"Preposterous Grace" March 6, 2016

Jonah 1: 1-6 Luke 15: 1-3 & 11-24 There needs to be a disclaimer before this sermon begins, that you cannot try to explain a joke, and this morning we explain two; which most people never recognized as being jokes. Parables are not only stories, they are exaggerated Satire. Like Jonah, the Two Sons and the Pharisees, we have no problem with “Forgiveness as a Concept” per se similar to someone else saying “Bless you” when we sneeze, but we have a hard time with GRACE: the limitless, unmerited, undeserved extent of God's Forgiveness, and Who God Forgives. The Grace of God is so unrealistic as to be Preposterous! When something is so far outside our expectations as to be ludicrous, you do not simply report the idea, you embellish and create an outlandish story or joke to emphasize how totally impossible this really is. Except, that with God NOTHING is impossible! AND because these stories are in the Bible and have been preached on so often, people no longer recognize them as being exaggerated satire, but Sacred. One minister preached on the Prodigal Son for a 16 week Sermon Series, at the end of which a woman at the door said “I am not certain about he or his father, but after this, I am sorry he ran away from home.” The Bible is the Sacred Word of God, but the Bible also speaks to the circumstance of Human Beings, and as such Scripture includes all the different moods of people like us. The problem when stories become too familiar is they lose their cutting edge, and parables like this become something more like a Self-Help Story for Adult Children: that you can always go home; completely missing the Satire of a rebuttal to our asking “Why does Jesus eat with Sinners!” or “Why prophesy grace, repentance, forgiveness to our enemies?” The people of faith had begun taking themselves too seriously, as if better than their enemies. They demanded Repentance in order to receive Grace, rather than the other way around. They began being divisive, unable to accept or forgive anyone who disagreed with them, let alone sinned against them, blaming anyone who was an enemy. Were they racist, Yes. Were they judgmental, Yes. Did they deserve punishment from God: Yes... Are we also racist, and do we deserve judgment? Probably! In the time of Israel's Wars with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, there was a Joke about how GOD's Grace in forgiveness of our enemies being Preposterous... God gave a prophecy to a Prophet, telling him to go to their enemy and say: “You are being Sinful.” All of which sounds simple, right? Except, the prophet knew God to be forgiving, and he did not want them forgiven. So he did not go North where he was sent by God, he went in the opposite direction, and he used his money to pay his way to get away from God and where God intended he should go as a Prophet to prophesy. So what did God do? God spit in Jonah's face with the Wind of Chaos! When you envision sailors, it is not as characters from Downton Abbey, but the Sailors on Black Sails. Yet the Sailors were each so afraid, they cried out to their gods and began to destroy the ship, to lighten their load from sinking. In the Ship that had been headed down South before being dragged down, Jonah was down in the bottom of the ship, where he laid down, and he was in the depths of sleep. In the midst of the chaos, the sailors became so desperate, the Captain left the helm and went down into the bottom of the ship to wake the “Dream-Interpreter” from sleep. And the sailors used the most corrupt way they knew for discerning the truth, they threw Craps: doing what they were told, they threw Jonah into the waters of chaos. Then the sailors recognized God to be God and sacrificed for their sins. As absurd as this is, we know that sinking in the water a Fish swallowed Jonah, taking him down a 3 day journey down to the foundations of the Earth. In addition to being a story of sarcasm, the emphases on going DOWN, away from God makes this is a story of depression. But when Jonah turns to pray to God, immediately, the fish is on the surface, vomiting him up, right on the shore of Ninevah where God wanted him to be. Wet & Stinking of Fish Guts, Jonah began to Prophesy, but not the Prophecy God gave him. Jonah prophesied: “There is no hope/ There Can Be No Forgiveness! God will destroy You.” Then Jonah sat down to watch. But the Enemy Repented, and God forgave the King and all the people of Ninevah, God even forgave the animals dressed in sackcloth and ashes! While Jonah sat unmoved, saying “See, I told you! God is too forgiving!” To which God asked: “And Are you angry about that?” Which Jonah says: “YES, Angry enough to die!” Every word is dripping with satire about us. Hundreds of years later, in the circumstance of Jesus, the target of righteous anger from this people was no longer Ninevah, but Sinners/Tax Collectors/Prostitutes among us, and Jesus consorting with them! Some have come to believe, we know this story too well, we skip over the hard stuff and before the Son ever leaves home, we already smell the Fatted Calf cooking and hear the seamstresses remaking the best robes. FIRST, Jesus identifies this is Not a story about The Younger Son needing Forgiveness. It is not a story about the Elder Son. There was a Man, who had two sons makes this a story about God. My father used to have a Bumper sticker that announced to the world: “We are spending or children's inheritance” because our inheritance was his property. Then again, he was furious after he had been in the hospital, saying “I gave my sons Power of Health Care & Power of Attorney but I never intended that you should use it!” Here, the younger son comes saying “Father, I wish you were dead, so I could have my inheritance.” And instead of being insulted, instead of reacting, this father, who must be the most understanding and gracious father in history, This father who is ___, gave the son what he asked! Being a fool what do we expect, suddenly possessing everything he ever wanted, the son wastes it, winding up not only broke, but so in debt as to be an indentured servant to a Gentile Pig Farmer, there could be nothing worse. As a Jew, wallowing in mud with Pigs was as low as you could fall. He was so far down in the social order, not even the Pigs would give him a bite to eat. He decided that his father's slaves were better off than he, so turned around, to go to his father asking to be a servant. What Jesus did not identify, which at the time would have needed no explanation, were two things: FIRST, that when someone shamed a respected family, or respected member of that family, the whole community felt responsibility to shame the individual before allowing them to darken their family's door. In that way, not much is different from our own community. They had rotten tomatoes, tar and feathers waiting for this bad-boy to come home. SECOND, that a Patriarch lived his life on pride and prestige, power and absolute control. Can you imagine Carson or the Dowager Countess running?! Demonstrating how preposterous is God's Grace, Love and forgiveness,... this Father runs through the Village streets, with his robes flapping in the wind, as demonstration of the unbounded love he has for a child returning home, AND his running to spare his son the shame and ridicule of the community. I think what Jesus was saying was: “Eat with Sinners? God would run to shield others from Shame and give those in need a drink out of my own cup and feed them from my own body and blood.” As if to make the story even more pointed, realize that while the Younger Son Sinned embarrassing their Father, and Repented and came home and was Received; the Elder Son also sinned bringing embarrassment on their Father in front of all their family and friends, yet the story ends without his choosing to come inside... UNLIMITED/UNMERITED GRACE offered but not yet REPENTANCE. Something I never saw before, is that in the story, the Elder is never referred to as Elder Brother, but only as Elder Son, because when the younger left, the Elder claimed to no longer have a brother. We named last week that Repentance does not simply mean saying “I am sorry.” Repentance is stopping to re-examine who God is and what life is about. So for the Prodigal: Repentance becomes what it takes for him to ever say “Father” again. While for the Elder: Repentance is learning to say “Brother” again.