10 March 2013

“Making the Sign of the Cross ... in welcoming the lost”
Luke 15
4 Lent C
10 March 2013


Hurray! It’s the Fourth Sunday in Lent!
That is the correct response for this day in this season ... in the history of the Christian church this is traditionally known as “Laetare” Sunday ... “Laetare,” the Latin word for “Be Joyful.” In the somber, even severe days of self-denial that were Lent in the Middle Ages, Laetare Sunday was a much-needed bright spot on the Lenten walk with Jesus towards the cross. The deep purple color on the altar was replaced with pink; the music was a little less severe, the texts more uplifting.
So today we do have those features present in our worship. We light the pink Lenten candle. Our hymns and songs are familiar, beloved ones, which we can and will sing forth loudly and joyfully.
And our Gospel text ... as we continue through our Lenten journey of Making the Sign of the Cross ... our Gospel text in also one which is given to us to bring us great joy.
Hurray! It’s another Word for us about Repentance!

What? You don’t think repentance is joyful?
Certainly that’s not the fault of the text ... one chapter with three different yet similar stories ... like the many facets of a fine jewel, this Gospel text comes to us this morning, this 15th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, which is all about Welcoming Back the Lost.
Now, yes, it’s true, the first two story-examples Jesus shares with us ... the lost sheep, the lost coin ... in neither of these stories could we say that there is repentance ... in the way we understand what that word means. In Luke’s Greek, the word is metanoia, which literally means “turning around.” A coin can’t “turn around” on its own, it’s an inanimate object after all. And a sheep, although a living creature, is certainly not capable of recognizing its error in wandering away from the flock, “Ohh, I’m sorry I ran away Mister Shepherd” ... no, the shepherd must go out after it to find it, and “lay it on his shoulders” and bring it back to the flock.
But to keep our focus here would be An Adventure In Missing The Point. And the point of these two stories ... is that Jesus tells us ... when the lost is restored to the rest ... the one sheep to the ninety-nine, the one coin to the ten .... when the lost is restored to the rest ... this is cause for rejoicing. Indeed, hear the words of the shepherd, and of the woman:

Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.

The joy of repentance, then, is in the heart and soul of the One who has wholeness restored to them, as they welcome the lost.
That One is God ... God, the Good Shepherd who goes far afield to find the lost sheep ... God, the Woman who turns her house upside down to find the lost coin.
And when God finds the lost ... and God welcomes the lost ... we are invited, encouraged, to rejoice along with God.
That, my friends, is the heart of repentance. It is cause to be joyful, because God is joyful when the lost are found, we are called to rejoice along with God.
The Pharisees and scribes certainly weren’t rejoicing. They saw Jesus associate with tax collectors and sinners ... tax collectors, those loathed co-conspirators with the Roman occupiers who preyed on the occupied Judeans, trying to take more than they were really owed, and pocketing the difference ... sinners, a catch phrase-description for anyone who was living outside the Law of the Religion of that place and time ... criminals, thieves, prostitutes, adulterers, you name it.
It was bad enough to the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus was associating with them. But to actually sit down and eat with them ... to share table fellowship ... a sacred time in their religion, when the unclean was to be scrupulously separated from the clean ... and here, Jesus was mixing it all up, and making a mockery and mess of their carefully delineated, noted and notebooked, catalogued and three ring bindered faith ... well, it was all too much for them. And so they grumbled.
Maybe that’s where we get that attitude, that repentance is one big negative. From the Pharisees and Scribes. From their behavior which suggests, implies, that God’s Big Tent simply isn’t big enough, so that All May Be Welcome.
If They are welcome ... They ... the tax collectors and sinners ... They who have obvious character defects (and I don’t) ... They who have come later than me (and I’ve been here longer) ... if They are welcome, well, there surely won’t be Enough to go around ... I, We who by right should be here will get shorted ... well, it’s just not fair.
It’s the Theology of Scarcity, at work, once more. The word, the way, that says there just won’t be enough to go around, so therefore, you who don’t “deserve” any shouldn’t get any.
No wonder we view Repentance as a dour, sour affair. Instead of rejoicing with the One who gladly, joyfully welcomes back the lost, we sit and gripe that the pool’s getting too full, and that There Won’t Be Enough For Me.
Jesus sees this, Jesus knows this.
And so he tells those Pharisees and Scribes, he tells us, an extended story. The second-best-known story in the New Testament ... perhaps even tied for number one.
This is the Story of the Lost Son.
The story begins on an unhappy note. A man had two sons, and the younger one wanted his father dead.
But the younger son, for whatever reason, couldn’t get rid of dad himself, so he did the easier deed … he asked for his share of the inheritance early. An act which not only shows what he thought of his father … but, truly, of the whole family. Asking for his share of the inheritance before his father had died puts the whole family at risk of financial ruin.
It’s OK for us to be angry with this character. I’m furious at him. What a selfish, self centered, careless jerk of a younger brother. Would that he would get what he deserves … a swift kick in the butt … and to be banished from the family forever.
But he doesn’t get it.
Instead … this unproductive young sapling … he gets precisely what the unproductive fig tree got in last week’s Gospel text … in its unfruitfulness, in his unfruitfulness, despite his unwillingness to bear good fruit … he gets one more year.

