James T. Cleland - "A Lost Boy" (January 20, 1963)
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| (soft music) | 0:11 | |
| - | Let us pray. | 0:45 |
| Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 0:47 | |
| be acceptable in thy sight, | 0:52 | |
| oh, Lord our strength and our redeemer, amen. | 0:55 | |
| If we were asked to decide what passages | 1:10 | |
| are central, basic in the teachings of Jesus, | 1:14 | |
| it would be almost impossible for us | 1:20 | |
| to come up with a unanimous answer. | 1:23 | |
| But two parables would ask for a hearing. | 1:27 | |
| The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, and rightly so. | 1:33 | |
| And yet, in all my ministry, I have preached on neither. | 1:41 | |
| It's high time that I did, for time is running out on me. | 1:49 | |
| And I now plan to remedy the situation | 1:55 | |
| regarding one of them. | 1:58 | |
| The Prodigal Son. | 2:01 | |
| It can be dealt with from many angles. | 2:04 | |
| There is a Scottish poem which actually considers | 2:09 | |
| the parable from the point of view of the fatted calf. | 2:14 | |
| The poem is unusual rather than theological | 2:20 | |
| in its perspective. | 2:23 | |
| Now, it will take three or maybe four sermons | 2:26 | |
| to do justice to this parable, | 2:30 | |
| this superbly told piece of teaching. | 2:33 | |
| Today we should look together at the younger brother. | 2:39 | |
| It's the tale of a boy, | 2:44 | |
| or for that matter, of a girl growing up. | 2:47 | |
| The story opens with a demand | 2:53 | |
| made by the younger son on his father, | 2:55 | |
| a demand which was granted. | 2:59 | |
| There once was a man who had two sons. | 3:04 | |
| The younger said to his father, | 3:08 | |
| "Father, give me my share of the property." | 3:10 | |
| So he divided his estate between them. | 3:17 | |
| Few days later, | 3:21 | |
| the younger son turned the whole of his share into cash, | 3:23 | |
| and left home for a distant country. | 3:27 | |
| A Jewish boy has come of age, around 18, | 3:33 | |
| of age to receive his inheritance. | 3:38 | |
| Father consented, the boy left home. | 3:42 | |
| What was the boy after? | 3:48 | |
| Freedom, freedom as he understood it. | 3:51 | |
| To be able to do what he wanted | 3:57 | |
| when and where and how he wanted to do it. | 4:00 | |
| He probably felt restricted at home. | 4:07 | |
| Why shouldn't he be his own boss? | 4:09 | |
| He was a true son of Adam. | 4:13 | |
| The father agreed. | 4:16 | |
| We aren't told what the father felt | 4:18 | |
| about the whole business. | 4:20 | |
| Hurt, worried, baffled, glad. | 4:23 | |
| He just cooperated. | 4:30 | |
| There's something admirable about his concurrence. | 4:32 | |
| His boy is desirous of becoming a man. | 4:37 | |
| Desire is in line with physical development. | 4:41 | |
| The father concurred his was no possessive love. | 4:46 | |
| His love did not imprison. | 4:52 | |
| Set free. | 4:55 | |
| A year or two ago, | 4:58 | |
| I visited a girl at whose wedding I had officiated. | 4:59 | |
| She had given birth to her first born son, | 5:05 | |
| three hours before. | 5:09 | |
| Mother and son were in the same room | 5:12 | |
| over in the Duke Hospital. | 5:15 | |
| In the name of God, I blessed the child | 5:18 | |
| and then I had a talk with the young mother. | 5:22 | |
| Her first words startled me. | 5:25 | |
| They were, "Well, I've lost him." | 5:29 | |
| Puzzled, I asked her what she meant. | 5:35 | |
| With a quiet resignation she answered, | 5:38 | |
| "I had him for nine months. | 5:41 | |
| Now he is a person in his own right. | 5:45 | |
| I'll help him. | 5:50 | |
| But I hope I never forget | 5:53 | |
| that he is a person in his own right." | 5:56 | |
| That's maturity for you. | 6:01 | |
| She is the kind of person who would have understood | 6:05 | |
| both the father and the younger son. | 6:08 | |
