4/6/25 Sermon

Before we hear today’s Scripture, I want to take a moment to set the scene—because the context really matters for this one.

By the time we get to Luke chapter 15, Jesus has been traveling around, teaching and healing, telling stories that are starting to make some people very uncomfortable—especially the religious leaders. He’s been eating with all the wrong people: tax collectors, sinners, outcasts—the folks that polite society had basically written off. And not just once or twice, but consistently, like it’s a habit. So the Pharisees and scribes, the religious gatekeepers of the day, are grumbling. They don’t like it. They say, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” And to them, that’s not just socially questionable—it’s scandalous. Eating with someone back then meant you accepted them, that you were saying, “You belong.”

So Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t argue. He tells stories. Three of them, actually—all about lost things.

The first is about a shepherd who leaves behind ninety-nine sheep just to go after the one that wandered off. The second is about a woman who tears her house apart looking for one lost coin. And in both stories, when what’s lost is found, there’s a party. Jesus is building to something here—he’s showing us what the kingdom of God is really like: a place where lost things matter, where heaven throws a celebration when one sinner finds their way home.

Then we get to today’s story. It’s longer, and it’s more personal. It’s not about a sheep or a coin—it’s about a father and two sons. And this one hits a little deeper, because it’s not just about being lost and found. It’s about relationships. About family. About grace and resentment. About the kind of homecoming that isn’t easy or tidy. And about a God whose love is bigger than what most of us are comfortable with.

So as you listen, try not to jump ahead in your mind to the ending you think you already know. Try to hear it the way those first listeners did—Pharisees and sinners alike. People who were trying to figure out who really matters to God. People who wondered whether there’s a limit to grace, or whether there’s a place at the table for them.

With that in mind, let’s listen now to Luke 15:1–3 and 11–32.

All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Jesus told them this parable:

Jesus said, “A certain man had two sons. The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance.’ Then the father divided his estate between them.

Soon afterward, the younger son gathered everything together and took a trip to a land far away. There, he wasted his wealth through extravagant living.

When he had used up his resources, a severe food shortage arose in that country, and he began to be in need. He hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. He longed to eat his fill from what the pigs ate, but no one gave him anything.

When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food, but I’m starving to death! I will get up and go to my father, and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son. Take me on as one of your hired hands.”’ So he got up and went to his father.

While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. His father ran to him, hugged him, and kissed him. Then his son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! Fetch the fattened calf and slaughter it. We must celebrate with feasting because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life! He was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

Now his older son was in the field. Coming in from the field, he approached the house and heard music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what was going on. The servant replied, ‘Your brother has arrived, and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he received his son back safe and sound.’ Then the older son was furious and didn’t want to enter in, but his father came out and begged him. He answered his father, ‘Look, I’ve served you all these years, and I never disobeyed your instruction. Yet you’ve never given me as much as a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours returned, after gobbling up your estate on prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’

Then his father said, ‘Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.’”

WORD OF LORD

Some people say you can never go back home.  Once you leave, that’s it.  You’re gone and you can’t go back to the way things once were.  You don’t get a do-over.  Nothing ever goes back to the way it once was. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotations in all of philosophy.  Heraclitus said, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man."

In the story Jesus tells, the younger son will never be the same person he was before he asked for his inheritance up front—essentially telling his father he wished he were dead—took what he thought he was owed, and squandered it all on hard living.

His relationship with his brother who stayed and carried the burden will never be the same.  Even though the father forgives everything and welcomes him home, they’re different people now.  Older, hopefully wiser, and both probably hardened a little bit by the years behind them. If nothing else, they’ve lost time between them. And time can be so precious, so important in this life; especially when its time with people we really love.

As a father myself, I worry about that sometimes - that I’m wasting the best years of my kids’ life by working too much, prioritizing the wrong things, letting them grow up too quickly.  As if I could freeze time or that they need my permission to age. Some days I try to convince myself that quality is far more important than quantity and some days that works.  Time moves quickly, the kids get older and I do too, and with each passing year it sometimes feels like we’re getting farther away from home.  They have less interest in me and more interest in their own independence.  Which is exactly how it should be but it doesn’t make it easier.

