St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

Sermon for Lent 4 2007, Cape Town
Revd Canon Professor Martyn Percy, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford
Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-end.

Here's an interesting riddle for you. Which is more important? That the right people do the wrong things, or the wrong people do the right things? The answer depends, I suspect, on where you are standing. From the point of view of the church, the right people doing the wrong things is where it's at. The efficacy of the sacrament does not depend on the effectiveness or competency of the celebrant. The vicar can, in other words, make a dog's breakfast of the baptism or the eucharist – but he is the right person to do it, even if he or she gets it all wrong. A layperson doing it and getting it all right won't do; that's wrong.

But as one theologian reminds us, in the battles between Jesus and the church, the church is ahead on points, but is still fighting a war it cannot ultimately win. The right people do the wrong thing; the wrong people do the right stuff. And it is clear what Jesus thinks: the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going to get to heaven before you. The wrong people doing the right stuff.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is, in one sense, saying something quite simple: whom I shall save is my business. Now, get on with yours. Or, 'as to who I let into heaven – what's it to you?'. This is tricky territory, I know, but no-one who reads the gospels deeply can be surprised. Jesus has a habit of including outsiders. He has a habit of associating with the undeserving. He has a habit of making peripheral people central. And in all of this, he asks us to rejoice with those he saves; be happy for them – God is.

The gospels offer extreme cases of God being reckless with salvation – he's always giving entry passes to the Kingdom to a rather odd bunch of folk. This recklessness means he abandons ninety-nine moderately well-behaved sheep to look for just one. The safety of the majority compromised for the one who is lost and wandering. Or consider the dying thief on the cross is an obvious example. He could not have known Jesus for more than a few minutes, or perhaps even seconds, let alone an hour. Yet on the cross, for the most minimal confession, he is promised paradise. Had the disciples still been around to witness this exchange shortly before the death of Jesus they must have wondered to themselves what on earth the point of giving up everything and forsaking all for the Kingdom of God had been. Had they not been with Jesus for three years? Had they not abandoned their jobs? Had they not left behind their families, even leaving the dead unburied? Of course they had. So how come then, that Jesus is offering precisely the same – no more and no less to a man who has been committed to a lifetime of violence and crime. It just doesn't seem at all fair – so you can see why the older son complains already. He knows that God is soft; too much love and not enough discipline.

Of course, the father is insulted by both sons. The younger son for the squandering of the inheritance; the older for refusing to come and feast. A key part of the parable is the father's initiative in running to the son. Middle Eastern custom would have had the younger son met on the borders of the village by an elder, and a pot broken over the penitent's head as a sign of the irreparable damage that had been done to the village and to family honour. The father, in running, exposes his legs and makes haste. This is an undignified custom on the part of the father, as Elders do not run so much as glide or walk slowly as a sign of their dignity. It is for slaves, women and children to run, but not for elders.

First century custom would have had the younger son – had he had the courage to return home – met at the village borders. There, he would have a pot smashed over his head, as a sign of the family dishonour he had brought. He would then have joined the servants. Any return to son-ship would have had to be earned. The Greek text teases us a little with the potential for conflict at the end of the parable. As the father runs to the son, the text tells us 'he fell upon the [son's] neck'. Interesting. The neck – vulnerable, breakable, exposed; but also sensitive, intimate and erogenous. Until he is embraced, the son cannot know if he is to be kissed or throttled. There is threat here; but also a hint of the possibility of intimacy.

But Jesus, as he so often does in parables, plays with our sense of fairness. Suppose your son or daughter 'borrowed' your credit card, and ran up huge debts. To add to the fun, he or she had a wild party for several days whilst you were away, looking after relatives. You come home with your partner, to find the place trashed, many things sold or damaged, and, you suspect, your son or daughter has decided not to sit their A-levels, but has instead bunked off to the Far East for an early taste of a gap year – or two. When your credit card bill arrives, you discover they have run up bills in tens and thousands of pounds. That their spending folly has cost you half your home – you have been ruined by their stupidity and excess.

But lo and behold, and only two years later, your son or daughter rings up from the airport, and says 'Mum, Dad – I'm home…'. What do you do now? Do you [a] say get the coach home – we'll talk later; [b] offer an repayment plan spread over several years, and give them a severe dressing down; [c] say 'we'll pick you up' – so glad to have you back, that we're organising a lavish party at short notice. Not c, I think. And if were c., your neighbours would be peering out of their windows, shaking their heads, saying to themselves – 'he was always soft in the heart – but now he has gone soft in the head'. But the justice of God is different. The parable of the prodigal plays with our sense of justice. And the older son hates it. Because the message of the parable is this: the love of God is so complete as to be almost unjust – and certainly unfair.

