Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

“‘Father, give me the
share of property that is coming to me.’”

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If you were a Jew, exiled in Babylon, during the captivity
of Israel, you may have heard a most strange story from your Mesopotamian masters:

In the beginning, there was Tiamat, a great dragon. Into the
void she gave birth to various beasts and fantastic beings; and one of these
fantastic beings was Marduk, the first and greatest human being. Marduk looked
upon Tiamat’s creation with horror, seeing all the beings that she bore to be
nothing but monsters. Therefore Marduk, the first of mankind, rose up, and
taking a sword, split Tiamat the dragon in two. From one half, he made the
heavens, and from the other, he made the earth.

Again, if you were a Jew, you would be horrified by this story, by the mere
fact that a creation would rise up and kill his own creator.

But this story really is not peculiar. For nearly all
ancient mythologies contain a story about the slaying of the ancient gods by
other, more anthropomorphic, more human like, very human like, gods.

Man’s default religious setting is not ‘there is no God.’
Rather, it is something much closer to what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
once wrote: “God is dead, he remains dead, and we killed him.”

These myths are nothing but the story of the Fall of Man,
but told from man’s perspective. For in all of them, man desires a world of his
own design, which cannot be unless some god is first done away with. In order
for man to be his own god, of his own world, he must first slay the true God of
the world, and take by force his own inheritance.

Our Lord tells a parable: “There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his
father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’”

An inheritance, of course, comes to a son only when the
father has passed away. To ask for one’s inheritance in advance is to say
simply: ‘Father, you are dead to me, and I to you, so give me my inheritance,
that way I can leave you forever.’ So the father gives the son his inheritance,
and the foolish son leaves the house of his father, and enters into ‘a strange country.’

The son is none other than mankind, who wished to be freed
from the love of God the Father. God had promised Adam, and all humanity
flowing from him, an inheritance, that he would be ‘after the likeness of God.’ But Adam would not wait. Neither would
he dally in impatience under the grace of God. He went to the forbidden tree,
and being promised that the fruit would indeed make him ‘like God’ he took of it and ate. It is written that then his eyes
were open, and like God, he knew good and evil. He had received an inheritance,
though not how God had desired; and yet it did not matter. For having received
what he wanted, he left God and his paradise to go to a ‘strange country,’ to a world of his own making.

Our Lord continues: ‘there,
he squandered his being in reckless living.’ The Gospel text does indeed
read ‘being’ or ‘essence,’ and not ‘property’ as many translations say. For it
is not merely the case that he spent all his money; rather, in the process of
his sinful, capricious living, he lost his being, he lost who he was, he ceased
to be the son of his father.

So too we, the children of Adam, as we sojourn as our first
parents did, in ‘a strange land,’ the
world of our imagining, we lose who we really are. We forsake our humanity, and
live like unthinking beasts. Animals, concerned only with satisfying desires:
hunger, drink, pleasure. If we cannot get peacefully what our base lusts
demand, we get them forcefully: we connive, we scheme, we steal, in open ways,
and in insidious ways; we commit adultery, we fornicate. We gorge ourselves on
food and entertainment. We are no better than dogs. We are unworthy of the name
given us when God first said ‘Let us make
man.’ We have ‘squandered our being
in reckless living.’

The parable goes on: “And
when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he
began to be in need.”  For what is
this life that humanity has made for itself but a famine? No matter how much we
make, no matter how much we consume, we always want more, we are always
starving, even unto death. What we hunger for is not ‘bread alone, but every word which comes from the mouth of God.’
The word of the God who we forsook, the God whose house we spat on and exiled
ourselves from. No amount of earthly pleasure and consumption can save us from
the starvation of our souls.

So the son ‘came to
himself’ he remembers what he once was, and sees what he has become, and he
is repentant. ‘I will arise and go to my
father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned … I am not longer worthy
to be your son.” He speaks as one who has come face to face with the
accusation of the Law, and the Law in this case does not take the form of a
prophet’s sermon or a priest’s rebuke. Rather it takes the form of the misery
of his own life. His entire existence pronounces condemnation upon his
meaningless works. But his repentance is not one of trust, but one of
groveling. He does not expect his father to treat him well, he has no faith in
the love of his father. Rather, he hopes that his father, with some miniscule
amount of mercy, will tolerate his prodigal son’s presence, and give him a job
doing some menial task on the family estate. “I am unworthy to be your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”

But it is written: “while
the son was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion, and
ran and embraced him, and kissed him … and he said to his servants, ‘Bring
quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes
on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, let us eat and
celebrate.’”

Now let us leave the son, let us leave all mankind. And let
me speak to you. Look where you find yourself. You are in the Church, in your
father’s house, a world not of your own making, but of God’s making. And how
did you get here? It was in repentance that you came to the Church, it was in
contrition, though in great weakness, that you first darkened the doors of the
sanctuary.

You, dear Christian, are the prodigal son; you wished your
father dead; you were there with the jeering crowd on Good Friday, mocking our
Lord, reviling him as a Messiah unworthy of your personal glory; you cried out
‘Crucify Him!’ you killed God. But then you came to this house and confessed
your sin, ‘Father, I have sinned, I am
not longer worthy to be your son.’ You entered into the temple of the God
whom you killed within your heart; the creator of all whom you crucified; and
having squandered your being in sin, you came to Christ as a beggar, to him
whom you once hated.

But while your soul was still far off, in love, God through
his Word came to you, embraced you, and kissed you. ‘Bring quickly the best robe!’ Receive, God said, this white
garment, this burning torch, the sign of the cross, upon your forehead, and
upon your heart, be clothed with the righteousness of baptism, the most
beautiful and blessed of all garments. ‘And
put a ring on his hand!’ For no longer are you but a servant. You are a son
of the most high, bearing the ring of his name upon you, the ring of his
authority and rule.

And look here. The table is set with the finest meat and the greatest wine; for
it is the meat and wine of Christ’s body and blood. Is this not why you have
come today? ‘Let us eat and celebrate!’

And not just now, but forevermore.

For you, O prodigal son, will one day make another journey.
For though we celebrate in gladness now, yet death is still your due. For the
sinful Adam within you still hates God, still desires to kill the creator,
still wishes to be the maker of his own world; and this sinful Adam in your
heart must be destroyed. Therefore, a final purification is needed. So you will
endure ‘a severe famine’, or perhaps
in this case, a penitential fast. You will lose your possessions, your
pleasures. You will lose your family, your friends. You will lose your sight,
your hearing, your mind, and then finally your body. All those things which sin
trusted in so much within you.

And then you will see a frightening vision; the expanse of
heaven and the gates of paradise, imposing, ever-high, dreadful; the Day of
Judgment is before you. Burning seraphs, infinitely tall, each of their six
wings enough to blot out the sun and all stars, they hover over you, singing
their awesome song in praise to the Father, your judge, before whom you are
presented. There too will be the countless throng of martyred dead, those
saints, clothed in light, harrowing, arrayed in glory as if for war, looking
down on you, prepared to exact upon you the just punishment for your ancient
sin.

What will you say on that day?

“Father, I have sinned
against heaven and before you.”

And the Father will not let you finish your confession.
Rather, he will command his angels
concerning you ‘Bring the robe of light, and wrap this my son in glory; put
a ring upon his hand, for he with Christ and all his brethren shall rule over
the new heavens and the new earth; and prepare the heavenly banquet, the
eternal Eucharist and ever blessed wedding feast of the Lamb in his kingdom.
Come, let us eat and celebrate,

‘For this my son was
dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’”

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Preached by Pastor
Fields

Sermon texts: Isaiah
12:1-6; 1 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32.