In the Prodigal Son we learn our right relationship to God; it is that of parent to child. In this parable, Jesus teaches that our actions never change our relationship to God and in this love we are always welcomed home. 

Vicar Neal Cannon, Fourth Sunday in Lent (C); text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32; Psalm 32; II Corinthians 5:16-21

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

The Pharisees have a big problem with Jesus talking to sinners.

Every time Jesus talks to a tax collector, they call him out. Every time Jesus eats with a Samaritan, they hassle him. Every time Jesus goes for a walk with a Gentile, the Pharisees get all worked up!

Why is that?  What’s the big deal?  Let’s just let the guy eat his lunch already!!

But for the Pharisees this was a big deal, and they had their reasons why. In the Old Testament, we read the story of a people who were constantly struggling to maintain their relationship with God. One day, the people are being faithful to God, and God is blessing them, and the next day the people are worshiping other gods and sinning in various ways, and God is punishing them.

Over and over again in the Old Testament God tells the people to follow his ways, to remember the laws and commandments. God warns them that there are consequences to breaking the rules. And so the Pharisees learned the rules and they learned them very well. They taught that if the people followed the rules, they would have a good relationship with God.

But then Jesus and his disciples come along, and they don’t follow the rules quite as well. Sometimes on the Sabbath Jesus would heal the sick and his disciples would pick grains of wheat from the fields. And as we find out today, Jesus would eat with people who were sinners; he would eat with people who were breaking a lot of rules.

And for the Pharisees this is a big deal because if our relationship with God is dependent on following the rules, then breaking the rules would mean that God might punish us. To be a Pharisee you had to be very careful about making sure everyone was following all the rules.

So when the Pharisees confront Jesus for spending time with rule breakers, Jesus tells them the parable of the Prodigal Son, the story of a wayward son and his loving father who welcomes him back home.

This story is often read with one major inaccuracy. The inaccuracy in the story that we often hear is that the father accepts his son because his son repents. We think this because we hear the son practice his confession, so we think that it’s because he repents the father accepts him back as his son. But if we listen more carefully we realize that the father never hears his confession. The father sees his son a long way off and embraces him before he says a word. When the son does repent to his father, the father never even acknowledges his words but clothes him with his finest robe, sandals, and rings.

The reason that the story is sometimes read in this way is because we unintentionally use a lens that says, “Our relationship to God is dependent on what we do and say.”

We do this for a lot of reasons. We tell ourselves that this story is about what the son does to earn his father’s forgiveness because we want to believe that we can redeem ourselves. We want to believe that if we follow all the rules perfectly, God won’t be angry at us.

Here’s the problem. When we read this story the way that Jesus told it, we realize we got the story backwards. We think that it’s what we do that impacts our relationship with God, when in Jesus’ story it’s actually our relationship to God that impacts what we do.

In this story Jesus tells us that our relationship to God isn’t dependent on our actions. God loves us even when we sin. God loves us when we do well. God loves us when we are close by and God loves us when we are far away. Jesus puts this love for us into terms that we can understand. Jesus puts it in terms of a relationship. Jesus says, this is the kind of love a parent gives to a child, and anyone who has had a relationship based on unconditional love knows what this is like.

As some of you know, my birthday was last week. And as happens every year, I got a phone call from my parents. It was during the day so I wasn’t able to answer but my parents left me a message singing Happy Birthday to me.  And then after singing Happy Birthday my Mom said something really incredible to me. She said, “Neal we love you. We were there the day you were born, and there is no one else who can say that but your Dad and I.” And I realized that this is the kind of love that we receive from God. This is the relationship a parent gives to a child, the kind of relationship Jesus was talking about.

This is the kind of love that says, I was there for you on the day you were born, and I will always be there. No matter how old you are, no matter what you do, no matter what you say to me, I will always see you as my baby, my child.

