READINGS

• • 2 Corinthians 5:16–21

    ¹⁶ From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. ¹⁷ So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰ So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

     

    ·       Luke 15:1–3, 11b–32

    Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3 So he told them this parable:

    ¹¹ Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. ¹³ A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. ¹⁴ When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶ He would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. ¹⁷ But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ ²⁰ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. ²¹ Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²² But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, ²⁴ for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

    ²⁵ “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. ²⁷ He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ ³¹ Then the father^[d] said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.

SERMON

I think that this week’s readings are particularly relevant as we see desperate negotiations going on about the conflicts in both Ukraine and Gaza. A lot of effort has been given to negotiations behind the scenes in attempting to reach peace deals which would stop those ongoing conflicts.

 I am sure we could all recognise the names of the political leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Gaza and Israel. However can you name to people doing the face to face negotiations for each side?

 I think that most of us would consider their progress too slow. Bombs and missiles are pounding each other every day. All we can generally hear is the public posturing of the various leaders. However without the efforts behind the scenes of those negotiators there would be no progress at all.

 In most cases the negotiators try to piece together the patchwork of suggestions made by each side into a plan which might be finally accepted. In the process each side will probably need to make concessions. However there needs to be some stability in the long term outcome. The Second World War was fermented because of growing anger at the terms of the Armistice following WWI.

 In the end each side has to accept the negotiated outcomes. Like most political settlements there will be some people who are not comfortable with the final outcome. This means that some wartime atrocities will not be resolved and guilty people will go free.

 Turning to Paul’s letter to the faithful in Corinth we hear that God has made a peace agreement with the world. In doing so God has made massive concessions. God has made exactly the sort of concessions that often cause angst in peace agreements. Most notably offering all of us, the worst of us as well as the best of us, immunity from prosecution.

 In fact, if you put the agreement that God offers on the table next to some of the convoluted cease-fires and treaties that are painstakingly negotiated between hostile nations, you might start to wonder what was in it for God. You might be tempted to describe it as an almost complete capitulation by God.

 God seems to offer everything, and demand almost nothing in return. In particular God promises to wipe the record of everything we’ve ever done wrong and hold nothing against us. If such complete immunity from prosecution was not enough, God also offers us high-ranking jobs as his ambassadors to represent him in the ongoing task of promoting the agreement.

 It is a bit like offering the head of a terrorist organisation immunity for their crimes and a trusted position in the organisation that they had been trying to dismantle. Such a capitulation might sometimes be able to be extracted from a very guilty party who has been single-handedly responsible for the mess, but in the case of the reconciliation deal which God offers to the world, the one who clearly holds the moral high ground is the one rolling over and conceding everything. 

 We are the ones who took God’s gift of a beautiful planet and set about polluting it, and tearing it apart by war, hatred and injustice. We are the ones who were invited to live in peaceful communion with one another and who instead hardened our hearts and succumbed to the demons of selfishness, greed and cynicism.

 We are the ones who squandered those gifts, blew the inheritance, and dragged our own name and God’s through the mud. So, what is God doing making such enormous concessions to secure a peace agreement with us?

 In a different place in the New Testament, we can hear this same scenario being played out in the story Jesus told about the prodigal son. The prodigal knows he’s got no bargaining power. He has blown his father’s trust and money, and dragged his father’s name through the mud of the pig stie.

 The son is desperate. He is ready and willing to give up everything for whatever shreds of his father’s care might be forthcoming. But instead, it almost becomes a competition to see who can give up the most. The ageing father bounds down the street in a most undignified manner, throws himself on his errant son, forgives him everything, and then crowns him in glory and after all of that there is a huge welcome-home party.

 What more could God give? Well actually, says Paul, there is more. Reputation. God was in Christ, trading reputations with us. Christ, who was not implicated in any wrongdoing, accepted guilt by association with us. Christ put his hand up and implicated himself in our callousness, injustice and hostility. He put his reputation on the table along with everything else to secure the deal. Paul says that in doing so He paved the way for us to be implicated in His goodness, for us to receive righteousness by association.

 We can see this illustrated in the story of the prodigal son. In that culture, as in many, the behaviour of the son is seen as reflecting directly on the parents, and this is one of the things that gives rise to so-called honour killings in some such societies. 

 In a passage that is almost certainly being alluded to in the prodigal son story in Deuteronomy 21. Here in the Old Testament the passage sets out death by public stoning for a son who disgraces his parents by rebellious, gluttonous, drunken and disobedient behaviour. The surrounding culture was not going to commend and congratulate this father for his generous forgiveness. They were going to see him as failing to fulfil his legal and moral obligations, and they would now regard him as the same sort of moral reprobate as his disgraced son. 

