4th Sunday in Lent, Year C
Joshua 5:9a, 10-12
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
March 10, 2013
The first reading speaks of the entrance of the Israelites into the Promised Land. This marks a new beginning for them. Once, they were slaves to the Egyptians and God set them free in a new beginning leading them out of Egypt in the Exodus.
However, they had to spend forty years in the desert without a home but that comes to close as they enter into the Promised Land to begin their lives anew with a land to call their own.
Writing to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of how we are a new creation in Christ, reconciled to the Father through Jesus’ Crucifixion. Jesus’ entry into our human world marks a new beginning. Life changes when we know Jesus and follow him. So, it is a new beginning, entry into new life through Baptism.
I see God as a “god of new beginnings.” I emphasis the plural because God gives us the chance to start over many times. Read the Old Testament. The people repeatedly sinned and each time, God gives them a chance to start over, a new beginning.
Is God reluctant to let us have a new beginning? No way.
Our gospel today is what we commonly call the “Parable of the Prodigal Son.” The younger son asks for his inheritance and then goes off and squanders it. In effect, he divorces himself from his father. We might even say he rejects his father in favor of a life of dissipation.
After his inheritance is gone, he is forced to work on a pig farm. For the Jews, there would have been nothing worse than working with pigs that were considered unclean. Effectively, he hits rock bottom and realizes it.
So, he goes back to the father, not expecting him to take him back in. He just hopes to find a job in his father’s house. He comes willingly to admit his wrongdoing.
As he returns, he finds his father eagerly waiting for him. The father is so eager that when he sees his son approaching, he runs out to meet him. In those days, no self-respecting father would do such a thing, especially for a son like this. The father doesn’t care what society things he is just happen to have his youngest son back.
He celebrates the return of his lost son.
All happy? Nope, there is an older son who has always stood by his father and he is angry that the father has taking the other son back. When the father hears this, he goes to the older son (again something no self-respecting man would do) and seeks to have his older son be with him too.
This is the way God is with us. God is eager to welcome us back when we stray and come back.
For those of us like myself who didn’t always go to church, we might see ourselves as the prodigal son. Although here, I would like to say when I wasn’t going to church, I can truthfully say I never sought a life of dissipation. I can say this because I didn’t know what dissipation actually meant until I looked it up in a dictionary this week.
There are also those among us who have always gone to church and always sought to do the right thing like the older son but something makes us angry like jealousy over the unchurched who return.
Or we might be somewhere in between, trying to follow God but stumbling along the way.
No matter how we might go astray, when we do God is eager to offer us a new beginning. God celebrates our return.
I think back to when I first returned to church. I had been away for sixteen years so the thought of going to confession was a bit intimidating and I hadn’t ever lived the wild life style.
When I went to confession that first time back, I did not encounter “judgment”. I encountered “joy.”
When I began my confession by saying I hadn’t been to church for sixteen years and didn’t really know what to do in the confession, I didn’t find judgment that questioned why I hadn’t been there. No questions like that.
Rather, the priest expressed great joy that I had returned. In fact, so much joy that the confession took forty minutes, but not because my sins took that long. I confessed my sins in just a few minutes. The rest of the time, it was mostly the priest talking about how wonderful it was that I was back.
Now, if you haven’t been to confession in a long time and come, I’m not going to keep you for forty minutes but I do assure that I won’t be judgment. I will be glad that you came and God will be dancing.
If you’re thinking you don’t know where to begin or think your confession is going to take a while, just call and make an appointment (you don’t have to give your name). Then I can help you and we can take our time. I can’t do forty minutes on Saturday afternoon because there are people waiting but call and make an appointment and I will make the time for you.
God will rejoice!