| Real love is not possessive. | 6:12 | |
| It is cooperative. | 6:16 | |
| It does not claim, it emancipates. | 6:19 | |
| But the younger son is a person with claims. | 6:27 | |
| You members of the student body | 6:32 | |
| may well grin with agreement. | 6:33 | |
| Unlimited cuts, late privileges at any old time, | 6:37 | |
| parking spaces anywhere, everywhere, | 6:45 | |
| but not all things are built | 6:50 | |
| like the father of the prodigal, | 6:53 | |
| neither are all fathers. | 6:57 | |
| So the boy left home, just like you. | 7:01 | |
| What did he do? | 7:05 | |
| He went away to a far country, | 7:06 | |
| Alexandria, Athens, | 7:09 | |
| Babylon, Rome, somewhere, | 7:13 | |
| and there he behaved | 7:20 | |
| as many young people do away from home. | 7:21 | |
| He squandered his inheritance in reckless living. | 7:26 | |
| Dean Gordon of the Princeton chapel | 7:31 | |
| suggests that he spent his money on fast women, | 7:33 | |
| slow horses, feasting, and drinking. | 7:37 | |
| Well, he had what he believed to be the kind of good time | 7:42 | |
| that freedom demanded. | 7:47 | |
| If freedom can demand. | 7:51 | |
| He must've been quite a bit of a lad, | 7:54 | |
| for reports reached home. | 7:56 | |
| His big brother didn't like it. | 7:59 | |
| With a shake of his head, | 8:02 | |
| he commented to his father about this son of yours | 8:03 | |
| running through your money with his women. | 8:08 | |
| Now, you can understand it, members of the student body. | 8:15 | |
| You may not go quite his length, | 8:21 | |
| but you know the life anarchy | 8:25 | |
| of sporadic adolescent freedom, | 8:29 | |
| firecrackers in Coke bottles, spring vacation in Florida. | 8:33 | |
| Beer, more beer, and noise, especially noise. | 8:41 | |
| C. S. Lewis, I think, once remarked | 8:50 | |
| that the distinguishing feature of hell is noise. | 8:52 | |
| Perpetual noise. | 8:59 | |
| Well, you have a wee hell of your own | 9:03 | |
| in the dormitories on West Campus. | 9:07 | |
| I don't know about East, | 9:11 | |
| though I imagine there that the noise is piercing, shrill, | 9:14 | |
| rather than uproarious. | 9:20 | |
| This is freedom. | 9:22 | |
| Three hearty cheers for all younger sons and daughters. | 9:24 | |
| But the prodigal was unluckier or stupider | 9:32 | |
| or less uninhibited than most of us. | 9:38 | |
| He nose-dived. He crashed. | 9:43 | |
| He squandered his inheritance in reckless living. | 9:51 | |
| He'd spent it all when a severe famine | 9:56 | |
| fell upon that country and he began to feel the pinch. | 9:59 | |
| So he went and attached himself | 10:05 | |
| to one of the local land owners, | 10:07 | |
| who sent him on to his farm to mind the pigs. | 10:10 | |
| He would have been glad to fill his belly with the pods | 10:15 | |
| that the pigs were eating, | 10:18 | |
| and no one gave him anything. | 10:20 | |
| Now there is a how do you do, | 10:27 | |
| especially for a Jew. | 10:30 | |
| You know the Semitic aversion to pork. | 10:34 | |
| The boy not merely fed the pigs, | 10:40 | |
| he was almost driven to eating their fodder. | 10:42 | |
| This lad was in trouble. | 10:47 | |
| He was both down and out, a way down and out for the count. | 10:50 | |
| Sitting in the pigsty or leaning over the rail, | 10:58 | |
| we're told that he came to his senses. | 11:01 | |
| "King James Version" translates it, | 11:06 | |
| so does the "Revised Standard", | 11:09 | |
| which we read this morning, came to himself. | 11:10 | |
| Do you remember the (indistinct) sermon | 11:15 | |
| about how Mr and Mrs. Prodigal had two boys, | 11:16 | |
| and how one of them left home, | 11:20 | |
| and he lost all he had in a game of strip poker. | 11:23 | |
| His coat, his jacket, his trousers. | 11:27 | |
| But when he lost his shirt, he came to himself. | 11:32 | |
| Now, that is too literally strip poker. | 11:36 | |
