The Unconditional Love Of God

The tax collectors and the sinners were all seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say,

And the Pharisees and the scribes complained.

This man,

They said,

Welcomes sinners and eats with them.

So he spoke this parable to them.

A man had two sons.

The younger said to his father,

Father,

Let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.

So the father divided the property between them.

A few days later,

The younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country,

Where he squandered his money on a life of debauchery.

When he had spent it all,

That country experienced a severe famine,

And now he began to feel the pinch.

So he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed the pigs.

And he would willingly have filled his belly with the husks the pigs were eating,

But no one offered him anything.

Then he came to his senses and said,

How many of my father's paid servants have more food than they want,

And here am I dying of hunger.

I will leave this place and go to my father and say,

Father,

I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I no longer deserve to be called your son.

Treat me as one of your paid servants.

So he left the place and went back to his father.

While he was still a long way off,

His father saw him and was moved with pity.

He ran to the boy,

Clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly.

Then his son said,

Father,

I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I no longer deserve to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants,

Quick,

Bring out the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

Bring the calf we have been fattening and kill it.

We are going to have a feast,

A celebration,

Because the son of mine was dead and has come back to life.

He was lost and is found.

And they began to celebrate.

Now the eldest son was out in the fields and on his way back,

As he drew near the house,

He could hear music and dancing.

Calling one of the servants,

He asked what it was all about.

Your brother has come,

Replied the servant,

And your father has killed the calf we had fattened because he has got him back safe and sound.

He was angry then and refused to go in,

And his father came out to plead with him.

But he answered his father,

Look,

All these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders.

Yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends.

But for this son of yours,

When he comes back after swallowing up your property,

He and his woman.

You killed a calf we had been fattening.

The father said,

My son,

You are with me always,

And all I have is yours.

But it is only right we should celebrate and rejoice because your brother here was dead and has come back to life.

He was lost and is found.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you,

Lord Jesus Christ.

This parable is so loaded with lessons and stories that it is so difficult to stand here and actually focus on one thing.

And it is one of these beautiful parables that Jesus told where we can rediscover and we can discover something new every time that we listen to it or we read it or we think about it because there's so many angles we can look at this from.

Father,

I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I no longer deserve to be called your son.

It is interesting that these words are repeated twice,

Word for word in this parable.

And I'm reading something into that because it's not often that we see words like this repeated.

And we'll get to that in a bit.

But let's begin with looking at this son going away and doing whatever he wants to.

And that is one of the angles that we can look at and that we can take is that of the son,

The youngest son.

I don't know about you,

But the story goes that the youngest is usually kind of spoiled over the elder.

I'm not sure,

But that is what a lot of people would say.

So this child goes away from his father.

He takes his inheritance and goes away with that.

And does whatever he wants in a new country away from daddy's eyes.

Isn't that something that we oftentimes want to do?

We want to do things and we want to live our lives away from our parents because we want to do our own thing.

So we can say that maybe this child might have been quite a rebellious teenager.

And he then sees that this inheritance doesn't last and he goes back to,

Or in this new country,

He's miserable.

We can say that this child is in his own form and his own version of hell.

And not because of his father,

But because of his own decisions and his own choices.

He is away from the comfort of his father's home.

He recognizes while he's there,

What he has done.

He recognizes that these servants,

These paid servants,

That's quite an interesting thing because I mean,

Slavery was a big thing in the time of Jesus.

It was normal to have slaves.

So the word that paid slaves means that his father was somebody who actually cared for humans.

His paid servants eat better.

They have more than enough food at my father's house,

In my father's household.

So I'm going to go back.

This is quite beautiful.

I realized what I did wrong.

I realized that I'm in hell.

I am away from my father.

I want to return.

So the decision is made.

But with that,

He also says that I no longer deserve to be called your son.

I am not worthy because of everything that I have done.

And that is the thing that is standing out to me tonight so much.

I am not worthy.

I have sinned against you.

I have done so much wrong.

Father,

I have caused you so much heartache.

Can you just imagine if a child comes to their father saying,

Give me my inheritance now.

You're not dead yet,

But I don't want to have you as my father now.

I want to live my own life.

How much hurt would that not cause most parents?

So the child recognizes that pain that he has caused for his father,

And yet he returns because he knows that is where he belongs.

When he goes back,

He says to his father exactly those words.

And that is something also very,

Very,

Very important.

The follow through,

Not going back with good intentions.

And then when we get there to say,

Ooh,

But actually,

Actually,

I'm going to try and manipulate you emotionally and get from you what I really want.

This child,

The son goes to his father and he says exactly what he planned to.

And he wants to follow through with that.

He goes and says,

I am not worthy of your love of the title of your child of your son.

And I think it's quite easy to say yes,

But that's just that's right.

That is what you deserve.

Be a servant.

Be not the child anymore because of what you have done in the past,

Because of the hurt that you have caused others,

Especially your father.

And here we see unconditional love at work.

The father embraces his son after being told by the son,

Please,

I don't deserve your love.

I don't deserve being your son.

Please treat me as a servant.

And I can almost in my mind's eye,

I can see how this father scoffs at his son and say,

Don't be silly.

You are my child.

I love you.

Do you think that any hurt that you can do to me will ever change the fact that I love you?

And then the child is taken in and given the best robe,

Best food is prepared for them.

What happened there?

And it's not mentioned explicitly in this parable,

But the child accepted the father's love.

The child didn't run away again because the father didn't do what they wanted them to do.

They embraced,

They accepted the love of the father.

I don't think we realize we can grasp the immense love,

This immense power of unconditional love that God is,

That God has for us.

God resides in us.

God is love.

And yet we go like this child,

This son,

And we leave the father,

We turn our backs on God and we think I want to bugger off in my own area and my own direction because I know what's best for me.

Sometimes we find that we have strayed away from the love of God,

From that beauty of being in the house of the Lord.

And we are in hell,

We have no nourishment.

We go back and we think,

Yes,

I'm so sinful,

I don't deserve God's love.

Well,

I have news for you.

You're not that powerful to tell God that you are not worthy of God's love.

Everything you can do will change the fact that God loves you unconditionally.

It is your choice to accept that love,

To go back to the house of the father and join in the feast and be in communion with God,

Be in perfect harmony with the universe or to stay with the pigs,

To stay hungry.

That's the big thing,

To stay hungry for the food that God gives,

For the nourishment,

For the love of the Lord.

So let's maybe start this week and we work on our worthiness because maybe it is just the way that it is,

We are not worthy of God's love.

But maybe we can start working on the part after that.

Yet God loves us and nothing we can do can change that.

And if that is true,

I ask that this week you join in your meditations and in your prayers,

Because this is what my meditation time is going to focus on for the next week,

To stop trying to run away from God and to just accept the fact that I am loved unconditionally.

Amen.