“The Undiscovered Country”
Part 1 of 3
Scripture Reading: Luke 15:17-32
Sermon Transcript for June 18, 2006
By Reverend Dan Sinkhorn
The title of the sermon this week and for the next three weeks is “The Undiscovered Country”. And today’s message in particular is about change. Now “The Undiscovered Country” is a phrase that might be familiar to you because you really like Shakespeare and you remember that it is a line from Hamlet. It might also be familiar to you because a few years ago it was the subtitle of one of the Star Trek movies. In both cases they were referring to death. The undiscovered country is death. We hate change, I think, because it reminds us too much of death which is the ultimate change whether it is our own or someone we love. It’s a change that we can’t unchange; and so we fear it greater than any change. Now I don’t plan on talking about something morbid and dark, but actually something really joyful and bright. If Shakespeare had been writing this particular passage I’m going to read after having heard the words of Jesus who said “if anyone would come after me, they must take up their cross daily and follow me”, then this could have easily been one of the greatest commentaries on Scripture ever written. Listen to these words from Hamlet by Shakespeare:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come”
And a few lines later Hamlet says:
“But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country fro whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
He’s spoken very plainly about change, hasn’t he? We would rather bear the ills that we have than risk changing to something we don’t know of. And yet by dying, and from now on I am speaking of dying to self, “If anyone should follow me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross.” So from now on when you hear me say “death”, know that I am talking about death to the self. You see, if you are going to experience change, it’s going to cost you something. And the question is, “Are you willing to pay the price?” I’ll illustrate with the best illustration that I can think of, the illustration that comes from the words of the greatest illustrator who ever lived, Christ. He told a story about a certain prodigal son. Most of you are familiar with that story. And if you are not let me summarize to a point here.
There was a certain father who had two sons who were coming of age. And these young men were beginning to realize that they had rights and responsibilities of their own. And they also began to realize that they had an entitlement. They were going to inherit significant wealth from their father. And one son, the younger son, the one we call the prodigal…by the way, prodigal is a word that means “a reckless self-indulgence. So here was this young son who for want of reckless self-indulgence went to his father and said, “I’d like to have my inheritance now.” We don’t know why but the father gave in and allowed him to take his inheritance and go to a foreign land where this son spent all this money on all sorts of indulgences. He eventually found himself broke and homeless. And Scripture says at one point he was feeding pigs because it was the only thing he could do to sustain himself. And he realized that even pigs were eating better than he was.
I’ll let the gospel reading take it from here. This is from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15: “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! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven ad against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 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. 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. Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘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. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘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. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 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.’” May God add His blessing to the hearing of His Word.
This is a story of two sons. We always call it The Parable off the Prodigal Son, but it is really a parable about a prodigal son, you know, one who is recklessly seeking self-indulgence, and it’s about a calculating son who is not so recklessly but “precautiously” indulging himself. And so I am going to call that older son the “precautious” son for just a moment. This precautious son has revealed something about his heart in the words he said to his father when he said, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.” Did you hear that bitter contempt in his voice—slaving for you? Now I can tell you that in my life as a son and also as a father, there have been moments when particular activity felt like slavery when I was given a job I didn’t particularly want to do and I grumbled in a quiet place where my dad couldn’t hear me, “I’m slaving here doing something I don’t really want to do!” And I am certain that the same kind of grumbling is being spoken about me in private too. But that’s not what this is about. This is a son who says he spent his whole life slaving for his father. As the kids would say, “What’s up with that?” For you know the real meaning of all the commandments in the Bible settles down on this line, “we must love our Heavenly Father with all our heart, and mind, and soul.” I don’t hear love coming from that precautious son; I hear ugly resentment. I hear a son who really wasn’t serving his father out of love and devotion, but because he expected something in return. He was going through the motions saying the right things, doing the right things, but in the end all because he expected something for it.
