4/8/62

Scripture: Isaiah 1: 10-20; Luke 15: 11-24.

Last Sunday, at our service of re-dedication, we read together the Statement of Faith which is commended to us in the United Church of Christ, not as a test, but as a testimony.

[Three years ago, at the second meeting of the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, a Statement of Faith was adopted and commended to the churches for their approval and use. It was offered to the churches for use, not as a test, but as a testimony.] Perhaps you remember the paragraph, near the end of the Statement, in which we read these words. "He promises to all who trust him: forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace; courage in the struggle for justice and peace; his presence in trial and rejoicing; and eternal life in his kingdom which has no end."

I want to take those four statements in that summary of promise as themes of the four sermons I want to share with you today, Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, and Easter Day. Today’s theme, you will notice, is the assurance [I want to take the first of those four statements in the summary of promise as the theme of this morning’s sermon. The theme, you will notice, is the assurance] that God promises to all who trust him "forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace."

The classic example of forgiveness is Jesus’ own story of a father and two sons. Neither of the sons were in any way perfect. The elder son proved to be demandingly dutiful, quite self-righteous and altogether unforgiving. The younger fellow was impetuous and impatient, unwilling to learn except by his own confidence and experience. As a matter of fact, the father was hardly perfect, either. He was a bit indulgent; not inclined to adhere to the rules of justice that could have at least kept the elder son satisfied. But he was quite a man nevertheless.

It is said that a young lad from the English countryside came into a cathedral and there heard the reading, from Scripture, of this story that Jesus told. Came the words, "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him." Whereupon this English kid from the country, forgetting what place he was in, and among what people, said quite loudly, "Eh, but yon was a grand old man!" You see, in that light, the story might be called the parable of the Good Father. But it is still the story of the prodigal son -- or rather of two prodigals.

We do not have to assume that the younger son was a bad fellow when he left home. He was inexperienced; he was impatient and impulsive. He was headstrong. But he was venturesome; he had initiative. He asked for a division of property, which may not have been unusual, and he headed for the city. He trusted in his own wisdom to win success and to be free. But he never probed into the meaning of success or of freedom.

He never got beyond the itch for popularity, the hankering for things, the search for pleasure. And the result? Famine; no resources left; economic depression and want; evaporation of popularity; degradation and humiliation. By that time he was both hungry and ashamed. He knew that in essence, his sin was against his family and against God. And he confessed his sin. I suppose his penitence came from mixed motives, as it does in most of us. But he tried to be honest about it. He decided that he would go back and approach his father directly; confess is foolishness and his wrong-doing and ask for at least enough compassion so that he might have a job as a hired hand on the farm. This was more than appeasement of hunger. It was realism in penitence.

The story of his return is joy; if it were not so, it would bring tears to one’s eyes. The father, looking down the road in longing concern, as he had done so many times, knew that walk! It was his son! He ran down the road to meet him; kissed away the long-rehearsed confession; ordered up clean clothes, a robe reserved only for honored guests; a ring and shoes - the sign of sonship. How freely flowed his forgiveness, as in glad relief he welcomed the young man home!

He could have done it quite differently. There is a parallel story in Buddhist literature which tells of a father hiding his identity from his son for 20 years, watching and harshly testing, until penitence was fully established and nobility was proved through trial. But not this father! As far as he was concerned, the boy who had been dead to him was now alive again, restored to the home.

One might wish that the story ended there, where we ended the reading of Scripture this morning. Apparently it did, so far as the young prodigal was concerned. Jesus simply says, "and they began to make merry."

Actually, there is more to the story. For Jesus goes on to describe the elder "prodigal." He came in from the field, heard all of the music and saw all the feasting, discovered what it was all about, and flew into a fit of anger. He wouldn’t go in! He had made a good start, as a man who was not at first bad. He had said, "I will stay at home and work hard" --- and he did! But his spirit was as far away as his brother’s body had been. Now his father came out and tried to persuade him to come in join the party. He preferred to sulk outside. He chided his father. "I have worked for you, obeyed you, served you; and you never gave me even a tiny goat from the flock from a little celebrating with my friends. And here you have killed the choicest young beef for a great feast over the son who is apparently your favorite. He has squandered your living with ‘wine, women, and son’ and this is the way you treat him!" [Luke 15: 25-30].

