The Parable of the Three Sons

the Reverend Scott Homer
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—Amen

The Middle East has an arid climate. There is little rainfall. The land is dry and rocky. Only the most drought resistant plants survive. Attempts to cultivate the land and grow crops require great effort and substantial good fortune. If the rains do not come, there will be no crop. If there is no crop there is no food. And if there is no food there is no life. So it should come as no surprise that in the scriptures “water” is a common metaphor for life—no water, no life—abundant water, abundant life. Water is even used to describe eternal life.

In Zechariah 14.5—8, the prophet speaks of the time when messiah will come. He declares, “Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. On that day there will be no light, no cold or frost. It will be a unique day, without daytime or nighttime—a day known to the LORD. When evening comes, there will be light. On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, in summer and in winter.”

The prophet foretells the day when life will no longer ebb away from us little by little, but a new day, a day of everlasting light and eternal life will flow, like a river of “living water.” It will flow out from Jerusalem in both directions. It will flow in season and out of season.

In the gospel of John chapter 7, verse 38, Jesus declares, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
Jesus claims the prophecy for himself. He claims that, the “Lord your God has come,” just as Zechariah had promised. Jesus says, “I am he. And those of you who believe in me will know eternal life flowing through you.”

Do you know how good water can taste? I don’t mean Perrier or Pellegrino with their happy, teasing bubbles. And I don’t mean Aquafina, Dasani or Evian with their attractive packaging. What I am asking is have you ever realized that plain ordinary H2O is the greatest taste in the world? If you have never been thirsty, you have no idea what I’m talking about. If you have grown up in the city, in a house with three to ten water faucets, with bottled water at every corner store, and water fountains at work and school, then you may have never experienced true thirst. And if you have never experienced true thirst you may be of the opinion that water is just plain and bland. You may wonder, what’s to like? And, given an option, you probably choose to drink coca-cola or ice tea or maybe even a glass of wine over plain old water.

But if you know what it means to be truly thirsty you know that it is not a happy experience. Maybe you have walked down a long hot trail, or gone for a very long run; or maybe you’ve gone to a remote beach somewhere and forgotten to take anything to drink along with you. If you have experienced true thirst you know what it feels like when your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth, and your mouth feels like cotton, and you can’t sweat because there’s no moisture left in you, so you start to run a fever, and your lips are all chapped and splitting—and yet there is still no water in sight—and you realize you could die of thirst. If you’ve ever been truly thirsty then you know how good water tastes! When you are truly thirsty you don’t drink daintily from a glass. You get grabby. You don’t sip. You guzzle. You act like a drunk under a bridge getting his first drink of the day. You relish the cool slippery liquid sliding down your throat. You lick you cracked lips and rejoice at the refreshment it brings. A glass of wine won’t do it. You might put up with a soda or an iced tea but when you are bone dry thirsty—cool, pure water is the only thing that truly satisfies!

And that drink of water doesn’t just quench your thirst; it allows you to live on. It doesn’t just wet your whistle. It saves your life.

On Ash Wednesday as we placed ashes on your forehead we said, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” and, in fact, the deciding difference between flesh and blood and dust and ashes is water. When you are dried up, when you are truly thirsty, nothing in all the world can substitute for water. But plain old water is not enough. In physical terms, even if we can escape disease and injury, even if we manage to stay healthy late into life, even if we enjoy all the necessities of life our days will eventually come to an end. So, if we are going to survive for the long run, that is beyond our appointed years here on earth, there is going to have to be some other source of life, something even more essential than water. What we need to obtain eternal life is what Zechariah called, “living water.” We need a spring of living water welling up within us and flowing through us. If we hope to last we need eternal life…and for eternal life we need Jesus Christ because he is the sole source of that living water.

Now let’s turn to our gospel reading for today. In Luke chapter 15, verse 32, at the very end of our reading, the Father confirms to his elder son that the important thing is fellowship with the Father. He says, “We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” The prodigal son was faced with death but that did not occur when he realized he was starving. It happened long before then. The Prodigal son began to die when he broke fellowship with the Father. After that his life was a downward spiral. And he was not revived when the Father fed him. He was revived when the Father embraced him. Reunion with the Father restored his life.

This is the lesson we learn from the younger son. We will not discover living water—we will not find fulfillment apart from the Father. We think we will. We think that as we venture out on our own journey we will stumble upon something life-giving, but nothing we discover will quench our thirst. We can take the gifts that God has given us—our inheritance—and we can squander all those gifts on a million pleasures, countless things of beauty, sensual gratification galore and we will find ourselves emptier than when we began. “Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink” Ask any addict. They will tell you that the more they used the less satisfying it became. More and more meant less and less. We can insist on denying that our Father is wiser than us. We can ignore the necessity of living in relationship with God but without him we will always fail.