This has deep meaning for us. In this parable we discover that we are not objects or pets in God’s eyes. We are God’s children and God wants nothing more than to be in relationship with us. The Psalm today tells us, “Do not be like horse or mule, which have no understanding; who must be fitted with bit and bridle, or else they will not stay near you.” In other words, God doesn’t use us as we would use an animal. God doesn’t force us to do God’s will.

Like the younger son, we are given the opportunity to leave whenever we want. We’re given the freedom to take our inheritance and waste it away. We can pollute the Earth and exploit its resources until the land is parched and withered. We can treat our family, friends, and neighbors with contempt until we are alone in this world. We can exchange love, and life, and community for immediate gratification until we’re empty inside.

But from the parable we learn, life is better when we have a relationship with God. And yes, there are rules when we live in God’s house, but our relationship is never dependent on how well we follow those rules. God is always our Parent and we are always God’s children.

But like all children, we think God’s rules are there to get in our way. We think they hinder us. Don’t eat too many sweets, treat your sister nicely, don’t stay out past midnight!  Unfortunately, too often it’s not until we get sick from eating too many sweets, or a relationship with a loved one is ruined, or we get in a car accident because we drank too much at the party and decided to drive home that we realize that God made these rules to keep us safe, to give us life more fully. In the context of God’s relationship to us, we realize that the rules don’t define the relationship,
God’s loving relationship to us defines the rules.

The Good News is, as Jesus tells us in our parable today, that even when we do screw up the door to reconciliation and forgiveness, the door to coming home, is always open. When we realize the world and all its charms is not everything it’s cracked up to be, God is there waiting for us like a Parent waiting for their child to come home late at night.

During this time of Lent this is an especially powerful thing to remember because as we confess our sins, as we prepare ourselves to come before the altar we remember that before we ever uttered a word God forgave us. Before we did a thing, Jesus Christ, the living expression of God’s love, died on cross and was resurrected as proof of the length and depth that God goes to have a relationship with us. This relationship that God has with us, changes our very nature.

As St. Paul says, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” In Christ we are new creatures, a new creation. God sees us as he would see a newborn child. And as such, we can do nothing to separate us from this kind of love, this relationship.

When we are in relationship with God, when we treat others as brothers and sisters in Christ, we become as St. Paul says, “ambassadors for Christ,” because we proclaim as Jesus taught us that God is our loving parent who has welcomed us home.

When our neighbors really tick us off, we forgive them because we know that God forgives us. When our children are too much to bear, we endure their childishness because that’s what God does for us. When a brother or sister sins and falls short of God’s will on Earth, we rejoice and celebrate when they come home safe and sound.

And when we screw up, we repent because of the pain and suffering it has caused us and the world, but we never have to fear God abandoning us because in Christ we have a promise that our sins are forgiven, and that our Loving Parent will never leave us. Thanks be to God.

Jesus urges us to ask different questions of God and of life, focusing on the life God offers and to which we are invited to turn, and not on justifying others’ sin or suffering.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, 3 Lent C; texts: Luke 13:1-9; Isaiah 55:1-9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

On the one hand, what Jesus seems to be saying to the crowds in this episode is very helpful even in our day.  He refers to two tragedies unknown to history but clearly known and clearly troubling to his listeners, and emphatically declares that no conclusions about the victims and their sinfulness can or should be drawn.  In a world where some people (and let’s be honest, it’s mostly Christians who do this) seem eager to blame the deaths of others, by everything from natural disasters to acts of evil, on the wickedness of the victims, having this clarity of declaration from the Son of God himself is incredibly important.  Those who were killed by the governor Pilate as they made their religious sacrifices were no more sinful than those who were not killed.  Those who died in a collapse of a tower near the walls of the city were no more sinful than those who escaped death in that tragedy.  Period.  End of argument.  Jesus has spoken.

