sermons-GLS

Evangelism

Gerry Swieringa

Sunday September 28th 2008

"The Prodigal Son," (Best beloved of Jesus’ parables.)

Has everything: rich story, emotions, lots of description, strikes a cord with anyone who has left home and yearns to return.

Many of Jesus’ parables are sketches and the meanings ascribed to them are open to many interpretations. The disciples themselves often asked Jesus what he intended to get across.

Not so with the prodigal son. It’s all right there, a short story really. Not hard to see the followers and listeners of the Rabbi cozying up to him to hear this tale. In an age where the spoken word was everything, this story had great entertainment value.

Typically regarded as a parable about grace: the Father meeting and welcoming back the wayward son and offering him the full rights and privileges of sonship, despite the prodigal’s squandering of that inheritance.

But what a strange choice to begin a series on evangelism. We could have started with the sermon on the Mt.: Jesus speaking to his followers about the Kingdom of God and offering them the keys to life in the Kingdom. Or Jesus feeding the 5000. Meeting the world’s needs and drawing them into the intimacy of shared bread. Or perhaps something from Paul who defined evangelism for the early church and whose shadow is still cast wide over the church 2000 years later.

But the parable of the prodigal son? What has this to do with evangelism? We have a story of redemption, forgiveness, and restoration. That is perhaps the desired outcome of evangelism, but shouldn’t we start at the beginning? Shouldn’t we look for how evangelism is done? Shouldn’t we ask where is the evangelist in this parable? Ah, good question. Let’s ask that again:

Where or who is the evangelist to the Prodigal Son? Hold that question.

What comes to mind when we talk about evangelism? What images come to mind?

For me, it’s always been Billy Graham. Soldier’s Field when I was 11 years old. George Beverly Shea and the great choir behind the stage. The altar call with people streaming into the aisles from the 100,000 people filling the stadium. The choir singing, Just As I am, and thousands of prayers partners filtering out into the crowd to pray AND COUNSEL THOSE WHOSE HEARTS HAD BEEN TOUCHED BY THE GREAT EVANGELIST.

And Billy Graham himself. Holding his worn soft leather Bible at arms length, the pages draped over his large hand and the Word of God like a river flowing down his extended arm. “The Bible says… The Bible says…”

Even as an 11 year old boy my heart was opened and I wanted so to join that throng coming forward to accept Jesus as my savior. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that supposedly I had already done that. So I watched as hordes of people came forward and said to myself: I will never forget this. And I haven’t.

Billy Graham, and before him Billy Sunday. And before him George Whitefield. Ben Franklin once attended one of George Whitefield’s services and measured off the size of the crowd and estimated 30,000 people were on hand to hear him. Without benefit of a PA system he was able to communicate to 30,000 people on the strength of his voice alone. Remarkable. A long trail of evangelists leading back to St. Paul, John the Baptizer, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Jesus Christ, the greatest evangelist of all.

If the world had to wait for Great Evangelists to come along, there wouldn’t be very many Christians around. Great and powerful as they are, they come only occasionally on stage. They stir great revivals and many people are saved. But Soldier’s Field was only one place at one time. Even in Chicago there were far more people who weren’t there that Sunday afternoon that there were inside the stadium. No, the real work of evangelism goes on in smaller places, with more intimate crowds, where people work and study and talk to each other about the things that matter.

My granddaughter Zoe loves rocks. She gathers them from the driveway of our home and when she was a little younger she would wrap them up in a gauzy mauve colored cloth and bring them to me. Then she would carefully unwrap them and say. “Here. Look what I found. You can have it.”

Now that is an image of evangelism I can live with. One that speaks to my abilities and my place in the world. Here, look what I found. You can have it too.

And what is it we have to offer? Nothing more and nothing less than the Son of God as we have come to know Him through the Word of God.

Because the Word of God shows us God in the person of Jesus. The Anglican theologian NT Wright says the “The authority of scripture is the authority of Jesus Christ.” All scripture gives testimony to the authority of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Scripture has no authority in itself, it has all the authority conceivable in the authority of Jesus Christ. You can try to dodge it. You can try to ignore it. I know because that’s what I tried to do many years ago. You can pretend it’s no longer meaningful, or relevant, or that it has been superseded by the mind of modern man. But if you try to go through it, you will be changed.

Another image of evangelism: From the movie The Apostle starring Robert Duvall. Mostly, Hollywood gets it wrong. They pander to our basest instincts and call it art. But once in a while they get it right, and Robert Duvall got it right in the Apostle.

Story: Successful TV evangelist commits a great sin: murders someone in a fit of jealous rage. Goes on the lam and finds himself alone in the deep South and drawn to a small rural community where a dilapidated clapboard church is in need to a pastor. He feels the Holy Spirit is calling him to be there. So he begins meeting the townsfolk, inviting them to his church, building friendships and trust and preaching the Word of God.

