Let us pray:

Lord, at the beginning of this Lenten season, I sense my need of you. Yet I’m not quite sure how to reach you.

I heard someone say, “Read your Bible,” but too often the words are like bullets that ricochet off my brain.

I heard someone say, “Pray,” but my prayers, hurled heavenward, fall back to earth like lifeless stones.

I heard someone say, “Meditate,” but my wandering mind was lost in a desert of thoughts and daydreams.

Lord, speak to me through your word, and let it penetrate my mind, my heart.

Lord, speak to me through my prayers, and turn the lifeless stones to bread.

Lord, speak to me in the midst of meditation, that I may see, amid life’s wilderness, the way, the truth, the life.

In Christ’s name.
Amen.

 

The Nicene Creed

I BELIEVE IN ONE GOD, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light: true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father; by Whom all things were made: Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man; And was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried; And arose again on the third day according to the Scriptures; And ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father; And shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end.

And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life; Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spake by the prophets.

In One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, And the life of the age to come.
Amen.

 

 

 

 

The Second Lesson is from:

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

The Sermon Text is from:

the Gospel of Saint Luke in the 15th chapter,verses 1:18-31

Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. And he spake this parable unto them, saying, (Luke 15:1-3)
And he said, A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. (Luke 15:11-32)

 

The title of today's sermon is:

Post Your Failure

And concerns the theme of:

Failblog.org posts pictures of failure for the whole world to see, but the story of the loving father and his two flaky sons provides enough snapshots to make a failure photo album.

It used to be that when we did something stupid such as, say, walk into an apparently invisible plate-glass door or fall down the stairs or back the car out of the garage while the door was still down, we’d try to keep that to ourselves. No sense letting the neighbors know we’re dopes, after all.

But with the advent of the Internet and the popularity of shows such as Video Zonkers or the older America’s Funniest Home Videos (which probably started the trend), people are now beginning to look at their gaffes, faux pas and misadventures as things to share with the whole world. We’ve bought into Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” idea, even if that fame comes from a 15-second clip on a video-sharing site and shows us just before we headed to the emergency room.

But while most video-posting sites, such as YouTube, carry a wide variety of content, one site is devoted entirely to the imperfect populace. It’s called the “Fail Blog.” Think of it as a cross between AFV, Jay Leno’s “Headlines” segment and Candid Camera all rolled into one. People post their own pictures and videos or upload goofy signs or sights they’ve seen for everyone else to view and comment on. You’ll see everything from a guy getting de-pantsed by a bull at a bullfight to sports mascots with big furry heads brawling on a football field. Over each picture or video, the site stamps the word FAIL in big, bold letters.

Kinda gives a new meaning to the concept of the “boob tube.”

The opening verses seem relatively inconsequential and appear to demand little interpretative discernment when read quickly. Jesus’ audience is composed of two distinct and evidently opposing factions: “all the tax collectors and sinners” and “the Pharisees and the scribes.” The sinners “listen” to Jesus; the religious officials “were grumbling.” Perceiving the tension between these two groups, Jesus “told them this parable.”

Yet this introduction is critical for several reasons. First, it sets the narrative scene by contrasting two disparate groups who unknowingly share a common trait. Second, it prefigures the parable’s two sons. Third, the initial remarks also demonstrate Luke’s literary acumen, for everyone who reads this passage can identify with either one or both of the story’s corporate personae dramatis (i.e., the degenerate sinners or the dutifully self-righteous). As Luke’s readers are imperceptibly drawn into the narrative’s drama, they also unwittingly become participants in the parable’s plot.

The parable begins innocuously: “a man … had two sons.” But the initial tranquility is short-lived, for the younger son says to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me” (v. 12a). Conventional wisdom demands that the father explain to his younger son why he should wait. But the father surprises all. Rather than deflecting his son’s request, the father honors it and divides his property.

The younger son’s intentions aren’t initially transparent, but they soon become clear. He plans to take his newly acquired resources and indulge his appetites and desires. So he leaves his father’s house and “traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.” As fate would have it, “a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need.” To survive, he becomes a hired hand and feeds pigs; he even considers eating some of their feed because “no one gave him anything.” From the perspective of the religious authorities, the younger son is getting his just desserts; he is reaping what he has sown. His improvident, degenerate living has rightly reduced him to an animal’s existence — and an unclean animal at that.

But Jesus didn’t end the story there, lest the religious authorities revel in their proud, self-righteous understanding about the wisdom of providential living. On the contrary, he described how the younger son “came to himself” and chose to return to his father’s house. This son not only recognized what blessings were to be found there but also realized the horrendous mistake he had made. Consequently, he was ready to confess his sin and accept whatever place his father would give him. Despite the younger son’s personal epiphany, “the Pharisees and the scribes” might have presumed that when this wayward son arrived home, Jesus would finally tell how the father would have reprimanded him and said, “I told you so.”

