The Missing Ending

But how do you get holy? Nobody gets holy by being better than other people. We get holy by going to the author of the story. Only Jesus can make sinners holy. And notorious sinners or pretty cleaned up sinners, they're all sinners. And all of them get clean by going to Jesus. Get holy by going to Jesus. All of us need Jesus. Glenda needs Jesus and Elphaba needs Jesus. Pharisees need Jesus. Tax collectors need Jesus. Older brothers need Jesus. Younger brothers need Jesus.

You know, one of my sad things about being a pastor in the South is, we say all the time, hey, your badness cannot keep you from Jesus. But often, goodness keeps lots of people from Jesus.

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This is Christ the King's sermons. Christ the King's sermons is ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.

We're going to read from page 908, verses one through two, and then verses 11 through 32. Would you join your voices with me as we read God's word?

Now, the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him and the Pharisees and the scribes murmured saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." And he said, "There was a man who had two sons and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me,' and he divided his living between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed swine, and he gladly would have fed on the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he had come to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger. I will rise 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."' And then he rose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion and ran, embraced him, and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry. For this son is dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.' And they began to make merry. Now his elder son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant. And he said to him, 'Your brother has come and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has received him safe and sound.' But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, 'Lo, these many years I have served you and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a kid that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf.' And he said to him, 'Son, you're always with me and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad. For this your brother was old and is alive. He was lost and is found.'" — Luke 15:1-2, 11-32

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

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I'm a noob at Wicked and all the things related to Wicked. So I'm going to mess up this sermon introduction and all of you die-hard Wicked fans just cut me a little slack this morning. This is all new to me, but my family saw Wicked over Christmas like many people and the first half of this really long thing. It picks up where the Wizard of Oz left off and so the whole movie begins, I assume the play does too, with this celebration. Glenda the good witch comes and announces to the Munchkins that the Wicked Witch of the West is dead. Sorry, the Wicked Witch of the East. Right? And they begin to sing this song. There's a big production number breaking out into singing and dancing. "No one mourns the wicked." Am I right?

And some of you are checking me on this. So the opener makes me think of this story. It makes me think of where we are in the prodigal son story. Now, as I said, we're week four out of five weeks and we've gone through all the parts with the dad and the son, the younger son asking for the inheritance and running off and the reconciliation.

And today we're going to look at the older son and the last half of this parable. This is the climax of the story. And I wonder as you picture, if you could picture in your head, here's the older son and he's coming back to the house and he could hear the music and the dancing. And I wonder if he thought this is no one warns the wicked. Because I wonder if he thought they're celebrating because finally this jerk, he's died. He's gotten what he deserved. I wonder if he thought that they were celebrating. Here's this younger brother who publicly shamed his father, who impoverished his family, who became a pariah in the eyes of the whole community and we've just gotten word he has suffered in the famine that he deserves and now we party because he, the wicked, no one warns the wicked. I wonder if that's what was going through his head because he's the Glenda of this story. He's the good witch. He's the good son. He's the one who stayed around and did what he was supposed to do. He was obedient. He obeyed all the rules and can you imagine his utter shock when he finds out what actually happened? That as he draws near the house, he understands that the wicked son's return has been celebrated? That there's been a fat calf killed and a huge community-wide celebration for this scoundrel? And the outrage, the anger.

Here's my outline for us today if you take notes. The other lost son, number one. Two, that other time that dad ran, and number three, the missing ending.

Now remember the audience of the story. We read it at the very beginning together when we read that out loud. Jesus is telling this parable not just to a general crowd. He's telling it to a specific group of people. He's telling it to the religious leaders. The good people. These were a group of people who would have fit in at any church. Pharisees, we like to kind of if you've been around church, we sort of make fun of Pharisees or belittle them. They were people who really knew the Bible. They were really serious about their faith. They were really regular in worship. These were good people and yet these Pharisees were trying to make a distinction, to emphasize the difference between themselves and the so-called sinners, the notorious sinners. They would have loved Glenda. They would have hated the wicked witch. They would have sung along with no one mourns the wicked. Right? Because this is what they thought and this is what many people think. Holy people should not hang out with sinful people. The way that you're holy is by avoiding a lot of contact, spending a lot of time with sinners. That's the way you're holy. And they were emphasizing that difference. That's what's going on with the story.

