Bulletin 200628 Trinity 3 Divine Service Recording 200628 Sermon on Luke 15:11-32 Sermon Manuscript: In our Gospel reading the younger brother and the older brother appear to be quite different from one another. The younger brother is irresponsible. He squandered the wealth that he had received from his father. He did not worry about income and expenses. All he worried about was having a good time. The older brother stayed at home. He lived responsibly. He continued to work for his father. You don’t hear about any money troubles with him. Outwardly, therefore, the two brothers are very different. Jesus is deliberate in framing this story in just this way, because it suits his purposes at the time. At the beginning of this chapter Luke says that all the tax collectors and sinners were coming to hear Jesus. The Pharisees and experts in the Law were complaining, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” These two groups of people corresponds to the younger and the older brother. The tax collectors and sinners lived a very different life than the Pharisees and experts in the Law. The tax collectors and sinners were obviously irresponsible. The Pharisees and scribes were responsible. Since we are so familiar with this parable and we know how the story ends, it is easy for us to miss the valid concern of these Pharisees. We already know the moral of the story—that everybody gets forgiven, that everybody gets saved by grace—and so we don’t notice the scandal. The scandal is that Jesus is being kind and generous to people who don’t deserve it. These people who were coming to him and eating with him were not sinners in name only. They were real sinners. They hurt people. Perhaps they hurt friends and loved ones of some of the Pharisees and scribes. The Pharisees and scribes didn’t hurt people. They did what was right. To help the Pharisees and scribes, especially, Jesus tells this parable. He teaches them about the Law and the Gospel using picture language. Let’s deal with the Law first. The way that the Law works is that if you do good, then good things will happen to you. If you do evil, then harm will come upon you. The younger brother did evil things. When he is brought into poverty, misery, and loneliness, he is only getting the punishment that he deserves. The older brother did what was right. Good things should have (and probably did) come to him—we can see that, perhaps, in how he did not experience the difficulties of his younger brother. At the heart of the parable, though, is that the Law doesn’t seem to be working the way that the older brother thinks it should. The younger brother ends up being accepted by the father. The younger brother ends up getting good things, even though he had not done good things. This is not how the Law works. It is a contradiction like dry water or an impossible mathematical sum. Remember how on those old calculators if you did something that the calculator couldn’t compute it said “EE?” That’s what’s going on here. The Law is being contradicted because good things are happening to someone who has done evil things. The Gospel is quite different than the Law. The Law says, “Do this!” and it’s never done. The Gospel says, “Believe this!” and it is done already. The Gospel does not threaten or squeeze or give tit for tat. The Gospel gives. It does not look for someone who is worthy. It gives to those who are unworthy, thereby making them worthy. In the parable this is shown by all the father’s actions. When the father sees his son afar off he hitches up his robe and starts a-running. That’s not something that old men do very often. It does not say that he opens up his arms and says, “Give me a hug, son.” Instead it says that the old man fell on his son’s neck. This is not a “keep your distance, let’s see how this turns out” kind of thing. This is a full and free giving of the father to the son. Nothing is held back. Then the father goes all out: He orders that the best robe be taken out—maybe