Coming Home to God: Sermon for Lent 4C

Chapter 15 of Luke’s gospel begins with two other stories right before our gospel passage: the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost coin:

4‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

8 ‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

The eliminated stories make very clear that all three parables are about rejoicing when the lost is found—for relationships that are restored. The application for our behavior then also has to do with rejoicing over the one who has repented instead of judging them and refusing to forgiven for their mistakes. These stories are about accepting repentance freely, rather than demanding punishment from those who have done wrong so that they “earn” forgiveness.

I think too often when we hear this parable, and many other parables, we want God’s “justice” to mirror human “justice.” And the human “justice system” is not about reforming people; it’s not about reconciling those who have hurt others to those they have hurt. It’s simply about punishing wrongdoers. It’s about responding to the lost coin by locking the remaining one’s into a tighter grip. It’s about writing off the lost sheep as collateral damage. But God’s justice is NEVER about punishment, which is something we all can be grateful for if we acknowledge how God’s grace has worked in our own lives.

We hear three parables in quick succession of seeking and restoring precisely because Jesus is insisting that God is a seeker and a restorer, NOT a punisher.

The younger son has demanded the portion of his inheritance that would have gone to him—when his father died. The outrageous implication here is that he is not willing to wait and work to inherit, but is willing to break up his father’s estate and household in order to live according to his will rather than by his Father’s.

The younger son goes to a distant country—one where there is no sense of obligation to each other, the kind of obligation that is at the heart of the Great Commandment to love God and each other no matter if you know that other person or not. In this country to which the younger son travels there is no concept of living by a covenant of grace, as the laws of the Torah and the New Testament demand. In that place there was no command to love your neighbor. In that place there was no obligation to care for the widow, the orphan, or the poor. In that place there was no concern for the oppressed. As long as you have plenty of resources, you can cruise along. Sounds like the world in which WE live right now. And it’s a place of the heart rather than a particular geographical place. It’s a place where people deny the universal need of all of us for the grace of God.

The older son refuses to enter and resents the feast for the younger son because he is eaten up with the idea that junior has gotten away with something. Yet the father, when he pleads with the elder son to join the feast, assures him that it isn’t going to cost him anything to be glad his brother is back and not dead. I mean, remember, he’s turning down a FEAST. And it will cost him nothing to come in and be glad his brother is still alive, is still capable of redemption.

Nothing but his pride. Nothing but his hard heart.

You know, there’s a reason why there is a common saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Instead of being grateful for the fact he has NOT been through what his brother has, instead of being reassured that the same rules of forgiveness and abundant mercy apply to him, he wants to tear down the bonds of love, so sure is he that he will never himself need help.

There’s a name for that. It’s called self-righteousness. And self-righteousness poisons the person who wraps themselves in it. It causes us to be lost in a foreign land of our own bitterness, our own resentment, our own pain where we tell ourselves we have no need for God’s grace, that grace is a safety net only for sinners—forgetting that all sin and fall short of the right relationship with God and their neighbor. We all do.

No, we certainly are all prodigals. We are extravagant when spending our emotional and even spiritual currency on ourselves, rather than realizing that all we have belongs to God. And that leads not to happiness and contentment, much less real joy. It leads, as we see with both sons, to despair, bitterness, ruin.

Notice that with both sons, the parent, who could simply demand obedience, instead goes to them. To the wayward younger son, who has been physically lost, his parent even RUNS to greet him before he is halfway up the street. To the bitter older son, he leaves the feast and pleads with him for a change of heart, from demanding that someone else be punished to being grateful that the same generous, amazing grace and mercy his brother is visibly receiving now is always there for him too. To both sons, the parent offers his love, his assurance to them of how precious they are to him.

But what if the important point is that no matter how far we stray from God, God is always more than willing to call us back, and will start toward already from the halfway point. We don’t have to be able to take the whole journey ourselves, with God as some sort of immovable wall to be scaled. 

No, God’s abundant lovingkindness and grace meets us more than halfway and always calls us to return no matter how truculent we are. St. Augustine claims we are born with a space in our heart that only God can fill—and that we keep searching until we find it. Sometimes, like the kids in Willy Wonka we try to fill that space with other things, cheap substitutes that do not fill our need for connection but instead feed our greed and fears. They will never satisfy. When people have fallen into that kind of thinking, there will NEVER be enough. We see it all the time in our public discourse.

Our hearts are placed in the center of our bodies for efficiency when we think of them as mere pumps. But our spiritual hearts are placed in the center of our bodies to remind us that what is on the surface means little.

Both sons have an affliction of their hearts—their hearts are turned toward themselves rather than outward toward love of God and love of each other. The same affliction that shapes the world in which we live right now. But the cure begins small—one heart at a time. In our own hearts. As former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams states:

It is not that I have a long journey to undertake in order to get to God, but that I have a long journey to my own reality. It is my heart, the centre or source of my own being, that is furthest away from my surface mind and feelings, and pilgrimage is always a travelling to where I am. . . . God is not merely, like the Prodigal’s Son’s father, on the way to us: he is there at the heart. Or: he travels to meet himself in what is always other, eager to recognize his own joy and beauty in the distinctness of what is not God’s self. However we put it—there are countless ways—God’s loving kindness is there ahead of us. Forgiveness is never a matter of persuading God of something but of discovering for myself that there is no distance to be crossed, except that longest journey to that which gives truth and reality to my very self.

What if we heard this story as a story of gratitude for unearned forgiveness? What if we paid attention to the JOY that the finder expresses in each of those three parables, instead of focusing on the bitter whispers of others who expect God to balance out punishment to everyone else on some great heavenly balance sheet so that they can feel better about themselves?

Some of us identify with the younger brother: we have all done thoughtless things. Some of us identify with the father, especially if we have ever thought we lost someone or something precious only to have the joy of restoration take the place of our anticipatory grief. Some of us identify with the older brother, and resent the heck out of anyone who gets a second chance when we think they don’t deserve it.

As you know, I have also been including poetry in our adult forum classes, and while doing my reading, I discovered what is considered to be one of the shortest poems in the English language, so short its title is longer than the poem itself. It is attributed to George MacDonald, called “The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs.” Here it is:

Come.
Home.

As we prepare for the easing of restrictions from these long months of COVID precautions, I hope you hear the promise of the two most beautiful words that lie under our gospel selection from Luke. Those two words were probably in the heart of the father every day his son was gone.

Those two words also have a very practical component in our church life right now, too. As we find a new normal, rather than mourn or resent what we’ve done without, let’s return stronger and more resolute than ever to holding fast to these precious relationships that feed us. Let’s join hands, and give thanks for the amazing grace of those two words: Come Home. Let’s say them to each other, and invite those we know into the warmth and welcome of this place and the knowledge and love of God in Christ.

But as we look over the long journey of the last two years, even when we have felt isolated or alone, remember that God has been beside you, supporting you and reminding you of the abundant, tender care God lavishes upon us, in times of joy and also, even though we might need to reach through the anxiety or numbness, in times of trial.

And all along, we have each other. And as long as we have that, we can hold fast to each other, and return to living into ways old and new that we remain bound within each others’ lives.

Come as you are. Come home to yourself, and the amazing gift of God’s grace and mercy that upholds each and every one of us no matter our circumstances.

Come home.

Preached at the March 26 505 and the March 27 10:30am Eucharist (in person and online) at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.

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