Reckless
What do you think of when you hear the word reckless? Here in Southeast Wisconsin your mind probably goes to the problem of reckless driving. Recklessness often means that you are doing something without thinking about or caring about the consequences. Our parable this morning is about recklessness. We see the reckless actions of the younger son who despises the love of his father, leaves home, and lives a life of wanton and reckless abandon. We see the reckless arrogance of his older brother who despises the love and mercy of his father. He is filled with bitterness that his father would dare to forgive his younger brother. But most of all in this parable we see the reckless love of a father who shows love to both of his sons regardless of the consequences.
The Parable of the Lost Son is all about the reckless love of our heavenly Father. In Luke chapter 15 Jesus is confronted by a group of Pharisees who are appalled that he a righteous and learned rabbi would sully himself by eating with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus shares a series of three parables about the joy God has when lost sinners repent and return to him. This is what God wants. God does not want to punish us as our sins deserve. God does not want people to perish in the fires of hell. God wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God is like the father in this parable. He waits and watches hoping that his lost children will return and when they do he is filled with joy.
Our God is a God of reckless love. He loves all the people of this world even though he knows that most will reject his love. God is reckless as he sows the seeds of his Gospel. He know that much of that seed will be wasted, but still he hopes that it will take root. God wants all his children to come to life through the message of the Gospel. God freely offers his forgiveness to all. But there are dangers. Satan is always trying to snatch the joy of the Gospel from our hearts. He wants us to be like the two sons in this parable; either taking advantage of God’s reckless love and using it as a license to sin or becoming proud, arrogant, and complacent in our faith.
Satan wants us to abuse and take advantage of God’s love. He wants us to live like the younger son who boldly went and demanded from his father his share of the inheritance. The younger son chafed under the rules and authority of his father despite his father’s love. He wanted more freedom and thought that doing whatever he wanted would bring him happiness. When he went off to a distant country, he found misery instead of happiness. After he wasted all his wealth on reckless living, he was left destitute. The young man hit rock bottom and found work as a swineherd. Soon, the young man began to envy the pigs and realized that life in his father’s house, even as a lowly servant, was better than the mess he had gotten himself into.
Like the young man, there are times when we find life in the household of our heavenly Father to be burdensome and chafe under God’s Commandments. Satan tempts us with promises that if we just throw off our shackles and follow his way, we will find happiness. And so, for a time, we wander as the young man did. We chase the passions and desires of our sinful natures. We live selfishly and hurt those around us. We live recklessly and embrace every lustful passion of our sinful hearts, and perhaps for a time find the illusion of happiness. But eventually, the reality of sin comes crashing down. Our conscience burdens us with guilt and shame. We see the wreckage our sins have caused in our lives and how we have hurt those we love.
Like the young man, we find ourselves in dreadful conditions of our own making. Our consciences burden us with guilt and shame. Satan whispers in our ears the terrible truth that we are sinners who have broken God’s righteous commands and the terrible lie that there is no way that God could ever forgive us. But the central point of Jesus’s parable is the powerful reminder that our God is filled with reckless love. When we wander into the ditch of reckless sinning, our God is waiting to welcome us home. In the parable of the Lost Son, Jesus wants us to picture the father as a man who waits and looks every day to see if his wayward son has returned.
Then we hear of that great and joyous day when the father sees his lost son returning home. The father rushes down the road to greet him. He throws his arms around his neck and kisses him. The son, filled with shame and remorse, repents. But the father is so filled with joy that he barely hears his son’s words; instead, he commands his servants, “Quick, bring out the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let us eat and celebrate, because this son of mine
was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.” This is the beating heart of our heavenly Father. He loved us so much that he sacrificed his only Son to suffer and die to save us.
God does not want to punish us as our sins deserve. God wants to shower us with blessings. God wants to call us his beloved children and welcome us into the eternal banquet he has prepared for us. This is why God sent Christ to this world. Jesus descended from the heights of heaven to place himself under God’s righteous law. Christ was a perfectly obedient Son who never wandered from the path of his heavenly Father. Jesus lived a perfect life in our place so he could die on the cross to save us. God accepted the sacrifice of his Son as payment for our sins. For this reason, when we wander from God’s righteous path and wander into the ditch of reckless living, God is waiting with open arms to forgive us. Our sins have been completely washed away, and through faith in Christ, we who were dead have been made alive.
As Christians, we also need to be mindful that we do not abuse God’s reckless love in another way. The older brother did not find joy in his father’s great love, but was filled with anger and resentment towards his father. The older brother simply could not believe that his younger brother, who had betrayed their father, squandered his wealth, and had wallowed in every depraved kind of behavior, was now welcomed home. How was this fair? Shouldn’t the good and righteous son be rewarded for his years of faithful and dutiful service?
This was the attitude of the Pharisees, who condemned Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners. This, unfortunately, can be our attitude as well. It can be very easy to think that we, as lifelong members of God’s household, are better than others. After all, we come to church every Sunday wearing the right clothes. We help with projects around the church and regularly give our offerings. We do all the right things; therefore, we should be rewarded for our efforts. Surely it isn’t fair that God would love us the same as that person who comes to church late, wearing not-so-nice clothes. Surely, I am more deserving than the person who only comes to church every few weeks and certainly doesn’t do as much as I do for God’s church?
This attitude of pride forgets that in God’s eyes, we are all sinners who have wandered away. None of us are righteous and none of us can do anything to make ourselves righteous. We were all born dead in our trespasses and sins. It is only by God’s reckless grace and love that we have been called to faith through the Gospel. It is only by his reckless love that our sins have been washed away by the blood of Christ. The older brother was filled with bitterness that his father forgave his brother. But what did the father do, he went out to his older son. He showered him with love and asked him to come and join in his happiness. God gives us the same invitation to repent of our pride and rejoice when sinners come home.
Dear brothers in sister in Christ I urge you also to love recklessly. Our heavenly Father has shown such great love to us that we cannot help but show that love to others. This is who we are. As Christians we want to love as Christ showed us. We love all people with reckless abandon without any expectation of repayment. We want to be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as we have been forgiven. We want to withhold our judgment about others, realizing that we are all sinners who deserve God’s judgment and all saints who have been freed from our sins by the death of Christ. We want to shout this message of amazing grace from the rooftops because we know what it is like to experience the reckless love of God. Amen.
See the kind of love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are! The world does not know us, because it did not know him.