 The father is effectively swapping reputations with his humiliated son. And in holding this up as a picture of the love and mercy of God, Jesus is completely challenging the accepted image of a stern and remote God who demands that a price be paid for every sin before there can be any hope for a pardon.

 We can see why Paul says we’d be mad to turn our backs on this peace deal that God is offering. It’s a take it or leave it deal, but why on earth would you leave it? We’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose. The deal is completely stacked in our favour. We are offered complete forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with God, a new identity, a fresh start, mercy and healing and life and love beyond our wildest imagination.

 ·       So what are we asked for in return?

·       What do we have to put on the table to complete the deal?

 Well, there’s a paradox here, because the answer is both nothing and everything. God actually demands nothing of us except our willingness to accept the deal and to put our faith on the line. Everything else is completely voluntary. God signs off on the deal regardless of our response. It is a gracious gift. There is nothing we can do to undo God’s gracious acceptance of us. God will be all over us like the prodigal’s father, lavishing love and generous gifts on you. And it costs us nothing.

 The point here is that if we give nothing in return we will probably fail to appreciate and enjoy all the lavish gifts we have been given. We can end up as sad and twisted as the prodigal’s older brother who is now the sole heir to all his father owns, but still stumbles around weighed down like a slave by anger and resentment. We can be forgiven and still feel burdened by guilt. We can be accepted and still feel excluded. We can be loved and still feel unloved.

 It is easy for us to fall into taking sides in the story of the prodigal son. We can easily identify with one or the other brother and to judge the other. We can easily look down on the younger brother for his callousness and irresponsibility, and we can easily condemn the elder brother for his self-righteousness and his insensitivity. But disappearing down either of those paths misses the point and cripples our own capacity for love and celebration. 

 The prodigal’s father does neither of these things, and it is his example that Jesus is calling us to follow. He does not berate the younger son for leaving and losing everything, and neither does he chastise his elder son for being stuck-up and resentful. He just invites both of them to the party, to an everyone-is- welcome celebration, where reputations are forgotten and only forgiveness and unconditional love matter.

 Can we rise to the challenge of the prodigal father and renounce our irresponsibility as well as our self-righteousness?

  In this season of Lent we are reminded again and again of the discipline and commitment required to enjoy the full fruits of life’s greatest gifts. They are gifts, and our response is purely voluntary, but unless we do volunteer and respond in full, this gift may again be wasted and we will again short-change ourselves horribly. 

 God calls us to become ambassadors for Christ, to be the ones who take the news of God’s gracious reconciliation and proclaim it and live it out to the full so that the full dimensions of God’s gracious love might be readily apparent for all the world to see. God’s offer of peace and reconciliation is not dependent on our acceptance of that call, but those of us who don’t accept it will probably find that we are cutting off our noses to spite our faces as we deprive ourselves of the here and now benefits of that gracious and healing love. Those gifts will still be there for us, but we may make ourselves the last to know it as we stand stubbornly and miserably outside the party.

 So as extravagantly free and generous as God’s gift of reconciliation is, let us respond to the challenge of this Lenten season by committing ourselves to the way of Jesus, to the way of disciplined love and scandalous mercy that leads all the way to the cross and beyond. This love by its very willingness to give up everything opens our hands and our hearts to receive the fullness of life and love and peace that we hunger for with every fibre of our being. 

 Perhaps that’s precisely the method in God’s madness. Perhaps that’s the secret God is enjoying and trying to let us in on: that only in putting everything we are and everything we have on the table and letting it go, that we free ourselves to enter the party and know the fullness of life and love for which we were created.

 

• APRIL LECTIONARY

  April 6             Is 43:16-21

                          Ps 126

                          Phil 3:4b-14

                          Jn 12:1-8

   

  April 13           Is 50:4-9a

                          Ps 31:9-16; 118:1-2, 19-29

                          Phil 2:5-11

                          Lk 22:14-23:56 or Lk 23:1-49

                          Lk 19:8-40        

   

  April 20           Acts 10:34-43 or Is 65:17-25

                          Ps 118:1-2, 14-24

                          1 Cor 15:19-26 or Acts 10:34-43

                          Jn 20:1-18 or Lk 24:1-12

   

  April 27           Acts 5:27-32     

                          Ps 118:14-29 or Ps 150

                          Rev 1:4-18

                          Jn 20:19-31