And so Jesus tells this parable as a story with a twist. Are you all familiar with the movie director and writer M. Night Shyamalan? Shyamalan is a movie producer and director who's done a lot of movies and they're all kind of similar in one way. Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village, The Trap, Watchers—they all, you're going along watching the movie and then toward the end, there's a twist that reinterprets the entire movie before that and what you thought you were watching suddenly has been flipped upside down. That's kind of how his movies all work and there's an M. Night Shyamalan moment in the prodigal son story because what we realize reading this is it's not one lost son. You know, the headings in your Bible, the prodigal son, for example, if you read this in your Bible, those were added centuries later. They're not part of Jesus', they're not part of the text. They're not how Jesus told the story. Here's my story, the prodigal son. Now this has been added later and it's a misnomer because we find the twist in the story is that there are two lost boys in the story. One is lost out there in the world, the other is lost in here at home.

Danny, our worship director preached last week and we studied the parable of the lost coin and he made this point of it's very possible to be lost inside the family of God, inside the church. You can see this if you look at this text. It's funny because the way it reads, there are seven verses around the lostness of the younger brother and then there's seven verses around the lostness of the older brother and Jesus seems to be setting them up like two lost, both lost. He's setting up the story to emphasize not the difference. The Pharisees wanted to emphasize the difference between themselves and the sinners. Jesus tells the story to emphasize the sameness. The sameness between the good and the bad. Between the Glendas and the Elphabas in the world.

Let's contrast these. Both boys in this story want a life without the father. Did you notice that?

We talked about this over the last couple weeks and when the younger son comes to his father and says, "Father, divide the estate between us," he's in effect saying, "Father, I wish that you were dead today, that we were dividing up your property today. I wish you were dead." It's a deep insult and this is what we've been saying: sin is not doing bad things. It's not wasting money. It's not being a person who is frivolous and uncaring. That's not the big thing. Sin is trying to make a life in this world apart from God. That's what the younger son wants. A life in this world, at home in this world apart from God.

But doesn't the older brother want the same thing? Doesn't he actually want the same thing? You look at his words later on and it looks like he views his dad as a source of gifts and he also can't wait until daddy is dead. "All this will be mine. I can do whatever I want. I can have a party with my friends. I can do things the way that I want to."

Now, after each of these comparisons, I'm gonna ask you the same question. Isn't this like those of us who spend a lot of time in the church? Isn't this just like us? I mean, what about you? Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if it would be better off without God in it? You know, being a believer is actually holding you back on enjoying life. That there would be more freedom and more guiltless existence apart from God. Do you ever wonder that?

Both Boys Shame Their Father

The both boys shame their father. It's interesting. Both boys shame the father. Now, the younger son's request to divide the property—this would have been very public. Small Middle Eastern village. Everybody knows everybody. Dad goes and executes a short sale, really quick, to sell off animals. He sells off his property very quickly. Who does he sell them to? There's no people coming from New York to buy this property. This is other villagers. Everybody would know. This is public and it's shameful. The father is shamed in doing this and distributing his property.

But the older son, he shames his dad as well. In fact, he does it two times in this passage. The first time, he comes back to the house and he hears what's going on. There's a party going on inside and his father begs him to come in and he says no. His father has to go out of the party. He has to leave the party and go outside to entreat his older son. Now, in that day, the older son would have been viewed as the head maître d' of this whole gathering. He was expected to make sure that there was plenty of wine, that people had enough to eat, that they sat where they wanted to, and that everything went well. And here's the son, the older son, who is refusing. I'm sure somebody was sent outside: "Go get him." He probably doesn't know what's happening. And he refuses to come and everybody knows. So suddenly in this party, there's a pause. Suddenly, the music stops. There's that awkward silence you can feel in groups when you know something's going down and it is not good and everybody can hear. They didn't have double-paned windows. Everybody could hear what's happening outside.