I thought about that the other day when my own dad called me and I just didn’t have the time to stop and talk to him for that long.  And I realized just how long it’d been since the man and I actually talked, like really talked.  Usually by the time its quiet and I can sit down, its 9 or 10 at night and with the time difference he’s already in bed.   It feels like we’re far from home now.

I look at my kids and wonder if I’m truly appreciating the time I have with them and I look at my parents and wonder if I make the best of the time I have with them too.  Sooner than we like and quicker than we want to admit, the chances to go home will be gone. Both time and people are precious and we never know when we’ll lose both…

Sometimes we waste time and sometimes we waste people.  It’s tempting to say we waste time on wasted people.  But isn’t that the point of the story? That when it comes to Jesus there aren’t wasted people? That no one is beyond redemption?  That the time we spend with someone who is lost and trying to find their way back home is never wasted time?

I think we all relate to the story because there’ve been times when we’ve been searching and trying to find our own ways back home.  There are times when we all feel lost or embarrassed by things we’ve done or who we’ve been or how we’ve acted. And a lot of those times if it weren’t for people trying to help us, we’d never find our way back.

In fact, some people don’t make it back home.  Sometimes we don’t let people make it back home.  Which is a shame because people are irreplaceable and we can waste a lot of valuable time holding on to resentments and past failures keeping people from home instead of allowing them in; especially if they’ve come a long way to get to our doorstep.

And as much as this story is about grace and forgiveness, it’s also about what’s truly precious—what really matters in the eyes of God. It’s not just a story about getting a second chance; it’s a story about how God sees people. What—and who—Jesus finds worth celebrating. It isn’t what we might initially think or expect. And if I’m being honest, that hasn’t always lined up with how I’ve seen people. Or how I’ve seen myself.

There was a time when I thought this parable was about one son being better than the other. I figured the message was that the younger son—the mess-up, the sinner, the one who ran off and wrecked everything—was actually more loved by God. And maybe I needed to believe that back then. I was in a place where I couldn’t imagine God having much affection for the “righteous.” I honestly thought God preferred people with a little dirt under their nails—people who didn’t always walk the straight and narrow.  And I’ve heard plenty of sermons that tell us not to be like the older brother, or sermons that paint the Pharisees as the villains. But when I really sit with this story now, I don’t think that’s the point Jesus is making.

Jesus isn’t telling the Pharisees that the sinner is more precious than the righteous, or that the wayward son is somehow better than the one who stayed. He’s not saying that what’s been lost is more valuable than what’s already there. What he’s saying is that there’s room for all of them. There’s enough to go around.

There’s enough love for the son who stayed.And enough grace to celebrate the one who came back.

Because when people are precious, you don’t give up on them. You don’t just walk away or write them off. And when time is precious—and it is—you don’t waste it holding on to old hurts or past mistakes. You use it to help people find their way home, or you celebrate because they made it there on their own.

And Jesus makes that clear with the parables he tells right before this one. You don’t stop looking for a lost sheep. You don’t shrug and move on when a coin goes missing. And you don’t do that with people either. Not if they’re precious to you. Not if they matter. And to Jesus, they do.

The road back home is hard enough already. The journey isn’t easy. And even when you get there, things won’t be exactly like they were. We don’t get to freeze time or rewind the tape. But what we do get is love. What we do get is restoration. What we do get is grace.

Going back home doesn’t mean going back to how things used to be. It means being welcomed back into a place where you are known, forgiven, and loved—no matter how far you’ve gone or how badly you’ve messed up along the way or how lost you may feel when you darken its door.

Jesus isn’t telling the Pharisees they’re bad people. He’s not saying God doesn’t love them, or that their faithfulness doesn’t matter. He’s just telling them that the same love they’ve always known—the same truth they’ve always lived—is something the “sinners” need to know, too. They deserve a chance to find what the Pharisees already have: the assurance that they are deeply, unconditionally loved.

Because you don’t go searching for what’s already been found. You go looking for what’s missing. You go looking for what you want back. And if it’s precious to you, you don’t stop looking until it’s home.

And to Jesus, we are all precious.

