Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
March 21, 2004
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
After our family suffered the unexpected and premature deaths of my two brothers when they were only young adults, my mother was never the same again. Whenever I was about to leave the house, she forbid me to use the word, “go” because she must have feared that I too may not come home again.
As many of you know, we lived in Pennsylvania for 20 years raising our family of two children while my mother continued to live in Boston with my sister-in-law. We would make trips home to Boston sometimes for Thanksgiving, sometimes for days after Christmas and sometimes for significant birthday parties. But once when we have given my mother the date that we would come home, she would get up early on that day and sit by the front living room window and wait until we drive into the driveway. She was like a cat by the window. And in the few times that we forgot to call (years before cell phones!) because we got delayed for some reason or another, I knew I would get an earful when I got home.
When I came home, I would bend down to kiss her cheeks since she barely stood 5 feet tall. Then she would pat my butt like a coach about to send his quarterback out on the field. The prodigal son was finally home.
Waiting Father
The Scriptural lesson for today is the beloved parable of the prodigal son. It could also have been titled, “The Parable of the Compassionate Father.”
Jesus tells a story about a boy who asked for his father’s inheritance, then went out into a distant country, putting as much space between himself and his father as possible. Then in this distant country, the boy lived as he pleased, quickly descending to living like a pig, feeding off the slop that was thrown to the swine.
Meanwhile, the father waited. Through all the days and nights of his son’s absence, the father waited. Jesus said that the father waited until that day when the son’s steps finally turned toward home. And when the son finally came home, the father was waiting to embrace him, even ran out to meet him, so that the son might be home as soon as possible. The compassionate father running so to shorten the few steps so that the son can be home with the father sooner.
Last Sunday, I shared the word of God from Luke 13, the parable of the barren fig tree. We learned that God is still giving us time to repent for our unproductive lives before we may be cut down like an unproductive fig tree with no fruits to show for three years.
But before we are cut down, the gardener wants to dig around us and loosen up our tightly bound roots and put some that sweet smelling manure on us to see if we may have fruit next year.
Today we have a parable that teaches us that God as the compassionate father waits for us until we come home even after we have sinned against God and his creation. There’s a little word that appears in each of these parables that Jesus told about the “lost.” This little word is “until.”
In each of these stories, Jesus says that the shepherd searches “until” he finds the lost sheep. The woman searches “until” she finds the lost coin. The father waits “until” the lost boy is found. The father shouts out, “This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” God is waiting until we come home.
Salvation for All
One of the persistent questions that plague many Christians’ minds is: “What happen to those who are not Christian, who do not serve Jesus as their Lord and Savior and now have died?” For all of us here, we know of family members and friends who have died without the benefit of a pastor, without having become active in the church, without, so far as we know, having accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior. What about these? How about these who never had or found the time to come home?
After I became a minister, my mother would say to me, “I believe in Jesus.” But since my mother, as far as I know, were not baptized, what about her? Can we see from this parable of the compassionate father a message of hope for the salvation of all those who did not, as far as we know, know Jesus while alive?
There are some who argue that it makes no sense to be a Christian if people can be saved without being Christian. The whole reason for being a Christian, some of these people argue, is to avoid damnation. Being Christian means that we are on the “right” side of the issue. We are saved. Those who are not Christian are not. What is the joy of our salvation if everyone escapes the misery of damnation, regardless of his or her beliefs or lack thereof? If we are all to be saved, why don’t we just eat, drink and be merry? If we are all saved, then what are we doing on this fine March day sitting in church when we could be doing something more fun?
This was on the mind of the older brother. He begrudged the generosity of the father who not only waited for the wayward younger brother to return but he resented the fact that the father threw a party for him too. He said, “For all these years, I worked like a slave. I never disobeyed you. You never gave me anything to party with my friends. It is unfair!” He was saying, “The whole reason why I stayed home with you, Father is to be on the right side of the issue and to escape the misery of eating with pigs in some distant country. But now, you are giving my brother a party?”
From our human perspective, we like the idea that being a Christian gives us a head start to avoid damnation. And everyone else who doesn’t have what we have should deserve their fate.
Separation from God
Behind the older brother’s complaint is justified in Scripture. We cannot deny or avoid that the Bible teaches about separation from God. In Matthew 25, we have judgment and final condemnation of those who do not do the will of Christ or walk with him.
According to Jesus, when the Son of Man comes in his glory, he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. And those who didn’t feed the hungry, and give drink to the thirsty, and welcome the stranger, and clothed the naked, and took care the sick, and visited the prisoner have also not done so to Christ himself will be sent away into eternal punishment.
Yet when we lay alongside these texts of judgment and condemnation with those that proclaim that the whole cosmic will be redeemed, we must somehow find a way to give weight to those passages that speak of the possibility of separation from God, as well as those passages that speak of the full triumph of God in Christ over all of our sinful tendencies to separate ourselves from God.