And that's when the younger son shames his dad again—the second time. Because this is how you greet your father in Middle Eastern greetings in first century Hebrew culture: "O father." There was a title of respect. He speaks to his dad like a peer or somebody beneath him. "How dare you, dad?" You could almost hear the people inside gasp. Nobody talks to their dad this way. It's in public. Isn't this also like so many of us who've spent time in church? Are you frustrated with God? You look around and other people have more than you do and you've done all the things. You know, more of the good life, more blessings, more vacations, more gifts, more happiness, more great trips, better bodies, happier kids, a kid, happier spouses, happier marriages, a spouse, a marriage. I mean, can we be honest in church? This fits us. Aren't you sick of God's leftovers? Can you feel a little of this? He's holding it out on you.

Both Boys Have a Servant-Master Relationship with God

Third, both boys have this kind of servant-master relationship with God as their operating paradigm. We talked about this before. The younger son, he has a speech. He rehearses as he's making his way back home to interact with his father. He has a speech in his head:

Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me a hired hand.

Make me a hired hand. And it reflects what he's always thought about his father. This relationship has always been master-servant. There's not been a whole lot of warmth in the younger son's heart toward his dad.

But isn't the older brother's speech the same? He comes in and as he has his conversation with dad outside the party, he said, "All these years, I've done what? Served you." Master-servant yet again. All I've done is serve you.

He's been living under the same assumption, the same cold heartedness. He doesn't understand the father. He doesn't understand him at all. The same master servant paradigm like so many of us. Let me ask you a question. Are you tired? I don't mean just tired like you didn't nap this afternoon. There's a lot of y'all who need that and I know. I'm with you. But tired of serving and tired of giving, tired of being relied on, tired of church, tired of being faithful, tired of being dependable, tired of sermons. Tired of the Christian life, tired of being in church. Are you tired? Nobody else is honest with you this morning. Just me. Okay. That's alright. That's good.

Both Sons Reject the Family

Next one, both boys don't care anything about the family. You could tell this in the words that the son uses to describe his family. Now we can tell this with the younger son. He runs off and leaves home. He doesn't care that in leaving home he impoverishes everybody. That's nobody had liquid assets. They had to sell a bunch of stuff and impoverished the family very quickly. But the older son does the same thing. I don't care about this family. You throw a party for this son of yours. This is no longer his—my brother. It's this son. He reads himself out of the family. He despises the family. He says, all this time I've slayed for you and you never have given me a goat.

In this passage we read a kid that's not about a child, that's about a goat. I know it's distracting in this part because many of us are big fans of goat meat but I want to make sure that you get this part of the story. So all this time you've never let me celebrate with the people that matter the most to me, which by the way aren't my family. They're my friends. Just so you know, dad. Just want to make sure you are aware.

I mean, like so many of us, isn't it? You spent time in church, aren't you kinda tired of the family of God? Am I supposed to say that as a pastor? Aren't you kinda tired of Christians? Do you ever get tired of Christians? You know, I always want something for me for a change. Is that too much to ask?

The Same Sinful Desires

Both boys have the same sinful desires for wild living. Only one of them is bold enough to do it. That's what really separates them in the story. You notice how the older brother's speech, he outs himself? I love this part of the story. So he outs himself. He traps himself by showing off his own imagination.

So let's think about this. Where did he get the intel that his brother had been going to see harlots? Nowhere. Nobody told him that. What is he doing? He is projecting his own imagination for what I would do with that money onto his little brother and what little brother had done. Yikes. He's not telling on his brother, he's telling on himself at this moment. He's telling dad this is what's really in my heart. This is what I really wish I was doing.

What separates these two brothers? Both are sinners. One's bold. One goes in and executes on the plan. The other wishes he did. But on the inside the same, isn't this like so many of us who've spent our whole lives in the church? The only difference between bold sinners and timid sinners is follow through. That's all it is. A lack of brazenness. I'm not bold enough to go do that but it's in my heart. You feel that?

