Madness & Sadness - Midweek Message 30th September 2020

 

Dear Friends,

I mentioned at the beginning of Sunday’s sermon on the parable of the prodigal Son¹ that people have preached a whole series of sermons on this parable and therefore I would have to be selective in terms of what we considered. In the light of that I ended up focussing on two main themes 1) the self-centred nature of human sin & rebellion and 2) the lavish and joyful nature of God’s mercy.

My original heading for the first point in the sermon had been: the self-centred and insane nature of human sin & rebellion but I realised I wasn’t going to have time to deal with the ‘insane’ part!! However, one of the benefits of these Midweek messages is they provide an opportunity to follow up on or add to what may have been said previously.  So, I thought I might reflect a little further from the parable on the madness and sadness of going our own way instead of God’s.

In relation to the madness, it’s implicit in the way in which Jesus describes the great turning point for the younger brother when he’s far from home with nothing left: his wealth has gone, his fair-weather friends have gone; famine has come and food has gone;  he’s left feeding pigs and longing for the pods the pigs were eating. Given that pigs were unclean animals, this was, for a Jew, to reach rock-bottom and then Jesus says this: When he came to his senses, he said, `How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father…’  (Luke 15:17-18a)  

He came to his senses. Literally  that reads he came to himself,  but it’s interesting that all the modern versions and paraphrases of this verse follow the NIV and talk about his coming to his senses, which implies that he had not been in his right mind when he had been running away from his father and rebelling. In other words, it suggests the insanity, the madness of sin. There is a verse in Ecclesiastes which speaks in similar fashion: The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live (Ecclesiastes 9.3)

Sin (going our own way, doing our own thing as opposed to God our Maker’s) makes no sense. It is irrational. It is madness. Now of course that is not how it seemed, how it felt, to the younger son (nor so often to us) when he got his inheritance and left his father to live life on his own terms. It seemed anything but madness. It seemed marvellous, liberating, intoxicating. I’m sure he could have happily sung along with Elsa in the movie Frozen when she left her home to set out on her own:

No right, no wrong

No rules for me

I’m free!

 But for this younger son such a life did not ultimately prove liberating. As he lived out his self-centred dream, it turned into a nightmare – until eventually he woke up to reality of what he had left and lost, until he came to his senses and recognised what he had done for the madness it was.  I’m sure that this younger son could better understand that heartfelt call and question from God issued through the prophet Isaiah to all who have embraced such madness and  fallen  for the deception of sin: Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?

And with that madness of sin we can also discern a sadness. It is there in the picture of the younger son in rags in the pig sty, alienated from family and friends. Jesus is surely trying to say to us that whatever ‘My way’ as opposed to ‘God’s way’ offers at the beginning – it always ends in tears. That lesson is reinforced as you observe the experience of the elder son. Though outwardly he presented as respectable and obedient to his father, in fact he proved equally self-centred, as alienated from his father in his obedience at home as the younger brother was in his disobedience in the distant country.  His self-righteous anger at his father and his younger brother over the reconciliation and restoration that had taken place between them as his sibling came home humble and penitent, displayed just how deep and wide that alienation was. The madness of his sin is  seen that he can’t recognise or rejoice in the value of what he actually had as his father gently and truly reminds him "`My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. (Luke 15:31)  At the end of the parable he cuts a lonely and bitter figure -  stubbornly standing outside the party, alienated from his father, his brother and indeed the community that had gathered to celebrate his brother’s return and his father’s delight.  The madness and the sadness of sin.

Sin never reveals its true colours.  It always dresses to deceive.  Among many other things in this parable, Jesus is warning us, ‘Don’t be taken in!’

Yours in Him,

David

 

¹ Traditionally, it has been called the parable of the prodigal son, but it might be more accurate to call it the parable of two lost sons or indeed the parable of the waiting father