On Extravagant Grace
March 30, 2025
Traceymay Kalvaitis

Psalm 32:1-2
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

Luke 15:1-3 and 11-32
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
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Today’s sermon is titled On Extravagant Grace.
The story we are offered today is known as the story of the prodigal son. Prodigal is an uncommon word and I have to admit that, until a few days ago, I could not have accurately defined it. Prodigal comes from the Latin prodigus, meaning “lavish” or “extravagant.” The interesting thing about this word, prodigal, is that as an adjective, it describes extravagant and wasteful spending, as in the case of the young man in our story who wasted his inheritance, and prodigal also describes having or giving on a lavish scale. Instead of titling this sermon On Extravagant Grace, I could have titled it On Prodigal Grace. That would be a more appropriate title because this story, this famous parable, is all about grace….grace given and grace received.
Before we can fully appreciate the implied meaning Jesus weaves through this parable, there are three things we must keep in mind. The first is the criticism that served as a catalyst for Jesus to offer this particular teaching. We heard in verse one, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” It is in response to this comment that Jesus offers the parable to illustrate a welcome that is so full of grace and unconditional acceptance that those that heard it first would have instantly recognized it as a hyperbole, an outrageous example.* This is the second point to keep in mind, because to our 21st century hearing, it may not seem so hyperbolic.
To fully understand how outrageous this story is, we have to view it through the lens of someone living in first century Jewish culture in Palestine. In that time, if a son had asked his father for his inheritance while his father was still living, that would be grounds for disownment right then and there, leaving him with no inheritance at all. No son would risk even asking. The scribes and Pharisees, they know this.
It is also highly unlikely that the son would sell the land. Biblical scholar Leslie Hoppe explains, “Jesus’s audience would have been shocked as much by the presumed sale of the land as they would have been by the son’s squandering of the proceeds from the sale. It was not just a question of a land-based economy, which led Jewish families to hold on to the ancestral lands. It was also a question of religious belief, since Jews considered their ancestral land holdings to be God’s gift to their families.”
Do you see what Jesus is doing here? He is giving detail after detail to illustrate just how undeserving the younger son was of his father’s forgiveness and grace. Jesus continues with the hyperbole. Next there is a famine and the youngest son finds work as a swineherd, feeding and caring for pigs. Pigs are unclean animals in Jewish culture; the scribes and Pharisees, they know this. No doubt they are thinking this Jewish boy is beyond hope, beyond redemption. But when the son returns home, after all of the disgrace and disrespect, after selling his ancestral lands, after the squandering of his fortune and his humiliation as a swineherd…. his father welcomes him, graciously, extravagantly.
This parable is Jesus’s response to being accused of sitting down to eat with “tax collectors and sinners.” The third and final point we should keep in mind is that in Jesus’s time, in choosing to sit at a table with someone, Jesus was elevating that person, or those people to a level equal to his own. This practice that Jesus had of welcoming people without judgement, much like the father of the prodigal son, was culturally a revolutionary action that cut right through cultural divisions, cut right through class divisions, and cut right through divisions based on divisions between Jew and Gentile.
With this parable, Jesus shows the scribes and Pharisees what he could never point out directly. In his actions, ministering to each and every one, no matter their standing in society or lack thereof, Jesus became the embodiment of God’s grace, bringing the presence of God within reach to both sinners, saints and everyone in between.
There is one final part of this parable we should hold on to, especially considering that we are at the midpoint in our season of Lententide, a season when we are invited to create space for intention change in our lives, change that brings us closer to the person we want to be and change that brings us into closer alignment with the source of love we call God. Consider, lastly, the colossal scale of the cascade of poor choices made by the younger son that led to his revelation in the pigpen that he could humble himself, return to his home and family, admit his mistakes, and ask to be taken back as a servant. In so doing, that younger not only risked rejection, he also opened up to the possibility of grace. Frederich Buechner reminds us that “grace is something you can never get; you can only be given grace.” Is there a time when you were given grace that you did not deserve? Did grace come in the form of forgiveness or acceptance or welcome? Did grace come in the form of love, compassion, or empathy? To know grace, to receive grace, allows us to offer it without asking if it is deserved.
In closing, Friends, I celebrate that our teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, modeled such extravagant grace that he became a threat to the Empire and the power structure of his day. In welcoming all of humankind to the table, Jesus embodied the love a parent carries for one’s own child…unconditional and full of extravagant grace. May we know we are so graciously loved; and may we be gracious, in turn. So be it. Amen.

*https://academic.oup.com/book/8056/chapter-abstract/153449112?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Pastoral Prayer

God who is Father, Mother, All, I pray your blessings of peace upon us all this morning. This worldly life is fraught with hardship and disappointment and it can eclipse the light of Your presence among us. Help us, Lord, to attune our awareness of the divine that is intermingled with the ordinary, the blessings that come along with the tragedies, the beams of holy light that shine into the heart of darkness. For the parts of us that are fearful, grant us assurance; for the parts of us that feel unworthy, flood them with forgiveness. Strengthen us, we pray, when faced with difficulties within ourselves and within our culture, strengthen us with a love so tender that we become boundless and effectual, on every level of our beings. For the healing that is happening, we thank you; for the awareness that is deepening, we thank you; and for the guidance that is only a prayer away, we thank you. This we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Benediction

I leave with you these words from an early Quaker by the name of George Fox:
“Keep close to that which is pure within you, that which leads you up to God.”