I’m still disappointed, Ken, you didn’t use your hands as much as I was afraid for you to.  As the choir is seated, I am curious, “How many of you have ever heard a story in the Bible about a man who had two sons?  We sometimes call him the “Prodigal Son”.  I thought most of you might have heard that story so I chose not to read the Scripture this morning.  In fact, I’m going to tell you the Scripture.  Jesus did that, you know?  He borrowed from the surroundings of His culture and then He told the people who were following Him a story that they could apply to their life.  He didn’t try to explain it; so today maybe you’ll find yourself somewhere in a story.   We call it “the prodigal son” but Jesus, He didn’t call it, He didn’t title it that way.  It could just as easily have been called “the waiting father”.  But Jesus told this story to the crowds that were following Him.  In the crowd that was following Him, there were the Pharisees and the Scribes who were picking at Jesus, grumbling, angry because He was associating with people that society normally would reject—tax collectors and sinners.  And maybe not paying enough attention to those that felt they should have more attention paid to them by Jesus. 

So I’ll tell you a story, a story I know that you might find your place, that you might find a view, that you might find yourself on a journey to encounter grace as found in forgiveness.  There was a man who had two sons.  That man was a business man who had inherited from his father a grocery business.  And that grocery business he had worked in since he was a young boy; and it was profitable.  And he handed it, hopefully he said, to his sons, those two sons.  He brought them in and he said, “I’ve worked, you have worked.  I recognize that you, the oldest son, have been the good son.  You are good and you do good things.  I’ve watched you come in before school and after school.  You know how to stock the shelf putting the lower priced item below and the higher priced items above and bring the cans out from the edge.  You know how even to work deals with suppliers as they come in.  I’ve watched you.  You love this business; you care about it.”  And then he turned to his younger son and he said, “There is more than years which separate the two of you.  I always had to drag you even if it was through the doors that opened automatically, to come in and even carry out things to the dumpster.  And you burned up the one floor buffer that I had going too fast.  You never really seemed to enjoy the business.  But my hope is that by inheriting it that you will take hold on it.  So I am leaving it as your inheritance—two-thirds to the older brother and one-third to you.  You have a vested interest in it.  I am going to Florida.  It will be like I’m not around any more.  No, I’m not dead, but I won’t be around any more.  It’s yours.” 

Before he could get to the door, the younger son said, “Wait.  You know, I have a dream for fame and fortune.  That rock band that I am in, I can do real well in California, Dad.  I want my inheritance in money.  I’m going to sell my third immediately.  I can’t carry grocery stores with me.   I want this money and I want it now.”  And like so many that want to please, so many that allow a child to go their own way and may regret it latter, the father let that child go his own way.  Out of wisdom or out of foolishness, the child grabbed the money, all he could carry in fluid amounts, and took off for California.  The older brother was left to manage the stores, to figure out how to make them have a profitable bottom line all on his own.   

They found the young son a year later in San Francisco.  He had gotten in a fight and was injured because he and another homeless person were fighting over a morsel of food they found in the bottom of the garbage bin behind a restaurant.  The police chaplain asked the young man, “Do you have any place to go?  Is there anyone who might help you out in this desperate, reckless situation that you are in?”  He said, “Well, I have a father.  I don’t know if he will take me back.  I’ve shamed him.  And I have a brother; I know he won’t take me back.”  

Something within him though stirred that was called hope—hope for mercy.  And so he got on the bus and the Greyhound traveled and as it traveled the young man thought in his mind again and again and again, “What have I done?  Where am I going?  What do I expect?  Wow, I’m going to have to pay my dues.  I wonder what I’m going to have to grovel, how long?”  He started making a list of who he owed what.  How would he explain all of the money and how it went?  What got stolen and how he had been a complete failure.  And he totally lost any religious upbringing and moral stature that he had.  He brought shame, perhaps, to his family by the way that he had lived. 

He got off the bus and wandered a little further to a gated community.  It was very quiet there.  The buzzer didn’t even ring when he pushed it so he pushed it again not sure it was working.  There was someone watching him though.  An older man saw on the security camera someone who had a faint resemblance to his son.  But it couldn’t be, in a year such a difference.  Pounds had melted away and he was gaunt, his hair was matted, the designer tennis shoes, as the security camera scanned, had holes in them.  His pants were not fashionably tight around him but his belt was doubled over because he had lost so much weight, and the tatteredness of the elbows—that could be his son?  And then he knew as the young man looked up.  He saw the glint in his eye, the tear as he turned his head again and pushed the button.   

