Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Beloved
in Christ, is forgiveness truly possible? Can someone truly receive real
forgiveness? I don’t mean the sort of forgiveness that says, “Okay I’m too
angry and frustrated with the situation and so I’ll just accept the apology and
not do anything against you, all the while I harbor a grudge against you and
never really warm up to you.” I don’t mean the sort of forgiveness that says, “I
don’t trust you for a minute or believe your apology for a second, but I’m just
going to pretend that I do because it’s expected of me.” And I certainly don’t
mean the sort of forgiveness that says, “Well, I never considered the matter
all that significant, even if you did, and so I’m more than happy to overlook
such a trivial thing.” I’m talking about real forgiveness, where everyone
agrees that someone has seriously wronged another person and the wronged person
truly and heartily forgives the other person from the bottom of their heart.
In
today’s Gospel we see that our Lord Jesus Christ believes in that kind of
forgiveness and freely gives it. And He tells a parable where there is only one
person who believes that that kind of forgiveness is available, namely, the
father of the two sons. But as we will see, the two sons do not believe such
forgiveness is possible or maybe even desirable.
Let
me begin with the older son first. He may make his appearance last, but it is
obvious that he doesn’t believe in forgiveness or redemption of any kind. He
has the crasser attitude toward forgiveness—it would be highly unfair towards
those who did what they were supposed to do in the first place—but his own sin
is subtler and has disguised itself so much that it has fooled him into
believing that he doesn’t need forgiveness and therefore forgiveness shouldn’t
be offered to anybody.
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| Il Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Return of the Prodigal Son |
But
what do I mean when I assert that he too has sinned and is in need of
forgiveness? Well, first of all, consider what he did when his younger brother
demanded his share of the property. In his culture he as the eldest son was
supposed to bring about some reconciliation between his father and his brother.
He was supposed to have sat down with his brother and talked him out of his
foolish request. But he did nothing. He just let his brother misbehave because
it would make him look better.
But
it there’s more. The father didn’t just give his property to the younger son,
but to the older one as well. The parable clearly tells us that “he divided
his property between them.” Granted, the older son didn’t sell his
share and then move away. But he didn’t exactly protest either when the father
gave him his share. He should have. He should have said that it was the wrong
thing to do and that he wasn’t going to claim a single thing before his
father’s death. But he silently went along with what his father was doing. The
younger brother may have instigated the division of property, but the older
brother shared the guilt for letting it take place.
And
then we see his attitude fully on display when his younger brother finally
arrived home. Listen to his words to his father: “Look, these many years
I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a
young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.” Now is that how a
loving son shows his affection for his father? Does he say, “I’ve been slaving
away for you for many years,” as if his dad were the world’s harshest
taskmaster? And do you think that a father who was so generous to his youngest
son, even to the point of giving him the inheritance in advance, would begrudge
his son a little party with his friends? No. The older son was as distant from
his father as was the younger son. The sad thing is that he didn’t know that the
father who forgave and loved his younger son also loved him and wanted to
forgive his churlish attitude.
That
is a real tragedy: not knowing your own faults, your own most grievous faults,
and thus not realizing that you need forgiveness or that forgiveness is
available to you. But the younger son reminds us that even people who are
deeply burdened by their sins don’t understand that God forgives them. And so
we turn now to the younger son.
We
see that the younger son had no clearer concept of forgiveness than the older son
did. To his credit, he did recognize that he had done wrong. He acknowledged
that his bad behavior had broken the natural father-son relationship. At most
he hoped that he could become an employee of his dad’s, for he knew that his
father was a good boss to have. He thought about working hard and proving
himself to his father—not to be taken back as a son, but to be recognized at
least as a decent human being. And so he made the same mistake as his older
brother. The older brother told his father that he had been slaving away for
his dad all those years. The younger brother wanted to be treated as one of the
hired servants. Neither brother believed that they had a gracious father who
wanted to treat them as his beloved sons.
If
only they had known that their father loved them and forgave them! Not in some
kind of half-hearted way, either. No, He forgave them from the bottom of his
heart. And he did so at tremendous cost to himself and his own dignity. I think
that we as westerners are likely to overlook some of the ways in which the
father in the parable was downright generous in his forgiveness. Of course,
first, most fathers in just about every culture would understand a child’s
request for the inheritance to be nothing short of telling him, “Drop dead.”
Such insolence was very much frowned upon in our Lord’s society. Most people
would have expected a father to treat his child as dead after such an insult,
no matter how much they came groveling later on. But notice also that the
father doesn’t allow his son to grovel. His son begins his speech, but the
father cuts him off. The son would naturally have stooped to kiss his father’s
hand, a custom of that day, but instead the father falls upon his son’s neck,
which prevented the son from doing that. It isn’t because the father is angry.
Quite the opposite. He doesn’t want his son to grovel in the least, but is glad
to forgive him wholeheartedly. He doesn’t want the other people in the village
to see his son groveling, lest they mistreat his son, even though he is at
peace with him.
To
reinforce that he has completely forgiven his son and that no one in the
village should interfere or act as if the son needed to make further amends,
the father threw a banquet that would feed the entire town. He made sure that
everyone saw that he had put his own best robe on his son and put his own ring
on his son’s finger. This reconciliation would have been a costly affair, to be
sure, and the father had to bear all that expense. But if he had not done it,
the villagers might well have lynched the son.
In
the same way, God forgives us at great cost. It isn’t just a word or two spoken
half-heartedly. It is something that cost God the Father His very own Son and
that cost the Son His very own life. Nor was this a decision made on the spur
of a moment, when God was overwhelmed by emotion and decided to pay such an extravagant
cost—an impulse buy, if you will. No, it had been decided before the dawn of
time that this is what the Son would do. The Father and the Holy Spirit poured
themselves out into the Son’s work, so that it would have their blessing. The
entire Triune God was intent on saving us human beings. No cost was too great
to pay in order for mankind to be redeemed.
And
that forgiveness is ours today. It is real and total forgiveness. We aren’t put
on probation for a while or made to be servants until we can show that we are
worthy of God’s trust again. Nor is it a one-time deal, as so many people
mistakenly think. You don’t just get one chance to be forgiven after you
royally screw up and nothing thereafter. Rather, God gives forgiveness
throughout our entire life, because He knows that we will struggle with sin as
long as we live.
God
forgives lavishly and generously, for He knows that is exactly what we need.
And that is why He gives that gift in many forms. He forgives us by washing our
sins in holy baptism and calling us His beloved children. He forgives us our
sins through the Word of God, as it is read both in church and at home. He
forgives our sins by holy absolution, where the pastor by God’s command and not
his own initiative imparts the forgiveness that God has commanded to be given
to all repentant sinners. He also forgives our sins by imparting Christ’s body
and blood in the Lord’s Supper. There we are given the very means by which
Christ won forgiveness for us—the body once nailed to the cross and the blood
once shed on Calvary for us.
And
that is why we gather every week. There are places that can entertain you
better. There are other places that can lecture you on various enlightening
topics. But only here, that is, in the holy Christian church, do you find the
forgiveness of sin offered again and again. Real forgiveness for real sinners.
Yes,
real forgiveness is possible for real sinners who have committed real sins. May
you believe that with all your heart! In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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