THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN Lent March 25, 2001

“But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran to him and put his arms around him and kissed him.”

St. Luke 15:20

‘GOD IS NOT FINISHED WITH US YET!”

Today, our Gospel is one of Jesus’ most cherished Parables.....The Parable of The Prodigal Son.....or as it is more correctly called, it is

“The Parable of the Loving Father.”

For to be sure, when Jesus told the Parable, He intended for us to understand that the Father in the Parable, really represented God, who by all means, is our “Loving Father.”

The Parable has been called “The Gospel in a Nutshell,” for as in no other way, this story presents for us, all the major themes of our Christian Faith.....of Sin & the Fall, of Repentance & Restoration, Envy & Jealousy, of Love & Forgiveness & Redemption.

.....and let us not leave out one of the most important aspects of the Christian Faith.....that of “New Beginnings.”

Some people cherish this Parable & their hearts are gladdened because in spite of their waywardness.....they have received forgiveness.....

.....However, others resent the Parable and don’t like it, because they consider it is unfair.....unfair that one brother who squandered his Father’s inheritance and was a disgrace to the Family.....

.....instead of getting a swift kick in the pants, what he really deserved....instead received a great feast & and a great celebration....while the other brother who had worked so hard.....seemingly was ignored and received nothing.

However, I find this Parable is that which gives me hope.....it is that which allows for me to begin anew......it allows for me to start over again in spite of my past mistakes, my errors and my blunders.....and most of all it allows for me to have and to begin a new life.

For to be sure....our God is a God of “New Beginnings”.....for ours is a God who specializes in “New Beginnings.” St. Paul in our Epistle today declares:

“If anyone is in Christ.....he or she is a new creation.”

The message of the Scriptures today is that: “God is not finished with us yet,” and I don’t know about you, but to that I say: “Praise God!” For who in the world would wants to spend all eternity with all those prejudices, gripes, grudges and imperfections that we have.....that relentlessly gnaw at us & trouble us?

In our Parable today, as with most other Parables, there is always a key word or a key phrase, that sums up or really get to the point of the Parable.....and which stands out above the rest.. The key phrase in this Parable that gets to the heart of the matter & which really expresses the heart of God is:

“But while he was still far off.....the father saw him and ran.....the father saw him far off and he ran to him .....the father ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”

We can tell.....by this in the Parable.....that the Father probably each day, each morning, continued to look out the window.....to go outside and to look down the road to see.....to anxiously, hopefully see, if His son was in sight returning home.

What an overpowering picture.....what a moving scene.....to see in the Father’s eyes, that longing and loving expectation of his son’s return.

* * * * *

Some years ago when I served at Trinity Church, Galveston, in a Bible Study Group, we were discussing this very point of that loving look on the fathers face. That afternoon, an artist, a member of the Bible Study Group......

Guyrene Cater brought to my house a beautiful picture that she had drawn.....of the face of this loving father with the ragged, barefoot son kneeling before him.

What a meaningful picture and gesture this was for me. However, though it is an aside, that’s not the end of that story. For on the first Sunday in Lent that I began here, Guyrene who had died a few years ago, her husband Buddy Cater, who is 97 years old, heard that I was here, and came to the service and to the next Sunday service also.

* * * * *

The Bible teaches us that God is never in a hurry....that a thousand years.....is as one day with God....and one day with God is as a thousand years. But here is the one exception in the entire Bible, for when God was in a hurry.....For when from a great distance, the father saw his son coming down the road.....

.....Jesus tells us that the Father ran....he didn’t walk or amble.....Jesus tells us that the Father just couldn’t wait to receive and to forgive his wayward son, so he ran...... Why?.....Because the Father loved his son so much.....he just couldn’t wait for the relationship that was broken.....to be restored.

Yes, God comes out to meet us more than half-way when we, as the Prodigal did, when we make a “U-Turn,” and return back home to Him.

A counselor of many, many years was asked, what he had learned from so many years of counseling people: He replied: “I have learned that people almost never change.”

And yet is so very difficult for Christians not to believe that God has intended more for us

.....that He is not finished with us yet.....even though we know that all is not right with us and the world.....

.....yet, we instinctively know, deep down in our Soul.....that through God’s grace, a new life is possible, for He is the God who has promised to make all things new.

When we read the Prophet Ezekiel, that God will put a new spirit within us, and that a new heart he will give to us.....then we know, then we know that there is still hope.....that there is still hope, even for us....there is still hope, even for you and even for me.

We were created, says the Book of Genesis, in God’s Image, what St. Augustine called, “The Imago Dei”.....and although we may have marred and warped and distorted that image, God’s keeps creating and recreating us.....for God’s creation is not finished.

The tragedy and the heartbreak of the Gospel of Christ, is how infinitely great is God’s love for us.....and yet how we ignore and how we even reject His love and His invitation to have an intimate relationship with Him.....

.....and yet God keeps working, He keep forming and recreating us.....He keep on knocking at our door.....He never gives up.....in spite of ourselves.

There is a poem, a Christian Poem, that to me is the greatest Poem in all Christian Literature, that describes our Lord’s un-ending and relentless invitation to have communion with Him......

.....it is written in the eighteenth century by a great Anglican Divine, George Herbert. George Herbert, was a simple Country Parson in rural England, and he was a friend and a contemporary of John Donne.

“L o v e B a d e M e W e l c o m e”

“Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love observing me grow slack from my first entrance in,

drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, if I lacked anything.

A guest I answered, worthy to be here; Love said, you shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful, Ah my dear I cannot look on Thee.

