[Sermon] The Prodigal Gift of Belonging

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo + March 30, 2025

Fourth Sunday of Lent

"Full to the Brim: Prodigal Grace"

The word “prodigal” means extravagant, excessive, even reckless. In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus reveals a God whose grace overflows beyond expectation—a love that embraces the lost, reconciles the broken, and challenges our human sense of fairness. Whether we relate to the younger son who squandered everything or the elder who resents such mercy, God’s invitation remains the same: to step into a love that is not earned but freely given. In a world that measures worth by achievement, status, or appearance, God’s reign redefines belonging. This story reminds us that grace is not rationed but poured out abundantly, calling us to be both recipients and channels of mercy. What would it look like to live as if God’s love truly has no limits?The Prodigal Gift of Belonging

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatically generated captions, lightly edited by ChatGPT for punctuation and readability.

Grace to you and peace from God—Abba, Father, Mother, Creator—and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, our sibling, our friend. And we said, Amen.

Well, yes, I mean, it's a story that we know very well—a story that we have heard in different versions, probably. We have read it in different places; somebody has told it to us in different ways. It's a story that connects us, maybe, with our Sunday school.

As I was thinking of this story, I was also thinking about the topic for last Sunday. If you remember, we were talking about being worthy. We all are worthy. And we were talking about how the Lord Jesus is working on us—working on us every day, every day—to vivify the roots that reconnect us to the source of life, even lives once that sometimes stink.

And as I was reading this passage—well, we have somebody whose life really was stinky with the pigs this time. But we are gathered here, my siblings in Christ, to remember, to remind ourselves, and to be reminded, probably, that we are fertilized and that we have a God who is not a God of second chances, but a God who gives us a promise—a Lord who gives us a high call to be an extension of God's reign, where every person lives and experiences the God-given worth in Jesus.

Underneath this story that we heard today, I believe that we continue to hear the theme of being unworthy. In another version of the scripture, the son, when he comes to the father, says, "I am unworthy to be called your son." And I believe that this sense of unworthiness also leads us to live lives where we feel lost and lonely.

Let me ask you the question again: Who do you identify with in this story? Who identifies with the father in this story? You can raise your hand again, like we did last Sunday.

Who identifies with the younger son?

Who identifies with the older son?

Right. This story, I believe—this gospel—is something that we need. I mean, this gospel—we need to read it not only in the sense of the story that Jesus tells; we need to understand the context in which Jesus is telling this story.

In the gospel that we have before us today, the Lord Jesus is making a poignant description about the attitude and the posture of the religious leaders. If you notice, they are coming to him, and they are not happy. We read: They are not pleased. They growled and said, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends."

The growling triggers this story. This is the context in which this story is told.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I—Jade and I—were watching a movie, a Chinese movie. The title of the movie is Gone with the Light. In this story—it's a science fiction film, but I think it also has some aspects of our human experience in life, especially in relationships.

And the—the—the story, the plot—is that in one of the big cities in China, there is a big light. And when the light disappears, they notice that some of the people also disappeared. And then, as they go to identify the people who disappeared, they realize that the ones who disappeared were the people who were experiencing true love—a right relationship with their partners.

And the people who are still in the world, those who did not disappear, start to wonder in their lives: What is wrong with us?

The story goes on to say that in the reflection of one of the main characters in the movie, he realizes that the light was not necessarily taking people away, but that the light actually helped the people in the world to see their own reflection—how they were living out those relationships with those they said they loved.

The situation then unfolds so that everyone who was left—those who didn’t disappear—begins evaluating and reassessing their relationships with others, asking questions, wondering, and sometimes even questioning their own love and connection with others.

And I think that this story that Jesus is bringing is that light—one that invites us to think about and to reassess the relationships we are living with God and with one another.

We were talking last Sunday about this reign of God—this reign of justice, beauty, reconciliation, and wholeness. And today, I want, maybe, to point to the reconciliation aspect of this reign of God, because it speaks to the unifying power that brings together that which has been separated by the forces in this world—forces that tell us, day after day, that you and I are not worthy, or that you and I do not have what we should have, and therefore, we should go and get it by ourselves.

Whether it is spending, or whether it is giving our lives over to overwork, breaking relationships in order to feel worthy and valued—

In this, in this, uh, reflection that I was doing on what it means for us—with this light shed by this story—to reassess our relationships with one another and with God, I came across the words of a—he's a Muslim, he's an activist, a writer, um, thinker, uh, that, um, I think has gotten into trouble around the world because of his statements regarding the ways that empire and power have been destroying society.

