Sermon translation Luke 15:11-32 Sjømannskirken i San Francisco 26.10.2025, Rev Alain Fassotte

Today, as mentioned, is the Day of Repentance and Prayer. I actually find it a bit strange that the Church has chosen the story of the prodigal son as the Gospel text for this day.

Strange, because I don’t really think the story is about repentance or asking for forgiveness, although that element is present.

The younger son doesn’t seem especially remorseful for what he has done. He comes home because he’s starving and needs food and a safe place to stay. He admits he has sinned against heaven and his father, but I don’t really see any deep repentance in him. Certainly not any penance for what he has done.

This is one of my favorite texts, and perhaps this sounds a little arrogant, but I feel that many preachers miss who the main character and the central theme of the story actually are.

For it’s not the younger son who is the main character, nor the older son. It’s the father who is at the center of the story. But we’ll come back to that.

Henri Nouwen wrote a wonderful book about this parable called The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming. I strongly recommend it.

What Nouwen and I both see as the main theme of this text is longing. Especially the longing to be seen.

Longing is a deeply fascinating theme that in many ways characterizes our time.

You may have read in the media that more and more young people are seeking out churches and prayer houses. Especially after Charlie Kurt was killed. Particularly within the Catholic Church and the traditional church.

They say they long for something more concrete, something solid in life. Something they can lean on—not just easy answers, but something lasting.

There is a longing among young people today. In the U.S., Bible sales went up 24% in 2024, and most of those buyers were purchasing their first Bible. On YouTube, people even post videos of themselves unboxing the Bible they ordered a kind of “Bible reveal.”

We see that the wave of New Atheism has crumbled, perhaps because people realized it led nowhere. And the Woke culture is declining too—partly because, within that culture, there is no forgiveness, only punishment.

The Church is the opposite of Woke. We are about forgiveness.

It’s as if the world has grown tired of easy solutions or of canned energy that fades faster and faster, leaving you drained and exhausted. A bit like the feeling you get after eating too much cake: uncomfortably full, yet unsatisfied.

It seems the world is ready to sit down after a long, wild feast with far too much sugar.

Maybe the world is ready for some coarse bread again. Something you have to chew on, that takes effort to digest. Something that isn’t easy, but solid. Something that actually gives real answers to life’s big questions.

Maybe we are like the younger son, who left his father, but are now on our way home again.

This text is about many things, but in our context, one central theme is the longing to be seen. Not just the longing itself, but what we actually long for.

Whether you feel more like the younger son, who went out into the world chasing excitement, pleasure, and escape or like the older brother, who stayed home, worked faithfully, and perhaps suppressed certain longings or desires because he knew they weren’t right. Both are driven by longing.

The need to be seen and recognized is one of the strongest human longings we have. We can go to great extremes to be seen.

If you want to see the longing to be seen, it’s in full bloom here in San Francisco. Much of the extreme behavior we see here, I believe, ultimately comes from that same longing—to be seen.

You can also see it among reality TV contestants, influencers, and YouTube celebrities. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with what they do, but since they’re all competing for the same attention, they keep pushing the limits further and further.

I think what drove the younger son away was a longing to be seen by others. Not through eyes that saw the truth, but through eyes that saw the illusion of who he tried to appear to be.

When he was seen by his Father, he was seen as he truly was—without filters.

How would you feel if someone could see everything wrong you’ve ever done?

That kind of gaze can burn—it can hurt deeply. You can feel stripped bare before the truth.

To see your true self in the mirror of truth can be painful.

Fortunately, we don’t see ourselves with the same eyes God does—with that immense love our Heavenly Father has.

This isn’t just something I talk about in theology or have learned from studies—it’s something I’ve experienced myself.

Some years ago, I had a physical encounter with the risen Jesus Christ. I had lived many years away from God, and I carried many wounds from my childhood.