Perhaps the attitude of the older brother may have helped to drive the younger into the rebellious desire to leave home in the first place. At any rate, the older son was prodigal too, in a spiritual sense. Always taking a side-long glance at his own goodness, he could angrily deplore the follies of another.

Unless we are careful Christians, this can easily be the prodigality of the church, of "respectable people." And it calls for penitence just as surely as does the prodigality of the wastrel. And the father was fully as ready to forgive the older son’s hardness as he was to forgive the younger son’s foolhardiness.

The father in this story stayed at home and waited. That is not always the picture. In Alan Patan’s novel, "Cry, the Beloved Country," the Negro father goes searching for his wayward boy -- all over the streets of Johannesburg, up one alley and down another, from reform school to Shanty Town to jail, until he finds his wandering and troubled son. This is not to say that he is nobler than the father who waits. But there is a sense in which the eternal, forgiving righteousness of God goes looking for His own. And often that is you and me!

George Buttrick suggests that those who heard Jesus tell the story might, had they listened closely, have heard another story in this wise: "God had three sons. Two of them were sons of earth, children of his creation; and the other a Son of his heaven, begotten on his abiding rightness. The younger son on earth forgot his true home, and through pride of flesh sank into shame. The older son on earth began to despise his brother, and so grew hard through pride of mind. The Son in heaven lived in his Father’s joy, but a shadow fell on both when they thought of the two sons of earth.

"Then the Father said, ‘I will send the Son of my abiding rightness to seek the sons on earth.’ And the Son said, ‘I will go, that my brothers may come home and my father cease to grieve.’ So the Son took flesh and walked the roads of earth. He found the younger prodigal, ate his husks with him; shared his shame. But the young prodigal was deaf. God was only what he wanted; not Who wanted him.

"So the Son of abiding rightness found the elder prodigal, who was in church, but whose heart was hard. Bitterly, the elder prodigal asked, ‘Why should you seek my brother? Or expect me to? He is a wastrel. And you are no better than he!’

"Then befell the most cruel thing earth has known. The two prodigals killed the Son of abiding rightness. For his light was only pain to their sorely darkened eyes. In the hatred that grew from their yearning, they slew him on a cross. But he prayed for them as he died, ‘Father, forgive them.’

"Then the younger prodigal said, ‘I would return to God my Father if I had not killed his Son of abiding rightness, but now ...’ And the elder prodigal said, ‘I never knew my lovelessness, until I saw his love; but I have killed him, so now .....’

"Then the Son of abiding rightness rose from the dead, for no grave could imprison his great love. And both prodigals knew that he was with them. What they did then, who can say? You and I must choose the answer."

Is that just Buttrick’s fancy? Or is it a fleeting glimpse of the need and the possibility and the hope of forgiveness?

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Now let us look to that stern old prophet, Isaiah. He addresses himself to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. We may suppose them to have been particular dens of iniquity when we remember what awful things befell them according to the narration of Scripture. But apparently their people did not think so! Were they not pious to perfection? How careful and particular was every detail of their worship! Imagine one of their great church festivals. The temple courts are full of the jostling crowd of worshippers. The air is filled with the bleating of unblemished sheep and the lowing of unscarred cattle. Incense and the smell of burnt offering is everywhere. No pains are spared to make the worship perfect in every detail; correct in plan and accomplishment; magnificent in its fervor. The worshippers kneel at the right time. The priests chant the correct prayers. They all have the appearance of piety. Surely one would be moved to admiration of the liturgy and of those who perfected its every detail.

Isaiah agrees that it is a great spectacle. And he adds the devastating judgment that in the eyes of God it is all hollow mockery! He goes on to say, in effect, that no splendor of worship can in any way offset the disregard of God’s moral demands! For Isaiah sees that the pious assembly is made up of men whose hands have shed the blood of others; whose eyes are hot with greed and lust; whose ears do not hear the cries of children or the pleading of broken-hearted women. And Isaiah says that God hates the burnt offerings, the long prayers, the solemn assemblies of those who flout the moral law. "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless; plead for the widow."