| Now, we don't have to take the story as literally as that, | 11:44 | |
| but in his downness and upness, he came to his senses. | 11:48 | |
| He talked with himself and to himself. | 11:54 | |
| How many of my father's paid servants | 12:00 | |
| have more food than they can eat? | 12:04 | |
| And here I am starving to death. | 12:07 | |
| I will set off and go to my father and say to him, | 12:12 | |
| "Father, I have sinned against God and against you. | 12:15 | |
| I'm no longer fit to be called your son. | 12:24 | |
| Treat me as one of your paid servants." | 12:28 | |
| He decided to go home. | 12:36 | |
| More than that, | 12:40 | |
| he decided to renounce his freedom completely. | 12:41 | |
| He would become a hired hand on the ancestral farm. | 12:47 | |
| Why? | 12:53 | |
| Well, he had to. | 12:55 | |
| He'd almost no choices left. | 12:59 | |
| There was a must to his decision. | 13:02 | |
| One wonders if he would have gone home, | 13:06 | |
| if his money had held out. | 13:10 | |
| Well, it hadn't. | 13:13 | |
| It suited his convenience to head for Palestine. | 13:15 | |
| Did he work his way? | 13:22 | |
| Did he hitchhike? | 13:25 | |
| Did he ride home for the fair? | 13:27 | |
| Jesus never told us. | 13:31 | |
| And yet there was more than a must to his resolve. | 13:34 | |
| There was a sense of safety in the decision. | 13:40 | |
| It was a comfortable conclusion. | 13:45 | |
| He would be fed even in the job of a servant. | 13:52 | |
| Man may not live by bread alone, | 13:57 | |
| but he won't live long without it. | 14:00 | |
| And bread is an advance on swill. | 14:04 | |
| So it was back home for him. | 14:10 | |
| Some years ago, I listened to Ted Ferriss of Boston, | 14:17 | |
| the leading preacher in the Episcopal Church | 14:23 | |
| in this country, whom we've tried to bring to this pulpit. | 14:26 | |
| I listened to him talking to a group | 14:31 | |
| of army chaplains at Berchtesgaden, on this parable. | 14:32 | |
| The question he asked and the answer he gave, | 14:40 | |
| I shall never forget. | 14:44 | |
| The question was, what was the sin of the prodigal? | 14:48 | |
| He went over the possibilities. | 14:57 | |
| Drinking, it's so often a status symbol, | 15:00 | |
| a sin sometimes, but not the sin. | 15:06 | |
| Swearing, that may be an aesthetic offense, | 15:14 | |
| a sign of a poverty-stricken vocabulary | 15:21 | |
| rather than a spiritual vice. | 15:25 | |
| Women, understandable, | 15:29 | |
| though hardly commendable. | 15:33 | |
| These may be sins with a small S, | 15:37 | |
| but not one of them, according to Dr. Ferris, | 15:41 | |
| is the sin with a capital S. | 15:44 | |
| Can you guess what the sin was? | 15:48 | |
| He never wrote home. | 15:54 | |
| He never wrote home. | 15:59 | |
| It is as simple and as penetrating as that. | 16:03 | |
| He deliberately cut himself off from his roots, | 16:07 | |
| his heritage, his father. | 16:12 | |
| He intentionally destroyed all contact | 16:16 | |
| with what had created and sustained him. | 16:21 | |
| And then he found he couldn't manage on his own. | 16:27 | |
| When he came to himself, to his senses, | 16:32 | |
| he discovered where he belonged. | 16:36 | |
| He decided to go home, | 16:40 | |
| to the home which had received no mail from him. | 16:43 | |
| Now, I know there are some homes | 16:50 | |
| which it is wise to leave. | 16:54 | |
| Professor Dickey of St. Andrews University, in Scotland, | 16:57 | |
| told me of an incident | 17:02 | |
| when he as an officer was censoring mail | 17:04 | |
| written from Palestine during the First World War. | 17:07 | |
| Orders had been given that all troops had to write home | 17:13 | |
| because of the complaints of dearth of correspondence | 17:18 | |
| from husbands and fathers and sons. | 17:22 | |
| One letter began, "My dear wife". | 17:27 | |
| The rest of the sheet was blank until the very foot. | 17:32 | |