Enter the antagonist. Billy Bob Thornton is a vile bully who sees the new church as a direct challenge to the stranglehold of fear by which he maintains control over the community. And he plans to do something about it. So there’s a rumble while the small community worships and Billy Bob Thornton advances against the fragile church with a D-9 Cat to knock it down to dust. The worshippers are terrified and stand in the churchyard waiting for the inevitable calamity to begin, But Robert Duvall, taking his Bible in hand, stands directly in front of Billy Bob Thornton and his diesel smoking cat. He doesn’t challenge himself. He knows his own sin and failure will not let him stand up to this attack. But he knows what will. He lays the Bible down in the mud in front of the idling bulldozer and tells Billy Bob Thornton, “You can’t run over the Word of God. You can’t do it.”

And the camera freezes on Billy Bob Thornton as the truth of that statement begins to make itself known to him. His fists begin to unclench. His shoulders begin to shake. And soon he is sobbing, unable to do what he so intensely desired to do. “You cannot run over the Word of God.” Because the Word of God will not let you go through it without being changed. In a powerful image, Hollywood got it right. We may come up against the Word of God with all our armour intact, with all the disdain we can muster. But if we encounter it and pass through it, we will be changed. We will not be the same person on the other side.

And our job, as evangelizers, is to nudge, point lead others to their encounter with Jesus Christ as reveled in the Word of God.

We do that through love. We do that because the measure of our joy is so great, we can do nothing else but want to share it with others.

Here, look what I found. You can have it too.

Here is an evangelist who did that for me. My friend John Cole on a log on the Seachelt Peninsula across Horsehoe Bay above Vancouver. Beautiful day, surrounded by God’s magnificent creation. He opened up to me his relationship with Jesus Christ and I began to remember how it felt like as a child when I reveled in God’s presence. I began to turn back. I wanted to come home again.

Who is the evangelist in the story of the Prodigal Son? Open your Bibles are let’s read Luke 15: 17-20. Who was the evangelist to the Prodigal Son?

The hired hands? His Father? Even his Brother?

There’s no John the Baptist in this parable. Jesus doesn’t tell us that the prodigal son attended a 3 day evangelism conference and afterward decided to change his life around.

All those who daily lives shaped his own. Who I’m sure without knowing cast their spell on him. Who showed him that was abundance, and love and forgiveness. He is led to repentance by his memories. The Holy Spirit worked in his life because it was already at work in he lives of those who loved him and wished abundant life for him.

Now not everyone has the memory of the feast. Many people have never sat in on the feast and they do not know what it is like to return to it. To them we offer it as participants. We hold it out to them in the way we live our lives, in the way we invite them to come inside and join us.

Paul tells us how it works in Colossians. Collosae, in modern day Turkey, was at one time a major trading city on the main East-West trade route between Europe and Asia. At the time of Paul’s writing it had diminished in stature, but was still a thriving cross-cultural town. There was a strong Greek presence, a northern Slavic presence, an Asia presence, along with strong Jewish culture. Into this mix Christianity happened under the discipleship of Epaphras in the 1st century. It was an eclectic Christianity that suffered from a lack of vision regarding Christ as its center and necessity. Paul writes to the Colossians to remind them of Christ’s authority and to show them how they need nothing else in their lives. It’s a short book, and full of beauty and fervor. I recommend you take the time this week to read Colossians and be blest by it.

In our passage for today, Paul uses a metaphor of clothing. It’s like he’s describing someone coming down the runway at a fashion show with the newest and latest style. He remarks that whatever this person wore last year, it’s now changed. There’s a new style this Fall and everything else is passé. “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”

This style is authentic. It springs directly from the mind of the designer. We wear it, and we discover it daily as our understanding of it deepens.

“As God’s chose ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”

That’s what this new set of clothes looks like. This is what makes the world stop and take notice. “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Now are we being asked to preach here? Are we being asked to give testimony to our faith? There may be a place and time for that, but our evangelism here is a quiet one of living out our lives in consistency with the life modeled by our Lord. “Just as the Lord has forgiven you, you also must forgive.”

Paul goes on to conclude: “Above all, clothe yourself with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” This completes the accessories. The binding of Love is what brings us into wholeness. Whatever other faults or shortcomings we may have, they are erased if we are bound by Love. This is what the world sees when they look at us. And this is what the world wants for itself. Here look what I found. You can have it too.

This is an appropriate beginning to our study of evangelism. In the weeks ahead we will learn from others in scripture and in the examples of people from our own congregation, how to carry out the message of salvation to a needing world.

We are all, in one way or another, returned prodigals. But we now live in the feast days. The father’s feast is our feast. The celebration continues. Let’s invite the world to join us.

Amen.