SERMON 4 LENT 3.18.,07

Joshua 5:9-12, Psalm 32, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 1b1-35

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.” Beautiful words these. Words that in a sense sum up our faith. Words that could be said over the baptismal waters as the person being baptized rises out of the water, cleansed and made new.

And yet, in all honesty I sometimes wonder if we’ve been made new, how come we spend so much time wandering around in a distant land feeding pigs?

Why is it that the parable of the prodigal—perhaps the most well-known of all parables, why is it that this beautiful parable is all about death?—all about death. It begins with the younger son asking for his inheritance—in a sense—proclaiming that his father is a dead man. The Father accepts his own death—prematurely though it may seem—he divides his estate between his two sons. He is legally dead. The younger one goes off to the distant land—the place of exile perhaps, in any case the place of estrangement from home. The place of separation. You’ve probably been there. I certainly have. No cell phones. East of Eden, the Jews in exile. The son is self-focused and self-indulgent—he does whatever he does and ends up dead. Ends up in the pig sty feeding slop to the pigs and recognizing his hunger and his poverty, he imagines going back home this time as a servant—not a son. But of course, he is a son. And really he’s a dead son. He doesn’t fully grasp that until he is embraced in the arms of his dead Father who throwing all convention to the wind races down the road to welcome him. In that embrace of dead father to dead son, the son knows the truth of his death. “Father, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” . . . So the dead father invites the whole village into a homecoming party for his dead son.

Then we hear from the older brother—not self-indulgent like the younger one—but self-righteous I guess we would say. The one who imagines that his righteousness comes from himself—his own behavior. He refuses the invitation to party and can only think of how mistreated he has been by the father. “I have been working like a slave for you…and yet you’ve never given me even a young goat to celebrate over with my friends.” Woe is me. I can only imagine the dead father’s surprise--after all he’d already given this son his portion of the estate. “Son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours.” The older brother is as dead as the younger brother and the father. He just doesn’t recognize his condition. He is stuck in earning, deserving, and being worthy. He is stuck in not dying.

We don’t know what happens next.

So much death. Paul says, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.” Then he says, “All this from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”

It’s possible that when you hear that line about God’s reconciling with us through Christ what you think of is Jesus on the cross, dying—and maybe what you think of next is that traditional idea that somehow God needed a sacrificial lamb—some kind of blood offering—to be reconciled with humanity. That understanding of Jesus’ death is prevalent in our world and in much of the history of the church.

But I wonder about reconciliation. What is it anyhow? When in your life have you been reconciled? Have you carried out a ministry of reconciliation? The dictionary tells us that reconciliation is bringing harmony where there was none. It’s bringing unity where there was separation. So, if Jesus is God reconciling God’s self to humanity then Jesus is bringing us together when we were apart. Closing the chasm between us. Repairing the breech. Realigning things. It’s about being able to talk with your brother or your daughter whom you haven’t spoken to in 20 years. It’s about listening so deeply and respectfully to someone you don’t agree with that finally you really hear the reason for their thinking or their actions. It’s about looking at the person that hurt you and imagining how his mother might have looked at him when he was a baby. It’s about daring to cross the chasm that separates you from another. That’s reconciliation.

How did Jesus bring reconciliation to his world—to our world. I think about the way he ate meals with folks who’d been judged and rejected—who were marginalized. He sat down with them and ate with them. His need to be fed was the same as theirs. They were one in that. He taught about reconciliation—certainly this parable is about that. He reached out to touch and heal. He forgave—even on the cross. Forgiveness is so often at the core of reconciliation—don’t you think? He entered the depths of life—in his body he came to know the pain, the grief, the abandonment, the ambiguities of life. Jesus reconciled us to God in his living—his living the fullness of life as God-with-us—unto death itself.

Jesus is like the father in the parable. On the cross he is dead. And he knows it. He even seems to know his own death before that when he stands silent before the powers that be. Simply silent in the truth of his own self. His own child of God beloved by God self. Maybe the reconciliation of God is through Jesus because in Jesus we know that God’s love will go to any lengths to convince us that we are loved extravagantly—no matter what. We are forgiven not because we deserve it—not because we confess—not because we head for home for any good reason except that were hungry. As Robert Farrar Capon puts it, we’re forgiven because God is the Forgiver. We’re loved because God is the Lover.

Reconciliation requires death. Requires us to let go of something. Requires us to change in some way. Requires us to know our own vulnerability. Reconciliation invites us to journey in Christ. To journey to tables to eat with folks we’d rather not eat with. To draw near to folks we’d rather run from. To face into the truth of our own sinfulness. Only in dying can we be graced into new life.

In a previous lifetime of mine, a good friend told me a story about his own life that I have never forgotten. He was a gay man who when he finally came to terms with his sexuality had gone through a hard divorce and pretty much thought he’d lost his children forever. He was from a faith tradition that viewed both his sexuality and his divorce as sin. He was filled with shame. He was in the distant land—far from home. In the pit of depression he tried to kill himself. Thankfully he did not succeed. As he began to get back on his feet his therapist told him that he simply had to stop living in secrecy—he had to tell his family about his sexuality. He was an only child; he tried to tell his parents, but simply couldn’t. He decided to tell his cousin—his one cousin he’d grown up with. She’d been his closest friend when they were children. As adults they’d drifted apart as his life and her life took them separate ways. She had married a man who abused her physically. The marriage had ended and now she was ill—so ill that my friend couldn’t be sure she would make it. So he drove to tell her his secret—not sure of how she would take it—but feeling like he needed to tell her his truth.

When he got there she was in bed—and he went in and they talked. He sat beside her and after bit he told her what lay behind his suicide attempt. “You tried to kill yourself because you are gay?” She was incredulous. He tried to explain. He talked of his shame. His grief. His losses. Then he blurted out, “You can’t imagine what it’s like to live with a secret like mine.” There was silence. She took his hand and looked him in the eyes. And she told him how ashamed she had been about her marriage, about marrying a man and staying with a man who hit her. How humiliated she’d been. How she kept it a secret so long she’d almost been killed. There was a pause and then she said, “After I left him I found out I was pregnant. I couldn’t bear it--to be connected to him that way. I ended the pregnancy.” Silence. Tears. Reconciliation. Healing. One truth led to another. What had been broken was repaired. The chasm was closed. Two dead people home at last by the grace of God that runs out to embrace us in our truth.

In baptism of course, we sink down and die with Christ. And we are raised to new life. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see everything has become new. All this from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” AMEN

Robert Farrar Capon’s three books on the parables are well worth reading—he provokes me to thought every time—even though I don’t always agree with him. Various authors have commented on the death of the father in the prodigal son parable, Capon’s analysis of death in the parable was helpful in my preparation of this sermon.