Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:Today, we are getting close to the end of our at commons series. This is the penultimate message, and next week, we will bring it all home before we move into the gospel of Mark for the rest of the fall. But this series, to start season 10 at commons, has been all about working our way through the opening page of our journal, which has Particularly, being there since the start of commons is a frame for our community together. However, before we get to this week, let's look back quickly at where we've been. By the way, if you missed anything in this series, it's all available in audio on our podcast and in video on our YouTube channel.
Speaker 2:We post stuff there almost daily, so, make sure you're subscribed to keep up with everything that's happening around comments. But last week, it was this. We believe that Jesus came not to change god's mind about us, but to repair our imagination of god. And hopefully, if you've been here for the series, you can see how each of these statements are building on each other. Because that statement really depends on what we set up earlier in the series.
Speaker 2:This idea that everything in Christianity points us to Jesus because Jesus is the word, the self revelation of God. If Jesus really is what God looks like, Then the incarnation isn't about fixing anything for god or even how god looks at us. The incarnation is about showing us finally and fully what god looks like. And to talk about that, we looked at a story in Luke 7, a story that honestly is pretty easy to glide through if you're not Paying close attention, but a story that nonetheless provides a very beautiful window into how Jesus slowly repairs our imagination of god. This woman comes to Jesus weeping and pouring perfume on his feet, and often, I think we see this as an act of contrition.
Speaker 2:After all, the men who are there label her a sinner, but instead, Jesus tells a story where He describes this moment as an act of gratitude. And I think this is the first thing that we have to understand about how Jesus reimagines god for us. Grace is not a transaction. You can't buy forgiveness with perfume. You can't earn forgiveness with good theology.
Speaker 2:You only receive what you could never afford in the 1st place, and then You have the rest of your life and all the perfume at your disposal to live with flowing gratitude. That is gospel. But second, the very fact that Jesus announces not only her forgiveness, but also her salvation tells us something about god as well. Primarily that god was never the one that needed repairing. See, Jesus could forgive sins before the cross as he does in Luke 7, And god could forgive all through the Hebrew scriptures as god does frequently.
Speaker 2:So it's not that god changes, Because god doesn't change like the shifting shadows, god is absolutely firm in god's character. God is love regardless of what you do. And As I said last week, you simply do not have the power to change god's posture toward you. But that means the cross, The center of the Christian story, the center of our faith is meant not to enable grace in God as if God wasn't graceful for poor. The cross is intended as the full expression, the final demonstration of god's unassailable goodness.
Speaker 2:But no matter what we throw at Jesus, no matter how much hatred and violence and vitriol and humiliation we try to enact, God refuses to pay any of it forward, refuses to play our games, refuses to let us change god for the worse. The cross is God saying in the loudest terms possible, you don't even know what you're doing. Therefore, I forgive you. I will wake you up to the reality that undergirds your existence and pervades the universe that surrounds you. And Jesus, in his life and in his death and in his resurrection, doesn't fix god.
Speaker 2:He shows us exactly who god is, and that is our salvation. Now today, in realizing all of this, everything we've We've talked about so far in this series, we affirm surprising grace as the way god chooses to heal all things. First, let's pray. God of grace, who is love, who has always been love, who works to show us divine love in our lives and throughout history. Would you remind us today not only of your grace for us, but for the ways your grace pervades and Fills and then ultimately changes us from the inside out.
Speaker 2:For those spaces where We come this morning holding on to hurts perhaps longer than we have needed to. Hurts that are no longer part of our healing, but are now holding us down And back and away from you. Would your grace for us turn slowly into grace overflowing through us? Right. We forgive as we have been forgiven, and in that, might we sense your healing spirit even now.
Speaker 2:We trust that you are the same today as you were on the cross, as you were in creation, as you have always been from before time. Perfect, divine, self giving love, and may that love guide us always Back to you in the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Alright. Coming to understand that god is love, we affirm surprising acceptance and scandalous grace as the way god chooses to heal all things.