Yet in Jesus’ parable, the father’s reaction defied logic. For when the younger son “was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him” (v. 20). In response to his father’s gracious act, the younger son repeats his oft-rehearsed confession: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” Once more, the father’s joy and expressions of compassion are overwhelming. He is the true prodigal, the one who profusely gives rich blessings to his son — a robe, a ring and new sandals. The father also orders his hired hands to kill the fatted calf so they can celebrate the resurrection and return of his son who “was dead and is alive again ... was lost and is found!.”

Although the text neither reports nor clearly intimates the reactions of Jesus’ listeners, it is nearly impossible not to speculate about their reactions. Luke’s laconic style draws readers into the parable. On the one hand, the “sinners” were likely relieved because Jesus had duly chastised the religious authorities who grumbled. On the other hand, the religious officials — though probably somewhat disappointed with the story’s outcome at this point — could accept the father’s response to his son’s return, for surely some of them were fathers, too. But what both groups heard next was wholly unexpected.

For a second time, the parable begins a scene in a rather innocuous way. The “elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing.” Perplexed by what he saw and heard, he asks a slave “what was going on.” The servant tells the elder son about his younger brother’s return. At once, the older brother “became angry and refused to go in.”

Then, just as he had done with his younger son, the father went out to greet his older son who — though he hadn’t “squandered his property in dissolute living” in a faraway land — had nonetheless failed to value his inheritance. Because he had misunderstood his relationship with his father and his brother and hadn’t recognized his own need to repent — including the need to offer compassion and forgiveness to his younger brother — the elder brother believes his anger is justified. He had “been working like a slave … and … never disobeyed” his father’s “command.” In contrast, his younger brother had “devoured [the father’s] property with prostitutes,” and yet his father “killed the fatted calf for him.” This disparity between the brothers’ conduct could not justify his father’s actions; they were unpardonable and foolish.

But the elder son’s anger was unwarranted, for his father said, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” The fatted calf — along with everything their father had — had always belonged to both brothers. Consequently, when the younger son who was dead and lost had come to life and been found, the father rightly exclaimed, “[W]e had to celebrate and rejoice.”

With superb literary artistry, Luke used Jesus’ parable to call sinners and the sanctimonious to repent. The younger son, who represented “all the tax collectors and sinners,” needed to turn away from his self-indulgent, degenerate life — that is, from his lust, greed, gluttony and slothfulness. The elder son, who symbolized “the Pharisees and the scribes,” needed to turn away from his narcissistic condescension — that is, from his pride, envy and anger. And as the parable makes clear, the father graciously received both sons because they always had been and always would be his heirs.

When you read the famous parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, it begins to look like a similar photo album of failure — but without the funny.

Clip number one shows a kid with his hand out, demanding (not asking) that he get his share of inheritance right now, up front. A kid with his hand out isn’t an unusual picture, as any parent knows, but in this case it’s a particularly shocking one given the cultural conventions of the time. Jewish law dictated that when the father passed away, the eldest son would get two-thirds of the estate (a “double portion”) and the next youngest son one-third. But, as Jesus tells it, Dad was still alive and well. So the younger son commits an egregious gaffe by basically saying, “Pop, I wish you were already dead. Forget the family business and, for that matter, the whole family. I’m outta here.”

Although it wasn’t unusual for a father to distribute property in advance, as in the case of marriage, Jesus strongly implies that the younger son’s demand is disrespectful, rebellious and foolish — a clear violation of the commandment to honor one’s parents (Exodus 20:12). In a culture where family and community always took priority over the individual, the kid’s self-centered demand would have raised the eyebrows of those hearing the parable for the first time. They’d definitely lump him in with those “sinners” that the Pharisees and scribes were accusing Jesus of befriending.

As if to hammer home that very point, Jesus offers clip number two: the suddenly wealthy kid living it up in some foreign (read “Gentile”) country. There he “squanders” all the property (the Greek word can also mean “scatters”) by living a wild and undisciplined lifestyle. But after he’s blown it all and is flat broke, he hires himself out to a Gentile pig farmer, which is about as un-Jewish as he can get. Pigs were an abomination to Jews (Leviticus 11:7; Deuteronomy 14:8), and people who cared for swine were cursed. The picture of a young man, hungry and destitute, sitting in the filth of a pigsty envying the slop his porcine charges were horking down would have qualified as a major FAIL photo. Jesus seems to be making the point that this kid is even farther gone than any of the “sinners” with whom he’s sitting down to dinner.