That is stern talk by Isaiah! It sounds like that other prophet, Micah, who cried out, "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" [Micah 6: 8]. Then Isaiah goes on in a different mood: "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool."

That has been preached as the message of the sheer grace of redeeming love. In a deep sense it is the good news of God for penitent and sinful people. But even the New Testament, with its cross of Christ, does not declare unconditional forgiveness. The assurance of forgiveness must be preceded by a cry for mercy. And that cry is not alone, "Lord help me!" but also "Lord, how can I help?"

I know a worshipper who has gone regularly and faithfully to the worship service of her church. She says, "It’s compulsive." And I think she wants to feel that here she can go through the process of penitential forms, confess her sins, perhaps receive the Eucharist, and rise feeling completely cleansed for the week.

Is that enough? Ought one; may one; can one be so quickly, so surely, so completely freed of the guilt that bears us down? Do we expect, because forgiveness is free, to get off too easy? Can forgiveness and mercy be had by repetition of prayers each week, or each day, or on a Buddhist prayer wheel?

Is there not a dangerous sense in which we want to be freed of the sense of guilt without dealing with the cause of guilt? We want peace of mind, inward serenity, and solace without reckoning with our conscience. Micah did not say "avoid or escape evil." He said that what the Lord requires is to do justly. In other words, we have not been truly penitent when we want only to be freed of a heavy feeling. We have no right to be absolved from responsibility. Oft time the truly penitent person must go and make restitution or amends.

It was Jesus who warned his hearers of the futility of worship for purely selfish reasons. "When you bring your gift to the altar," he said, "If there you remember that you have aught against your brother, just leave your gift for a while --- go and be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift." [Matthew 5: 23-24]. It is subtly easy for us to pray, in effect, "O God, let me off! Let me off from my share in the world’s evil! Please look the other way from the evils that I condone. From the call for real brotherhood, for equal rights for all mankind, for honest dealings with the world’s afflicted, Lord let me off! I will make token payment. I will be merciful, and I will be kind to some people. I will do many small good deeds. But I’m not sufficient for everything. Can’t you let me off?"

The world is so dangerously full of evil; the time is so short --- can we afford to lose the guilt that might drive us to reforming the evil ways of our time? A. Powell Davies has suggested that we might best pray for unforgivingness --- the utter absence of relief from guilt, until we have attacked the causes that produce it.

If anyone says, "Well, what about the love of God? Is not love his law of life?", the answer may well be, "Yes, love is the law of life. We are not mistaken about that; we are only confused." For love is not a soft sentiment, an indulgent attitude toward all things good or evil. Genuine creative love is the most demanding thing in the world. It drove Jesus right to a cross! It will not relax its standards -- because it can not. If it did so, it would degrade itself from being love.

Can the love of God condone our evil prejudices, our indolence, our refusal to care, our callousness? If we feast while those we could help starve; if we betray the human brotherhood which we proclaim; if we are content to let a race of people -- our race or any other -- dominate other folk just because of race, do we have a right to expect God’s love to set us at ease?

Let us try to put matters in their right proportions. Forgiveness is a virtue indeed. Indeed it should be so habitual in the Christian as to need no name in one’s self. Jesus said, "Certainly forgive -- not just 7 times, but 70 times 7 -- you go beyond the counting." [Matthew 18: 21-22]. He also raised it to sublime heights when he groaned, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." [Luke 23: 34].

But even the forgiveness of Jesus did not prevent the fall of Jerusalem, which he had grimly prophesied. And it did not make angelic saints out of his brutal crucifiers. Forgiveness does not suspend the moral law.

Therefore it is time that we pray not for ease of soul, but for strength to attack the causes of our guilt; for willingness to set things right among ourselves in mankind, and to get right with God; for God to forgive us only when we have done all that He knows one man or woman can do to change the evils we deplore.

Let none of us be reduced to selfish begging of God for what we do not deserve. But let us strive for the peace, the beauty, the joy that can be found through the gateway of an honest conscience. For that is God’s gateway to real "forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace."

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 8, 1962.

Also in Madison, First Congregation Church, August 5, 1962.