Speaker 2:That is our agenda for today. And to do that, we are gonna look at a very familiar passage from the gospel of Luke, and we will address an inclusio, a preamble, what we already know and how we are being healed. But first, Part of the problem today is that we are going to be looking at a story that most of us have probably heard before, and that, somewhat ironically, Can make it difficult to hear what the story is trying to say. Anyone with kids will know this feeling. You try to Explain something to your kids and you hear back, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, dad. I know. I know. Still, like, that's sort of what happens with us in the scriptures at times.
Speaker 2:Right? Because even if you've never really studied the bible, you likely know the parable of the prodigal son. A son squanders his inheritance and comes crawling home and is welcomed with open arms. However, to really hear what this story is about, we have to do our best to listen with fresh ears. And to do that, we have to back up just a little bit.
Speaker 2:So we're gonna start today in Luke chapter 1 all the way or chapter 15 all the way back in verse 1 where we read this, that the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Now Feels kinda familiar. Right? It's basically where we found ourselves last week when Jesus was at dinner and a grateful woman busts in and the same religious leaders Label her a sinner.
Speaker 2:Now there in Luke 7, the concern was Jesus allowing a sinner to touch him. Here, it's that he welcomes and eats with them. But this combination of tax collectors and sinners, that's a favorite of Luke. He uses that combo in chapter 5, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners. He uses it again in chapter 7 with the critics calling Jesus a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, here again in chapter 15 as well. And it Seems like for the writer, this is meant less as a description of specific people in the crowd and more like what we call a representative inclusio. And that just means it's a literary device to draw the boundaries to include everything in between. See, whenever you read this, you can almost insert from the tax collectors to the sinners. They were all gathering around here, Jesus.
Speaker 2:And that makes a little more sense, doesn't it? It's not like tax collectors and sinners just specifically hung out together all the time. It's a descriptive image. What's interesting, though, is that tax collectors didn't necessarily technically do anything wrong to be called sinners. I mean, they worked with the occupying Roman government, and some would have been Jewish collaborators that worked with, Rome, to collect taxes from their fellow people, which was never going to go over particularly well.
Speaker 2:And we do know that some of them were in fact Unscrupulous about this because the taxation laws were often, shall we say, open for interpretation in Rome. That meant you could interpret on the high side when you were collecting and then on the low side when you were remitting, and you could pocket the difference. That seems to be what the tax collector Zechias had been doing before he met Jesus. But still, the label tax collector was more like guilt by association. What intrigues me, though, is that as we saw last week, sinner was also guilt by reputation.
Speaker 2:If you remember, we saw in Luke 7 that phrase, a woman in town who lived a sinful life, Possibly better translated as a Semitic idiom meaning something like a notorious woman. Now Luke is commenting on her perception in town, Not her moral character necessarily, but taken together, you can start to see how Luke Uses this phrase from the tax collectors to the sinners to talk about all of the people that we all write off for all kinds of different reasons. Right. Like, we generalize and we marginalize and we do that economically, and we do that religiously, and we do that at every point in between. And Luke is saying something here by repeating this phrase over and over again about the people that seem to consistently find their way to Jesus, about how quickly we will write someone off and about how quickly Jesus will welcome them back.
Speaker 2:So every time you read tax collectors and sinners in Luke, don't try to picture those 2 groups of people. Instead, Think about all the ways that you and I, we tend to lump people into this category we call unredeemable Based on our deeply ingrained stereotypes, that's what Luke is trying to draw to the surface here by repeating this phrase. K. But that's important because of what follows. And next, Jesus says to this group, Suppose 1 of you has a 100 sheep and loses one of them, doesn't he leave the 99 in the open country and go after that lost sheep until he finds it?
Speaker 2:Or suppose a woman has 10 silver coins and loses one of them, doesn't she light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully till she finds it, then Call her neighbors and say, rejoice with me. I found my lost coin. Or suppose there was a man who had 2 sons. Now the 2 sons story, that's the one we wanna get to today. But let's talk about the first 2 stories first because they set the stage for us.