And the father disrupted that gated community as he ran down the driveway sprinting and weeping and saying, “He’s back!  He’s back!  He’s back!”  Neighbors came out because in gated communities you are not supposed to yell.  And he was creating quite a ruckus.  And he flew down the driveway with his arms open.  Oh, yes, young men, he thought, “There he comes.  Now what?”  Because he didn’t expect to see hands open; he expected to see fists.  And he had his list prepared.  “Oh, I have sinned.  I have forsaken the way that I was brought up.  How could you ever forgive me? How could you take me back?”  He was ready to play those words out but they couldn’t be heard because his father was clapping him on the back, weeping in his ears, “You’re home!  You’re home!”  He said, “Dad, I’ve got to tell you something.”  “No, no, let me tell you.  We’ve got to get you measured for a tux.  I’m going to call the caterer, the best one in town.  Oh, we’ve got to rent that restaurant.  What’s the one at the top of the tower?  Oh, my gosh, we’ve got to celebrate.  I’ll have to send e-mails and faxes out and call all of your cousins and let them know you are back.  We’re going to have a party people!”  And the neighbors are like, “Oh, my goodness.  A party!  We’ve not had a party for a while.  A street party maybe, huh, just a prelude to the big celebration, the big dinner.  There is a mighty ruckus going on. 

The older son decides to drive by the house and drop off maybe some financial reports for his dad to review.  He’s been working on them all night.  He made the rounds of the local stores.  But his Dad’s house is all ablaze.  There are tents on the yard; the gates are wide open.  What’s this—a party?  They didn’t do that well at the year end.  And why didn’t he know about it?  It was a surprise party for him, he just knew.  His dad was going to have a surprise party!  He pulled into the driveway and the neighbors are there and they tell him what is going on.  It’s not about you.  Oops!  It’s not about you; your brother has come home.  The older brother doesn’t even get across the threshold in the house.  He stops in anger and disgust.  He can’t mount the steps into the house.  And so he turns on his heels with resentment and anger filling him, bitterness.  He just gets ready to slam the car door and leave and his father grabs the handle of the door and says, “Wait, where are you going?  Don’t you know, your brother is home!  I thought he might be dead.  I hadn’t heard from him and he is here!  Come in and let’s celebrate.”  The older son rolls up from the car and says, “Celebrate, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone these last twelve months trying to make a profit, trying to please you.  I’ve even gone to Thanksgiving dinners at the local shelter so that the name of our company would be there on Thanksgiving Day.  I’ve continually put in hours, long, hard hours working for what you have given me.  You didn’t even through me a pizza party, Dad, and you want me to celebrate this scumbag who has dragged our name through the mud?  You want me to celebrate that he is back, who ran out on us, on our family, you want me to celebrate that, that he is back?  We don’t have any idea what he did out there in San Francisco with those guys of his.  We don’t have any idea how disgraced we could be.  Have you asked about where all the money went?  Have you asked about who he hung out with?  Have you asked what he might have?”  And the father says to the oldest son, “I didn’t need to ask those questions.  He’s back.  He’s home.  The one that I thought was lost is found.”  

In the meantime, while all of this was going on outside, the young man who came back, who is now in a tux, whose hair has been neatly trimmed, stands before his friends, his families friends, his cousins, and even his mother as the honored guest.  And from his tux pocket he pulls the list that he has been figuring all the way from San Francisco to the east coast.  He pulls it out and he looks at it.  Here is the list that he wants to read, the debts that he owes, the disgraces, the obligations.  But he looks at it and he starts looking and each one has a red line through it, a thin red line.  He had written it in pencil and somehow there is red ink going down that list.  And at the bottom written in bold, red letters are the words, “Paid in Full”. 

I don’t know where you are in that story.  I know Jesus told it a different way.  He told it to those that knew they were self-righteous and had committed the sin of placing themselves above others. He told it to the tax collectors and the sinners who didn’t expect to be offered grace and forgiveness from anyone least of all Jesus. There were those that hoped, following Him.  There were those that feared who followed Him.  There were those who needed to hear the sound of joyful reconciliation in those types of stories, that type of hope.  There were things that themselves had known and done--reckless rebellion.  There were parents who had let their children go their own way and needed to ask even those children for forgiveness.  And there were those who knew the cheerfulness and the joy and the love of unconditional acceptance. 

That was the story that Jesus shared.  A story that confirmed what the religious people thought about Him.  He welcomes sinners.  Such love is this, love without end.  Love that encounters and alters us, a new way of life.  I don’t know in your life what you may need to recover from, to forgive or to be forgiven.  It might be a broken dream; it might be a health problem that you caused or that you have been a victim of that you have deep resentment about.  It might be a financial disaster that someone else caused you.  It might be a moral crisis in your career or relationship with another, a breakup, a divorce, even a death.  But I would like to leave you in this prayer.  And those of you who may not have found yourself in that story yet, maybe just bow your head and pray for the others that you think did find themselves.  Let’s pray, “Dear God, I’ve messed up a lot of things in my life and I’ve had some losses.  Today I want to start a different road, a journey of knowing your grace, a journey of admitting my need for this grace, this power of love that forgives where I have been and what I have done.  I want to pour out my heart to you, Lord.  You know how I feel better than anyone.  I need you in my life.  I don’t want to let bitterness and resentment fill my heart.  I want to be a better person.  Please forgive me.  Forgive me for hurting others, forgive me for not trusting you and help me, God, help me forgive those who hurt me.  And help me to remember to let go of my pride and my fear that has me from forgiving others.  Most of all, Jesus, help me to remember the stories, the truth that you told about our Father.  As you have become my Lord, my Savior, my brother, Amen.” 

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Nancy Blevins

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