Sir, let it alone … let him alone … for one more year … if he bears fruit next year, well and good …

Grrr. Sometimes grace can really hack me off.
And so it is that the younger son is given time … more time … to blow through the inheritance … not like a drunken sailor on shore leave (that’s what his older brother thinks) but more like a silly spendthrift.
And then he hits rock bottom. Finally! Just desserts for the wasteful fool! No one will help him! He finds out the world can be a terrible, cruel, mean place.
And then … and then he comes to himself.
Some readers of this text … coming from families where their “younger brothers” have hit “rock bottom” … they read this text and say, “Hey! Wait a minute! Where’s the repentance here? This jerk, he put the whole family at risk! Sure, he decides to go back to his father with the words “I have sinned” on his lips, but his motivation is purely selfish. His belly is as empty as his wallet, and he wants to be taken care of … get bailed out of his mistakes … once again.”
Well, now, wait a minute.
The text says he “came to himself.”
Literally, that’s the meaning of the Greek word that we, in our American English, would rather feebly interpret as “repent.”
Really, what that word … metanoia … what that word means, is “to have a change in one’s thinking.”
If that is the true meaning of repentance, then, the younger son has used his ‘one more year’ wisely.
He has ‘come to himself,’ in exactly the same way the 12 step programs of today define ‘coming to oneself,’ “We admit that we are powerless over … alcohol … drugs … gambling … pornography … violence … our lives have become unmanageable.”
Coming to oneself. That’s what it’s all about.
The younger son has ‘come to himself’ in his one more year.
And so he sets out on his way home.
Now the Father in this story, the Father plays the same role as the Shepherd and the Woman in the first two stories. He is all about the Joy of Welcoming the Lost.
When he sees his son coming, way off in the distance, he runs out to meet him. This is behavior unbecoming for a grown man of his standing and position. And yet … he does it … ‘unbecoming’ and all. As unbecoming as Jesus who eats with tax collectors and sinners.
A party is in the offing, one of great excess in its celebration. There will be meat … not a usual part of the daily diet. People will come from miles around for the celebration.
It’s a scene ensconced in popular culture ... my favorite description comes from Elton John’s song, “Bennie and the Jets” …

Hey kids, shake it loose together.
The spotlight’s hitting something that’s been known to change the weather.
We’ll kill the fatted calf tonight, so stick around!
You’re gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound …

A great big blowout, a real shindig, as my dad used to say.
Everyone’s celebrating.
Everyone, that is, except the older brother.
Here’s one so full of resentment at his younger brother that, not only can’t he bring himself to go in and celebrate with his family … he’s so full of resentment that he makes things up about his younger brother.