Speaker 2:God is like a shepherd with no business sense, who will leave his large investment in 99 at risk so he can go and one measly misbehaving sheep. Bad businessman. God is like a woman who can't keep track of her coins And then for some reason thinks that the entire neighborhood is going to celebrate with her when she finds what she misplaced in the 1st place. God is like a father with 2 sons. So in this chapter, we've got 100 sheep, 10 coins, 2 sons.
Speaker 2:There's Pretty clearly some sense of building climax going on here. Right? Like, Jesus starts with the absurdity of god's grace. This leaving the 99, that that reminds me of the story Jesus tells about the farmer who throws seed on the road and on the rocky ground and Into the bushes and finally on some good soil just to see what will happen. More seed than he can possibly deal with.
Speaker 2:But then Jesus moves on to an image that's a little more communal. The idea that maybe when something good, anything good happens to anyone we know, we should celebrate that moment with them. And then he lands on an image that's very personal. Fathers and sons and the relationships between them all. But they're very clearly meant to be linked together.
Speaker 2:Right? So let's read the final story. There was a man who had 2 sons, and the younger one said to his father, father, give me my share of the estate, and so he divided his property among them. Now Lot of subtext here, Jewish culture, inheritance, but I think we get the general premise. So he goes to his dad and says, look.
Speaker 2:I want my inheritance. I know you're alive. I don't really care. The most important thing about you to me is your wealth. I think it's fair to say that that's a somewhat hurtful moment.
Speaker 2:Right? I have 2 kids. They're both adopted, and I know there will come a day when my kids are Teens by the way, we're getting very close to that quickly. I don't know how that happened. We're at the stage where we have a teenager one moment and a 10 year old boy the next, and it's very hard to keep up with.
Speaker 2:But I know there will come a day when we are not seeing eye to eye, and my kids will turn to me and say, you can't tell me what to do. You're not my real dad. And I know they will mean it in that moment, but hopefully not in their heart. And I know I will still absolutely cry, and that is Probably the closest thing I can imagine to what this father feels like here in this moment, that the thing I care about most about you is what you can Give me. Still, the father agrees.
Speaker 2:And so not long after that, the younger son got together all he had been given, Set off for a distant country, and there squandered that wealth and wild living. And after he had spent everything, There was a same famine in that country, and he fell into great need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of the country who sent them to the fields to feed pigs. And he longed to fill his stomach with the paws that the pigs were eating, but they wouldn't even give him that. But then one day, he came to his senses.
Speaker 2:And he said, how many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and yet here I am starving to death. And let's pause here just for a moment because, actually, what the text of Luke says here is not that he came to his senses. That's an English idiom. Right? What it says is he came back to himself, which is just such a great image.
Speaker 2:It's not that he finally wised up and devised a better plan. It's that he finally remembered who he was, And that snapped him out of this false sense of self he was living out of, which then enabled him later to make some better choices. And that in itself is just is really profound idea from Jesus, kinda just snuck in here in the middle of the story to stumble over. That when you are at your worst, sometimes the first thing to do is to stop beating yourself up and remember who you are. Like, when we're spiraling and making bad choices, more negative self talk is rarely the answer.
Speaker 2:Often, it's slowing down, stopping, reflecting on the narratives that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and remembering who who we really are, so that we can move forward from a better place. This is such a core idea for me. It's one that I see woven through all of Jesus' teachings. This idea that it's actually seeing yourself as god sees you. Coming back to your true self, you might even say, that's what changes you for the better.
Speaker 2:So Berating yourself as a sinner won't make you more kind. But knowing that you are perfectly loved as you are right now, That will make you less defensive, and that will slowly wear down your instinct to guard yourself with caustic words. And over time, that will make you more kind. Being angry about your greed doesn't make you more generous, but coming to trust Actually, that you are perfectly cared for and held in god's hand, that absolutely will make you less nervous and anxious, and over time, that will make you less selfish, and over time, that may actually make you more generous. So coming back to yourself comes before coming to your senses comes before making good choices.