Sometimes we forget what’s truly precious—what actually matters in the end. But if you really want to know what someone values, ask them to show you the photos on their phone. You won’t find pictures of clean houses, perfectly organized spreadsheets, or a screenshot of their Candy Crush high score. You’ll see faces. Moments. People. A birthday. A vacation. A quiet cup of coffee with someone they love. You’ll see what we hold onto when time moves fast and life gets messy.

Because deep down, we know—what’s precious isn’t the stuff we accomplish or accumulate. It’s the people we love. The time we spend with them. The memories we make and the ones we carry. And if we’re honest, some of those people aren’t here anymore. Some of those moments are gone. Which makes what we have now—this day, this breath, this time with each other—even more sacred.

And maybe that’s the whole point of the parable: to remind us not just of who God finds precious, but to ask ourselves if we’re seeing people the same way. Are we treating the people around us like they matter? Are we helping others find their way home? Or are we so caught up in what we’ve earned, what we’ve built, or what we think we deserve, that we’re missing what matters most?

I think it’s fair to say that we all know that the people we love are precious and we all need reminders of the priority they should take for us.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that if we’re followers of Christ, if we’re supposed to have the heart of Jesus and love what God loves, and if we’re supposed to be His body acting in the world, then the question becomes are we regarding all people as precious or just the ones we want to and the ones that are like us?

Because to God each person is as precious as the ones we have pictures of on our phones and those we wish would return home.  Are we, as the church, helping other people find their way on their Journey home? Are we helping people find their way back to a place where they are restored and loved no matter how hard, how unfortunate, or badly they messed up on the Journey.

I’m not talking about starting to hand out tracts at the grocery store.  I’m not even talking about telling people about Jesus or trying to make them come to church.  What I am asking is do we show deep, human concern for the well-being, safety, and fulfillment of each of God’s children?  Are we trying to find what is lost inside of people?  Are we practicing the kind of compassion, forgiveness, and love that the Father shows to both of his boys by truly showing people that when it comes to God, when it comes to love and grace there’s always enough to go around? Or do we only worry about what we already have?  Because what Jesus seems to be saying is that what’s precious, what’s of value is all of it - the sinner and the saint, the wayward and the obedient, the lost and the found, the homeward bound and the wandering soul.  Do we sit and eat with the sinner or do we wonder why Jesus would even bother?

The truth of these stories isn’t that lost things or broken people are more loved by God. It’s that everyone—the faithful and the wandering, the steady and the struggling—has deep, intrinsic worth in the eyes of God. And that truth calls something out of us as the Church. It challenges us to see each person as precious—not because of what they’ve done or haven’t done, but because they belong to God. No one is more valuable. No one is less. The journey back—back to connection, back to grace—is hard enough without us standing in the way. Our job isn’t to sort people out. It’s to help them find their way back, and to celebrate when they do.

Because really, that’s what this has all been about today: seeing clearly what’s truly precious. We've talked about people, time, forgiveness, and the grace that meets us when we least deserve it.

So the real question—the one this story places in our hands—is this: if we say people are precious, do we actually treat them that way? Do we live like there’s enough grace to go around? Do we make space for someone else’s return, or do we quietly decide who’s worth the effort and who isn’t? Are we helping others find their way home, or standing at the doorway with our arms crossed?

And now we come to this table—a place where all of those things come together. A place where we remember that in God’s eyes, every single one of us is worthy of love, of welcome, and of joy.

And maybe that's exactly what makes this table so special. Because Communion is a reminder that no matter how far we've wandered, no matter how much we've messed up, or how distant we've felt from home, there's always a place set for us here. This table says there's enough grace to go around for everyone—for the younger sons who've messed things up and the older siblings who feel overlooked; for those who feel close to God and those who wonder if they're still welcomed.

Jesus invites us not because we've earned it or because we’ve somehow gotten life exactly right, but simply because we are precious to Him, and He longs to have us close. This table is about coming home, again and again, into God's welcoming arms.

So whoever you are, wherever you've been, whatever your story looks like right now, come. You’re invited to come home to this table, to taste God's goodness, to remember you're never alone, and to know—deep down—that you're precious and loved exactly as you are.