How do you get to heaven? Part 2: The Story That Messes With Everything.

Grace means that… Both sons are prodigals.

In Luke’s account of Jesus’ life he tells us about a moment when Jesus was teaching, and he’s speaking to these two very different groups. There’s a bunch of ragtag, messed up, reject ‘sinners’. People who’ve gone off the rails and know that they probably deserve the social exile that’s been imposed upon them. And then behind them there’s a bunch of Pharisees and teachers of the Law. These are good, respectable, middle-class people. They are the pillars of society. They give away at least a tenth of everything they have to the poor. They are religiously devout, and careful to keep all their social, religious and moral duties. They pray often, and earnestly. But Jesus always seems to have a problem with them. He keeps warning them that if they don’t repent – turn around 180 degrees on the deepest level – then they are heading towards ultimate separation from God. Why? He can’t stand their presumption. He says they walk into the presence of God himself and say, ‘Thank you God for making me good – not like those other people, those sinners,’ and that makes Jesus livid. He can see them right now, looking down at the ‘sinners’ who are there; he can see them silently, secretly placing these people somewhere in the bottom half of the Hitler-Teresa scale, and bumping themselves up a little bit in the process. So he tells a story. It’s Jesus’ favourite way to pick a fight.

There was once a Father with two sons. And one day the younger son comes to his Father and says,

“I want my share of the inheritance now.”

That’s the inheritance. That’s what you get when someone dies. He’s saying, basically, ‘I wish you were dead. I want your stuff instead of you please.’

So obviously the Father is gutted. He loves his son, but his son doesn’t care about him. That hurts in a way that no one who’s never had a child can really understand. And he doesn’t want him to leave. But, strangely, he says yes. He doesn’t shout – he doesn’t beat him – he doesn’t throw him out on the street with nothing – he sells half his land and hands his son the money, and lets him go.

And where he ends up, as far away as he can get, the son spends all his money on having a great time – parties, prostitutes. He’s really enjoying himself right up until the money starts to run out, and his friends run out with it. Then a famine hits that country. He ends up struggling to survive, with a job feeding pigs, so hungry he wants to eat the slops and pods he’s supposed to give them. And then it dawns on him, there in the muck with the pigs –

‘What am I doing here? The servants back at my father’s house have got enough to eat and good jobs. I’ll go back. I’ll have to face the shame, apologise to my Father and beg him to hire me as a servant, and maybe if I work hard enough I can start to pay off all the money I’ve wasted.’

So he gets up and starts the long journey home. Exhausted and alone – stinking from the pigs and the sweat – and full of shame.

And then Jesus gives us a powerful detail.

While he was still a long way off, the Father saw him in the distance.

How come? Because the Father had been waiting for him. Every day since he left he’d been watching and waiting and hoping that his son would come home.

And when he sees him – bare feet caked in dust, disgusting and ragged – he hitches up his robes, and he runs. He runs out to him, and he doesn’t care that the people in the village are pointing and laughing he’s just fixed on his son, and when he gets to him he throws his arms round him and picks him up like he used to when he was little, and he kisses him, and the son knows for sure that his father still loves him. And the father calls back to a servant from the house and says “Bring my best robe, put it on him!” – he doesn’t want him walking through the village dirty and ashamed. “Bring the family ring put it on his finger to show everyone that he belongs here, he’s my son. And bring sandals for his hurting feet. Then let’s kill the fattened calf and invite everyone round: we are feasting tonight! Because my son was dead and is alive again, was lost, and is found.”

The ‘sinners’ are wide-eyed, mind-blown. Their whole world is turning upside down. But Jesus looks up at the Pharisees and the teachers because he hasn’t finished yet.

Remember that other brother? The older one? That evening he’s still out working in the field like always. He’s a good boy, very respectable, always does his duty. And when he hears all the laughter and the dancing coming from the feast inside he calls a servant and asks,

“What’s happening in there?”

The servant explains that his brother has come home and his father’s thrown a feast, he beckons him inside. But the older brother turns his back and walks away.

When the Father realises that his eldest son is still outside he runs out to him.

He runs out to him. Just like he ran to the younger son. Just as humiliating for the father. But it’s the big brother who’s far off now.

He says, “Son, come inside, come to the feast!”
But the son replies, “Look. I’ve been slaving for you all my life and you never even gave me a goat to have a party with my friends. But now this son of yours, stinking of prostitutes and pig shit comes back and you kill the fattened calf for him?”

And once again, the father is gutted. He’s hurt. He never asked him to ‘slave’ for anything – it wasn’t supposed to be like that. Biting back a tear, he says,

“My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate because your brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.”

So here we are, asking the question – will he go inside? Will the family be reunited? But Jesus stops the story. He stops talking and he looks at the respectable crowd, as if to say, ‘Well then, are you coming in? The ball’s in your court. It’s up to you now.’

