The Rev. Canon Dr. Brett Cane, March 14, 2010
Lent 4: 8:30 a.m. Holy Communion and 10:00 a.m., Holy Communion
Learning to Love #4: “Limitlessness”
2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Opening Prayer:
Lord God, you are our heavenly Father and have not limited your love for us in any way: teach us now, by the power of your Holy Spirit, how we can live lives of limitless love and so reflect the love you have given to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Introduction
The theme of our series of Lenten sermons is “Learning to Love.” For the first three Sundays, we have been looking at how we humansGod loves. His love for us is also expressed in three dimensions – as limitless, precarious and vulnerable. experience and express love. We have explored this in three dimensions – security, intimacy and commitment. In these last three sermons, as we draw closer to Holy Week and the events from Palm Sunday to Good Friday and beyond to Easter, we will be looking at how
I took these three marks or signs of God’s love to us from a powerful little book written some years ago by W. H. Vanstone – “Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense.”[1] There he explores the depths of God’s love for us. God’s love is limitless – it is totally self-giving. God’s love is precarious – it does not control and risks being rejected. God’s love is vulnerable – it is given at great cost to himself. In these next three sermons, we will look at each of these in turn, rooting our exploration in Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son. Today, as we look at the limitlessness of God’s love, we will see first how God’s self-giving love is shown through the parable, then we will look at how we try to limit God’s love, and then finally how we can be generous in our love to others.
The Incredible Father
In Luke 15 we have one of the best-known stories Jesus ever told – the Parable of the Prodigal Son. However, when you look closely, the title we have given it is really a misnomer. First, the story is not only about the son who went off to a far country – the prodigal; it is also about the son who stayed at home – which we will look at in a moment. But supremely, it is about the amazing love of the father in the story and it has been suggested we rename the story, “The Parable of the Incredible Father.”[2]
Why is this so? The story begins with an amazing scenario. The younger of two sons comes to his father and says, “Father, give me my share of the estate” (Luke 15:12). Now, even today, this would a surprising request; at the time of Jesus it would have been even worse! The father is nowhere near death, but the son wants his share of what his father owns right away. Many of us might have our eyes on what legacies we might receive but we would be too polite to pursue it ahead of time. This lad disregards all standards of decency and says, basically, “Father, I can’t wait for you to die; give me what’s coming to me and I’ll be out of here!” Not only would this be seen as totally selfish and disrespectful, it would be deeply hurtful. The son is saying to the Father, “I don’t want to stay here and be at home with your love – I’m going to try and find my fulfilment elsewhere!”
What’s incredible is the father’s response – he gives him the money! This is even more shocking than the son’s request. What kind of father would do that, knowing that the son was irresponsible and up to no good? Then, as expected, the son squanders the inheritance and ends up destitute. In all this, the father does not nag him nor chase after him. He stays back on the farm, waiting – waiting for his son to come to his senses. Does the father not love him? Of course he does, but his love will not rescue the son because the son must want to return home freely. That the father does love him is shown by what happens when the son finally returns. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (verse 20). The father has been waiting with a yearning heart and rushes out, running very unceremoniously – in those days an old man would have had to hitch up his long robes and expose his legs – an indecent sight. The father doesn’t even wait to hear his son’s rehearsed appeal, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (verse 21). Instead, he orders a magnificent celebration because “This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (verse 24).
What does this parable show us about God’s love? Four things:
- God’s love is limitless. The father gives away half his fortune knowing that it will be squandered. God has given us his Creation – he has lovingly poured his love into this world and given it to us knowing we might abuse it. God has given each of us the precious gift of life knowing we might twist and disfigure it. God has given us himself – by coming to earth as Jesus, knowing we might turn on him and reject him. God’s love is limitless.
- God’s love is not mere kindness. The father goes beyond what is reasonable. Kindness, or acting pleasantly, can not substitute for love because it sets limits. When Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive someone and set the limit at “seven times,” he was being kind – going beyond the common standard. But Jesus went way beyond any acceptable standard, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:21-22). God’s love is not mere kindness.
- God’s love accepts restraint. The father does not run after the son, but restrains his love until the son is able to receive it. Vanstone points out that “Love accepts without limit the discipline of circumstances.”[3] Love does not have to “express itself” but waits until the beloved has the capacity to receive. For example, we avoid overwhelming children by untimely or excessive expressions of love to prevent harm. Another way of withholding love for the sake of the one who is loved is so that it can become a richer gift or be used at a more appropriate time. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve were not to take from Tree of Life until provision had been made for the damaging effects of sin to be removed at the cross. God’s love accepts restraint.
- God’s love is offered freely. Finally, there is no earning the love of the father. The prodigal son’s rehearsed script is disregarded – he is not readmitted into the home as a hired hand but a full son. Repentance is not earning back God’s love but moving back into his care. God’s love is offered freely.
God’s love is incredible and limitless – but we are not all able to receive it. There is another son in the story and his reaction shows how we try to limit God’s love – for ourselves and for others.
