Sunday, Marrch 27, 2022
/The Fourth Sunday of Lent
Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
The Rev. Clint Brown
Theme: God is looking for you
Paul’s word for it was “reconciliation,” which means, then as now, the work of restoring the relationship between two parties who have had a falling out; but in Paul’s day it was a largely secular term. In Paul’s day, the more familiar use of the word was in the sphere of international relations. It was more akin to what we might call diplomacy or mediation. Reconciliation was quintessentially the work of an ambassador who was tasked with hammering out treaties and terms of trade between countries or people groups. With Paul the twist is that normally the responsibility for reconciliation lay with the one responsible for the breach, the rupture in the relationship, but here, in this illustration to the Corinthian church, contrary to normal expectations, Paul represents God as the reconciler. God, who is the injured party, is the one who accepts responsibility for having us back in God’s good graces, and whereas human demands for reparation are often punitive, onerous, and vindictive, God, Paul tells us, has offered all of humanity a blanket amnesty. If it were us, and the tables were turned, we would not likely pass such kindly judgment, at least not if our track record as a species has anything to teach us, and nowhere is the difference between us and God more poignantly or powerfully illustrated than in the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son.
We all know the story. By verse 16, the prodigal has hit rock bottom. We know this because he finds himself in a pig sty, no less, which for a Jewish person would have been a particularly offensive place to find oneself in. And as he watches with envious eyes the pigs munching on their scraps and would even be glad to fill his own belly with what they’re eating, it is the same word[1] that Jesus has used in the Sermon on the Mount for those who are to hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6); and, later, at the feeding of the five thousand, it describes the complete satisfaction of the crowds after having their fill of loaves and fishes (Matthew 14:20). All along all the prodigal has wanted is to fill his belly, and, all along, he has wanted the wrong thing. So very like us. And so, the Scripture says, he “came to himself” (v. 17). What a masterful “stroke of art to represent the beginning of repentance as the return of a sound consciousness.”[2] Swallowing his pride, he determines to return home. He knows he will not be returning as a son, however. By custom he is now dead to his family, as if buried and gone. As someone who has brought enormous shame on his household, particularly on his father, he is now to be treated as a complete stranger, not even to be acknowledged on the street. As he well knows, the best he can hope for is just what he says, to be taken on as a hired hand in his father’s house in order to at least subsist – which, to him, would be a vast improvement over the abject state he is in now. And so he returns home a far wiser individual than how he left.
And what happens? It is a complete reversal of expectation. While he is still far off, his father recognizes him and runs to him – runs to him, as if the father were the one in the wrong – and throwing his arms around his son he completely ignores all the disapproving looks of the neighbors for the smelly, dirty, unworthy louse they see crawling back with his tail between his legs. What he sees though, and what they do not, is the moral journey his son has taken, who has returned a different person. He was dead and now lives, he was lost and now is found.
Of course, the prodigal son is us, our deadness and lostness is just a matter of degree, perhaps. What are we to do with such extravagant grace? In the first place, there’s really nothing else for it but to take it seriously and accept it, and we do that by changing. Countless times when Jesus heals or in some other way restores the individuals he encounters, he says, “Go and sin no more.” It is not necessarily a free pass. It comes with strings attached. He is saying, go and make a fresh start. Don’t waste this opportunity by falling back into the same patterns and hates and sin. Go and show that you understand what I have done for you by amending your life. And, secondly, appreciating all that has been done for us, we are to become ourselves ministers of reconciliation. We are to practice the kind of forgiveness and reconciliation that has been lavished on us. Every strained relationship in your life – every wrong that you have done that needs to be righted – there is no better time than today to utter those most difficult words, “I’m sorry.” Because when the books are opened and the accounts are read, the only thing we will have been asked to be experts at is the quality of our relationships and our love.
To close, I wanted to point out that in Luke 15, in addition to the story of the prodigal, there are two other stories about something being lost: a man loses a sheep and a woman loses a coin. Jesus does not tell these stories as models of virtuous conduct. Jesus’s point is that no one in their right mind would leave ninety-nine sheep to wander around in search of one. Plain common sense dictates that you count your losses and not risk losing more. Or take the lady with the coin. While we might search for ten minutes – to get on our hands and knees and scratch around a little under the dresser or a few extra nooks and crannies – we also know we can’t waste the whole morning. What we do is recognize our loss – it stings a little – but we decide that it is not a very great loss, or at least not one from which we can’t recover. We haven’t lost something we can’t live without.
But not so with God. That is where human nature and the character of God are shown to be so radically different. Because God can’t live without us. God does go off to search for the one lost sheep, not desiring that any are left behind. God is the father, the Heavenly Father, running out to embrace you after you have “come to your senses” (Luke 15:17). In God’s mind there is no calculus to perform – no risk assessment to make – no judgment about whether you are worth the effort or not. You are. You are something God searches for constantly and intensely, and that is really good news in a world that that always seems to be in a rush to get ahead and to see after its own needs, even if it means putting you down and, all too often, leaving you behind. God is always looking for you, which means that the only way you can be lost is if you want to be. Amen.
Children’s Sermon: Practicing forgiveness and letting go of anger and resentment
[1] Gk. χορτάζω (chortazō). See Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, Vol. 1 (McLean, VA: MacDonald, 1985), 386.
[2] ibid., 387.