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Sermon for Sunday, June 22, 2008
“God’s Big Circle”
Luke 15:26-32
It never fails. f I use this Luke passage about the Prodigal son and do not bring in the elder brother, the questions and comments will come. “What about the elder brother?” I have often wished that Jesus had let this story end with verse which says, “and they began to have a wonderful time.” The tone and mood of this parable changes quickly, doesn’t it? We left last week feeling good about how the younger brother was welcomed home, party being thrown, new shoes, new robe, good stuff. Abruptly, that all changes. It happens. It has happen to you and to me.
---you are happy one minute and a phone call, a conversation or a letter in the mail brings sadness, anger, despair.
---you’re watching a basketball game. The game is so close and for much of the game the score is so close that the outcome won’t be decided until the very last. Your team takes the lead by one point. The seconds tick away, 10, 9-8-7-6-5, the other team shoots and makes it as the buzzer sounds. Your euphoria turns to disappointment.
--you have something good to share that has happened to you and you share and the response is, “that’s not so hot!” And the air goes out of your joy.
---good sermon pastor, ‘thank you, thank you.” “I didn’t like that one!”
The mighty sounds of joy and celebration can turn to disappointment and despair in the twinkling of an eye.
That’s where the rest of this parable leads. Excitement and euphoria over a homecoming and then the response of the elder brother. Now please, before we go any further, he is not the bad guy, but he is giving an honest, gut response. In fact, he is reminding us of what led Jesus to tell the parable in the first place.
We have to go back to the beginning of the chapter. I want to read it to you from the Message Bible. Verses 1-3. Although there have been thousands of sermons preached from this passage, I have a hunch that these opening verses really do tell us the meaning of the story the first time it got told.
Jesus’ circle of welcome was too large to suit the scribes and Pharisees so instead of rejoicing to see sinners at Jesus’ table, they were offended, angered and unhappy. And it was at that moment, Jesus said, “let me tell you a story.”
In response to the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling over how Jesus welcomed people - the most broken, most hopeless, helpless, those who loved the Lord, but couldn’t seem to get their act together and probably those who didn’t even know the Lord. The scribes and Pharisees were not bad people. They were, in fact, the good people. They were the ones who really thought they knew where the line should be drawn, where God’s circle of welcome should begin and end. That’s why they grumbled when Jesus welcomed sinners. They believed that Jesus crossed the line, so he told them a story to show them their circle was too small.
They were the elder brother, the person who cannot rejoice over the wide open welcome of a real, sure enough sinner. That was the point of the story the first time it got told. It was about God’s big circle, God’s open hands, arms and heart, his astounding welcome of broken, flawed, sinful people.
What the story said to them, it says to us, as Christians and as church. All too often when it comes to “who is in and who is out,” we draw the line one place and God draws it somewhere else. God’s got a mighty big circle. That’s the point of the story. A father had two sons and loving one didn’t mean leaving the other. There was room to welcome both of them, if they could both stand to be inside the same circle!
That is where we often struggle as church. We want people to think, look, act, be like us and our tendency is not let the circle get too large, because we do not know what to do with those who are sinners, but not sinners like we are. It is easier to ignore, exclude than to welcome.
There is another side to it all…how are people going to know about the God’s love if we don’t welcome them? How are lives that are teetering on the brink of disaster going to find hope and encouragement if the circle is too small? God doesn’t like the way we do a lot of things in life, but He will not leave or forsake us.
God’s circle of welcome is almost always bigger than ours. Just how much bigger we may never realize this side of heaven and see who else shows up. If we don’t learn to grow the circle there will be those who may never know the saving love of Christ. Rejection never won a soul to Jesus Christ. Someone mentioned to me this week that this older brother did not understand the pain of the father when his son left, so he couldn’t understand the joy of homecoming either. I wonder how much we understand God’s pain over lost people especially when we may want to close the door to them?
Unless I miss the point completely, the mission of the church is to open its arms to the world with God’s good news of love and acceptance found through a relationship with Christ…not to change first, but to love and accept in the hopes of what God can do.
Maybe we should probably go ahead and get use to the fact that where God draws the line is somewhere outside where we draw the line. Otherwise we might be unhappy in, of all places, heaven…and that would be a long time to be unhappy.
A lot of us in this room already have a place in the kingdom. Some may have not. It may be time to accept your place among the people of God.
Whenever the church gathers for worship there are those who need to begin the journey of faith. It begins by saying ‘yes’ to a relationship with Christ. Have you accepted him as your Lord and Savior and professed him publicly and followed him through the baptismal waters?
Do you need to take risk; it’s a big risk to ask you to consider church relationship. Will you invest yourself with God’s imperfect people to work to do God’s perfect will?
There are other decisions that can be made; recommitting your walk with God, decisions concerning what God may want to do with your life…maybe just to ask someone to pray with you. It’s all yours and it’s all God…the two of you in journey together.
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