James T. Cleland - "A Lost Boy" (January 20, 1963)

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	(soft music)	0:11
-	Let us pray.	0:45
	Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts	0:47
	be acceptable in thy sight,	0:52
	oh, Lord our strength and our redeemer, amen.	0:55
	If we were asked to decide what passages	1:10
	are central, basic in the teachings of Jesus,	1:14
	it would be almost impossible for us	1:20
	to come up with a unanimous answer.	1:23
	But two parables would ask for a hearing.	1:27
	The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, and rightly so.	1:33
	And yet, in all my ministry, I have preached on neither.	1:41
	It's high time that I did, for time is running out on me.	1:49
	And I now plan to remedy the situation	1:55
	regarding one of them.	1:58
	The Prodigal Son.	2:01
	It can be dealt with from many angles.	2:04
	There is a Scottish poem which actually considers	2:09
	the parable from the point of view of the fatted calf.	2:14
	The poem is unusual rather than theological	2:20
	in its perspective.	2:23
	Now, it will take three or maybe four sermons	2:26
	to do justice to this parable,	2:30
	this superbly told piece of teaching.	2:33
	Today we should look together at the younger brother.	2:39
	It's the tale of a boy,	2:44
	or for that matter, of a girl growing up.	2:47
	The story opens with a demand	2:53
	made by the younger son on his father,	2:55
	a demand which was granted.	2:59
	There once was a man who had two sons.	3:04
	The younger said to his father,	3:08
	"Father, give me my share of the property."	3:10
	So he divided his estate between them.	3:17
	Few days later,	3:21
	the younger son turned the whole of his share into cash,	3:23
	and left home for a distant country.	3:27
	A Jewish boy has come of age, around 18,	3:33
	of age to receive his inheritance.	3:38
	Father consented, the boy left home.	3:42
	What was the boy after?	3:48
	Freedom, freedom as he understood it.	3:51
	To be able to do what he wanted	3:57
	when and where and how he wanted to do it.	4:00
	He probably felt restricted at home.	4:07
	Why shouldn't he be his own boss?	4:09
	He was a true son of Adam.	4:13
	The father agreed.	4:16
	We aren't told what the father felt	4:18
	about the whole business.	4:20
	Hurt, worried, baffled, glad.	4:23
	He just cooperated.	4:30
	There's something admirable about his concurrence.	4:32
	His boy is desirous of becoming a man.	4:37
	Desire is in line with physical development.	4:41
	The father concurred his was no possessive love.	4:46
	His love did not imprison.	4:52
	Set free.	4:55
	A year or two ago,	4:58
	I visited a girl at whose wedding I had officiated.	4:59
	She had given birth to her first born son,	5:05
	three hours before.	5:09
	Mother and son were in the same room	5:12
	over in the Duke Hospital.	5:15
	In the name of God, I blessed the child	5:18
	and then I had a talk with the young mother.	5:22
	Her first words startled me.	5:25
	They were, "Well, I've lost him."	5:29
	Puzzled, I asked her what she meant.	5:35
	With a quiet resignation she answered,	5:38
	"I had him for nine months.	5:41
	Now he is a person in his own right.	5:45
	I'll help him.	5:50
	But I hope I never forget	5:53
	that he is a person in his own right."	5:56
	That's maturity for you.	6:01
	She is the kind of person who would have understood	6:05
	both the father and the younger son.	6:08
	Real love is not possessive.	6:12
	It is cooperative.	6:16
	It does not claim, it emancipates.	6:19
	But the younger son is a person with claims.	6:27
	You members of the student body	6:32
	may well grin with agreement.	6:33
	Unlimited cuts, late privileges at any old time,	6:37
	parking spaces anywhere, everywhere,	6:45
	but not all things are built	6:50
	like the father of the prodigal,	6:53
	neither are all fathers.	6:57
	So the boy left home, just like you.	7:01
	What did he do?	7:05
	He went away to a far country,	7:06
	Alexandria, Athens,	7:09
	Babylon, Rome, somewhere,	7:13
	and there he behaved	7:20
	as many young people do away from home.	7:21
	He squandered his inheritance in reckless living.	7:26
	Dean Gordon of the Princeton chapel	7:31
	suggests that he spent his money on fast women,	7:33
	slow horses, feasting, and drinking.	7:37
	Well, he had what he believed to be the kind of good time	7:42
	that freedom demanded.	7:47
	If freedom can demand.	7:51
	He must've been quite a bit of a lad,	7:54
	for reports reached home.	7:56