We can continue running from God as long as we like. All it will ever accomplish is to lead us to the point of death and despair. It always does. The drunk living under the bridge is no worse off than the obsessive compulsive business executive with his two martini lunches. The anxiety driven mom who is ready to lose it at any moment is only one step away from the woman inmate who stepped over the line in a fit of anger. Whether you are ignoring God’s plain call for you to do ministry or whether you are grudgingly serving on ten committees at church, it is no different. Pursuing our own path, demanding life on our terms always leads us into the desert of despair. We always discover we are eating and drinking out of a pig trough. There’s no water there and unless we are able to find enough humility to turn around and return to the Lord we will surely die there. That’s what happened to the likes of Anna Nicole Smith, Howard Hughes, Keith Ledger, and Kurt Cobain. In a shockingly literal way, it was what happened to Bp. James Pike who abandoned the traditional teachings of the church. He was the darling of the liberal church. He enjoyed an international reputation. There was water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. In the end he died of thirst—literally, lost in the Judean desert, not very far from the place where Jesus—the Lord he so openly and unashamedly denied—was crucified. He was so close to his Salvation and yet he was light years away because he was not willing to humble himself. (that remains the great danger facing our churches today)

And this is the lesson of the older son. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” All over the world today there are Christians living miserable, unhappy, legalistic lives. We work too hard. We are constantly striving to “do God’s will” but we try too hard—our obsession with being good Christians betrays a real lack of trust. While we claim to surrender to God’s plan we insist on God being intolerant, bossy, and condemning. Emotionally, many of us have decided to cover up our depression or our anger, or any other negative thoughts or feelings, because we fear that no true Christian is permitted to feel that way. We know all the right things to say and do. We look so good on Sunday morning. We drive ourselves daily, trying to prove our love for Jesus. But we can’t find any joy. There is no peace. We don’t seem able to grasp the fact that God loves us without condition. We desperately need to accept the fact that God wants to set us free. God does not seek to punish us. He has, in fact, wiped the slate clean. The sins of our past are forgiven and forgotten. Our future is debt free. We don’t seem able to conceive of a God who could simply take delight in forgiveness. There always has to be a “yea but”—some catch—something else we must do to qualify. And many of us are deeply offended—never publicly of course—but deeply offended when God’s grace and freedom shines in the life of some wretched sinner. We will not—will not—celebrate in God’s forgiveness. We refuse to join in God’s celebration. We have never come to understand that true freedom is the goal of “salvation” and “forgiveness.” It is the joyous work of God—it is the only reason for the party…and so we trudge along wondering when the drudgery will end—questioning whether in the end our merits will outweigh their demerits. We spend our whole lives thirsty while a vast ocean of pure living water runs right through the middle of their lives. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make us drink.

Now I don’t usually title my sermons—the Presbyterians always wanted to know the title of my next sermon but Episcopalians just don’t even ask. But if a Presbyterian were to ask me for the title of today’s sermon it would be, “The Parable of the Three Sons,” because there is a third Son in our story this morning. The third son is the only begotten Son, the Son telling the story. Jesus paints a picture of a loving, forgiving Father and his two wayward sons for a reason. He is answering a complaint. Jesus had been accused of acting contrary to God’s will. At the beginning of chapter 15 St. Luke tells us that “…the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear [Jesus]. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." We are told that “they muttered”—and muttering is not good. Muttering destroys lives and ruins ministries. They were muttering that if Jesus was God’s anointed one, as he claimed to be, then he should be hanging around with the righteous people and insisting that the sinful be punished. And since Jesus was doing the opposite Jesus must be opposed to God’s purposes.

Jesus’ answer is that this third Son, this Son that is telling the tale, is different than the rest. This third Son is not running from the Father’s will like the prodigal did and like sinners always do. Neither was He leaving brother sinners in despair nor self-righteously insisting that they be forever punished. No, this Son who is telling the story is different. He desires what his Father desires. He rejoices in bringing the dead to life—he delights in finding the lost—he loves to set sinners free—just like the Father. And neither he nor his Father waits for sinners to clean up their act and show proper penance. Instead, as soon as they see the sinners coming, while they are still a long way off, the Father and the true Son run out to meet them. This third Son is just like the Father. In fact, when you look at the Son you see the Father. And this Son does not act on his own authority. Rather He does the will of the one who sent him. It is the Father’s will that sinners be saved. It is Jesus’ will too. The Father is devoted to compassion and forgiveness. The Son is too. In fact, Jesus has come for the very purpose of opening the door for compassion and forgiveness. He came to save sinners, people who look and act just like us, people who have spent their whole lives fighting to get away from God and people who have been refusing God’s gracious gift and insisting upon justice; all the younger sons and the older sons who ever lived, Jesus has come to save.

That is the sole reason the Son came down from heaven. It was the Father’s desire that springs of living water would flow out from Jerusalem, to the east and to the west, for all time. Generation after generation thirsty, lost sinners, have quenched their spiritual thirst from the spring of living water that flows from Jesus’ self-sacrificing wounds. We have been refreshed and we have been restored through faith in Jesus Christ.

Every time someone drinks from that stream there is rejoicing in heaven—and so God’s banquet, his party for saved sinners continues uninterrupted to this day.
Some of you have been wasting your time searching for refreshment everywhere but in Jesus. You can’t understand why you keep getting beat up by life—when will you return to the Lord? Others of you have been hard-hearted Christians for years. You mean well, you try harder than the rest, but you are desperate for refreshment.—when will you let go and let God?

Before his son ever got to the father, the father jumped up and ran to them. It is as if he was watching and waiting for a glimpse of them. He is watching and waiting for a glimpse of you too. He has been watching and waiting for a long time, longing to see you, longing for you to come into the banquet. He longs to embrace you and to set you free. He longs to give you a drink from the stream of living water—a drink so refreshing that everything else pales into insignificance. Have you ever been really thirsty? If you have you know how good the living water tastes. Amen.