Speaker 2:And I love how Jesus starts at the start in the story. This kid comes back to himself. And he says, what am I doing here? I will set out and go back to my father, and I will say to him, dad, I have sinned against you and against heaven. I'm I'm not even worthy to be called your son anymore.
Speaker 2:Just give me a job. That's enough for me. So he gets up, and he goes home. And I love this point in the story because even before he can get near the house, his dad sees him off in the distance and starts running toward him. Right.
Speaker 2:Like, the image here seems to be that the father has been getting up early in the morning every day, maybe since his son left, Going out to the edge of his property just to see if this would be the day that his son would find his way home. And on this day, It actually happens, and the dad is there to meet him. It's beautiful. Now sometimes, you might hear in a sermon That this would have been an embarrassing or an untoward act for a Jewish patriarch to do something like this, to hike up his skirt and run to meet his son. But the point is Jesus demonstrating god will break convention to demonstrate love.
Speaker 2:Nice idea. However, Jewish readers will tell you that's nonsense, And that Jewish dads love their sons just as much as anyone else, and there's absolutely nothing shameful about this story. It's wonderful. So that's clearly not the point here. Still, the son tries out his rehearsed line.
Speaker 2:The father says, forget it. You're home. You're my son. We're gonna party. For the son of mine was dead and is alive again.
Speaker 2:He was lost, but is now found. And so they all began to celebrate. Great story. Right? God is gracious even when we are selfish.
Speaker 2:And when we Finally remember who we are, that we are loved. God is there at the edge of the property to welcome us back home. I love it. However, That's not the end of the story. In fact, everything that we have read today from the lost sheep to the lost coin to the lost son, All of it has just been set up.
Speaker 2:One of the things you wanna keep in mind when you read A parable is that there's a story that exists on the surface, and then there is the twist ending. And here, A father who welcomes back a wayward son while beautiful is not particularly surprising, is it? Honestly, in Jewish culture, This is probably exactly where you'd expect the story to go. In fact, you could argue that Jesus starts with the most outlandish image, The shepherd and his lost sheep moves to a slightly more reasonable image, the woman who searches for a coin even though it does nothing to help itself, And lands on the one that, let's be honest, we should all agree on here, dads should love their kids. If anything, Jesus is slowly reeling us in, perhaps better said, reeling in his audience.
Speaker 2:Because remember back to where we started? From the tax collectors to the sinners, everyone was fascinated by Jesus, but The religious folks, they jeered from the sidelines, and so Jesus told them a story. God's interests are wider than you think. God would leave 99 of you just to go and find 1, and maybe they grumble, but they nod. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That sounds like god. And Jesus tells another story. God is more active in searching you out than you think. You don't need to do anything. God would still search the house for you, and they grumble and nod again.
Speaker 2:Sure. So Jesus tells a third story. God is more forgiving, more gracious than we think, at least as loving as a good dad. And this time they say, well, of course, god is. That's the whole point of being god's children.
Speaker 2:Sure. Do you see what he's doing? He's painted an image of the god that we all know we want to believe in from the most secular to the most religious person in the crowd. The god that Jesus describes as the god that all of us, even his most ardent critics, want to believe in. And so now that they're all on side with him, nodding their heads in agreement about the goodness of god, Jesus tells the real story.
Speaker 2:See, meanwhile, the older son has been out in the fields, and he hears the singing and the dancing and comes rushing back to see what's the commotion. But when he realizes what has happened, he became angry and refused to go into the party. So the father goes out to him, pleading with him to come in and celebrate. By the way, do you notice this here? The father goes out to the edge of his property to watch for the younger son's return.
Speaker 2:The father leaves the party to go and plead with the oldest son to come inside. I think Jesus wants to make a point here. Grace can feel like partiality, but that's only because we're not really paying attention. God is coming to find all of us. Grace is the only posture god has.
