March 14, 2010
The Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year C)
Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21;
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
We’ve just heard one of the best known of Jesus’ parables, if not THE best known! Unfortunately familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. Or to put it another way I wonder how many of you are thinking right now, “What can she say that we haven’t heard before?” That’s actually a very good question. And I wonder what have you heard before! But we won’t go there today.
We call this story “the Parable of the Prodigal Son.” However, in two separate places this week I have seen it referred to as “the Parable of Two Beloved Sons” and “the Parable of the Gracious Father.” Both those titles, I think, put a positive spin on the story and put the emphasis where it truly belongs, on God’s reconciling love and forgiveness.
It is a story that even in its ancient setting seems to resonate with any and all times.
I’m sure no one would question that the father was, in Jesus’ mind, his father, God. But the sons could represent anything from our own inner conflicts, to a lesson in parenting, to a discussion of the appropriation and use of natural resources, to the very basic: Jesus trying to make the Pharisees and Scribes understand what he was really trying to accomplish when he mingled with sinners and ate with tax collectors. I think, maybe contrary to public opinion, that he truly loved those Pharisees and Scribes as much as the sinners and tax collectors, and that’s why he struggled so often to explain things to them.
Of course it could it be that Jesus was thinking of those Israelites of old that the reading from Joshua tells about. They crossed the Red Sea, wandered for forty years in the wilderness before crossing the River Jordan into the Promised Land. Both times the waters rolled back and let them pass. You might say that doors opened for them without any effort on their part, just as so often doors open for us as we enter public buildings. In addition they had been fed with the heavenly food called Manna and because at least one generation had passed, few would remember tilling the land and eating of the produce. A fresh start must be made, a reconciliation of the old ways with the new; now they were going to have to work to make a new life.
A new creation, Paul calls it, as he writes to the Corinthians. God through Christ has provided us with a new vision, a changed vision, what Paul calls the ministry of reconciliation, the transformation of the individual’s behavior and thinking. God loved his first creation enough to send his son to reconcile it to him when it had become so sinful and neglectful of its God and his Law. Through Christ God has entrusted that message of reconciliation, that message of God’s reconciling love, to us.
And that brings me full circle back to the gospel and the two brothers who chose to follow different paths. But then circumstances caused those divergent paths to turn and come together again, and not only did those young men have to face a loving father who wanted nothing more for either of them but that they should once more be loving, caring members of the family – for him it was immaterial that the one son had broken numerous codes of behavior and that the other felt used and abused by a father to whom he had given his whole life – but also in this new setting under the auspices of a loving father they had to work out their own respective differences, jealousies, envies of one another, maybe even fear. Can they do it? Will they do it? We are not privy to the answer. In spite of all the details and descriptions Jesus gives us in this story, he does not give us a neat ending. We are left wondering, will the older son join the party or will he continue to feel hurt and unjustly dealt with. And “tomorrow” will the younger son really change his ways, stay home, and help on the farm? Choices!
Like them we have choices. We have the freedom to choose our life’s directions, morally, ethically as well as practically and independently, individually. Often we can follow dreams. And I’m drawn to Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road not taken.” The last stanza reads:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
What were those two roads, do you think? Where did they lead? Analysis of this poem, even Frost said, was “tricky.” Apparently the inspiration for it came from the custom of two friends walking in woods near London and frequently choosing different paths as they came to forks on the way. Linda Sue Grimes, a Classic poetry scholar, admits that it can be ‘tricky,’ but “only if we are not careful readers. If we read into poems claims that are not there.“ And with respect to Robert Frost’s poem in particular, she says, “It does not moralize about choice, it simply says that choice is inevitable but you never know what your choice will mean until you have lived it.”
We have choices put in front of us all the time, some as simple as what to have for dinner tonight, eat in, eat out? Some are more difficult, as we really should go and visit the grandparents this weekend, we haven’t seen them for a while, but this maybe the last time to ski this season. And then there are the life changing choices, taking a new job, whether to go back to school to pursue a new career, should we move into a new community. There are also, of course, the choices that people make that land them in trouble: the child who skips school, the young man who holds up the local convenience store, the politician who uses the power of his position inappropriately. And I’m sure you can think of many more examples of the choices we all make either because we have to or because we want to.
The difference, however, between how society reacts and how God responds to our choices can be like night and day. Society may approve and reward or it may criticize and punish. God, however, loves us so much that he/she is watching, waiting, with open arms to hold us, to enfold us, to forgive us, not only when we feel good about what we‘re doing but most amazingly when we least expect it as was the case with the young man who had taken his inheritance and squandered it and then come home in disgrace.
“You never know what your choice will mean until you have lived it.” Jesus left us with choices for living: to follow his road or not. And if we follow his road, there are, as on our highways, rules to be observed. And I was thinking about our official motor vehicle signs and how many can apply to life in general as well as to following Jesus’ road. “Stop” – look and listen. “Yield” – to God who is in control. “Do Not Enter” – stay away from trouble. Speed Limits – stay safe! But Jesus’ rules are much more simple and more concise. There are only two: love God and love one another.
God loves us so much with that remarkable unconditional love and all he wants for us or expects of us is to love him back and to love each other as unconditionally as he loves us. He is indeed the Gracious Father and we are indeed the Beloved Sons and Daughters
“You never know what your choice will mean until you have lived it.” Go forth from this place this morning rejoicing in and living out your choice to follow Jesus, and in the knowledge that you will always be the Beloved of God.
Amen.
Sonia F. G. Stevenson, M. Div.
Church of the Good Shepherd