	His big brother didn't like it.	7:59
	With a shake of his head,	8:02
	he commented to his father about this son of yours	8:03
	running through your money with his women.	8:08
	Now, you can understand it, members of the student body.	8:15
	You may not go quite his length,	8:21
	but you know the life anarchy	8:25
	of sporadic adolescent freedom,	8:29
	firecrackers in Coke bottles, spring vacation in Florida.	8:33
	Beer, more beer, and noise, especially noise.	8:41
	C. S. Lewis, I think, once remarked	8:50
	that the distinguishing feature of hell is noise.	8:52
	Perpetual noise.	8:59
	Well, you have a wee hell of your own	9:03
	in the dormitories on West Campus.	9:07
	I don't know about East,	9:11
	though I imagine there that the noise is piercing, shrill,	9:14
	rather than uproarious.	9:20
	This is freedom.	9:22
	Three hearty cheers for all younger sons and daughters.	9:24
	But the prodigal was unluckier or stupider	9:32
	or less uninhibited than most of us.	9:38
	He nose-dived. He crashed.	9:43
	He squandered his inheritance in reckless living.	9:51
	He'd spent it all when a severe famine	9:56
	fell upon that country and he began to feel the pinch.	9:59
	So he went and attached himself	10:05
	to one of the local land owners,	10:07
	who sent him on to his farm to mind the pigs.	10:10
	He would have been glad to fill his belly with the pods	10:15
	that the pigs were eating,	10:18
	and no one gave him anything.	10:20
	Now there is a how do you do,	10:27
	especially for a Jew.	10:30
	You know the Semitic aversion to pork.	10:34
	The boy not merely fed the pigs,	10:40
	he was almost driven to eating their fodder.	10:42
	This lad was in trouble.	10:47
	He was both down and out, a way down and out for the count.	10:50
	Sitting in the pigsty or leaning over the rail,	10:58
	we're told that he came to his senses.	11:01
	"King James Version" translates it,	11:06
	so does the "Revised Standard",	11:09
	which we read this morning, came to himself.	11:10
	Do you remember the (indistinct) sermon	11:15
	about how Mr and Mrs. Prodigal had two boys,	11:16
	and how one of them left home,	11:20
	and he lost all he had in a game of strip poker.	11:23
	His coat, his jacket, his trousers.	11:27
	But when he lost his shirt, he came to himself.	11:32
	Now, that is too literally strip poker.	11:36
	Now, we don't have to take the story as literally as that,	11:44
	but in his downness and upness, he came to his senses.	11:48
	He talked with himself and to himself.	11:54
	How many of my father's paid servants	12:00
	have more food than they can eat?	12:04
	And here I am starving to death.	12:07
	I will set off and go to my father and say to him,	12:12
	"Father, I have sinned against God and against you.	12:15
	I'm no longer fit to be called your son.	12:24
	Treat me as one of your paid servants."	12:28
	He decided to go home.	12:36
	More than that,	12:40
	he decided to renounce his freedom completely.	12:41
	He would become a hired hand on the ancestral farm.	12:47
	Why?	12:53
	Well, he had to.	12:55
	He'd almost no choices left.	12:59
	There was a must to his decision.	13:02
	One wonders if he would have gone home,	13:06
	if his money had held out.	13:10
	Well, it hadn't.	13:13
	It suited his convenience to head for Palestine.	13:15
	Did he work his way?	13:22
	Did he hitchhike?	13:25
	Did he ride home for the fair?	13:27
	Jesus never told us.	13:31
	And yet there was more than a must to his resolve.	13:34
	There was a sense of safety in the decision.	13:40
	It was a comfortable conclusion.	13:45
	He would be fed even in the job of a servant.	13:52
	Man may not live by bread alone,	13:57
	but he won't live long without it.	14:00
	And bread is an advance on swill.	14:04
	So it was back home for him.	14:10
	Some years ago, I listened to Ted Ferriss of Boston,	14:17
	the leading preacher in the Episcopal Church	14:23
	in this country, whom we've tried to bring to this pulpit.	14:26
	I listened to him talking to a group	14:31
	of army chaplains at Berchtesgaden, on this parable.	14:32
	The question he asked and the answer he gave,	14:40
	I shall never forget.	14:44
	The question was, what was the sin of the prodigal?	14:48
	He went over the possibilities.	14:57
	Drinking, it's so often a status symbol,	15:00
	a sin sometimes, but not the sin.	15:06
	Swearing, that may be an aesthetic offense,	15:14
	a sign of a poverty-stricken vocabulary	15:21
	rather than a spiritual vice.	15:25