Speaker 2:God is always coming to look for you. We just tend to See it when it's pointed at someone else. But the son misses it, and he fires back. Look. All these years, I've been slaving away for you.
Speaker 2:I've never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. Now this son of yours, can't even call him his brother anymore. That's pretty real. When this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes The toots come home, you kill the fattened calf for him. My son, the father said, you are always with me.
Speaker 2:Everything I have is already yours. But today, we had to celebrate. We had to be glad because this brother of yours notice the way the father flips it back here, hold on to that. This brother of yours was dead and is alive. He was lost but is now found.
Speaker 2:Amen. Now I love this parable, and there's a reason that it's so well known. There's so much going on to tap into here. But I think our biggest problem in making sense of the prodigal son is that we tend to think Jesus is trying to tell us something about god, When the truth is, he's trying to tell us something about ourselves with this story. Right?
Speaker 2:See, everything Jesus says about god in these parables, that's all designed to get us just to the starting line. It's all the Stuff we already somehow deeply know about god in our bones. It's beautiful, but it's not the point. To the point that Jesus wants to make is that god is graceful, and we can't stop it. And if we don't get on board with it, eventually, we're gonna find ourselves miserable on the outside of the party by our choice.
Speaker 2:That's the whole point of the chapter. That's what everything has been building to. This moment right here between the father and his eldest son where he pleads with him to come inside. Remember how it started? From the tax collectors to the sinners and everyone in between, they were all gathered to hear Jesus.
Speaker 2:But those who had forgotten how graceful god had been to them, they thought this all seemed very unfair. So Jesus told a story about the gracefulness of god and then another and then another until everyone agreed, yes, of course, that's the god we know. And so he ends with this question, then why on earth are you standing outside the party angry about who's on the inside? That's what we mean when we say that we affirm surprising acceptance and scandalous grace as the way god chooses to heal all things, because god's grace will invite you to the party, But it's actually your slowly evolving grace that will enable you to walk in through the door. See, it's god's grace that saves you, but it's your grace for others that enables you to enjoy it.
Speaker 2:And every time you surprise yourself with the way that you accept someone you didn't think you could, Every time you scandalize yourself because you extended grace just a little bit farther than you ever thought you could, Every time that happens, you find yourself 1 step closer to the door. Because here's the thing, Grace isn't just the invitation. It's grace taking root in you, changing you, surprising, confounding, and then eventually flowing out through you. That is god fixing you, healing and preparing you for the kind of Scandalous celebration that god's kingdom is made of. You are here because of grace, and you will get there because of grace.
Speaker 2:But the more grace that you and I practice along the way, And the better the party will be when the time comes. That's what Jesus wants to tell us here. Because god is love, And surprising acceptance of scandalous grace is not just your gift to someone else. It is how you are slowly, steadily healed and made new from the inside out. Every time you extend grace, every time you surprise yourself with acceptance, that is you Modeling the way of Jesus, being healed and transformed into the person god imagines you to become.
Speaker 2:Let's pray. God of grace, for all those times That we have passively accepted your grace extended toward us, but actively noticed it, made note of it when it was extended to someone else. For the ways that we have thought, those are 2 different things. They need to be weighed and measured against each other So that things are fair, for all of this, we repent. And we recognize that grace is the foundation that undergirds Everything in our existence.
Speaker 2:Our breath is grace. Our posture here today is grace. You're welcome into this space near you to speak to you. All of this is grace, and it's the starting point for grace to then take root in us. God, might we slowly come to believe that when we live gracefully, That is not just a model of you.
Speaker 2:That is you transforming us, healing us, helping us become the people you imagine us to be, People who are ready for the kind of world that is flooded with goodness and peace. Might we slowly find ourselves on that path. One step at a time, Moving towards the acceptance of others so that we can sense your acceptance for us. And in that, Might we participate in the kingdom that surrounds us always. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.