Sermon - 30 March 2025 - The Prodigal Son

The gospel reading today is the parable of the prodigal son, and I think we would all agree that it is a summary of our Christian faith: it tells the story of a human being, just like us, one who is free, who turns away from his loving father in a selfish sinful way. This man suffers for his sin, but looking into his own heart, this man recognizes and admits his sin. He seeks to return to his father, a loving father who is filled with joy at the prospect of his return.

We have heard this parable many times. As we think about it, and ponder it, it tells us there is hope for us! Which is awesome news! And it would be very easy for me to tell it to you again, and think about it, because this parable is incredibly rich. 

But I thought, instead, we might take a slightly different tack.  Not to think about this parable, but rather to focus on the feelings that it evokes, and to practice those feelings.

Now why would we want to feel this parable?  Or any parable? Why not analyze and interpret it? Don’t seminarians study scripture so that they can explain and interpret it?  And what is wrong with thinking?

These are reasonable questions.  I get it.  In answer to the first question, I would say that our Lord was wise, and recognized engaging us emotionally, through parable, is much more powerful than engaging us rationally, through argument.  And yes, seminarians study scripture so they can explain and interpret it.  And finally, let me assure you that it is absolutely essential that Christians think.  There is after all a grammar to our faith, that can be discovered in the serious study of our creeds and our Lutheran confessin.  But still, there is something to be said about paying attention to feelings.

Just so, I hope that you will indulge me.  Indulge me when we think about the difference between thinking about something, and where that will get you, and feeling something, that is, looking into our own hearts and being present to what we encounter in our hearts, and thinking about where that canwill take us.

Specifically, I want us to discuss what the Prodigal Son felt and where it got him.  Not what he was thinking, but what he was feeling. 

Here is a hint.  What the Prodigal son felt is described in our second reading, from second Corinthians, where St. Paul, namesake of this church, says “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.”   What does that feel like? And how can we practice feeling it?

Finally, let’s explore an insight that comes from our predecessor in faith, Martin Luther, who reminds us, with his typical German frankness, what we are practicing, and what we are not practicing.

Now, people who know me will tell you that I’m a rational guy, and thus I need to tell you that I have never much liked it when people have told me, all my life, that I am overthinking things, and need to feel them more. 

But, as much as I don’t like it, the truth is that I’ve come to realize that feeling are not just important, but are also critical to our discovering my authentic self. It is critical because as human beings, feeling actually comes before thinking. 

Did God really make us to feel before we think? As I think on it, I think it is plain that He did.

I think this because it seems to me that feelings are primary to our nature and happen automatically, while thinking is secondary and only happens when we deliberately set out to do it. 

We recognize this as true as the frequency and volume of our feelings is far greater than the frequency and volume of our thinking. 

Now it might seem that this would doom us to a life of irrationality. 

But that’s not the case. It is actually an opportunity for us to encounter something quite profound.  Carl Jung, who was the founder of analytic psychology and was a deeply religious thinkers, said, and I’m paraphrasing:

“persons who forever look outside themselves, that is to say, persons who always think, well, those persons dream; but persons who have the discipline to look inside themselves, and can identify accept and integrate the feelings that they find there,

those persons awake.”

Let me repeat that. To think is to dream.  But to look inside, and to encounter one’s one’sown feelings in an authentic and primary way, that is to awake.

So, here is a question. What was it that awoke in that prodigal son?  What was he feeling?

To answer that, let’s imagine that we can feel what he felt.  As I said earlier, this is a parable, and it is designed exactly for this purpose.

So the prodigal son has gone from feelings of grandiosity to shame. Indeed, because he paying attention to his feelings, the prodigal might have realized that his grandiosity and his shame are really the same feeling.  He awakens to that truth.  It leaves him embarrassed and humiliated. He knows it is entirely his own doing.

As he encounters himself, he feels these things. 

He is no longer thinking “oh but so and so did this”, and “oh so and so did that”.  That is thinking, the equivalent of dreaming, and he is past that.  Rather, our guy is face to face with his own feelings of guilt.

But then, he has one more feeling.  You know what it was?  It is carried to him from his past, in a memory, but nonetheless, he feels it.