| There was written, "Your loving husband, John." | 17:37 | |
| Dr. Dickey sent for John to account | 17:41 | |
| for this unusual epistolary effort. | 17:45 | |
| The explanation was short and to the point. | 17:49 | |
| "We were ordered to write home, | 17:53 | |
| but me and the missus are not on speaking terms." | 17:56 | |
| There are some homes which are only cafeterias | 18:05 | |
| and dormitories with garages attached. | 18:07 | |
| Some of you are glad to escape from such places, | 18:13 | |
| but even you know | 18:18 | |
| that this is not what home is supposed to be. | 18:20 | |
| It's not the kind of home which you hope to make. | 18:24 | |
| You don't believe that the prodigal's problem | 18:28 | |
| was that he and his father were not on speaking terms. | 18:30 | |
| Problem didn't lie there. | 18:35 | |
| The younger brother decided then that it was home for him, | 18:39 | |
| but notice the kind of homecoming which he decided on. | 18:42 | |
| He would return as a servant, not as a son. | 18:47 | |
| There was a measure of integrity left in him. | 18:54 | |
| He had sinned, he said so. | 18:59 | |
| Against God and against his father. | 19:02 | |
| He wasn't fit to be called a son. | 19:06 | |
| Could he have a job as a hired hand? | 19:11 | |
| Here was the renunciation of the freedom | 19:17 | |
| which had led him to the pigsty. | 19:20 | |
| Freedom to be able to do what he wants | 19:23 | |
| when and where and how he wants to do it. | 19:26 | |
| He thought he would be his own master. | 19:33 | |
| In plain fact, he was a pig's butler. | 19:37 | |
| Confidence in himself as captain of his soul | 19:43 | |
| had landed him as a scullery maid for swine. | 19:46 | |
| No wonder he was homesick. | 19:51 | |
| And yet in his homesickness, | 19:53 | |
| he kept some of his independence. | 19:56 | |
| He would acknowledge his sin, | 20:00 | |
| but he would not ask for forgiveness. | 20:02 | |
| He knew he didn't deserve reinstatement with the family, | 20:09 | |
| letting bygones be bygones. | 20:13 | |
| Could he just have a job? | 20:17 | |
| And so he set off for his father's house. | 20:23 | |
| That's how the new English Bible translates verse 20, | 20:28 | |
| for his father's house. | 20:31 | |
| That's what he'd head for, | 20:34 | |
| not home, but to his father's house. | 20:36 | |
| Maybe somewhere near Nazareth. | 20:42 | |
| We can picture him winding his way home, | 20:46 | |
| muttering over the speech he would deliver. | 20:49 | |
| "Father, I've sinned against God and against you. | 20:52 | |
| I'm no longer fit to be called your son. | 20:57 | |
| Treat me as one of your paid servants." | 21:00 | |
| He went over it again and again and again | 21:03 | |
| until he was letter-perfect. | 21:05 | |
| And we remember, | 21:09 | |
| some of us angrily, some of us gladly, | 21:12 | |
| how he was received. | 21:18 | |
| But while he was still a long way off, | 21:21 | |
| his father saw him and his heart went out to him. | 21:25 | |
| He ran to meet him, | 21:32 | |
| flung his arms around him, and kissed him. | 21:34 | |
| The son said, | 21:39 | |
| "Father, I've sinned against God and against you. | 21:41 | |
| I'm no longer fit to be called your son." | 21:44 | |
| But the father said to his servants, | 21:48 | |
| "Quick, fetch a robe, my best one, and put it on him. | 21:49 | |
| Put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. | 21:57 | |
| Bring the fatted calf and kill it | 22:00 | |
| and let us have a feast to celebrate the day, | 22:03 | |
| for this son of mine was dead and has come back to life. | 22:06 | |
| He was lost, and is found." | 22:12 | |
| The boy began his speech, the one he had memorized, | 22:18 | |
| but his father, in joy to have the boy back, | 22:23 | |
| rudely interrupted. | 22:28 | |
| The young brother never finished his prepared recitation. | 22:31 | |
| He never got it out about being a hired servant. | 22:36 | |