The Father's Shocking Generosity

Finally, both sons are shocked by the father's generosity. They just don't get it. Either of them. Neither of them get the generosity of the father. The father's grace. He runs. He kisses. He embraces. He clothes. He kills the fatted calf. And the younger son is shocked by this. And the older son is shocked by this. Completely shocked. And he doesn't understand either.

The older son's like—the younger son's like, what is going on? The older son's like, banquet? This is a banquet and memorial to my little brother's sin? No. It's a banquet and memorial to the incredible love of the father. That's what's being demonstrated.

There's this comedian named Sarah Silverman and she has a bit called "Religion is Crazy." I love this. Here's what she says. Christianity is super old but it's absolutely crazy. Christianity says that you're born a sinner and by being born a sinner, you're going to hell but you can just apologize and you're going to heaven. No big deal. If you're a murderer, same thing. You just apologize and go to heaven. You could be Hitler and go to confession and say, forgive me, father. I killed 6,000,000 Jews. The priest would just go like, no problem. Just say 10 Hail Marys and Hitler goes to heaven. Hitler goes to heaven. You can hear her being incensed by that. You could tell she's really wrestling.

She's right. This is the scandal of grace. This is the scandal of grace for younger brothers. God is this crazy. He is this good.

The scandal of his grace—and because of it, the older brother is consumed with envy and bitterness and sarcasm and anger and resentment, self-centeredness, and hatred and stinginess and self-satisfaction and self-deception. I mean, all that comes pouring out.

Look, if you are a church attender, if you've regularly been to church—and y'all look like you have because you know what to do. Stand up at the right times and sit down and sing and all that. So if you can't relate this morning, if you can't relate to the older brother, I need you all to do this, okay? We're all going to take out our left hand. Stick it out like this. Come on. Take your right hand like this. Alright. So we're going to put this right here. Is the heart beating? Can you feel anything? Should be able to feel a little bump. Boop, boop, boop, boop. Okay. Good. Because they're no different.

The commentator Kenneth Bailey says about this passage—and he's quoting an Arabic proverb—he says this: "Each one of them is worse than the other." Each one of them, the two brothers—one's a rebel, the other is a faithful, obedient son. They have one thing in common. Neither of them get the father at all, and they've hurt him so deeply. And the father is so gracious. The father's love reaches out to both of them.

That Other Time Dad Came Running

When the younger brother starts for home, we talked about this over and over. Dad comes running. Pulls up his toga and takes off—probably the first time he's run in twenty-five to thirty years. Patriarchs don't do this.

That other time dad comes running, he runs out in the yard and he doesn't come to chew him out, the older brother. He doesn't come to punish him or scold or even—what's our phrase?—come to Jesus moment? Such a misnomer because the father does just the opposite. He comes to him and says, "my son."

Now that's maybe not shocking to you. That word "son" has already been used eight times in this passage, but in the Greek it's not the same word. Over and over, it's been the word son—S-O-N, generic word for child, male child. But not this time. This time when the father addresses his older son, he uses a different word. Not huios, but tekhnon—which means "little child," "dear one." It's a term of incredible affection. Apple of my eye, heart of my heart. Some of you have these phrases in your families. Some of you have like pet names that people call each other. It's that kind of term of affection. It's that kind of beloved son, my pride and joy.

You know, this is the scandal of grace for older brothers. This is the scandal of grace for older brothers. This is the heart of God for you. And I know you don't believe it. I know you don't. I don't either. My best days I do. It fills my heart with joy, but there's so many days I walk around like it's all about me. But this is the father. He can't resist you.

Have you ever heard of the "you idiot" test for reading the Bible? Here's how the you idiot test works. When you read the Bible and you're reading a long passage and you could fill in the word "you idiot" and it would sound the same to your heart, you know you're reading it wrong—because that's not how God talks to his kids. But it would be easy to listen to the story and think that this is how the father is talking to the older son.

The father's speech would go like this: "You idiot, you're always with me. All that's mine is yours, you idiot. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, you idiot, because your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found, you idiot."

