Empty Handed

Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Dear saints in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

In our gospel readings over the last couple of weeks we have heard Jesus call us to repentance. Two weeks ago we heard Jesus lament over Jerusalem as He described Himself as a hen who longed to gather her brood under her wings. The call was to return to the wings, the loving, caring protection of our God and Saviour. Last week we heard Jesus talk about disasters and tragedies that happen in the world around us. He taught us that these disasters and tragedies are a reminder of our need to repent. “Repent or you will likewise perish,” He said. I spoke briefly last week about what repentance is, that it is a turning away from sin and a returning, a coming back, to the Lord our God. I want us to think a little more about this today and use the parable of the prodigal son to help us understand the nature of this coming back or this returning to the Lord our God. I want us to see that repentance means coming back and returning to the Lord our God empty handed.

         To help us think about and contemplate this well-known parable in a deeper kind of way I have an image, a painting, which I want us to look at. This painting was done by an artist by the name of Edward Riojas who happens to be a Lutheran. He has painted a number of rather striking scenes from the Bible and I even have a print of one of his paintings hanging in my office. This is his take on the parable of the prodigal son.

Looking at the image as a whole here first we see that this painting depicts the prodigal son right on the brink of returning home to his father’s house. He is rounding the final bend and is just about to complete his journey home. Behind him lies the “far country” where he had gone and squandered his share of his father’s property in reckless living and in front of him lies his father’s property and home.

 

Rather than focusing on the scenery, however, I want us to focus on the prodigal son. Look at him here. His face is downcast and dejected, broken by his own sinful decisions. He has no luggage, no bag, and no possessions to his name. What little clothing he does have is tattered and worn. You can see his ribs there through the side of his shirt. He is hungry, malnourished. He doesn’t even have shoes on his feet. He has nothing. He is and as empty handed as a person could possibly be as he makes his way back to his father’s house.

What we find out from the parable as Jesus tells it, however, is that this son had no intention of returning to his father empty handed. Even though there is no way he could repay his father for what he had taken and squandered, even though there was no way he could even scrounge up a small gift or a present as a token of his repentance, the son is determined that he will not return to his father empty handed. Maybe it’s because he fears his father won’t receive him empty handed. Maybe it’s because he is appalled at the idea of coming back to his father that way. Maybe it’s because his guilt ridden heart won’t let him do it. Whatever the reason, however, the prodigal son is convinced that he must offer up something, anything, to his father. Jesus tells us that when the prodigal son came to his senses, when he was out feeding the pigs in the far country longing to eat the food that the pigs ate and decided to make the journey home, he said to himself, “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.’” He had nothing to give his father, but he was determined not to return empty handed. He would offer his work, the labour of his hands. He would pay back his father and work off his guilt by living as a servant in his own father’s house. He would not return empty handed.

Now that is normally an attitude that we would applaud. The prodigal son’s desire to do earn back his father’s trust, to work off his debt, and to pay back at least part of what he had squandered would seem like the right thing to do. He should, we would think, refuse to return empty handed. He should, we would think, do what he can. What we see in the story as Jesus tells it, however, is that the father of this prodigal son thinks about these things very differently.

When the prodigal son rounds that final bend towards home and returns home everything changes. The father runs out to receive his son. We can see that happening in the painting. The son doesn’t see him yet, but he will. The father will rush right up to his son, his empty handed prodigal son, embrace him, hold him in his loving, fatherly arms, kiss him, and rejoice that this, his son who was lost and as good as dead, has been found and is alive.

When that happens, when the son father rushes out to greet his son, the son is finally going to get his chance to speak to his father and to confess his sin and apologize. Now I imagine that as the son made his way home he rehearsed his apology over and over again in his mind. We do that when we have something big to apologize for, we go over it again and again to make sure we have it just right.  As he walked he probably said over and over again, “I have sinned against heaven and before you I am no longer worthy to be called your son…” and I am sure that each and every time he ran through his apology he ended it by saying, “treat me like one of your hired servants.” But when the son finally gets his chance to apologize something will have changed. “Father,” he will say, “I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” And he will stop right there. The offer to work, the offer to become one of his father’s servants, the offer to make it up to his father someway, somehow, will be gone. Long gone.

When his father has rushed out to greet him and receive him just as he is any offer to work, any offer to become a servant, would just seem so irrelevant, so unnecessary. His father has received him, empty handed, and has welcomed him home. The son is so overwhelmed by His father’s grace, by His father’s forgiveness, by His father’s love that even though it does not seem right to him to return empty handed to his father’s house he now knows that his father will have it no other way. And so he will stops short. He won’t offer to work or to become a servant. He will come home empty handed and his father will receive him, empty handed, as a son. He will clothe him in fine clothing, throws a feast, and rejoices that his empty handed son is home.

The question is why? Why does the father receive his son this way? Why doesn’t he demand some kind of repayment or compensation? Why doesn’t he require anything of his son who has treated him so terribly? By any reasonable human standard of justice, any reasonable standard of parenting, the son should be required to do something, anything, to repay his father. What is going to keep him from doing this again? How is he going to learn his lesson? Where is the justice in this? The son’s original offer, his offer to work for his father as a servant, is totally reasonable. Why does the father accept and receive his son empty handed like this? The answer to that question is in the other side of the painting.

Maybe you noticed it before or maybe you didn’t, but look up there on the side of the mountain that divides the painting. There you have Jesus on the cross. Now the death and resurrection of Jesus is obviously not part of the actual parable that Jesus tells, but the artist has added it here to get to the real point of the story. The father in this story is, after all, not just any old father who has two sons, the father is God. The prodigal son is not just any old son either, we are the prodigal son. Whether our lives are more like the younger son and have wandered into the far country and been swept up with the sins of the world or more like the older son who remained behind but was filled with bitterness and anger we are all, in one way or another, “prodigals” who have wandered from our Father’s love and care. We have all squandered the gifts that He has given to us on the passions and desires of our own hearts. We have all been bitter and resentful because of the gifts He gives to others. We have all abused His love. And by any reasonable standard of human justice and righteousness we should have to pay for what we have done, we should have to work off our debt. But God our Father has provided for us His Son, His beloved Son, and through His death our debt, every penny of it, has been paid.

This parable is an important reminder for us at this stage in the season of Lent, an important reminder that our repentance, our returning to the Lord our God, is an empty handed repentance, an empty handed returning. We can’t repay the debt we owe. We can’t offer a sufficient gift. All the labour of our hands, even a lifetime of servitude, could not even begin to offset our sin. We know all of that, but this lingering worry, this desire to do something to make up for what we have done, this nagging feeling that there must be more always remains. This parable stands as a crystal clear reminder, however, that God our Father, through His Son, has paid our debt and now calls us back, empty handed as we are, to Himself and that He receive us empty handed as His children.

I want to close this morning by reading you something from the Augsburg Confession. The Augsburg Confession was written in 1530 by a man named Philip Melanchthon as a confession of what Martin Luther and the Lutheran reformers held to be the truth of God’s Word. Concerning repentance the Augsburg Confession says this, “Strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the gospel… and believes that for Christ’s sake sins are forgiven. It comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror.”

Contrition and faith. That is what repentance is. Nothing more. Contrition that feels sorrow and pain over sin and faith that trusts in the promises of the gospel, the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Jesus Christ. That is repentance, empty handed repentance. May the Lord grant this repentance to us that we might return to Him empty handed and know the peace of His salvation for us in Christ Jesus. In Jesus name, Amen.