Jesus was teaching and a crowd formed and we are told that among those who came to hear him were tax collectors and sinners.  These were the kinds of people who were always drawn to Jesus because he loved them and showed them the grace of God.  Along with them were Pharisees and scribes who, true to form, grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”  This group of people always had a hard time with Jesus for the same reason the first group was drawn to him.  The Pharisees and scribes were offended that Jesus loved the sinners and even went so far as to eat with them.  It is in response to their grumbling that Jesus tells this parable.

 

It’s a familiar story to many of us, even those outside of the church have heard of the Prodigal Son.  As the story goes a man had two sons.  The youngest son decides that he has had it with his family and that he is old enough to strike out on his own to find himself.  So he asks for his share of the inheritance and on his way he goes to find fulfillment in life.  He indulges all his worldly appetites and finds himself living with the pigs, literally.

 

We all know this son, maybe you were him at one point.  He rejects his family and his upbringing and sets out on his own to conquer the world engaging in wild living.  These are the people who end up in places like New York City fleeing the restraints of their family and friends to make it in the world. They are the tax collectors and sinners who have come to hear Jesus.

 

The Pharisees and scribes, the ones who this parable is addressed to, are the older brother.  They have a traditional morality; they study the word of God, faithfully attend worship and pray.  They are the good people.  Jesus writing to them is making a plea for them to change their heart.  Like the younger brother they too have a sin problem.

 

Jesus target is the religious people who do what the Bible says.  They carry a very self-righteous attitude which not only destroys their own soul but the lives of the people around them as well.

 

In the common understanding of the story the problem lies with the younger son.  We even call this in correctly the Parable of the Prodigal Son taking little or no notice of the older brother.  But I would argue this morning that both are lost; the irreligious younger son and the religious older one.  Both paths are dead ends and every human idea about how to reach God is flawed.  The path of the younger son is obviously wrong but religious moralism of the older son is a deadly condition.  The outcast finds a friend in Jesus but the religious seem to stand at arms length from him.

 

Our churches are filled with conservative moralists, while the broken and the marginalized stand outside our doors.  Why is that?  Whey don’t we draw to ourselves the kind of people who are drawn to Jesus?  What are we teaching and how are we acting that we are not drawing the younger brother types?

 

The younger brother in our story makes a great demand upon the father and also upon the whole family.  Wealth at the time of Jesus would have been tied up in land ownership.  The younger son would have been entitled to one third of the estate so in order to meet his request the father would have had to sell off a large portion of his property in order to give the money to his son.  In reducing the size of his property the father would not only have lost money but would have lost his standing in the community.  With this one request of his son for his inheritance early the father loses his son, his wealth and his status.

 

Things don’t work out for the younger son so he devises a plan to get out of the mess he finds himself in.  He will return home and admit that he was wrong; he would repent.  He would then ask if he could be apprenticed to one of his father’s hired workers.  A hired worker was not a slave but a tradesman who lived in a nearby town and worked for the estate owner for a wage.  If the son could be apprenticed to a hired worker he would be able to work off his debt to his father.  The Rabbis taught that repentance was not enough, one needed to also make restitution for the wrong.  The son was saying I have no right to be a part of the family, but let me at least work off my debt.

 

The father will have no part of it.  When he sees the son from afar he runs to him, which is something a dignified, head of a household would not do.  Before the son can even make his case the father silences him and calls for a servant to put on him the best robe and ring on his finger and throw a party for the whole town, and even go so far as to kill the fatted calf.  The father simple takes the son back.  There is no mention of restitution at all.  He doesn’t make the son grovel, nor does he say to him, “I told you so.”  He simply takes him back and restores him to the family.  This is the evidence of grace.  This is what draws the sinner to Jesus.  But this is also the thing that highlights the spiritual condition of the elder brother.

 

Walter Wangerin Jr. in his book Reliving the Passion writes, “To sinners, the mere presence of goodness can feel like an attack.  It triggers quilt.  Guilt hurts. Guilt forces us to notice ourselves, thereby to question and to second-guess ourselves, and such an internal process destroys the joy of an unconscious life.  We are altogether too conscious, suddenly – too self-aware. Doubt destroys the thoughtless satisfactions.”

 

John writes, “And the judgment is this: though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to the light because their deeds were evil…but whoever does the truth comes into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God.”

 

When the younger brother returns and is brought back into the family unconditionally the older brother is furious and responds by disrespecting his father.  By refusing to attend the party he publicly questions the father’s decision.  The father is forced to leave his guests and attend to his rebellious son.

 

Why is the older son so upset?  It’s not just the cost of the party.  The younger son took his one third of the family wealth and blew it.  If he remained outside of the family that would have been bad enough, but the father restored him and so now he is again entitled to one third of the diminished remaining family money.  The restoration of the younger brother was now costing the older brother a substantial part of his inheritance.   As the older brother understood things he worked hard for all that he had and was deserving of the inheritance, while the younger brother was getting everything for nothing.  He questioned the justice of the matter.  The older brother felt he had rights and should have been consulted before some of his money was given away.

 

When the drug addict, the person infected with aids, the illegal immigrant, the homeless person, the ex-con comes into church and is saved by grace and gets to enjoy all the benefits of being a child of God even pushing some of the long standing members to the side becoming an equal partner in the ministry where is the justice in that.  Shouldn’t they have pay somehow after all they wasted so much of their lives while the good church folks sacrificed all for Jesus?

 

The elder son addresses his father as a peer.  He shows him no respect by using the proper title for his father.  He simply says, “Look.”  He gives him a “Yo, what are you doing taking back my brother?”  The father again invites him to join the party and the story comes to an end leaving the decision of the elder son open ended.

 

We define righteousness as moral conformity.  I am a child of God because of Jesus, but I remain there by obedience to his word.  Morality becomes the key to happiness.  The older brother was secure in his position, he thought, because he stayed and obeyed the father.  The younger brother on the other hand went out to find happiness through life-experiences.  He went out to find himself.  One brother sought happiness through conforming to the community while the other decided to ignore the community and went out on his own to find himself.

 

This is a conflict we see played out before us all the time.  It is a fight between the moral and the immoral.  The moral people blame the immoral for the problems of this world, while the self-discovery people accuse the moral people of being bigoted and self-righteous.  It’s the conservative liberal debt we see taking place in our nation.  Jesus says that both sons are wrong.  The younger son rejects the father’s love while the older son loses the father’s love because of his pride in his own moral goodness.

 

Neither brother is interested in the father for who he is.  Instead both brothers are seeking control of the father’s wealth.  Both are interested in what the father has to offer them.  The only difference between the two is the way they seek control.  They are both rebellious children.  The younger son rebels by being bad, but the older son rebels by being good.  Goodness as an act of rebellion.  You can rebel against God by either breaking his rules or by keeping them.  When you focus on the rules for whatever reason you stand the chance of loosing Jesus.

 

We need a deeper understanding of sin.  Sin is more than breaking God’s laws.  The law was given to point us to Jesus.  We can avoid Jesus the savior by keeping the moral laws.  If your righteousness, like that of the older son is based on your obedience to a moral code you will come to the conclusion that you have rights, that you earned something from God, that he owes you.  Religious people, church people who pride themselves on the fact that they are moral and upright use it as leverage with God.  The underlying belief is that wealth will make you happy.

 

Think about it this morning.  If I serve God faithfully he will take care of me.  I will be blessed and my needs will all be met.  That’s the premise we operate under.

 

When Sharon was out of work for 18 months the struggle was to love God with our whole being no matter what happened.  We were getting to the place that selling our house and moving was becoming a forced option.  Leaving this church to take a position somewhere else was part of our discussion.  The problem was I felt called to this church.  We believed that God wanted us to live in the neighborhood we were in.  We had made many friends and were deep into the community.  God was opening doors for us, but Sharon had no work and the church was struggling financially.  Were we misreading God’s leading to come here?  Were we in sin and being punished somehow by God?  The question was did we love God for who he is or did we love God for what he gave us?  It was the elder brother question.

 

Sin is not breaking a set of rules sin is putting your self in the place of God as savior, lord and judge.  The older son believed that he was saved because he was moral and upright.  He was the lord, ruler of his own life, his decisions mattered.  He felt because of his position and the good son he was in a place to judge his brother.  Where is the father in all of this?

 

The gospel message tells us that we are all, every one of us, both wrong and loved.  We are invited to recognize this truth and change.

 

We concentrate on outward actions.  Elder brother types believe that good people are in and the bad people are the problem with the world.  Younger brother believe that bigoted, narrow-minded people are the real problem with the world.  Jesus on the other hand said the humble are in and the proud are out.  Those who admit that they are not that good, confess their sins, are in while those who think they are just fine are out.

 

Though both positions are wrong the older brother’s sin is more dangerous.  Everybody including the younger brother himself understood his sin.  When I was doing drugs no one needed to tell me that what I was doing was wrong.  The younger son returned to the father broken by his sin.  The older brother was more alienated from the father because he was blind to his own condition.  He was angry with the father because he wasn’t getting what he wanted.  When you put your hope in things and don’t get them or have them taken away by circumstances you become angry with God.  Your system doesn’t work. 

 

The older brother felt superior to his miserable younger brother.  He was living a moral life not because it is right to do but because it was a way to control his environment and secure his inheritance.

 

We are refocusing our church toward mission.  Our target is the arts community.  They are often self-indulgent.  They are the one’s who often times set out on their own and defy community norms.  They are often liberal and open minded, more tolerant of divergent lifestyles.  Many, for sure, are in need of a savior.  The church tends toward conformity, more conservative and older brotherish.  How will we react to those who come among us?  The father comes to us as he came to the older son and invites us to the party.  Do we love God even if inviting the younger brother into the family will cost us?  Or will we remain in our sin casting judgment on those outside our doors.

 

In accepting the vision statement you are opening up the doors to people whose very presence in our midst will shine the light on our own sin.  Are you ready?