Today's Special

Today I gave the sermon at Fortwilliam. I spoke on the prodigal son's story (Luke 15:11-34). Here I've included a bit of the text. If you're really keen to read the whole thing, I'll e-mail it to anyone that asks. Please recall, I'm using ianborton@gmail.com as much as possible now.

-Ian

Jesus stops with the younger son in the party, the father consoling and encouraging the elder son outside, and the elder son arms crossed, scowl on his face and sulking out in the yard. It’s really not a very good way to end a story. You’d never end a movie like that... So, what happens next, we don’t know, but I think looking at what ought to happen next may inform us better about how we are to interpret this parable.
As I was working on this, I kept on coming back to the idea of healing. At Iona last week we participated in a service of healing one evening. Healing services are not common in the denomination I grew up in, and the closest we really come is praying with people in the hospital before they go into surgery. The service focused on the gift of healing as a gift requiring responsibility, like all gifts of God. Healing is about potential and about the restoration of a person’s potential.
Do not kid yourselves into thinking all that the younger son receives in this story is a pair of sandals and a steak. He receives from the Father nothing less than a healing of spirit, mind, and body. The prodigal becomes the faithful. The sinner returns to the father’s home broken and bereft and is returned to a place of comfort, love, and stability. With that comes the responsibility to do something with that healing. The younger son, now restored is in his father’s house, dining and laughing. But the feast will end and the work of the father will continue. And it seems to me he has to choose one of two paths, a life of obedience or one of selfishness.
Indeed there are tales from our own lives where people we know or even we-ourselves have faced this moment. After repentance, after the elation of being once again in the presence of God after being forgiven, we are faced with the person we used to be and the person God knows we are capable of being. It is now that Jesus asks which master we intend to serve Do we make our healing complete, a complete submission to the Father who has welcomed us home, feasted with us, forgiven us, and has always continued to love us? Or do we again look to serve ourselves, our own interests, our desires, our plans our agendas? That is the choice faced at the end of the story by the younger son, and it is the same choice each of us must make each time we walk confidently, pridefully, and blindly away from God. Does the younger son return only briefly, soon to wander away from home again and again, or is his repentance genuine, is his healing complete, is his service perfected?