Right? Now if you're reading the Bible that way—and I don't care if it's even the hard passages—you are reading it wrong. Because God is not like that. That is not how he speaks to his kids.

How would you imagine your heavenly Father would talk to you today? Voice full of disappointment, condemning, "You messed up again," shaking his head, "you idiot." It's not how the Father speaks. It's not who he is. This is his heart toward you. Fellow older brothers, this is us. This is what God is like.

The Missing Ending

Do you notice that the story doesn't actually end? Jesus is telling a fictional story and he tells it on purpose not to finish. No ending. It ends abruptly. It ends on a cliffhanger.

What will the older brother decide to do? We left the story with him out in the field. Is he going to come back in? Is he going to receive the father's invitation? Is he going to experience what God is like? You know, we don't know because the story is intentionally an invitation to older brothers, to Pharisees, to Glendas, to good people.

He loves you even when you're too proud to receive his grace. He stands ready to receive you even when you're stubborn and resisting him. This is the heart of God.

How will you finish the story?

Let's go back to Wicked. You know, as the munchkins are celebrating in the movie and they're singing, "No one mourns the wicked."

The camera pans in at several points on Glenda and as you watch this, Cece Robinson pointed this out to me. I'm gonna give her a little credit for this this morning. Glenda's not totally in on the celebration. They're all like, whoo, and she's like sort of singing along, but at the same time you can tell there's some kind of inner conflict going on inside of her. Because she knows she's not really the good witch, and Elphaba, her former friend, is not really the wicked witch. It's more complicated than that. It's sad.

Christians love to boycott things, and I found that Christians are boycotting this movie. This is really bad because it's tearing down our definitions of good and evil and they're all kind of becoming the same. I'm sorry, Christians. We've missed it if that's all we got from this because the point of this movie is in many ways the point of the story. It's all about perception and reality because Elphaba is not as wicked as everybody wants to believe and Glenda sure isn't as good as everybody likes to believe. The Wizard of Oz surely isn't really a wizard. No one mourns the wicked. It's about perception and reality. What's really real?

Remember the Pharisees? What they believed was that they were different than the sinners. They were different from others. That being holy was not about doing bad things and not being around bad people and that's what makes you holy. It's that very thinking that makes Christians into sin police in the lives of other people. It's the worst version of Christians.

Does Jesus care about holiness? Yes, he does. Does Jesus want every person here to be holy? Yes, he does. Does Jesus want everybody to be holy? Yes, he does. But how do you get holy? Nobody gets holy by being better than other people. We get holy by going to the author of the story. Only Jesus can make sinners holy and notorious sinners or pretty cleaned up sinners, they're all sinners and all of them get clean by going to Jesus. Get holy by going to Jesus.

All of us need Jesus. Glenda needs Jesus and Elphaba needs Jesus. Pharisees need Jesus. Tax collectors need Jesus. Older brothers need Jesus. Younger brothers need Jesus.

One of my sad things about being a pastor in the South is, you know, of course, we say all the time, hey, your badness cannot keep you from Jesus. But often, goodness keeps lots of people from Jesus. Trust in who we are and that we're good people and we pay our taxes and gosh darn it, we recycle. We vote. We do all the things. So many people won't come to Jesus because they don't think they need him. We'd rather stand outside.

What are you gonna do with this story today? Will you come to him? Will you come to the father? We don't need the story one time. We need the story every day, over and over and over again because we forget it. God's really not for me. I'm really tired. I'm sick of Christians. Something for me for once. Wouldn't it be nice to be free? That's where our hearts live.

I don't know about you, man. I need this story. I need this father and I need this grace. So do you.

Let's pray together. Father, give us courage today to finish the story, to believe what is hard for us to believe, that you are this kind of father and that you love notorious sinners and you love cleaned up sinners. You love bold sinners and timid sinners. Father, give us the hope to take a step today toward you. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.

Thank you for listening to today's sermon. If you have questions about our content or if you want to engage more deeply with our church, visit our website at ctkrally.org. This has been Christ the King Sermons, a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.