Sermon Tone Analysis

Theme: Unconditional forgiveness

Let us pray.

Most holy, Lord God, we give you thanks and praise for your extravagant love: help us to be worthy of your love and forgiveness that we may, in turn, forgive others, through him who taught us to love unconditionally, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son in the key of “F.”

Feeling footloose and frisky, a feather-brained fellow

Forced his fond father to fork over the farthings.

And flew far to foreign fields

And fabulously frittered his fortune with faithless friends.

Fleeced by his fellows in folly, and facing famine,

He found himself a feed-finder in a filthy farmyard.

Fairly famishing, he fain would've filled his frame,

With foraged food from fodder fragments.

“Fooey, my father’s flunkies fair far finer,”

The frazzled fugitive forlornly fumbled, frankly facing facts.

Frustrated by failure, and filled with foreboding,

He fled forthwith to his family.

Falling at his father’s feet, he forlornly fumbled, “Father, I’ve

Flunked, and fruitlessly forfeited family fellowship favor,”

The farsighted father, forestalling further flinching,

Frantically flagged the flunkies.

“Fetch a fatling from the flock and fix a feast.”

The fugitive’s fault-finding brother frowned

On fickle forgiveness of former folderol.

But the faithful father figured,

“Filial fidelity is fine, but the fugitive is found!

What forbids fervent festivity?

Let the flags be unfurled!

Let fanfares flare”

Father’s forgiveness formed the foundation

For the former fugitive’s future fortitude!

Jesus was traveling along the countryside gathering large crowds anxious to hear him.

Included in the crowd were tax collectors and sinners.

Jesus had a message for people wanting to change their lives.

And who is a sinner?

In the Bible, a sinner is one who engages in idolatry, in other words one who worships something other than God.

A sinner may also be one who engages in apostasy, in other words, denying the truth you already know.

The Pharisees were not pleased with the company that Jesus kept.

After all, if Jesus wants to be one of them, he will have to stop hanging out with the less desirables.

We know that good people hang out with good people and bad people hang out with bad people.

One sure way to get into trouble is to hang out with bad people.

Jesus must want to do bad things.

Just look at the people he pals around with!

The scribes also joined the criticism saying Jesus not only welcomes sinners, but he even will eat with them!

How disgusting!

The Greek conveys the utter disdain they had for Jesus.

It is amazing how these people, in their self-righteousness, are so totally blind to their own faults.

Jesus responds, as he often does to criticism, by telling parables.

Jesus tells the people three parables about the lost: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

Jesus’ point for his critics to hear is: for the first parable, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who turns to God then those who do not need to.

For the second parable, Jesus says that the angels rejoice when even one person turns to God.

What follows next in Luke, is one more lost story.

That third story is more powerful than the other two and should really drive Jesus’ point home.

It is one of the most famous parts of the Bible.

It is well known, because it is so powerful.

It was customary in Jesus’ time when there is more than one son in the family, that the oldest son receives the bulk of the inheritance and the other sons split up what is left.

In this case, the oldest son will receive two-thirds of the father’s property and the younger son one-third.

Even with one-third, the younger son gets a lot.

The father is very rich.

No son would ever dare to ask for their inheritance before the father’s death.

This son not only dares ask, but he demands.

Being an oldest son myself, I’m not sure what this says about younger sons in family systems – or do I? What is even more astounding is that the father does what the younger son demands.

Talk about spoiled enabling!

The younger son had an agenda – party time!

Wine, women and song!

I don’t know about songs, but wine and women can get expensive.

(But you can get good deals at local wineries.)

The younger son manages to spend it all.

With all his extravagance, he fails to make one good friend.

People like him for his money and not for him as a person.

When everything is gone, he has no one to turn to.

We assume the family in this parable are Jews.

Certainly the audience were all Jews.

This makes what happens next most demeaning.

The younger son is able to find one job – slopping pigs.

This makes him ritually unclean.

No Jew could get close to him.

Now, my great-uncle was a pig farmer.

I suspect that that was the family business when he and my grandmother arrived in this country from England.

So, not all pig farmers are bad.

The younger son was not paid enough to avoid starvation.

It is as if this younger son did things that these gentile people is he living among could not stand.

They hate him.

The only job they will give him is an extremely low-paying, demeaning job.

Like someone who is a substance abuser, he hits his low point.

Jesus says he “came to himself.”

The younger son realizes that his life is askew.

He also realizes that he needs to fix it.

He realizes that his life was not as it should be.

He will swallow his pride, face the humiliation, and hire himself out as a slave or a servant to his father.

His survival depends on it.

He would rather eat even it means public humiliation for the rest of life.

He rehearses his apology speech.

When the father sees his youngest son in the distance, he does something that is counter-cultural.

He runs to his son.

This is just not done in that culture.

In addition, the father is prohibited from touching someone who worked with pigs.

Compassion drives the father.

The younger son begins his apology speech to this father when his father cuts him off and orders a grand feast.

The father knew.