	Women, understandable,	15:29
	though hardly commendable.	15:33
	These may be sins with a small S,	15:37
	but not one of them, according to Dr. Ferris,	15:41
	is the sin with a capital S.	15:44
	Can you guess what the sin was?	15:48
	He never wrote home.	15:54
	He never wrote home.	15:59
	It is as simple and as penetrating as that.	16:03
	He deliberately cut himself off from his roots,	16:07
	his heritage, his father.	16:12
	He intentionally destroyed all contact	16:16
	with what had created and sustained him.	16:21
	And then he found he couldn't manage on his own.	16:27
	When he came to himself, to his senses,	16:32
	he discovered where he belonged.	16:36
	He decided to go home,	16:40
	to the home which had received no mail from him.	16:43
	Now, I know there are some homes	16:50
	which it is wise to leave.	16:54
	Professor Dickey of St. Andrews University, in Scotland,	16:57
	told me of an incident	17:02
	when he as an officer was censoring mail	17:04
	written from Palestine during the First World War.	17:07
	Orders had been given that all troops had to write home	17:13
	because of the complaints of dearth of correspondence	17:18
	from husbands and fathers and sons.	17:22
	One letter began, "My dear wife".	17:27
	The rest of the sheet was blank until the very foot.	17:32
	There was written, "Your loving husband, John."	17:37
	Dr. Dickey sent for John to account	17:41
	for this unusual epistolary effort.	17:45
	The explanation was short and to the point.	17:49
	"We were ordered to write home,	17:53
	but me and the missus are not on speaking terms."	17:56
	There are some homes which are only cafeterias	18:05
	and dormitories with garages attached.	18:07
	Some of you are glad to escape from such places,	18:13
	but even you know	18:18
	that this is not what home is supposed to be.	18:20
	It's not the kind of home which you hope to make.	18:24
	You don't believe that the prodigal's problem	18:28
	was that he and his father were not on speaking terms.	18:30
	Problem didn't lie there.	18:35
	The younger brother decided then that it was home for him,	18:39
	but notice the kind of homecoming which he decided on.	18:42
	He would return as a servant, not as a son.	18:47
	There was a measure of integrity left in him.	18:54
	He had sinned, he said so.	18:59
	Against God and against his father.	19:02
	He wasn't fit to be called a son.	19:06
	Could he have a job as a hired hand?	19:11
	Here was the renunciation of the freedom	19:17
	which had led him to the pigsty.	19:20
	Freedom to be able to do what he wants	19:23
	when and where and how he wants to do it.	19:26
	He thought he would be his own master.	19:33
	In plain fact, he was a pig's butler.	19:37
	Confidence in himself as captain of his soul	19:43
	had landed him as a scullery maid for swine.	19:46
	No wonder he was homesick.	19:51
	And yet in his homesickness,	19:53
	he kept some of his independence.	19:56
	He would acknowledge his sin,	20:00
	but he would not ask for forgiveness.	20:02
	He knew he didn't deserve reinstatement with the family,	20:09
	letting bygones be bygones.	20:13
	Could he just have a job?	20:17
	And so he set off for his father's house.	20:23
	That's how the new English Bible translates verse 20,	20:28
	for his father's house.	20:31
	That's what he'd head for,	20:34
	not home, but to his father's house.	20:36
	Maybe somewhere near Nazareth.	20:42
	We can picture him winding his way home,	20:46
	muttering over the speech he would deliver.	20:49
	"Father, I've sinned against God and against you.	20:52
	I'm no longer fit to be called your son.	20:57
	Treat me as one of your paid servants."	21:00
	He went over it again and again and again	21:03
	until he was letter-perfect.	21:05
	And we remember,	21:09
	some of us angrily, some of us gladly,	21:12
	how he was received.	21:18
	But while he was still a long way off,	21:21
	his father saw him and his heart went out to him.	21:25
	He ran to meet him,	21:32
	flung his arms around him, and kissed him.	21:34
	The son said,	21:39
	"Father, I've sinned against God and against you.	21:41
	I'm no longer fit to be called your son."	21:44
	But the father said to his servants,	21:48
	"Quick, fetch a robe, my best one, and put it on him.	21:49
	Put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet.	21:57
	Bring the fatted calf and kill it	22:00
	and let us have a feast to celebrate the day,	22:03
	for this son of mine was dead and has come back to life.	22:06