And this is why the event of the party is so central to understanding the parable. This celebration – the ring, the calf, the feast – is excess and exuberance to the point of wastefulness. Indeed, many of the parables that Jesus tells are about things that are thrown away, used up or finished with. Whether it be a banquet that is eaten, seed that is thrown around, or salt which is cooked in with food, Jesus' subjects, like Jesus himself, are used and then disposed of. A party that sets out to leave no waste is a very dull party. What marks the distinction between party-time and the rest of our lives is this wastefulness; it is the expression of abundance, of blessing. If most of our lives are spent gathering stones together, then in partying we find the time to cast them away again.

This is why the elder son is re-addressed at the end of the parable, by the father. Again, the Greek text holds some important clues as to the point of the parable. The father calls the older son 'baby' – either as a term of endearment, or perhaps as a form of chastisement. But the younger brother is called 'son'. It is as though the parable asks us all: do want to sulk about the sinners I celebrate with? Or do you want to join God's party with the lost sheep?

So many of the parables Jesus tells get right under the skin of the real motivation for being part of the Church, and following Jesus. And the interesting thing that the parable suggests is that in Christ's scheme of salvation, the rewards and bonuses scheme is all rather 'flat'. In other words, salvation does not come in half measures – you cannot be half saved; you're either welcomed into God's kingdom or you're not. You can't be half ordained.

Salvation doesn't come in fractions. You cannot be half baptised. You either receive the Eucharist or you don't - sacraments are not divisible. And so the parable, as so many do, comes back to haunt the Church. Instead of policing the borders and the boundaries of God's kingdom, acting as Passport Control or Immigration Officers, we are invited instead to gather up everybody – as many as we can – to share in precisely the same fortune that all of us already enjoy, and have known for years.

This excursion takes us back in to the parable of the prodigal son, and asks whether you're enjoying the feast, celebrating with the younger son who was dead but is now alive, and has been miraculously resurrected – that's what the parties for. Or, whether we are bitter and resentful with the older brother, believing that the party and celebration is undeserved. This parable, is in fact terrible news for the Church. For it points to the foolish abundance, the ridiculous generosity of God in relation to whom he bestows his favour on. Mercy and grace are infinite, and all shall receive the same.

It is the same salvation for the lay assistant that has put in fifty years of hard graft, blood, sweat and tears into keeping a church going, as it is to the tiniest child that is baptised right at the end, or indeed to those in the middle, who stumble around in their half belief, perhaps even barely caring about the inheritance that has been bestowed upon them. In all of that, this parable asks, do you as the Church rejoice at God's abundance, or seek to limit it or control it? Why is it the church likes to act as God's Immigration Control or Border Police – when all we have been asked to do is issue invitations and open the frontiers?

Simon Schama, in his excellent book Through Rembrandt's Eyes, narrates the story of the late 17th century painting 'The Prodigal' in these words:

'The face of the sinner, the prodigal, whom Rembrandt had etched and drawn and painted…is turned away from us, his eyes shut, buried in the bosom of his forgiving father. Rembrandt's prodigal has been broken by his journey from his transgression to atonement. The soles of his feet are lacerated and pierced, so that we understand that he has hobbled painfully home towards atonement. His finery hangs in pathetic rags and tatters from his emaciated frame. His head is shorn like a penitent's as he kneels in contrition. We can scarcely make out his features, so lightly has the artist drawn them, but we see enough to know this prodigal for Everyman, for the child who has taken all the sins of the world on his shoulders.

The father, mantled in red, his brow shining with consummate peace, places his hands on those shoulders as if to lift the burden of his trespasses from them with his paternal blessing. But the gesture is even more than a rite of priestly healing: it is also an act of resurrection, a transformation of death into life. To the indignant righteous brother who protests against the fatted calf being killed for the prodigal, the father, God like retorts, 'this thy brother was dead, and is alive again'. So the son kneels against the loins of the father, eyes shut, arms across his chest; they melt together in a single form, the pathetic shred of humanity returned to the boundlessly encompassing compassion of his creator.'

It is a beautiful meditation on the gospel. God reaches down to us, and holds us – especially the weak, the guilty and culpable, and raises us up to be his children once more. Although we have once forsaken him, he cannot and will not forsake us. His love is complete – too high, wide, deep and boundless to be by-passed. Indeed, he loves us too much for his own good, which is what Holy Week and the Easter story is all about. He is willing to give his life for us – for his love for us is full, free and forever. What better way to end then, than with the words of Frederick Faber's surprisingly inclusive early Victorian hymn:

There's a wideness in God's mercy
Like the wideness of the sea
There's a kindness in his justice
Which is more than liberty.

There is no place where earth's sorrows
Are more felt than up in heaven
There is no place where earth's failings
Have such kindly judgement given.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness
With a zeal he will not own.

There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed;
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of the Head.

There is grace enough for thousands
Of new worlds as great as this;
There is room for fresh creations
In that home of upper bliss.

If our love were but more simple
We should take him at his word;
And our lives would be all gladness
In the joy of Christ our Lord.

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