you can do is break it or chip away at it. Flesh can be changed and reshaped.

The best part of the Parable is that the father threw a party for his son who had returned home. It was in that moment of reconciliation that God’s goodness is shown. It is in that moment of love and compassion that the light of God shines.

One of the most powerful depictions of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in art is the painting by Rembrandt. In it, light is shed on the repentant son, whose father has put his hand on his son’s shoulders and welcomed him home. I don’t want to focus on the elder son, because this talk is about the father’s love but the elder son is hiding in the darkness. He was the one who, perhaps with good reason, was annoyed that he had served his father all those years without straying and had nothing but his sinful brother returns and he gets a party. Perhaps we too look at others’ lives and feel like the elder son feels.

Look at the painting though: the elder son is in the darkness. The light is where there is love and compassion, the shedding of tears, and the unconditional welcome back that the father offers. The father is simply glad that his lost son has come home.

I think it was Bishop Jack Nicholls that once said that this parable should not be called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Rather, it should be called the Parable of the Loving Father. I agree with him. God’s love is so amazing, so beyond our comprehension, and the focus is always on God’s love and mercy, never on the sins. That would give the devil some credit. The Father’s love, God’s love, is above all things and much more powerful.

As we now come to the end of these Lent talks, I want to thank you for coming and for your attention. My prayer is that you may all come to know that infinite, generous, and perhaps even wasteful love of God for yourselves. You are beautiful and beloved children of God.