How We Limit God’s Love
For many of us, when we see the unconditional nature of God’s love, we cry, “Not fair!” With the stay-at-home son in the parable we exclaim, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!” (verses 29-30). Here is the opposite of limitlessness – calculation. We think we have to earn God’s love, that it is given out according to merit, and so we get upset when the undeserving receive grace. We want to limit God’s love.
But this approach of calculation backfires on us because we end up interpreting everything in its light. In our Lenten book, “He Loves Me!”[4] author Wayne Jacobsen describes how setting limits on God’s love results in the “daisy petal” approach:
I got a raise. He loves me!
I didn’t get the promotion I wanted; I lost my job altogether. He loves me not!
Something in the Bible inspired me today. He loves me!
My child is seriously ill. He loves me not!
I gave money to someone in need. He loves me!
I let my anger get the best of me. He loves me not!
Something for which I prayed actually happened. He loves me!
I stretched the truth to get myself out of a tight spot. He loves me not!
A friend called me unexpectedly to encourage me. He loves me!
My car needs a new transmission. He loves me not!
Because we have not grasped God’s unconditional and limitless love for us, we misinterpret the trials of life as the absence of God’s care or even God’s punishment. We doubt God’s love for us and so we try harder to please God and do his will. A lot of religious life can be based on calculation.
Now there is nothing wrong with trying to please God and do his will, but if it is to try and earn his love, we have missed the whole point. That point has been made by Philip Yancey in his statement about God’s limitless love: “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more…and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”[5] The parable shows us that the father’s love was there to be received, not earned. What the father wanted most was a loving relationship with each of his sons. Jacobsen comments, “They were both in the house, but neither was at home.”[6][7] The father didn’t want their obedience – he wanted their hearts. Obedience flows from a heart full of God’s love. Don’t limit God’s love by calculation. “In the long run it doesn’t matter whether rebellion or religion keeps you from a vibrant relationship with the father; the result is the still the same.”
Loving Others Generously
It is interesting that the Parable of the Prodigal Son ends without resolution. We do not know whether the stay-at-home-son went in or stayed outside. This is because Jesus was addressing this story not to prodigals but to calculators. “Now 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.’ Then Jesus told them this parable…” (verses 1-3). Because we are not living out of God’s unlimited love for ourselves we can treat others in the same way these religious people did.
I have no better an example than from my own experience. It is not something of which I am proud, but it illustrates the point well. My former parish in Montreal is situated in the heart of downtown. The building is open daily for tourists and people who just want to pray. A number of years ago, when the AIDS epidemic was just becoming known, a young man came into the church. I had seen him before – he had always seemed a little unbalanced and I had not got close to him; he looked like a street person. This time, he was sitting in the chapel, crying. I went to talk to him and he informed me that he had just been told he was HIV-positive. I didn’t know how to react and felt condemnation in my heart. I spoke to him briefly and left him with his sorrow. “He was disturbed and responsible for his present state; he can’t be helped” were my subconscious thoughts. I didn’t think much about the episode until I heard the rest of the story some months later. An acquaintance from a conservative Baptist church told me that they had heard I knew a person they were ministering to. Apparently, the young man I had so coldly disdained had gone home and eventually gave up hope. A young Christian woman who lived above him had become concerned that she had not seen him for a while and so went down to inquire how things were going. She found him curled up on the floor, in foetal position, waiting to die. She mustered together the people of her Baptist church and they ministered to him, loving him and bringing him to Christ. I was shocked when I realized how I had so cruelly discarded one for whom Christ had died. I had the privilege of phoning him up in the hospital and asking for his forgiveness, which he gave me. I had not treated him as a person, someone for whom Christ died. I had been like the Pharisees and tax collectors muttering at Jesus’ openness to “sinners” and blind to the reality that God’s love is limitless.
How do we love others generously? By knowing and being at home with the God of the Scriptures “Who loved the world so much (i.e. without limits) that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Conclusion
In terms of love, God calls us to abandon our calculations and replace them with his limitlessness. This begins with our willingness to be “at home” with him and respond to God’s limitless love without calculation or setting any limits in our love for him. This is expressed beautifully in one of my favourite hymns from the old blue book.[8]
My God, I love thee; not because Then why, O blessèd Jesu Christ,
I hope for heaven thereby, Should I not love thee well?
Nor yet because who love thee not Not for the sake of winning heaven,
Are lost eternally. Or of escaping hell;
Thou, O Lord Jesus, thou didst me Not with the hope of gaining aught,
Upon the cross embrace; Not seeking a reward;
For me didst bear the nails, and spear, But as thyself hast lovèd me,
And manifold disgrace, O ever-loving Lord.
And griefs and torments numberless, So would I love thee, dearest Lord,
And sweat of agony; And in thy praise will sing,
Yea, death itself; and all for me Solely because thou art my God,
Who was thine enemy. And my most loving
[1] W. H. Vanstone, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977).
[2] Wayne Jacobsen, He Loves Me! (Newbury Park, CA: Windblown Media, 2007), pg. 26.
[3] Vanstone, pg. 44.
[4] Jacobsen, pg. 4.
[5] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), pg. 70.
[6] Jacobsen, pg. 29.
[7] Jacobsen, pg. 31
[8] Tr. 1849 from the Latin, 17th century, by Rev. E. Caswall.
