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Text: Luke 15:11-31
X Laetare (4th Sunday in Lent) Letters
to a Lost Son In the name of him who makes all
things new, dear friends in Christ: Today’s
sermon message is a little different. It
takes the form of an exchange of letters between two people. And with that brief introduction, I trust
that the rest will be self-explanatory.
So sit back and use your imagination a bit to try to picture the two
persons involved while I share with you a message I’ve entitled Letters to a Lost Son. My dearly loved son, I cannot find the words to
express the emptiness my heart feels on account of your continued absence. Though it has now been over three years since
your departure, never a moment passes that I am not painfully aware that you are
not here where you belong. A hundred—no,
more like a thousand times a day I catch something out of the corner of my eye
and I stop and turn and look to see if maybe, just maybe, it isn’t you. It is with the same fervent hope that I find
myself often just staring at the horizon or looking down the road you took when
you left, praying to God and willing you with all my spirit’s strength to
return. With each disappointment I feel
the pain and heartache of your leaving all over again. Oh how I wish that you give up this
folly. Bring joy to this old man’s few
remaining years and come home. At very
least have the kindness to reply to my letters.
Your angry silence is more than I can bear. Let me know at least that you are well and
that you want for nothing. But I know that
if we could just communicate, if we could just talk to one another, we could
work this out. Everything will be like
it was – or even better. Please, son,
respond – or better yet, come home. [signed] Your
grieving father Dear “father”, [spoken with a sneer of contempt] Got
your last letter. I don’t know what made
me open it instead of just throw it in the trash with all the others you’ve
sent. Maybe I thought if I responded to
one you’d finally get it through your stubborn, thick head that we’re
through. I don’t need you and I don’t
want you to be any part of my life. Just
leave me alone. If it’ll help get you to
stop pestering me, I’ll let you know that I’m fine, thanks. I’ve got a good job. And I’ve got plenty of friends – friends who
actually understand and care about me.
They treat me right; something you never
did. So this should satisfy you: I’ve
got everything I need and I really am quite happy right here where I am. So get over it. I am never
coming home. [signed] A
free and happy man My dearly loved son, We were overjoyed to receive
your letter. Your brother and I wept
with tears of happiness to have our long held fears concerning your welfare
finally put to some ease. Thank you; you
have given us such relief. Though the
resentment evident in your words is painful to read, I would rather hear curses
from you than nothing at all. It means
at least that we are communicating – and if we’re doing that there is still
hope. If it were possible, hearing from you
now – even in this way – has made us long to see you again all the more. Please reconsider: if I have wronged you in any way or if there
is anything I can do to put and end to this sad separation, I am certain that if
you just come home we can set things right again. You will see; I’m sure of it. Just come home. [signed] Your ever
hopeful father Dear “father”, I should have known
how foolish it would be to write you to tell you to give it up once and for
all. You just don’t get it, do you? Fine.
Now that I’ve made the mistake of starting, I’m going to finish this. But I hardly know where to begin. I am absolutely dumbfounded that you had the
audacity to mention your other son to me and then ask with all apparent
innocence if you had wronged me in some way.
What a joke! Can it possibly be
that you are so obtuse? I don’t even
know why you keep writing. You ought to
be happy now: you’ve got the son you
love the best and no one else to compete for your attention. You don’t even have to pretend that you care
about me anymore. That should be easy
for you. You always favored him. It seemed that he could never do anything wrong;
meanwhile you were always riding me, nit-picking this and that, never satisfied
with even my best efforts. I used to try
so hard to please you … and for what?
Well, I’m done with it. I don’t
need you or your suffocating guidance and direction. You can’t hurt me anymore. I’m free and you can’t touch me. Just leave me alone. [the letter is not signed] Oh my dearly loved son, How
bitter and angry you are; and also how confused and mistaken. You are absolutely right that I treated you
differently than your brother. I had
to. You two have very different
temperaments, very distinct personalities – there’s no way I could have treated
you exactly the same and be the kind of father you both needed. But you are so wrong to imagine even for a
moment that I love you less. Your
brother takes after your mother. He’s
more sensitive and tenderhearted; and yes, there’s a streak of something wild
there. If I had used a firm hand on him
it would have broken him and driven him away for good. But you, you’re more like me. Strong willed. Independent.
You needed the discipline. You
needed the bar set high so that you could achieve your best. And for a long time you did; you made me
practically burst with a father’s pride.
I’m sorry that you do not understand this. Maybe some day you will learn when you have
children of your own. There is no “one
size fits all” when it comes to parenting.