And with this story he’s redefined everything.

Redefining God: First of all a father.

This is a revolutionary picture of God. The Pharisees and the teachers were seeing God as a kind of distant arbiter. A referee. Watching us live our lives and assessing our performance. And of course the Bible does describe God as a judge – Jesus promised that he himself would be the ultimate Judge of every person in history – but Jesus is turning everything on its head by teaching the Pharisees that God is first of all a father. A loving father. A father who is deeply wounded by the rejection of his children. Who longs for them to come home. Who longs for the relationship to be put right.

Redefining sin: Not even a postcard.

Jesus takes a sledgehammer to the Pharisees’ definition of a ‘sinner’. He gives them a character that fits their categories down to the ground: dissolute, rebellious, sexually promiscuous, he’s even non-kosher with the pigs. But by showing us God as a father, Jesus points us to the heart of the problem. What is it that’s breaking his Dad’s heart all those days he’s sitting, looking out, waiting for him? Is it the parties? Is it the prostitutes? Is it the pigs? Not really, no. It’s that his son has run away from home. It’s that his son doesn’t love him back. It’s that his son wants his things and not his affection. It’s that his son wants him dead, and is living life as if he was. That’s the heart of ‘sin’. It’s not chocolate and lingerie. It’s the thing where we want God’s world but we certainly don’t want to hear his words. It’s the thing where we want the life that God has given us but we want to live it like he’s dead. That’s what grieves the heart of our Father in heaven.

Redefining goodness: Lost in your own back garden.

And then he goes a step further. The older brother: middle-class religious respectability through and through. Does everything he’s supposed to do, never puts a foot out of line, goes to church every Sunday. “I’ve been slaving for you all my life.” But hear that word, ‘slaving’. That doesn’t sound quite right. Why has he been doing everything the Father wanted him to do? Not because he loves him. Not out of joy and gratitude and affection. I don’t ‘slave’ for Rachael. He felt obligated. Not just that: he thought he was earning something. “You never even gave me a goat to have a party with my friends.” He’s been hoping for payment. He’s been working, obeying his Father so that he will get some of the Father’s stuff and can have some fun with his friends – people who are not his father. He doesn’t want his Dad’s love, he wants his stuff.

Sound familiar?

Jesus makes sure we know that the Father had to go out to both his sons. They were both ‘prodigals’. They were both lost all along. The older brother has just been lost in the back garden, digging away. And they both break the Father’s heart. They both bring dishonour on him as he runs out to get them.

Jesus is saying something deeply controversial here. He’s saying that the heart of the problem with all the ‘bad’ people in the world, is their rejection of God. And the heart of the problem with all the ‘good’ people in the world, is their rejection of God. Everybody is a prodigal because everybody is trying to make themselves somehow – whether that’s by running away from rules and religion, pursuing expressive self-discovery, or by strict obedience to convention. Everyone’s trying to save themselves and Jesus is saying that it’s never going to work. Everything Jesus did and said insisted that we have a problem that is so much bigger than bad behaviour, far too deep for ‘goodness’ as we know it to ever fix. We’ve all run away from God. We all want him dead.

Redefining hope: We can come home.

So Jesus is pretty clear that there’s no chance our self-generated ‘goodness’ is going to fix things between us and God – there’s no way it can reorient us at the deepest level so we actually want God, want to love and obey him, and don’t just want his stuff. So what hope is there for us? Well, there’s grace.

There is no better picture of grace than Jesus’ image of the father sitting, weeping, waiting, and then running out to his son. Wrapping his arms around his dirt-caked rags and picking him clean off the ground with the strength of his affection. Dressing him in the dignity of robes he does not remotely deserve – declaring him a member of the family he had tried to destroy – dancing all night with laugh-out-loud joy.

That’s God. That’s what he’s like. If we come home, if we want in, he is ‘gracious’ in the sense that nothing we could ever do will stop him throwing his arms wide open. He loves us, he wants us. He has seen every arrogant thought, heard every bitter murmur, he knows even the darkest, deepest secret and yet he looks at us and if we look back we’ll see nothing but irresistible affection. That’s what grace means.

And the ‘sinners’ in the crowd saw that look in Jesus’ eyes. And in time, so did some of the Pharisees. They heard him claim to be the judge of the whole world and they also saw him saying again and again to those who longed to hear it:
“Your sins are forgiven you.”
“Friend, your sins have been forgiven.”

“Daughter, your faith has saved you.”

“You’re faith has saved you, go in peace.”

But Jesus didn’t say that to everyone – it wasn’t a blanket proclamation. To some people he warned them that exactly the opposite was true and something needed to change. So what’s the difference? How do you know if you’ve really come home, or if you’re still lost in the back garden? I’ll have a look at what he said about that tomorrow.