Prodigal God

Luke 15:11b-32

St. Andrews Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem

March 10, 2013

John Newton trafficked in the slave trade, brought thousands of men, women, and children from Africa to the auction blocks.  He was successful in human trafficking not only because he was good at it but because there was a high demand for it in Empire’s expanding colonies.

Then on March 21, 1748 there was a great storm at sea and the ship he was steering started to sink. In desperation John called out to God for mercy as he steered his leaking ship for 11 hours straight. He was rescued by a sea captain wbo his father asked to search for him.  He was saved that day. He traced his religious conversion to his prayers being answered. It was the hour he first believed because God had saved a “poor wretch like him.”

Once back on dry land he decided to read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew and stop blaspheming.  In 1754 after suffering a stroke he became a tax collector in Liverpool and an evangelical lay minister. From there he went on to become an Anglican priest, a popular preacher among the dissenters and those beginning to question the ethics and morality of slavery.

In 1772 he wrote a hymn for the New Year called “Faith’s Review and Expectation,” the hymn we know as “Amazing Grace.” In 1788, a full 40 years after his being saved, he wrote a pamphlet “Thoughts on the Slave Trade” where he described the conditions on the ships during the Middle Passage. By then he was actively engaged in reforming his country’s acceptance of the slave trade and had joined the abolitionists like William Wilberforce and George Whittfield. He lived to see the Slave Trade Act passed in 1807. Grace or God’s mercy may have saved John Newton that day out at sea but surely it was grace that transformed a man who traded slave s into one who fought for their freedom. And as he says in his hymn, “Twas grace that brought us safe thus far… and grace will lead us home.”

Now I don’t know if John Newton lived to hear his beloved Amazing Grace sung by slaves in the colonies brought from there by Scotland to the early settlers. And I am pretty sure he didn’t hear it sung by both sides of the American Civil War or as a requiem by the Cherokee Indians on the Trail of Tears. I know he didn’t hear it sung right before Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech or when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison or when the Berlin Wall fell. I know he didn’t hear his beloved new year’s hymn cataloguing his own fall and rescue by grace but I do believe he would nonetheless be pleased to know that his hymn has touched so many who have felt lost and are now found or so many who have been wronged and are now free.

In addition, this iconic hymn is often sung at memorial services or any time the church needs to be reminded that God’s love is indeed extravagant, wide and merciful. We sing it today as an illustration of our Gospel story for it reminds us that we too are in need of God’s amazing grace whether we are the prodigal son or the righteous son.

We sing it acknowledging “through many dangers, toils and snares” that it was “grace that brought us safely thus far…”

Yet undeserved grace is a wee bit of a problem for us, is it not? Isn’t this parable of the return of the Prodigal Son rather difficult to accept? Isn’t it basically unfair or unjust that the father welcomes his wayward spendthrift son back without even an apology, a sign of repentance? Now to be fair, some claim that his moment of repentance came in the pigpen, others say it happened after he was wrapped in his father’s arms.

Now as the responsible child in my family, I have to admit I feel a kinship with the older dutiful son, the one who stayed home and did his work and tried to live a faithful life. For if it is all about undeserved grace, what’s the point of trying to lead a righteous or good life?  I have to admit it is challenging for me to really accept that God’s love is as amoral as this welcome home parable suggests.  I identify strongly with this older brother who must have felt like he had only two choices in the end---

Condone the undeserved love extended to his brother or stay out in the cold secure in being right. I think I have played this part many times, how about you? 

Or do you identify more with the younger brother, with John Newton, who feel that you were once lost and have now been found, were without a home and now feel welcomed? Do you assume you don’t deserve grace because you have squandered the inheritance your loving father has given you?  

I believe it is easier to be resentful of unearned love unless we are the one toward whom the father is running with open outstretched arms. The parable and the hymn make more sense if we identify with the sinner, the poor wretch.

Many years ago when I was first discerning my call to ministry in Raleigh North Carolina our congregation had a discussion about changing the line “wretch like me.” It seemed too extreme for many in the congregation. Just as the choir director was about to figure out an alternative phrasing one of the men in the congregation spoke up and told us his story about his time in prison for stealing money from his company. He told us that this hymn and in particular those words spoke directly about how he felt. He said his return to God and us was not real without this confession. Needless to say, we kept the words not just for him but that part of ourselves, our shadow selves that we often try to hide from others.   

Now years later I think that both brothers are lost.  I’ve had a few years standing out in the cold of righteousness and have found it has not brought me closer to God.  I believe now that each brother is lost and needs to be found---- one to his addictions and the other to his righteousness.

 Episcopal priest and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor says that each brother is not only lost but also needs the other. Both sons are lost to the father----one through irresponsibility and the other through self-righteousness. The younger brother needs some of his older brother’s discipline while the older brother needs some of his younger brother’s humility.

And the father knows this. Is this why he does not need his younger son’s verbal repentance?  The father does not choose one son over the other but rather focuses on bringing them back together. And does the father not also experience a kind of resurrection in his son’s return? Where once there was loss and death, now there is life.

Every time God’s active, stretching, searching, healing love finds someone and calls that person home, transformation happens. It may not happen right away. It took John Newton another 40 years before he spoke out against the slave trade but it did happen. Every time God welcomes us home, deserved or undeserved, it is a time for celebration for the lost has been found and the dead now live. Is this not the good news today?

So let us go then and give thanks to our prodigal God for the wideness of mercy and grace, for extravagant welcome that can save us from drowning or self inflicted self -righteousness. Let us open our tables to sinners and tax collectors, God’s outcasts. Let us open our arms wide and celebrate that we are all welcome here and in God’s home.

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