His name is Shahed Bolson, and he says something like this—I think his words, and I'm going to par—paraphrase his words—but he says something like this:

He says that our society has fostered empty slogans and allows us to explore only the surface of life and every situation in our lives, leaving no room for profound thinking or thinking in depth. In this society, life is reduced to momentary pleasures. Beneath the surface, there is emptiness and unresolved turmoil.

This society has not given us the tools to articulate or express what is in our hearts. We have been given only a language—only a language of superficiality. Our culture pushes us to simplify everything and not to take it seriously. We become unable to speak the truth of our own suffering.

This system perpetuates a shallow view of life—no tools to reflect deeply, only to consume. We are never shown how to find purpose; it's only about how to fit in, but not about how to behold what we have already been given. We receive no encouragement to explore questions of meaning in our life.

Life has become transactional—it’s only about what to get, how to impress. Everything has become a commodity, even our self-worth.

And it is in this process, or in this journey, that we lose our sense of rootedness, continuity, and belonging—to someone or to something that is greater than us. We have become fragments of people, floating from one superficial experience to the next, never truly connecting with others, even with our own souls.

That is what happens when a nation, an individual, or a society loses its moral and spiritual foundation—when we are told that value comes from what we own, not who we are and whose we are.

And I think that this is what was going on in the lives of the children. This, perhaps, reflects what is happening in our own society.

When I was looking at this picture that you saw in the background of the gospel reading today—and the slide that I have for you—Henri Nouwen uses this picture, this painting of Rembrandt, to remind us of what David Greenlee was telling us: this moment in which the father runs and receives the son.

If you notice, in the full picture, the son is kneeling down, and the father is placing his hands on the back of the son.

In the close-up that you see in the upper right corner of the screen, you will notice the two hands. And Rembrandt, according to Henri Nouwen, says that we can see that one of the hands is a male hand and the other is a female hand—to represent both aspects: the tenderness of the motherly love of God, but also the—excuse me—the strength of the fatherly love of God.

That is why, in our liturgy here, we constantly talk—even when I start the message—about our Abba, Father, Mother, and Creator. Because this is the way we remember that the embrace we receive from God is one of both motherly and fatherly love—love that each one of you experiences differently, as a mother or as a father.

In fact, two Sundays ago, we spoke of another image of the motherly love of God when we talked about the hen that covers her chicks with her wings. So, this idea of experiencing God as a mother is not foreign to the entire understanding of God's love for us.

The father in the story embodies God’s boundless compassion—welcoming the repentant younger son and inviting the resentful older son. Grace transcends our human merit. This is the prodigal grace of God, the prodigal love of God.

I believe that the son always knew that his father loved him deeply. I don’t believe it was just a sense of remorse that made him say, "Oh, I need to—I need to go back because I feel remorse and because I need to say sorry." No, it’s because, deep in his heart, he knew that the love of his father was greater than his mistake, greater than his spending, greater than everything he had done.

And this is the gift that you and I have received—whether it is the lostness in our lives that highlights our universal need for grace and reconciliation, or the fact that, sometimes, we want to earn God's love and belonging, either by squandering or by living a self-righteous life.

The love of God for us doesn’t change. And no matter what we are asking, wondering, and questioning, we have a God who is always there.

That is why I believe that Jesus is eager to tell this story—to use a ridiculous image of God, an incomprehensible image of a God who is running like a child. Imagine that.

I think that Ryan—probably, if he wasn’t here in the church—could have run in a very different way to receive Yema and done things he didn’t do when he encountered Yema in the back. Isn’t that right, Ryan?

And that is the image this story gives us: Jesus, who accepts us as we are—unworthy, perhaps, by our own standards, but worthy in his eyes.

Jesus encounters us where we are, just as we are in our faith journeys. He accepts us as we are—but one important thing—he never leaves us where he finds us or in the condition in which he finds us. He transforms us and incorporates us into God's reign of reconciliation.

We are in this story. Our journey seeks belonging and rootedness, warmth under the wings, assurance in our wilderness—intertwining our struggles with our identity, our loneliness, and our desire for belonging.

You and I are called to embody this love—moving from being recipients to being channels of mercy. As we can see in the image we have been using, we are not just recipients containing the grace and love of God. We are channels of mercy—where the grace of God flows out of us into a world in need.

We are full to the brim.

And for that, we thank God for this prodigal grace.

Amen.