Love took me by the hand and smiling did reply, “Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them, let may shame go where it doth deserve.

‘And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?’

You must sit down says Love, and taste my meat.

So we did sit and eat.”

To me.....possibly the most powerful, the most tender, the most loving and compassionate words in Christian Literature are the words of the Loving Christ in this poem:

And know you not, says Love......in other words.....how can this be?.....you mean not to ever have a close relationship with you.....for this to Christ, is completely unthinkable and completely out of the question.....

.....For He wants us so badly..........no sacrifice is too great to reconcile us to Him.....even death on the Cross.....He leaves no stone unturned.....especially the stone that sealed the tomb.

The words, “And know you not, says Love.....sums up the depth and the extent of God’s love to us, manifested in His Son.

If that doesn‘t convince us that Love covers a multitude of sins.....

then what ever will?

St. Paul reminds us that:

“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.”

However, that is not where it ends.....for Christ has also committed to us His Church,

“The Ministry of Reconciliation, ” whereby our charge our command, our mandate , is to forgive and to love one another......as He has loved and forgiven us.

To be sure.....Forgiveness is the most unique aspect of the Christian Faith.....and we might add by far the most difficult.....for most religions espouse love and other virtues.....however.....the Christian emphasis on forgiveness is truly unique.

Why is Forgiveness so important & crucial? It is because without forgiveness life stops dead it its tracks....kinship’s cease....connections are broken.....and lines are drawn in the sand.....and the most precious aspect and ingredient of life is ended.....and that is:

Our relationship with one another.....for there is no more precious commodity of life than our relationships.....for without them.....life is empty, lonely and barren.

As we said at the beginning of Lent: Lent that time of the Christian Year when we focus on our relationships.....our relationship with God.....and our relationship with one another. Life is way too short.....Life way too short to be estranged and to be separated from our friends and from our loved ones.

Just as God never gives up on us.....so we do not give up on one another.....for without any doubt.....our salvation is somehow tied up with our relationships and how we relate to one another and how we treat one another.

Any of us who have had wayward children.....those whose hearts have been broken because of love rejected.....or who has had a son or a daughter who had gone off as the Prodigal did, into their own “Far Country,”.....

then you have experienced just a tiny bit.....but only a tiny bit of what God feels when His children reject His love......and to be sure it’s no fun....but it is extremely painful.

The motivation for Christian Living, has always been our thankfulness for the immeasurable love and Grace and forgiveness of God.......that captures our wills and compels us to be obedient to God’s gracious will.

St. Augustine said that God’s Grace has a kind of irresistibility to it, that one can hardly resist.....that is when one begins to realize the extent of God’s blessings and His Love and His mercies.

And then, there is one more dimension of God’s forgiveness.....that has always been a model and an example for us.....that God’s forgiveness is complete.....it is never partial......

“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow....though they be red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”

One of my favorite passages in the Prophet Isaiah is when God says to Israel:

“I will blot out your transgressions and I will remember your sins no more.”

When we make a sincere confession and the absolution is pronounced.....it is thorough & complete.....we are absolutely forgiven.....there is no trace to be found.....thank God the slate is wiped clean. Forensic experts would be unable to detect or to decipher what was previously written our slates.....once God wipes them clean.

Is that Good News.....or is that Good news? It certainly is for me and I suspect it is for you also.

God’s love is un-conditional.....however His forgiveness is somehow intrinsically tied up with how we forgive others. God is no patsy.....how could we expect Him to forgive us.....when we refuse to forgive others? “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,”.....is the key to our own forgiveness.

Why must we forgive? Because each of us.....each and every one of us have enough transgressions hanging over us.....with which we must contend.....and to which we must face up.... and answer for.

The Story of the Woman taken in Adultery is the final proof that each of us has enough to deal with without judging others.....this story puts to rest any ideas or thoughts we might entertain about any moral superiority we might imagine.

The people took up stones to cast at the Woman, ( I’ve always wonder why they didn’t try to stone the man also), .....but Jesus puts them in their place by saying:

“Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.”

Then John in his Gospel, says that Jesus began to write something with His finger in the sand.....and then one by one, they each walked away....and I might add very hastily and hurriedly they walk away, until they were all gone and no one was left.

Just what did Jesus write in the sand?

“Asa, do you remember the night of June 30 last year when you were with, oh what’s her name?” Asa jumps up and runs off.

“Rebecca, do you remember when you were in the market place last week and you forgot to pay for that leg of Lamb for the Passover no less.....or did you forget?”

Rebecca disappears as quickly as she can.

“Ruben, what about that house and land you foreclosed on that widow.....was that really on the up and up?” Ruben backs silently away so as not to be seen.

I am certainly glad that I was not there for Jesus to write my misdeeds in the sand....He would have had to write in the sand until He got out of the city limits....

.....but how about you?

It is never too late while there is still life and breath

to forgive and to ask for forgiveness.

* * * * *

Once after I had preached on this gospel story, a lady came by a few days later and said: “Last Sunday after noon, after Church, I brought flowers to the grave of my mother’s second husband whom I never liked and always resented.

At the grave site, I told Bob, (my stepfather), that I am sorry that I was such a pill.....and to please forgive me for being so un-accepting of the relationship of you and my mother......when in truth, she said, you really provided a great deal of companionship and security for my mother.....I was just too resentful to understand and to accept it.

And yet, flowers are for the living....but forgiveness is that which gives life to relationships that are dead.....

.....and so while there is still life and breath.....we thankfully and we joyfully embrace that New Life that God offers to us through forgiveness.

Text:

“.....Let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and if found!”

AMEN & AMEN

jdp+