| He was received as a son. | 22:40 | |
| A hug, a kiss, | 22:45 | |
| his father's best robe, a signet ring, | 22:50 | |
| shoes, the sign of a free man, | 22:56 | |
| because servants went barefooted, and a party. | 22:59 | |
| Home is where they have to take you back | 23:08 | |
| even when you don't deserve it. | 23:13 | |
| This is forgiveness to the point of reinstatement. | 23:18 | |
| Now, don't be angry some of you, | 23:24 | |
| don't mutter under your breath, unfair, a shame. | 23:26 | |
| The old man was daft. | 23:31 | |
| Don't you see what the father has done? | 23:37 | |
| He has given the boy a tougher assignment | 23:41 | |
| than that of being a hired hand. | 23:47 | |
| He's given him the freedom of a son, | 23:53 | |
| the freedom to learn what a son is. | 23:58 | |
| What a home is. | 24:02 | |
| The boy had wanted freedom from sonship, from home. | 24:05 | |
| Now he must learn the freedom to sonship within a home. | 24:12 | |
| This is the correlation of personal freedom | 24:20 | |
| with group freedom. | 24:25 | |
| It's the transformation of freedom from into freedom to. | 24:28 | |
| He will now be a son with his ears and eyes open. | 24:36 | |
| He may discover that it was a better home | 24:41 | |
| than he thought it was. | 24:44 | |
| He is refused the job of being a slave within a household. | 24:47 | |
| He's given the job of becoming | 24:54 | |
| a responsible son within the home. | 24:57 | |
| The boy is being given the chance, | 25:02 | |
| the chance he wanted, to grow up. | 25:06 | |
| To mature as a son. | 25:10 | |
| He's going to learn what his freedom is | 25:14 | |
| in relation to the wider freedom of a family, | 25:17 | |
| but it will be a freedom surrounded with joy. | 25:21 | |
| Oh, it would have been easier in so many ways | 25:29 | |
| to have become a hired hand. | 25:34 | |
| But his more difficult job of sonship | 25:41 | |
| will be permeated with the remembrance of his welcome, | 25:44 | |
| when the first half of the parable ends | 25:49 | |
| and the festivities began. | 25:52 | |
| Now, what do you younger sons and daughters here at Duke, | 25:59 | |
| in a far country, think of all this? | 26:04 | |
| Is home for you a place to be forgotten | 26:10 | |
| with a kind of sad gladness? | 26:15 | |
| Is home a place you turn to only in crisis? | 26:20 | |
| You recall the telegram sent home by a British student? | 26:26 | |
| SOS. | 26:32 | |
| LSD. | 26:34 | |
| RSVP. | 26:37 | |
| SOS, the international sign of distress. | 26:39 | |
| LSD, pounds, shillings, pence. | 26:44 | |
| RSVP. | 26:49 | |
| Is home a place you left to be on your own, | 26:55 | |
| but which you think about when your freedom | 26:57 | |
| tastes like ashes and smells like pigs? | 27:02 | |
| Is home worse or better than you thought it was | 27:08 | |
| when you left to come here? | 27:13 | |
| What did your home give you when you came here? | 27:16 | |
| What may it now give you that you missed before? | 27:22 | |
| What do you make of a place that has to take you in, | 27:30 | |
| even when you don't deserve it? | 27:34 | |
| What did this parable say to you | 27:38 | |
| as we thought together about a boy who left home | 27:43 | |
| of his own free will | 27:50 | |
| and remembered home when he was far-spent | 27:53 | |
| and returned home | 28:00 | |
| to receive a most unexpected welcome. | 28:04 | |
| Amen. | 28:11 | |
| Let us pray. | 28:13 | |
| Oh God who art our father, | 28:20 | |
| help us to ponder the meaning of freedom | 28:24 | |
| and growing up and home, | 28:28 | |
| that we may become thy sons and daughters | 28:34 | |
| in the spirit of him who called us to be thy children, | 28:39 | |
| even Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 28:45 | |
| And may the blessing of the Lord come upon you abundantly. | 28:48 | |
| May it... | 28:54 | |
| Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 29:04 |