But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!

Nowhere in the text does it say that the younger son blew his money on prostitutes. The younger son is a poor money manager, yes, but the older brother makes the assumption and accusation where there is no proof. And he can’t call him brother.
So all the Father can do in the face of such resentment … grumbling and negativity … is to offer more grace.

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 back to life; he was lost and has been found.

Like the shepherd, and the woman who finds her coin, the father simply wants completeness … wholeness … to have what was … and is … lost … to be found once again.
So what happens next? We don’t know. Because that’s the end of the parable.
It’s open for interpretation, and there are as many different interpretations as there are hearers.
For those of us who attended last year’s Synod Assembly, Professor Mark Alan Powell of Trinity Seminary offered to us how different people hear and interpret this text, based on where they live in the world.
Namely … Westerners (Europeans and Americans) over and against Middle Easterners and Africans.
To Westerners … the words we hear the loudest are the sins of the lost son. He squandered his property in dissolute living. He needs to repent!
But to Easterners … far more community minded folks than independent, self-actualizing Americans and Europeans ... well, they hear two things. First, the sin of the community into which the younger son fell when he hit rock bottom. No one gave him anything. Yes, it’s his fault he ended up where he did … but others helped push him down.
But more important for Easterners and Africans … and remember, this is an Eastern parable told by an Easterner to Easterners ... so what is truly the heart of this text … and where the focus of the story should lie … is in the welcoming behavior of the father. And recovery. Recovery of the family.
The lost is found.
The dead is alive.
The family is complete once more … well, at least they are all in the same general vicinity of one another … for now.
For now.
That’s all anyone can say.
Because so much about this parable is unknown.
What happens next? We don’t know.
We also don’t know if there is, or was, a mother.
And what about the older brother? Will he ever reconcile with the younger?
We just don’t know.
And that, I believe, is for good reason.
Because now the text, the parable, the story is for us to live into it and see ourselves in it … sometimes the younger brother, sometimes the older; we hope, sometimes, as the father … and Jesus tells it for us, it has survived down through the ages for us, as a vehicle to move us to acknowledge our own lost-ness … for us to accept the reality that God has found us in Jesus Christ, all of us, lost sons and daughters of our loving Father, who is running toward us in love.
And there’s more.
This story … these three stories … Jesus gives them to us for the same reason, for us to see and hear that EVERYTHING we do here ... EVERYTHING we do here ... MUST BE FOR THE SAKE OF THOSE ‘OUT THERE.’
EVERYTHING.
Now I realize this is an offensive word.

Well, pastor, come on, I come here because of the community, to be called on when I’m sick, to be prayed about when I need it, to receive the Word and Communion. What do you mean that EVERYTHING we do here is to be for the sake of those Out There?
What about us, here? What about me, here? I’m here, week in and week out, I’ve been here, for years, I’ve served and labored and slaved over this place to make it what it is today.
If we, if YOU do everything for the sake of those OUT THERE ... there ... there won’t be enough to go around.

Now all the tax collectors and the 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.”

The point is, not that we should drop everything we do here which serves us who are here ... not at all ... BUT THE POINT IS THAT EVERYTHING WE DO HERE IS TO BE DONE WITH THOSE WHO ARE NOT HERE FIRST AND FOREMOST IN MIND.
Why do we serve each other? Because it’s nice? Because we like each other? Because we like being served?
Or because in serving, we are showing the world an example of what “living in Christ” is all about?
aaaAAAHHHHhh.
And so we, too, we, always, are called to repent. To come to ourselves. To receive that “one more year” from our good gardener Christ who tends us and feeds us and gives us that one more year ... he waits and watches for us, too, to bear good fruit.
Not simply for our sake.
But for the sake of the others who are lost.
For the sake of those ‘out there.’ For the sake of the completeness, the wholeness, of God’s good, beloved creation.

So how are you going to live into this parable now? How will you complete this story Jesus gives us, in this one more year of God’s grace?