One evening at a meeting, I was finally able, with all my heart, to forgive those who had wronged me—and to ask forgiveness myself. In that very instant, Jesus stood before me. Between us lay all the heavy baggage I had carried for years, much of it from my childhood.

Jesus took a step forward, brushed it all away with His foot, and embraced me. In that embrace, I felt His immense, infinite love for me—and for you.

God saw all my faults and shortcomings, and I saw them too. I tried to argue with Him, telling Him He couldn’t love me because of all my flaws.

He interrupted me and said, “I love you anyway.”

I’m stubborn, so I tried again to argue—but again He said, “I love you anyway.”

In His love, I saw all my faults and shortcomings—but it was somehow okay, because Jesus’ love doesn’t depend on what we do, but on what He does. I was seen by God. He took my baggage, my sin, upon Himself and carried it away.

What drove the younger son away never satisfied him. But he knew that back home, even his father’s servants had it better than he did. Even they were seen and valued.

I believe what drove the older son to distance himself from his father when his brother returned was partly jealousy, yes—but also a longing to be seen with the same loving eyes his younger brother was met with that day.

He too wanted the fattened calf to be slaughtered for him. Why was the one who had run away and squandered everything being celebrated?

Why was he seen more than the one who had stayed loyal?

What he may not have realized was that the father had already given him everything—all the calves on the farm were his. Everything the father owned was already his inheritance. But he didn’t see his father’s gaze.

The greatest longing we have, I believe, is to be seen by our Father in Heaven. The older son perhaps didn’t realize he was seen all along. The younger son didn’t realize that the father always stood watching for him—watching the horizon.

Remember the text: the father didn’t wait to embrace his son until he reached the house. No—when he saw a small silhouette on the horizon, he ran out to embrace his lost son. No demands for repentance or apology. Buy in the light of this enormous love, we will se you sin and repent.

Our deepest longing is to be seen by God.

In the Aaronic blessing, which I speak at the end of every service, there is also this longing for God’s gaze:

The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

In the time of Aaron and Moses, kings would act as judges in court cases. When someone was accused of wrongdoing, the king wouldn’t look directly at them. If he looked away, the person was found guilty. But if he lifted his gaze and looked at them, they were acquitted—declared innocent.

It’s interesting that we live in a world that says you can be whatever you want, do whatever you want, look however you want.

Live like this or that—it’s all fine. Yet at the same time, the world says you must change in order to be seen. You must look like this or that to be accepted. The world speaks with two tongues.

God says He accepts you just as you are—with all your faults and weaknesses. That’s why He longs, with all His heart, for you to believe in His Son, Jesus Christ—for it’s through His gaze that the way to God is found.

And in God’s gaze, your life will be changed forever.

As I often tell my youth group—maybe to the point of boredom:

There is nothing you can do that will make God love you more than He already does.
And there is nothing bad you can do that will make Him love you less.

His love has nothing to do with your actions.

He loves you because you are created in His image. And He longs with all His heart that you will see Him—through His Son, Jesus Christ—so that you can see God’s face, and be seen by God.

For the main question in today’s text is not whether we are the younger or the older son in Luke’s Gospel. We are probably a mix of both. We may long to run away—from the eyes of truth and waste our inheritance—and at the same time, we may be the loyal one, the one who stays, with jealousy simmering just beneath the surface.

Our model is the Father. The Father who stands watching for His sons and daughters to return home. Who meets those who were dead but now live again—with open arms, not with questions that cause guilt or shame, not with demands or conditions.

And remember—the father also goes out to meet the older son. With the same invitation to come inside, to share the feast, with the same love, the same gaze.

The younger goes in with the father. We don’t know what the older son did. We can only hope he came in too.

But that gaze—the father’s gaze, God’s gaze—that way of seeing others with love—is what we are all called to imitate.

Because even though only God’s gaze can fully satisfy, our gaze—when we see others with love—can bless others, and at the same time, point them toward Christ.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
one true God from everlasting to everlasting.

Amen.