Fourth Sunday in Lent - Year C

Fourth Sunday in Lent – Year C (RCL)
Joshua 5: 9 – 12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5: 16 – 21; Luke 15: 1 – 3, 11b – 32
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, March 14, 2010

HEARING AND TELLING OUR STORIES ANEW

Let us Pray: Shape us Holy God into the image and likeness of you – so that we may become that which you truly desire us to be. Help us to see in the familiar stories the unexpected as well as the comfortable truths. Wend into our hearts the power of your reconciling love for us and for all of your creation made new in the power of your suffering, death and resurrection. Amen.

(SUNG) PRODIGAL SON HE’D BEEN AWAY A WHILE
HE WAS MAKING HIS WAY BACK HOME NOW, OVER MANY
A RAGGED MILE.
WHEN HE FINALLY CROSSED THE RIVER, AND HIS FATHER
SAW HIM NEAR;
THERE WAS A JOYFUL SOUND FOR ALL THE WORLD TO HEAR.

It has been a full and fascinating week for me, and I reach this Sunday liturgy filled and full of the lessons, learning and life experiences that are a part of the totality that we bring with us to our shared work in Christian community. I am blessed to have an opportunity to hear and reflect with others during the week the texts that we will use for our gathering in prayer and worship on Sundays. My sharing of those texts helps to shape what God might be calling me to say as I listen to what others have taken from their own collective memories of the stories and experiences that have shaped their lives. On Tuesday we gathered at Terwilliger Plaza to celebrate our once monthly service of Holy Communion with some of our parish family who reside there. We share Eucharist with each other and with God and then we gather to share a lunch in the dinning hall. These wise women humble me with their depth of life experience and the wisdom that has garnered in their lives. I often come away from that gathering grateful for the chance to spend time and fellowship with a group that has begun to “bond” in many ways – but also very aware of the limit that our short time puts on our ability to deeply delve into the Gospel narrative and search out what it might mean for us in our own lives. After this gathering on Tuesday I drove down to Salem to attempt a pastoral visit with a member of our Parish family whom Deacon Ken mentioned in his remarks last Sunday. The demons of institutional apathy raised their ugly voices and I was not able to actually see him; but I was able at least to get a working phone contact that will provide me with periodic updates on his condition and the readiness of his spirit to receive visits. I find it truly amazing that all of this fuss is being made over a little parish priest who wants to visit with a troubled parishioner and share the blessings of presence and comfort with him. I wonder what the story of the prodigal son’s return would say to Edmundo! On Thursday I gathered with the folks at Campus Ministry at PSU and we shared communion and a wicked good tomato basil bisque and talked about the differences that folks heard in the Prodigal Son story based on which character they most closely identified with when they heard it this time. I was thrilled to have the perspective of young folks just beginning their adult Christian journey to compare with the wise women of Terwilliger who are nearing the end of theirs. It is amazing to me how folks hear the stories of our tradition and how they speak to us at different levels in our lives and this time did not disappoint. The young women who were at PSU tended to compare the story of the Prodigal Son with the story of Martha and Mary. Identifying with the strongly dominate male characters in Luke’s telling of this parable from the mouth of Jesus was not as comforting to these young women as it was to the guys gathered around the table on Thursday evening. In contrast, the women at Terwilliger more closely identified with the reconciling and welcoming love of the father in the narrative – it seemed to them that the whole story was about the welcome home and the nurturing care of a Father for both of his children equally and with very different needs. The young men at PSU on the other hand tended to identify more closely with the prodigal who was out in the world squandering the inheritance of his youth and looking for a way to work himself back into the graces of his father whom he loved deeply and was achingly aware of having damaged their relationship. What we hear and how we hear it can be deeply influenced by the role we most clearly identify with in the story. In this realization grew the seed of the message that I was pulling from the story and how it related to my life at this point in my adult Christian journey and I surmise the same is true for you.

If any preacher worth her or his salt hasn’t preached a least one sermon on the story of the Prodigal Son or the Beneficent Father however you want to focus it – then they just haven’t been preachin’ long enough! I myself have reflected on this parable from our Gospel texts at least 5 times so far in my short career. Part of our challenge is to find ways to tune our ears and our hearts to hear the stories which we know so well and pull out from them something new which they have to say to us each time that we hear them. What I heard new this time was the powerful message of reconciliation to which the prodigal, the older brother and the father are all called. Old wounds and grudges which have to be released in order to be fully present to the celebration and welcome home offered; perceptions and expectations which need to be examined and released after we have been forgiven – and can then focus on forgiving others. Here’s a piece of the mystery and grace of reconciliation – when I am reconciled to you both of us become healed even if you are unaware that I have offered our struggle into God’s hands and asked for the grace of reconciliation – still a piece of us becomes healed and space grows in our relationship so that grudges can move out and God can move in. Several folks have contacted me in the last weeks seeking an opportunity to join with me in the sacramental rite of Reconciliation of a Penitent. For those of you who may not be familiar with this rite of the Church it follows the form of Confession from our Roman Catholic roots. In this penitential season of Lent we look to find reconciliation in our hearts and our souls; and to repent and return. As a result of the introspection and personal reflection we have been invited to during these forty days, many seek to find a way to right their relationship with God and this sacramental gives the opportunity to confess our sins and receive the absolution and remission that is the gift and privilege of the Church.

So in this liturgical year when we hear the story of the Prodigal Son we pause to consider what the message is that we take to heart in this familiar re-telling. The temptation for me, I know, is to gloss over the details of the story and focus only on the fact that I’ve heard this before and it has spoken to me from the point of view of the Prodigal one year, the older son the next and the father in still another. This year, I forced myself to listen to what others picked up in their hearing – and it allows me to find anew the message that God’s seeks to convey in the voices of wise elders and insightful youth. I had yet another experience this week that led me to a deeper understanding of reconciliation in my life. It was the opportunity to come to reconciliation with myself; with my own fears and insecurities and to realize that in the voices of others I can find the truths that God seeks to help me discover. In reviewing my time among this community, I am being encouraged to discover strengths that I need to build upon and challenges that I need to overcome in order to guide us to a deeper and more fully alive witness to the Gospel in our corner of God’s Kindom. We have worked and discerned that our very special calling in this place is to be a gathering of healing and welcome to all who seek a deeper relationship with God – not only to those who come into our pews or into our Parish Hall seeking spiritual nourishment or physical nourishment. Perhaps more importantly to those outside of our Red Doors; our neighbors both housed and homeless – the stranger and the friend and invite them to feast in our abundant blessing. It is our calling and our responsibility to extend our sincere welcome that they might be fed by the God who has filled us all with the Good News that we are welcomed home; that those who felt almost as one who was dead have come to life and the ones who were lost have been found.

The incalculable love and generosity of our God – symbolized in this story by the father – is ours not because of anything we have done however good or bad we imagine our selves and our behavior to be; rather it is ours because God created us in God’s image and likeness and we are loved because God is good – all the time. Here’s the best news of the Good News in this Gospel story and it comes early in the narrative: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” The Community of God is not a temple for saints; it is rather a respite for sinners. Our Messiah the very God incarnate in Jesus the Christ chooses to eat sinners and welcome them to his table. We are called to do the same, to be the good news for those who think that they will always be alone and without a community that cares for them. To those who hunger for healing and hope; to those who thirst for refreshment and reconciliation we say “come to the table and eat, with and of the God who has reconciled all things in Christ.” I ask your help in spreading this good news. We need each and every one of us here this morning and even more we need each and everyone those who are not – to offer them the healing comfort of our community and assure them that they are welcomed by the God who welcomes sinners and eats with them! Now that’s good news; that’s Gospel my friends and that is worth all the effort it will take to build anew the Kindom of God in this place.

Amen.