He feels the love of his father. 

First he might remember his father’s face and smell, his manner, his words.  I often remember my father in that way; perhaps you remember someone like that in your life.  And as the prodigal son remembers his father, then he remembers how his father made him feel.  How his father respected, admired, and loved him. And as the prodigal son feels his father’s respect, admiration and love, it is then that he THINKS, that maybe, just maybe, he can be forgiven.  

The feeling came first. Thinking came second.  Do you see how paying attention to his feelings and experiencing them has aided his awakening?

Remembering his father’s love, the prodigal son now has confidence to actually return to his father and ask his forgiveness.  It goes well for him.  He feels an incredible joy at his father’s greeting.  Not just his joy, but his joy wrapped in his father’s joy!  This confirms the feeling! He feels the same respect admiration and love that he knew from long ago! He feels the warmth of the robe placed on his shoulder, the honor of the ring on his finger.  He feels his hunger satisfied when he sits down to table and eats. He hasn’t had to think about much of this. Rather, he feels it.

So let’s shift gears.  Imagine yourself, at some point in life, when you have sinned, and you faced your sin, and as you faced it you felt embarrassment and shame, and then you apologized and sought to make amends, to never do this sin again, and the person you apologized to, hopefully they said, it’s ok.  I forgive you. 

But even if they didn’t forgive you, if you can remember that moment, when you felt your grandiosity collapsed into guilt and you sought forgiveness, if you can ponder that feeling and feel it again, do so. Do it again and again. 

Because when you do that, you are practicing Christianity.  Not practicing like he or she is a practicing Christian.  But rather, practicing Christianity as in doing what is called a spiritual exercise. 

And as you practice asking forgiveness, by pondering it, over and over again, and practice other Christian feelings, like the feeling of forgiving others, and the feeling of giving alms to the poor, and the feeling of being present to the suffering of others, or the feeling of telling the truth and having integrity, you are, as Paul writes to the Corinthians in the second readings today, you are in Christ. And you are a new creation. And you are awakening.

Now then. This idea of “spiritual exercise” actually has a long tradition in the Christian church.  John the Baptist and Augustine of Hippo and many early Christians engaged in what could be called “spiritual exercise”. 

And here is something neat for you.  Modern science would approve.

As we practice, something, anything, including forgiveness, and helping the poor, and being present to suffering of others, we develop a capacity to do it more deeply, more authentically.

We actually create brain circuits, pathways of neurons that fire together.  And the first time we do it, a single random discharge of neurons occurs, but as we practice these theological virtues again and again, what was a chance discharge becomes of pattern of neruons firing, a path, a circuit, and as we practice it, it becomes a road, and then a longer wider road, until it becomes a highway.   And we, in this process,  become a new creation.

It's incredible it you think about it.  We are, as Psalm 139 says, awesomely and wonderfully made! 

Now then.  Though we are awesomely and wonderfully made, and as good as this gets, we would do well not to put our cart before our horse.  We should be clear about what we are practicing.  Our predecessor in faith, Martin Luther, had some really good insights about this, insights that make us unique as Lutherans.

“Progress,” he said, “is nothing other than constantly beginning…. The Christian is always being made new; he is in a constant state of progress and need of daily conversion”

He wrote this in 1515, in his commentary on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.  That was 2 years before his 95 Thesis.

By “progress is nothing other than constantly beginning”, Luther means that progress is not incremental improvement. We do not evolve to a higher quality of person, or a higher state of being.  That is a Roman Catholic and Calvinist way of viewing the issue of justification.  Rather, for Lutherans, progress is when we acknowledge and live within the constant tension between recognizing our sinfulness and having faith in God’s mercy.  

That’s what we practice.  Simultaneously recognizing our sinfulness and having faith in God’s mercy.  Just like that prodigal son..  We are semper peccator, semper penitens, semper iustus.  Always sinner, always penitent, always just.  Period.

Let me repeat: we don’t practice Christianity in order to improve our chances at heaven, and be better Christians.  Rather, what we practice is encountering Jesus Christ as a gift.  That’s what we practice.