But the father said to him, “Look, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours.” That apparently wasn’t good enough for that son. But it was all that the prodigal wanted after he had been completely and thoroughly defeated. All he could imagine was how good it would be to be at his father’s house again. Maybe he was familiar with the words of the queen of Sheba when she spoke of Solomon in 1 Kings and said, “Happy…are those your servants, who stand continually before you and hear your wisdom!” Can’t you hear it? She is saying, you know, just to be in your house is a blessing. And it really is for us the best thing we can ever hope for is to be in the Father’s house. Maybe if we keep entering into this relationship with God that we have like a business transaction, where we hope that if we pay in enough we’ll get something out of it of real value. Maybe if that is how we are worshiping God, we’ve missed the really important point! Maybe the truth is that it is just good to be in the Father’s house.
And do you know that wholehearted submission is the only key that opens the door to our Father’s house? We must, in order to enter the Father’s house, be just like that prodigal son having done away with self-indulgence and submitting ourselves completely to His authority as servants. I believe the reason that the father threw such a wonderful party for his son is because he saw his son as a new creation having been reborn, having received new life because he completely emptied himself of self. And you know, most of us come to the Lord that very same way. We have to give up and surrender our will because most of us won’t turn to the Father until we finally realize that the world doesn’t care about us. And when we are hungry and lost, defeated and beaten up, the world in the far country has no news for us and will give us nothing. And you will not find the kindness and decency just as this prodigal son didn’t find it until you enter the Father’s house.
The prodigal son returned to his father with no sense of worthiness. He was literally casting himself on his father’s mercy. And he had every reason to expect that when he went back to his father’s house he would meet closed gates or closed doors and he would knock and hear no response. But what happened instead, Jesus described so beautifully when He told the parable, is that this dignified, mature, responsible, respected man did something very undignified. He actually hiked up his robe a little bit so he could run fully to his son. He ran to his son and embraced him. He was watching for his son. It’s as though he knew that when his son was defeated and completely submissive, he would come home whole. And when he saw the son coming over the hill or the horizon or down the lane, he must have realized that his son was coming home and that he was whole.
This story touches me in a very personal and deep way because of so much what my life has been like. Just this morning in the kitchen we were talking about life lessons learned and I said, “If there was a hard way to do it, I did it that way.” In my twenties, I was as normal a young 20-year old man as you could be because I did everything the hard way. Average fathers can expect to regain their intelligence in about four or five years after their sons reach their twenties. My father didn’t get smart until just a couple of years ago. He was right about nearly everything! Now I have a son in his twenties, and I’m right just about everything too, I think.
I got my education in the school of hard knocks and I’ve learned like the prodigal son that until you completely empty yourself, you can’t get in to the Father’s house and you can’t experience the undiscovered countries that He has for you. I can tell you that though I am not perfect in this selflessness I keep working at it every day. And I try to get a little better. And I have found that when I really do give up on getting what I want and I focus myself on trying to give to the Father what He wants, all sorts of new adventures come my way, all sorts of interesting people come into my life. And I find that my life is more full and enjoyable than I ever imagined. You know, when I was in my twenties I was reckless. I drove fast, lived fast; I bungee jumped; I flew airplanes; I scuba dived; I climbed in the mountains and I did thousands of other things I don’t even remember. But I have the scars on my body and soul to tell of it. And still my life was never as exciting then as it is now. It’s more exciting now than it was then. Well, we still get wounded in our spirit, but I can say that I havn’t obtained any new physical scars in awhile.
But still, God has revealed countless undiscovered countries that came as a result of dying to self. Everywhere that I have been selfish and stingy and determined to help my own way, I risk something. But when I surrendered that to the Lord and totally gave it up, it was almost immediately that I would begin to experience a new life and a new direction and new people and new experiences. For example, I have witnessed people’s lives since I surrendered mine in ministry in the church. And what I have seen is remarkable. I have seen that husbands fall in love with their wives again when they stop worrying about getting what they want. I have seen parents fall in love with their children again when they stop worrying so much about getting what they want. I have seen people mature in body and mind and embrace their age when they stop worrying about getting what they want. I have seen people die well because they stopped worrying about getting what they want. The death of self is without a doubt the only passport to the undiscovered countries. Every time we submit and surrender something to the Lord and give it up and truly experience death of self, we are then resurrected in the same space, the same part of ourselves and experience life in a way that we never could have imagined.