But the pigsty is also a place of revelation. In the midst of piles of pig poo, the boy “came to himself” and decided to go home. Notice, though, that at least initially it’s more of a pragmatic decision than a penitential one. He’s a hired hand to the pig farmer and gets nothing, so he figures that if he goes home he can at least get hired on to the family business and get what the other servants are getting, which is way better than pig fodder. Yeah, he’ll have to do a mea culpa, but at least he’ll have a full belly.

Of course, we know the next picture — that of the father racing down the driveway to embrace his long-lost sinner son and calling for a major-league party to be thrown in his honor. Here we might picture Rembrandt’s beautiful painting The Return of the Prodigal Son, with the penitential son kneeling at the feet of his father, whose face reflects a deep love and sense of relief. It’s a picture we certainly wouldn’t post on the fail blog but is one that Christians have looked to for centuries as a reminder of God’s love.

In a first-century context, however, Jesus’ hearers might have been more likely to initially assign the biggest failure in the whole story to the father, who is really more the subject of the parable than the prodigal son for whom it’s more readily known. In the first place, the Pharisees and scribes would certainly have stamped FAIL on the father’s willingness to give the boy his inheritance in the first place. A good father would have squashed such rebellion in a child rather than give in to it. And then, after the insolent boy has the nerve to actually show his face back on the family farm, the father disgraces himself by running out to meet him “while he was still far off” (v. 20). In first-century Israel, it was considered the height of indignity for a man, especially a family patriarch, to run anywhere for anything, let alone to run out from the house to meet the one who had dishonored him. Not only that, but the father actually forgives the boy and restores him to the status of son, even though the kid had disowned himself from the family. Where was the rebuke? Where was the lesson? Where was the justice in all that? Dad was a failure, here, for sure.

The older son thinks so, too. He can’t believe that Dad is doing such a heinous thing for his stupid kid brother. He stands outside the party and angrily pouts, so the father once again disgraces himself to come out and “plead with him” (v. 28). The older son gives dad a tongue-lashing, reminding dad that he’s been a loyal son the whole time but he has nothing to show for it (except two-thirds of the inheritance, which Dad points out in verse 31). The big brother wants justice, wants retribution, wants what’s coming to him, but all Dad says is, “[W]e had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found” (v. 32).

Read the gospels and you see that Jesus had a habit of turning failures into the heroes of his stories. The “Good Samaritan” (a first-century oxymoron) in Luke 10 and the “Dishonest Manager” (Luke 16:1-13) are just a couple of examples that frame this particular story in Luke. Jesus picked losers such as tax collectors to be his disciples and partied with people who everyone in polite and pious society would have considered to be failures on a whole lot of levels. He didn’t seem to mind being pictured as a failure because he knew that was the only way that the many faces on whom the rest of the world had stamped FAIL would come to him. The parable of the loving father and his two sons was designed to invite self-righteous Pharisees and scribes to see how they had become the older brother, failing to experience the joy and celebration that God does when wayward sinners come home. But it was also designed to remind us all of the embarrassing lengths to which God, in the person of Jesus, would go to make that homecoming a reality.

Lent reminds us that the story of Jesus inevitably moves toward the cross, the ultimate picture of failure and disgrace. Jesus was willing to risk the embarrassment of being stripped, beaten and hanged naked to die and to be held up as a failure for the whole world to see on that Friday. It is through failure that God chooses to save the world. As Paul would later put it, the cross was and is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:23-25).

In his book Six Hours One Friday, Max Lucado wonders if Jesus used his hands while telling the parable of the loving father and his two sons. When he got to the point in the story where the overjoyed father runs out to meet his broken-down son, did he open his arms wide to illustrate the point? “Whether he did that day or not, I don’t know,” says Lucado. “But I know that he did later. He later stretched his hands as open as he could. He forced his arms so wide apart that it hurt. And to prove that those arms would never fold and those hands would never close, he had them nailed open. They still are.”

This is a great Sunday to invite the people in your congregation, whether they feel like long-lost prodigals or self-righteous prigs, to bring their failures to the cross and leave them there. Meet them with arms wide open for a time of prayer and healing. Help them get the picture that, in Christ, their failure isn’t final or fatal.

 

 

 

 

Psalter:

Psalm 32

A Psalm of David, Maschil. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in the LORD, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.

Let us pray as our Lord taught us;

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

Benediction

Go forth in Jesus Christ to practice friendship and hospitality. Give to others help and hope.

Share the Good News, offer life lived in abundance, and proclaim God’s love to all.

Walk on God’s shining path which is bright with the light of faith, hope and love.

Go forth living in the brightness of Jesus Christ, our companion, Savior and guide.
Amen.

   

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