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Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 30, 2025

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Today we hear what is likely Jesus’ most famous and most beloved of all his parables. But our gospel reading for today begins with an important bit of context. St. Luke prefaces the parable with an important bit of information. He writes: “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable.”

Jesus actually goes on to tell three parables, all with the same theme. Jesus tells the parable of the lost coin. Then he tells the parable of the lost sheep. And then, finally, he tells the parable we hear today. We only hear the third parable, which is why we jump from verse three to verse eleven. And the context in which Jesus is speaking is especially important for understanding this third parable.

Jesus tells these parables with two groups there listening to him. These two groups could not be more different from each other. On the one side you have a group of tax collectors and other assorted sinners. This group was comprised of people who were widely despised for their sin. Their sins were public, obvious, easy to see.

The tax collectors were despised because, well, because they were tax collectors. I mean, that’s pretty obvious, right? It is tax season, after all. As necessary as it surely is for a functioning government, I don’t know anyone who would list the IRS as their favorite government agency. In ancient Israel this was made far worse by the fact that tax collectors worked on commission, that is, they kept for themselves whatever they were able to gouge out of people beyond what was required, and they were working for their Roman oppressors while doing so. So they were widely reviled not only as aggressive bill collectors, but as betrayers of their people and betrayers of their God.

Along with the tax collectors were other assorted sinners. These were those who had wandered away from God and squandered their holy heritage with dissolute living –  chasing their every appetite, abusing God’s gifts for their own selfish pleasures, living by their own rules, ignoring God’s commandments, spending their weekends committing idolatry and adultery, wallowing in their own bad decisions.

This first group, the tax collectors and other assorted sinners, had been coming to listen to Jesus – and Jesus welcomed them! Jesus had even been breaking bread with them. Jesus had been enjoying little dinner parties with them.

The second group was comprised of the Pharisees and the scribes. This second group was the mirror opposite of the first group. While the first group was publicly reviled, the second group enjoyed great public respect. These were the good people, the respectable people. They were careful followers of God’s law. They were obedient to God’s commandments. They were Israel’s most loyal sons. And so of course they raised their eyebrows when they saw Jesus eating with these rank sinners. Of course they objected to someone who came preaching and teaching in the name of God sitting down and breaking bread with them. Of course they looked down their noses and grumbled at the whole thing.

Jesus tells this parable in response to this dynamic. Jesus is masterfully addressing both of these groups with it. Jesus is explaining what these little dinner parties with sinners are all about, while also inviting the Pharisees and the scribes to quit grumbling and take their place at the table.

Jesus begins by saying there was a man who had two sons. Note that right from the beginning this is a parable about two sons! The first son asks for his inheritance ahead of time. This was a great insult to the father in that culture, but the father gives it to him and the son promptly leaves home and goes to a far-off country called Las Vegas. He goes to a far-off country known as Amsterdam’s red-light district. In this far-off country he blows through all the inheritance money, spending it on vice, and debauchery, and immorality of every kind – which is precisely what “dissolute living” means. He hits rock bottom. He ends up flat broke. In his desperation he takes a low-paying job at a Gentile pig farm, where he ends up so hungry that the pig’s food starts to look good to him. He finally comes to his senses and returns home, hoping at least to get hired on as one of his father’s hired hands. But when he is still at the end of his father’s long driveway, he sees his father running towards him. Before he can even apologize, his father throws his arms around him. His father kisses him. His father calls for his son to be clothed in a new robe and to have the family ring put on his finger. Then he tells his servants to prepare the fatted calf. It was time to barbecue! It was time to celebrate! For this son of his who was dead was alive again, he was lost but had been found.

This first part of the parable describes what was going on with the first group, with the tax collectors and other assorted sinners. By listening to Jesus, those sinners were coming to their senses! In him, they had found their way back home to God. Jesus wasn’t endorsing their sin by eating with them. The son in the parable doesn’t bring whiskey and dancing girls back home to dad. These sinners had repented. They had come home, and God was receiving them with open arms! God clothed them in a new robe, giving them a new life. God restored them to the family. God and all his angels celebrated, for these sinner-sons who were dead were alive again. These sinner-sons who were lost had been found. The meal Jesus shared with them both symbolized and celebrated their homecoming.

The story line of the first son takes up most of the parable, but it is not the end of the story! This parable is often called the parable of the prodigal son, but there are TWO sons in the parable, and to ignore the second son is like telling an entire joke only to botch the punchline! This should be called the parable of the lost sons, because there are two sons in the parable, and both of them are lost. One is lost to self-indulgence, and the other is lost to self-righteousness.

When the younger, self-indulgent son comes home, the older son is indignant. He is sanctimonious. He is resentful. When he sees that his father has thrown a party for his brother, he becomes angry and refuses to go in. He feels he deserves more from his father for being the good, loyal son. Here they are butchering a fatted calf, and he never even got a goat to roast for a party!

But the father speaks tenderly to his older son. He acknowledges his faithfulness, his loyalty. He tells his older son that everything he has already belongs to him. All the fatted calfs. All the goats. It is all his and always has been. The father invites his older son to set aside his self-righteousness and to just come in and enjoy the party. You see, he is lost too! He needs to come home too!

This part of the parable is aimed at those Pharisees and scribes. They might enjoy much public respect, but they are sinners too. They might not be self-indulgent, but they are self-righteous. And so they are more like the first group than they want to admit! In fact, Jesus suggests with this parable that they are brothers! Their sins are two sides of the same genetic coin!

As the father of three boys, it is amazing to my wife and I how different our three sons can be. They sprang from the same two parents. They were raised in the same home, in mostly the same way. They share the same blood, the same DNA. But they each have such radically different personalities. For instance, one is an extrovert who will talk to you until you want to sew his mouth shut, while another is so introverted that two complete sentences from him in a conversation is a precious, cherished moment. They are so different, and yet, at the same time, in other ways, they are obviously brothers. They have a lot in common too!

The tax collectors and sinners and the Pharisees and the scribes are all brothers. They are all sons of the same Father. They are radically different in the ways sin presents itself in each of them, but they are all the products of the same turned-in-on-self DNA.

The same is true for us. There are obvious, public, glaring sins that we easily recognize in people – the sins of self-indulgence. These sins are harmful. They need to be repented of. There are behaviors that need to be left behind when coming home.

But there is another way in which sin is manifest, and it is especially rampant among those who consider themselves to be the good people, the respectable people, the correct people. This is the sin of self-righteousness. This sin is expressed in sanctimoniousness – which isn’t just a religious phenomenon. People get sanctimonious about all kinds of things. People look down their noses at others for what they eat or what they wear or what they drive or how they vote. They get sanctimonious about how their ideas and concerns and choices are SO much better than everyone else’s. This is a form of lostness too. It is a form of lostness because it fails to see that everything we have and everything we are is given to us through the graciousness of the Father. It is a form of lostness because it fails to see how we all fall short of the glory of God and are all equally and utterly dependent on God’s grace.

The son you might identify with can vary from day to day. We’ve all been both of them at different times. But no matter which son you might identify with today, the invitation offered in this parable is the same. The invitation for all of us always is simply to come home. We are invited to leave our self-indulgence AND our self-righteousness behind and come into the forgiving embrace of our loving Father. This Father clothes us in a new life. By his grace he restores us to the status of family. In his joy, he throws a celebration to which both kinds of sons and daughters are invited. We are all brothers and sisters, after all. And our gracious Heavenly Father wants nothing more than for all of us to enjoy the feast together.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church