Would that he would have stopped there, though.  Because the other hand of this episode is that after stating there are no causal links between tragedies, both natural and imposed by others, and those who are harmed, Jesus adds twice, “but unless you all repent, you will all perish just as they did.”  What’s the point of saying our sins don’t cause natural disasters to kill us or wicked people to kill us and then saying if we don’t stop sinning we’re going to perish like these apparently innocent bystanders did?  It seems as if Jesus is contradicting himself.

The lectionary doesn’t help us much, either, by having us hear Paul’s threats to the Corinthians that if they don’t shape up they’ll be destroyed like some of the Israelites in the wilderness were destroyed.  It’s part of an important and helpful section of this letter dealing with respect and care for others in the community, but this particular bit, added to Jesus’ statement, seems to add fuel to the fire of warning.

We can’t claim refuge in half of Jesus’ words if we’re going to dodge the other half, sadly enough.  But perhaps we don’t have to dodge anything.  There’s a lot more going on here than first meets the eye, and Jesus actually is being consistent.  He does mean to tell us that we can’t blame victims for tragedy not of their doing, naturally or human caused.  But when he asks us to repent or we will perish, he’s not threatening us with tragedy.  What Jesus is doing is pointing us to ask different questions about God, our lives, and what it might mean to turn around, to turn to God, to repent, instead of spending our time in judgment on others, and living in death rather than living in life with God.

The context of this section of Luke is a good starting point to our understanding.

Not only is this Gospel reading only found in Luke, where he places it is enlightening to consider.  In the chapter immediately preceding this, Jesus is giving a number of warnings about the coming end times.  Luke includes several of Jesus’ urgent parables about servants being at work and ready when their master returns, some of Jesus’ apocalyptic warnings, even his belief that families will be divided because of him.  That immediately leads to today’s discussion.  And recalling that the Transfiguration has already happened, and Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and his death, we hear today’s words with the urgency of last words, dire warnings.

But what happens afterward in this chapter is also important to note.  After this, Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath, to great criticism.  Then Luke places two parables next, the yeast and the mustard seed, parables Matthew tells as part of the Sermon on the Mount, earlier in Jesus’ ministry.  And last, the chapter ends with the lament of Jesus over Jerusalem we heard last week, that he wanted to draw his people to himself as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but they weren’t willing.

Luke seems to be making several points.

First, whatever Jesus is saying about repentance and the deaths of innocents, it’s weighted with the urgency of limited time.  He has to get his point across strongly, in other words, before he’s gone.

But second, it’s instructive to note the positive parables that follow, parables that are hard to read as anything other than the grace of God, and also to note the healing Jesus does.  The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is like yeast in flour, or a mustard seed, both which grow and flourish and bear far greater fruit than their tiny size would suggest possible.  And the grace of God that Jesus brings breaks Sabbath law, a law of God, to heal a woman in pain and suffering.

And third, the grief of Jesus comparing himself to a mother hen shapes the whole discourse.  Jesus is not only short on time, he desperately wants the people to listen to him and turn their lives to God.  He doesn’t want their destruction.

So the context tells us that Jesus desperately needs us to listen while we can, that he’s bringing grace and healing even when it seems inappropriate, and that same grace will flourish in unexpected ways, and that it causes him great sadness when we still won’t turn to God and live.

And lastly, let’s not forget the truly helpful context of the part we also heard read, the parable Luke retells right after this discourse.  The urging of patience by the gardener, to let the fruitless tree stand another season, get fertilized and worked on, in hopes that fruit will one day come, is a powerful statement of Jesus’ intent.

For all his urgency, it is that grace we see here and in the rest of this chapter that overrides all.  He wants us to turn to God, to bear fruit, and we won’t.  But the Holy Spirit, acting as gardener here, says, “let me see if I can do something, get this plant growing and bearing fruit.  Give me some time.”  Two chapters from now Luke will tell powerful parables of Jesus about the lost being found, about a father who waits for his wayward son and welcomes him home.  Such waiting grace is already seen in this story of the fig tree, and becomes our ground for hope.

What the gracious yet serious, the urgent yet patient Jesus is saying today is what he’s been saying all along: “Repent.  Turn to God.”  But today’s particular emphasis is that we remember that’s what’s really important.

In dealing with the unexplained and frightening tragedies as his framework in the way that he does, Jesus is taking our minds off of the status of others and telling us to focus instead on ourselves, not to be selfish, but because our lives depend upon it.  Don’t worry about the reasons for bad things happening to good people or good things happening to bad people, or any combination thereof, he says.  You can’t make any inference from what happens to people that will explain why things happen.  In fact, he says, I’ll just tell you right out, it’s not related to their sinfulness or behavior.

Instead, he says, you should be thinking about your life with God and whether you have that life or are living in darkness.  As Jesus shows grace in this whole chapter by his healing and his parables, by his very life, he says, “this is what God has to offer you.  Why won’t you let God surround and embrace you?”

His call to repent in this context is one of re-focusing, and it’s an important one for us.  We can spend a lot of time worrying about someone else’s salvation or sin.  Jesus says that our time would be better spent considering our own.

He’s also eliminating the “why?” question in favor of the “what can I do?” question.  By removing any justification for the innocent deaths in those tragedies, he’s answering the “why” question in something like the way God does in the book of Job: “you wouldn’t understand why if I told you.”  He’s saying, quit wasting time trying to find reasons for things you’ll never find reasons for.

Instead, ask yourselves what you will do with your lives now that you know what God is offering you.  Will you turn to God and live, or turn from God and die?

Jesus is heading to Jerusalem and the cross for the very reason that we mostly choose to turn from God and not toward God.  And he, the Son of God incarnate, will die to transform our hearts by his sacrificial love, that he might rise from the dead to bring us into this life he now is offering his hearers.

Risen from the dead, he still offers open arms, open wings, open love to welcome those who have strayed.  And he invites us to see that is where life is and turn to it, rather than perishing, and certainly rather than fretting about reasons for others’ difficulties.

This is exactly what Isaiah is saying to us as well.  I told the Tuesday study group that I hoped the Holy Spirit would lead me to Isaiah at some point this week after this hard Gospel and second reading.  And that’s just what happened.

Isaiah says what Jesus is saying: why do you run after things that don’t satisfy, eat things that don’t fill you up, seek things that are worthless?  He’s not really talking about food here, obviously.  Spending time trying to justify why someone else suffered a tragedy has no value or help for us or for them.

Rather, Isaiah says, go after the things of life God is offering.  Like Jesus, Isaiah says God is offering spiritual food and drink that will give us life, offering all we need for hearts that are in tune with God and filled with grace, if only we recognize it and turn to it.

Both Jesus and Isaiah are inviting us to find the joy of repentance, the joy of discovering life in the risen Lord who fills us with what we need and shapes our lives into children of God who will transform the world, the children God has hoped for all along.

My thoughts and ways are higher than you can imagine or think, God says through Isaiah, so don’t focus on that.  Rather, seek the LORD where he can be found, call upon him while he is near, Isaiah says.  And you will find life.

In the end, Jesus says, learn to ask the right questions in life and you’ll find the answers you need.

The One who taught us that when we seek, we certainly will find, tells us today where our questions need to lie and what answers the grace of God provides.  He shows us what truly will satisfy the longing of our hearts and lives, and will sustain us in this life, even in a world where people are killed and die in tragic accidents.  We need not fear such things because the Son of God has risen from the dead, and we have this same resurrection waiting for us no matter when or how we might die.

But best of all, we need not even wait for God’s redeeming grace to come only at the time of our death, because in this life, Jesus urges us to know, we will have the certain and gracious love of God not only filling us to our depths, but offering forgiveness for our sin and the gracious gardening action of the Holy Spirit helping us bear fruits of Christly love beyond what we thought possible, and that will shape the world.

Let us do what Jesus asks, repent, turn to our God and the life we are being offered.  And then we’ll see what well-fertilized lives planted in the grace of God can really do.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen