Love So Amazing

LOVE SO AMAZING (March 25, 2001)

"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." Luke 15:20

People sometimes say they don't believe in God because life is unfair. If God exists, they say, God would have made the world a lot more just. The good would get their rewards and the bad would get their punishment. When people say this, they most often say it because they think they themselves have gotten the short end of the stick. I've never heard someone say this because they think they've gotten better than they deserved. The funny thing is that this is really the heart of the Christian message. It's called grace. It means getting better than we deserve.

A writer named Brennan Manning in a book called The Ragamuffin Gospel says "the American church accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice." We prefer slogans such as "There's no free lunch. You get what you deserve. You want mercy? Show you deserve it." A pastor once told a child, "God loves good little boys." Obviously, the pastor didn't understand grace.

John Newton who wrote America's favorite hymn was actually at one time in his life a slave dealer. He was converted to Christian faith but felt he never deserved such happiness. It is out of that he wrote "Amazing Grace". He really meant it when he wrote "saved a wretch like me". Grace means we don't get what we deserve. We actually get much better.

No story tells it better in the New Testament than the story we know as The Prodigal Son. It should really be called the Parable of the loving father. The father is at the center. He has two sons, it says so at the beginning, and the full story must include both. In fact, the father really "lost" both sons, the younger to a far away country, the older to a terrible self-righteousness. He got one son back, we're not sure about the other.

We've heard the story so often we forget how amazing it truly is - and how offensive it is to those who think everything in life ought to be fair. Fred Craddock is a wonderful New Testament scholar much in demand as a speaker at conferences. One Sunday he received a phone call from someone in a rural church. Their pastor was ill and they needed a preacher, and by the way, would he lead the adult Bible class? What was the class studying?, he asked. The Prodigal Son, was the answer. His heart sank. How could he possibly make such an old and much loved story interesting?

Half way to the church he decided to tell it his own way.

He told the story just as it is from the start - the younger son asks for his share of the property, goes away, runs through the money, takes to feeding pigs (certainly the height of indignity for a Jewish boy), then comes to his senses, repents of his ways, and heads slowly back home. Eventually he came to the edge of his father's property, says Dr. Craddock, and he heard the sounds of music and dancing.

There was obviously a big party going on. He sees one of his father's servants and calls him. "What's going on?" he asks. The servant replies, "Your old man got tired of waiting for you to get your act together and come home," he said, "so he has thrown a big shindig for your brother, invited the neighbors, slain the fatted calf, and they're having a blast."
Suddenly, a woman in the back row of the class clapped her hands loudly together and shouted out, "Hallelujah, that's the way that story should have been told the first time!"

If I had been Jesus how would I have told the story? I think I would have said the young man came home and was met by one of the servants who told him his father was in his office doing the accounts. Sheepishly, the young man went in and his father got up and came slowly around the desk.. He heard the son's confession. The father said, of course, you are welcome back, but you have to sleep in the woodshed and I'm sure your brother will have chores you'll have to do. I hope you've learned your lesson. For something to wear, how about this nice sackcloth? "

That would have been the "fair" thing to do. A certain degree of compassion, but not too much. After all, discipline is important.
But Jesus didn't tell the story either of those ways. He told it his way. Because he wanted us to know how truly amazing is the love of God, how it is a love which is not filled with nice calculations of less and more. His love is such that it risks upsetting nice balances of what is "fair", even risks condoning sin.

In Jesus' story both sons have their shortcomings. The younger is impetuous and profligate. The older betrays unattractive aspects of his personality each time he speaks. "This son of yours…." He says, dissociating himself from his brother. He even says his brother has been spending his time with harlots, though that isn't clear. Perhaps he is fabricating something there. There's absolutely nothing particularly attractive about the older son. "I've slaved for you all these years," he says. Not a word that perhaps his father deserved his devotion.

But still, somehow, the father loves him, too. He refuses to take sides between the brothers. Loves them both. There is a gentle rebuke when the father says, "this your brother", reminding the older brother of the blood relationship, but that's as far as he goes. "All I have is yours," he says, but focus on what has happened. Your brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.

There is no doubt the loving father here is God. And there is God standing at the end of the property waiting for his son to come home. You can just see him looking into the horizon, waiting and waiting. "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near," as we heard from Isaiah last week. And then when he sees his son coming to him, he runs to him and throws his arms around him and kisses him, and before the son can finish his speech the father has called for a ring and a robe and sandals for his sons feet and gives the order to kill the fatted calf.

St. Paul wrote that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. This is what the cross of Jesus Christ truly means. When we look at the cross we see how amazing is God's love. God was in Christ making all things new, not counting our trespasses against us, and entrusting us with the message of reconciliation. We don't deserve it. Paul wrote: "Even for a just man one of us would hardly die, though perhaps for a good person one might actually brave death; but Christ died for us while we were yet sinners - far off in our own country -- and that is God's own proof of his love for us."

How utterly astonishing. The God of Christian faith is one who runs to us in Jesus Christ - no other faith has such an amazing claim about God and risks so much in making it -- throws his arms around us and welcomes us, but we have to do our part, come to our true selves, see how much we need him, then he is there, at the edge of the property, always waiting. Nearer than we thought, and far less judgmental than we feared, if only we have the courage to confess our sins, and come home.

Luke writes that the father had compassion on his son. The word in Greek refers to the deepest feelings, The splagchna referred to the heart, the lungs, the liver, and the intestines. The Greeks held these to be the seat of the emotions. But it would never have occurred to the ancient Greeks to think of God in this way. To them, the gods were apathetic, uncaring. But at the core of the Christian faith is this "love so amazing", of God's only son giving himself up on the cross out of the love of God so that we might be reconciled to God. And giving us a ministry of reconciliation and work to do for God. At the heart of the universe is not some impersonal fatalism or soulless scientific chance but a loving God who seeks us out to save us and reconcile us to himself through the cross.

Through the cross of Christ we truly don't get what we deserve. We get much better. While we yet sinners, Christ died for us. It's called grace - unmerited favor. And it is extended to us, whether we have been off in a far country of our own sin or whether we have stayed closer to home but wrapped up in our self righteousness and jealousy, offended at the grace of God offered who someone who doesn't seem to be deserving, the Father's love is still there for us.

"Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small, love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life my all."