	He was lost, and is found."	22:12
	The boy began his speech, the one he had memorized,	22:18
	but his father, in joy to have the boy back,	22:23
	rudely interrupted.	22:28
	The young brother never finished his prepared recitation.	22:31
	He never got it out about being a hired servant.	22:36
	He was received as a son.	22:40
	A hug, a kiss,	22:45
	his father's best robe, a signet ring,	22:50
	shoes, the sign of a free man,	22:56
	because servants went barefooted, and a party.	22:59
	Home is where they have to take you back	23:08
	even when you don't deserve it.	23:13
	This is forgiveness to the point of reinstatement.	23:18
	Now, don't be angry some of you,	23:24
	don't mutter under your breath, unfair, a shame.	23:26
	The old man was daft.	23:31
	Don't you see what the father has done?	23:37
	He has given the boy a tougher assignment	23:41
	than that of being a hired hand.	23:47
	He's given him the freedom of a son,	23:53
	the freedom to learn what a son is.	23:58
	What a home is.	24:02
	The boy had wanted freedom from sonship, from home.	24:05
	Now he must learn the freedom to sonship within a home.	24:12
	This is the correlation of personal freedom	24:20
	with group freedom.	24:25
	It's the transformation of freedom from into freedom to.	24:28
	He will now be a son with his ears and eyes open.	24:36
	He may discover that it was a better home	24:41
	than he thought it was.	24:44
	He is refused the job of being a slave within a household.	24:47
	He's given the job of becoming	24:54
	a responsible son within the home.	24:57
	The boy is being given the chance,	25:02
	the chance he wanted, to grow up.	25:06
	To mature as a son.	25:10
	He's going to learn what his freedom is	25:14
	in relation to the wider freedom of a family,	25:17
	but it will be a freedom surrounded with joy.	25:21
	Oh, it would have been easier in so many ways	25:29
	to have become a hired hand.	25:34
	But his more difficult job of sonship	25:41
	will be permeated with the remembrance of his welcome,	25:44
	when the first half of the parable ends	25:49
	and the festivities began.	25:52
	Now, what do you younger sons and daughters here at Duke,	25:59
	in a far country, think of all this?	26:04
	Is home for you a place to be forgotten	26:10
	with a kind of sad gladness?	26:15
	Is home a place you turn to only in crisis?	26:20
	You recall the telegram sent home by a British student?	26:26
	SOS.	26:32
	LSD.	26:34
	RSVP.	26:37
	SOS, the international sign of distress.	26:39
	LSD, pounds, shillings, pence.	26:44
	RSVP.	26:49
	Is home a place you left to be on your own,	26:55
	but which you think about when your freedom	26:57
	tastes like ashes and smells like pigs?	27:02
	Is home worse or better than you thought it was	27:08
	when you left to come here?	27:13
	What did your home give you when you came here?	27:16
	What may it now give you that you missed before?	27:22
	What do you make of a place that has to take you in,	27:30
	even when you don't deserve it?	27:34
	What did this parable say to you	27:38
	as we thought together about a boy who left home	27:43
	of his own free will	27:50
	and remembered home when he was far-spent	27:53
	and returned home	28:00
	to receive a most unexpected welcome.	28:04
	Amen.	28:11
	Let us pray.	28:13
	Oh God who art our father,	28:20
	help us to ponder the meaning of freedom	28:24
	and growing up and home,	28:28
	that we may become thy sons and daughters	28:34
	in the spirit of him who called us to be thy children,	28:39
	even Jesus Christ, our Lord.	28:45
	And may the blessing of the Lord come upon you abundantly.	28:48
	May it...	28:54
	Jesus Christ, our Lord.	29:04

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "A Lost Boy" (January 20, 1963)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r49c6x26w

Date:

January 20, 1963

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0213
ref5632_8eg
uachapelsermaud
duke:628531
dcrau002221
ark:/87924/r49c6x26w
6dfa167a-79e3-4bc4-a01f-397b5c4e937e

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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James T. Cleland - "A Lost Boy" (January 20, 1963)

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1. James T. Cleland - "A Lost Boy" (January 20, 1963)

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James T. Cleland - "A Lost Boy" (January 20, 1963)

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