Yes, I treated you differently; but never, never have I loved you any
less – and I still love you now with my whole heart. And
I remain deeply concerned about you – especially now that we have heard that
things are growing increasingly difficult where you are. There are reports of an extended drought and
possibly some crop failures. Have you
been affected in any way? Let us know
that you are well as our worries for you grow daily. And again, I implore you to come home. Things are well here and we have plenty. Do not let your resentment and your stubborn
pride cause you to suffer or keep you from the happy reunion we might share. [signed] Your father who always loves
and cares for you Dear “father”, How
touching. That last letter of yours
really got me all choked up and misty eyed, what with your “deep concern” for
me all. Well, don’t you worry about
me. I can take care of myself. Yes, it will probably delight you to hear
that I’ve recently lost my job on account of certain cut backs; but I’m looking
for work and I’d say my prospects are pretty good. Like I said, I have lots of good, reliable
friends – so don’t count on me coming crawling home like a beggar to you
anytime soon. That’s because you’re
right: I’m not like my brother. It’s
funny that you say he’s more like mom since it’s mostly his fault that she’s
gone now. When he took off on that
wanton binge of drinking and whoring and God only knows what other vices he got
himself into a few years back, it destroyed her. I’m sure that it was her broken heart that
led her to her early grave. And you’re
the one who let him go. You just let him
practically spit in your face and handed over to him his share of the
inheritance – and you did it knowing very well that he was only going to throw
it all away. What kind of a father does
that? Oh, yes, I know; you’d say, “One
who loves his son”. Yeah? Well I’m not buying it. If you had loved him, you would never have
let him go. And if you had loved me,
you’d never have taken him back—at least not like you did. Where was all that discipline you talk
about—the stuff you heaped so freely on me?
That’s what he needed. You should
have made him sleep with the livestock and eat what was leftover from the
servants’ tables. You should have made
him work off on half wages the small fortune he wasted. Then he might have learned something. But no.
Not you. It’s “Kill the fatted
calf and let’s celebrate. My worthless
son has returned to mooch off me some more.”
You even gave him back the family signet ring as if to say he could do
it all over again. That’s just
irresponsible. The whole thing makes me
sick. And like I said, I’m free of it
now. I don’t understand you. I never will.
And I will never come home. [again, no signature] My dearly loved son, At last we get to the core of
your complaint. And it’s true: you do not understand. For you it is all “by the book”. Everything must be just so: every ‘i” dotted and every “t” crossed. For you justice is the same as “sameness”;
and it is absolute, unbending, unyielding.
But you do not understand. Such a
sense of justice is a cruel mistress – an idol goddess that can never be
satisfied. She tempts you with the
notion that you might be able to please her; but you never can. She always demands more than you can deliver,
and in the end she demands your life and takes it. What you do not understand is
that justice must be tempered with mercy, fairness must take need into account
and be distributed with wisdom, weakness and failure must be attended by
compassion, and offense must be met with forgiveness. This is what it means to love: not that we demand of each other a perfection
that cannot be obtained; but that we forgive, uphold, and care for each other
despite our many failures, mistakes, and weaknesses. In this way I have always loved
you. You condemn your brother for
wasting a part of the family fortune; do you mean to say that you have never
squandered some of it on yourself? Do
you imagine that because I never confronted you that I didn’t know? You condemn him for sexual sins; do you mean
to say that you have kept yourself completely pure in your thoughts and
actions? You blame him for having a part
in your mother’s death, and yet you harbor murderous thoughts of hatred and
revenge in your own heart. By your own
standards you deserve to be cast out to live with the livestock. Your brother had to learn
through his own foolish mistakes that the path he chose was the wrong one. Though he had been told, it was a truth he
needed to discover for himself. And it
was a painful lesson for him – far more painful than any of the discipline I
ever applied to you. But now he has
learned the lesson. And by God’s grace
he has been restored to me; how could I not receive him back as the beloved son
he is? With all my heart I await the day
when I can receive you again in exactly the same way. Come home, son. I have heard that the situation where you are
grows worse every day. There’s no need
for you to endure it a moment longer.
Come home; I beg you. [signed] Your
very concerned father. Dear “Sir”, So that’s it, huh? First you say how different we are, and now
you say that my brother and I are just as guilty. How dare you make that comparison. I am twice the man he will ever be. And no thanks: I do not want your charity and I do not need
your forgiveness. I am not my
brother. I will never forget what he did
to our family and I will never forgive him for it. And I will never forgive you for letting him
get away with it. So let this be an end
to it. I need to get back to work: the
hogs need to be fed. I am no longer your
son, and you are not my father. My dearly loved son, You may think it possible to
severe our bonds of kinship with a few strokes of your pen; but I assure you that
it is not done so easily. As long as I
have life and breath I will love you with a father’s love, and I will search
the horizon hoping to see you return.
Once I was blessed with two sons.
One died to me – I thought I’d lost him; but he came back to life. Now I have lost the other; and I know that
the God who raised the first from the dead can bring me back the other alive
and well. So every day I pray that our God
and Father will melt your hard heart and open your eyes to see your own need
for forgiveness and compassion that you might learn that others need it
too. Mercy is better than
sacrifice. And love endures
forever. Come home, son. I have a robe, a ring, a fatted calf, and a
father’s embrace I want to give you. [signed] Your father who always loves
and cares for you I have here no response to this last
letter from the father to his lost son – except perhaps for the one that you
might wish to make. I wonder, is there someone
that you know who has offended you in some way whom God has now forgiven but
whom you still hold condemned? To
whatever degree that may be true, you are the lost son. God our Father is now making his appeal. I implore you on behalf of Christ, be
reconciled to God. For our sake he made
him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness
of God. For the sake of Christ, God no
longer counts their sins against them.
Therefore as his child neither can you.
So may God our Father give us all the grace to forgive as he has
forgiven us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
In his holy name. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |
