Ambassadors of God's prodigal love

(a.k.a., Looking for divine love?  Check our lost and found.)

Good morning, good people of St. Paul’s.  It’s been a long time, no?  Good to be back with you on this fourth Sunday in Lent. 

Note that it’s a Sunday “in” Lent… not “of” Lent – as you might know, Sundays are always feast days, even in the season of Lent, when we’re otherwise more somber and penitent.

This fourth Sunday is sometimes called rejoice Sunday or Mothering Sunday.  Like with the third Sunday of Advent, we have words of rejoicing in our readings for the day.  We’re called to lift countenance today with special joy for God’s goodness.  Tradition in the 1500’s had people (domestic help and others) returning ‘home’ today to fellowship with their families and in their home parishes.  Here at St. Paul’s, Fr. Seville has encouraged revival of the tradition of preparing special for today, using special ingredients. 

Indeed, our fast is meant to be lifted today. 

We are to celebrate with special sustenance – special bread. 

We are to rejoice that our heavenly parent is prodigious with divine love. 

We are to be sent out as ambassadors of divine love and reconciliation.

Special bread: The readings we’ve heard this morning call our attention to the role of food in our celebrations.  We’ve been reminded of how God provided manna to our spiritual ancestors as they wandered in the desert, until they made it to their promised land and were able to celebrate their first Passover there with produce of this promised land.  In the famous parable we heard about the father who had two sons, we’re told that hunger (among other things) and issues around food drove the recalcitrant younger son to return home… and that the father celebrated by throwing a feast with special food.  And, in our Collect for today, we ask God to evermore give us the true bread which gives life to the world – not manna, not produce from our land, not a fatted calf… but Christ’s mystical body, in and through which we are nourished eternally.

Rejoice that God is prodigious with divine love:  The parable we’ve heard this morning from Luke, the longest in the Christian scripture, is often called the parable of the prodigal son – focusing on the wasteful extravagance of a younger child who acts selfishly and shamefully, though is eventually welcomed back into the family.  However, I suggest that the parable is really about the parent, who Luke’s listeners would have considered prodigious with this mercy and love.  Note that the parable starts out “there was a man who had two sons” – the point of the story is primarily about the father’s extravagant behavior. 

This is even more apparent when you put the story in context – it’s the last of three parables that Luke has Jesus offering (in the beginning of chapter 15) to confront those who are questioning why he is hanging out with sinners and tax collectors.  Jesus tells three stories about unreasonable emphasis on finding and redeeming something that has been lost – a single lost sheep, a coin, and a son.  He’s making a point about the will of divine love that pierces through our own issues around blame and shame.

There’s so much shame in the story from the listener’s perspective at the time.  It’s shameful for the younger son to have requested what he did of his father.  It’s shameful also for the father to have granted such an unreasonable request.  It’s shameful that the father celebrates the return of that wasteful son and so quickly restores him to a place of honor and trust.  It’s shameful that the eldest son confronst his father in such a brash way and then refuses to attend the welcome-home celebration (although self-righteous listeners then and now might believe the eldest son is the only character acting honorably here).  It’s shameful that Jesus is seeking out and fraternizing with the untouchables, the outcasts, and the sinners. 

Jesus is also making the point (and Paul is emphasizing this point in what we heard from his second letter to the Corinthians) that gift of divine love is an invitation to reconciliation and restoration that we don’t need to “earn” – it is given to us by an unreasonably, irrationally, some might even say prodigious heavenly parent.

The younger son prepares an apology and an offering of humble service in advance of returning to his father’s house.  A root of the older son’s resentment and indignation is the feeling that his own obedience and good works have been in vain, given the extravagant treatment of the younger son who has not been so faithful in labor and loyalty.  (Ref. also Matthew 20: the parable about the laborers in the vineyard – even the last to work get the same wage as those working all day)

Yet, notice that the father doesn’t let the younger son persist in his rehearsed repentance, nor does he indulge in debate with the older son about fairness.  In both cases, the father focuses on the joy about the lost having been found – a cause for celebration.  As is said in verse 7 (which we didn’t hear), “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

Do you hear that?  God so loves this world that he’s willing to go to extravagant lengths, even the offering of his own son’s life, to redeem any one of us who is lost.  That’s the prodigious nature of divine love.  That is worth rejoicing.

So, are we being told that it’s ok to dishonor our parents, run off and be terribly irresponsible, and then returning home secure in our entitlement to divine forgiveness??  No. We’re also told not to put God to such a test and that our intentions will be judged.  Nevertheless, our creator-parent exhibits extravagant mercy toward those who turn to him with truly repentant hearts.

Ambassadors of divine love and reconciliation: And, Paul assures us that our past trespasses are not held against us once we’ve been reconciled in Christ.  He says that once we’re part of Christ’s body, our world view changes and everything is made new. He says that just as we’ve been given this gift of reconciliation, we are to take it out to the world as ambassadors of redemption, forgiveness and divine love.  In essence, we can hear him telling us to worry and struggle less around what we must do to earn or deserve forgiveness (and previous way of viewing things) and focus our attention on sharing the good news about what God has/is/and will be doing for us.

[insert anecdote about a brother thought to be lost coming back into a family... and about a father reconciling with his son after 20 years of no contact]

What are we to hear today?

God yearns for what is lost to be found.

It’s God’s party – God’s prerogative to give extravagantly in ways that might appear to us unreasonable, excessive and even unfair. 

Each of us is heirs equally in God’s kingdom, whether we labor faithfully in God’s vineyard our whole lives or come back to God later in life.

God has plenty to go around – none will go short.

Called sometimes to put aside our dignity and concern for what others think of us in order to radically welcome those who were thought to be lost – to welcome God’s children, our siblings, in a way that demonstrates that no sin is an insurmountable barrier for divine love, we are to be ambassadors of prodigious forgiveness and reconciliation.

AMEN.