My heart’s desire as I prepare to leave Grace Church and go to another place, which by the way is another expression of how letting God move me away opens up a new opportunity, a new undiscovered country. And so as sad as I am about leaving you, I am also excited about the undiscovered country that comes ahead. Because just like Grace Church has become a place that has fulfilled me in ways that would take too long to express, I’ve no doubt that the next chapter, the next undiscovered country will be the same. And if I were you, I would envy me. That was a brash thing to say! But my hope for you is that you want that. That you want to go to the undiscovered countries that God has in store for you. My heart’s desire is that you would learn to die to yourself in order to experience the life that God has for you. A life full of adventure; a life custom designed for you. It won’t be a cardboard cutout of Dan’s life or anyone else that you know. It will be a life that God has designed for you because He is your Heavenly Father watching for you to come over the horizon so that He can run to you and embrace you and welcome you home so that you can be in the Father’s house and you can experience all that the Father has in store for you.
If you don’t do this, I fear that you could become like that precautious son going through the motions week after week—attending church regularly, putting a certain amount in the plate on a regular basis, doing your time on a certain committee or volunteering your services in some other way. I fear that if you go through those motions without a heart that wants to be in the Father’s house, then your religion could simply be the stuff of the precautious son’s life. One who serves slaving the Heavenly Father in anticipation of something good that comes later. Don’t let your religion be that! Let your religion be an expression of this new life and these undiscovered countries that God has led you to. Let it be a living thing because you like being in the house of the Lord so much.
I am praying, and have often prayed, for softened hearts. If I could add a few extra words to the dialogue between the Father in our story and his precautious son, I imagine him saying, “Son, soften your heart, lighten up, let go of this stuff that you think you need so much and just be you.” This is my prayer for all of the people who are regular attendees of church--that their hearts will be softened. That they will experience more than just the slavery of going through religious motions and would truly experience the joy of being in the Lord’s presence.
Today I want to invite you to do that. Now for some that might require you to do something physical—come, kneel at the altar. If you want to do that, I encourage you. For some it might be more comfortable just to stay where you are and pray there. But whatever you do, don’t let this invitation go unanswered. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to say, “I sure hope they are listening to this.” This is God’s Word for you today. And His word is, “Come home. Be home. Learn to seek the undiscovered countries that you can only find through the death of self.” If you want to do that, all you need to do is to pray for forgiveness because sin is ultimately choosing your will over God’s will. And then know that you will receive forgiveness. So the next thing that you do is accept it. And then once you have accepted that forgiveness, go home. Go to the Father who will run to meet you and He will celebrate with you a new life and a new journey because there are so many undiscovered countries for us all to experience. Begin now by taking a moment to be silent before the Lord. And in a few moments after we have been silent, each praying in our own way, I’ll close this with an old Puritan prayer that seems to sum up our feelings pretty well.
Fourth Day Morning
True Christianity
Lord of heaven,
They goodness is inexpressible and inconceivable.
In the works of creation thou art almighty,
In the dispensations of providence all-wise,
In the gospel of grace all love,
And in they Son thou has provided for
Our deliverance from the effects of sin,
The justification of our persons,
The sanctification of our natures,
The perseverance of our souls in the path of life.
Though we exposed to the terrors of thy law,
We have a refuge, from the storm;
Though compelled to cry, ‘Unclean’,
We have a fountain for sin;
Though creature-cells of emptiness
We have a fullness accessible to all,
And incapable of reduction.
Grant us always to know that to walk with Jesus
Makes other interests a shadow and a dream.
Keep us from intermittent attention to eternal things;
Save us from the delusion of those
Who fail to go far in religion,
Who are concerned but not converted,
Who have another heart but not a new one,
Who have light, zeal, confidence, but not Christ.
Let us judge our Christianity, not only by our dependence upon Jesus,
But by our love to him,
Our conformity to him,
Our knowledge of him.
Give us a religion that is both real and progressive,
That holds on its way and grows stronger,
That lives and works in the Spirit,
That profits by every correction,
And is injured by no carnal indulgence.
Lord, help us to be like the prodigal son giving up our reckless or calculating self-indulgence, falling at your feet seeking your mercy, being revived as whole persons ready to explore the undiscovered countries of our journey with you. Amen.
E-mail Comments to: Reverend Dan Sinkhorn
Copyright Grace United Methodist Church.
E-Mail: AdministratorCopyright Grace United Methodist Church.
E-Mail: Administrator