Inasmuch that we have passages like Matthew 25; we also have passages that say that Christ has redeemed the whole world. In Romans 5:18, Paul wrote “Therefore just as one man’s (Adam) trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s (Christ) act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” Then in Colossians 1:19-20, “For in him (Christ) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.”
Ultimately, the answer to the question, “Will all be saved?” is not left up to anyone of us or any position that we might want to take as a church. Our salvation, the ultimate fate of our souls, or the soul of anyone, is in God’s hands, not our hands. And that is where we may find hope. We come back to the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin and the lost boy and we can see that there’s hope.
Waiting Until
We believe that people who manage to live without God, all the way to the end, wherever the end actually is, will surely go to hell. In fact, on their way to hell, the church teaches that they are already in hell because they are living without God.
But what if, on the way to hell, at the very end they repent? Remember the thief on the cross, next to Jesus? Remember a shepherd who searches until he finds? Remember the woman who looks until she finds? Remember the father who waits until. How long is the father willing to wait? When is “until” over?
It is tough to know if anyone persists in sin to the bitter end. Our Christian hope ought to be that none do. The Bible says that it is God’s desire that all repent. And we know that God gets what God desires. How could we possibly pray for the conversion of the world and the repentance of all if we don’t really believe that this is in God’s grace, a real possibility? Isn’t this the reason behind our sending out of missionaries and trying to reach all the people groups in the world is because we truly do believe that from the cross, Christ has already counted everyone in the world and he wants no one to be lost?
Our Christian hope is that God’s love is resourceful and that no one is beyond the reach of Christ. In Christ, all have already been found, and therefore no one is lost. That some may choose not to accept this gift is another matter. But we pray, we hope, that all will accept this gift of salvation. It is there for all. We hope that all will eventually receive the gift. In Christ, everything a person needs for salvation is already supplied, not by the person, but by God.
Remember the older brother. He was saying, “What’s the point of my working so hard to be good if God is going to wait for and let in all of the bad unbelievers on equal terms with us believers anyway? It is unfair!” He thought that he needed to supply the resources for salvation. He thought that his wayward kid brother should go to hell.
To this, the father replies, “Son, you are always with me. But your brother, who was lost, is now found, it is only right that we should make merry now that he is safe at home with us.”
But when we are truly honest with ourselves, we are more like the older brother. There is something in us that begrudges the freedom of God to save those whom God would save. There is something in us that tends to forget the graciousness that God has shown to each of us when we were that wayward child and God waited for us. There is something in us that says that being the responsible and obedient older brother that we are that we should deserve more love and get a party too.
Hope for the World
We don’t want to deny the fact of evil, particularly those of us who have lived through the bloodiest century of all time—the 20th century and the 21st century has started out being no better. Hell is real whether it is on earth or later when God is absent. And according to Scriptures, eternal and complete separation from God is a possibility.
Yet we also believe that eventual, final, complete union with God is also a possibility. Jesus did not say that the father waits until a reasonable period of time has passed, or that the father waits until he finally hears of the son’s demise in the distant country. The father waits until…
And therein is our hope, as well as the hope for the whole world. In the end, no matter how we have lived, or what we have believed, the mistakes we’ve made, or the triumphs we have had, in the end our hope is in the persistent, resourceful, patient, ever-seeking love of Jesus Christ.
There was one of those plastic billboard signs out in front of a local church that has this message: HELL HAS NO THERMOSTAT. If you are like me, we would crack a little grin. We do that because we are more like the older brother. The British Methodist minister, Leslie Weatherhead once said, “If hell is a place of eternal torture and damnation, then heaven must be a place of eternal grief among the blessed for those who are damned to an eternal hell.”
I believe that inasmuch as my mother who waited by the front living room window for me to come home, God out of his resourceful love that no one is lost waited for her to enter blessed eternity.
In just a few weeks, we shall gather here and witness the incredible steps that God will take to get God’s ways with us. The parable of the compassionate father tells of the father while his wayward son was still far off, was so filled with compassion that he ran toward his son.
This is highly shocking and extreme for a father to do this. In biblical times, men did not run. It was considered an undignified thing to do. Can you imagine the President running and leaping across the White House lawn to hug a foreign dignitary? The President might very well be pleased that the official has come. But running to welcome that person is definitely out of the question. However, that is precisely what the father did in this parable. God can’t wait until we come home!
The compassionate father went all the way to the cross. If God will do that, hanging there, with his arms outstretched toward us, if God will hang there for us until, then we are justified in hoping that one day, eventually, all will come home, safe, saved by a God who gets what he wants for the whole world.
Let us pray.
God of grace and God of glory, thank you for your patience with us as you wait for us to return home from our wayward ways. Account for our sins and lead us to confession so that no one may be lost. Grant us the blessed reassurance that your mercy is for the salvation of the whole world. We pray and hope for that eternal promise in the name of Jesus Christ who saves. Amen.