Fourth Sunday in Lent (C), March 6, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O reconciling God, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Earlier this week, I briefly entertained the notion that I would preach about our First Testament Bible lesson from Joshua or our Second Testament lesson from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians – you know, something different. Then I experienced our Tuesday early morning Bible study, which was so lively that folks were late to work because they were so stirred up that they didn’t want to stop talking. The parable that gets called, “The Prodigal Son” is a narrative that provokes strong and animated responses. I cannot say the same about either of our other two passages of scripture this morning, although their themes of Passover in Joshua, and being ambassadors for Christ in 2^nd Corinthians are certainly appealing. I decided that I shouldn’t attempt to steer around our Gospel story. So we’re going in!

I wish I had an hour to explain to you why I think that Jesus’ parables were originally political and economic stories to mobilize oppressed people, rather than primarily theological and moral stories to strengthen the faithful. Surely Jesus’ stories got used as moral lessons in the early Church, but I don’t think Jesus had anything like Church in mind when he was teaching. If you’re interested in this, read William Herzog’s book, Parables as Subversive Speech, and Bernard Brandon Scott’s book, Hear Then the Parable. For now, suffice to say that Jesus didn’t get executed by the Roman government for telling stories about God and moral behavior. Jesus was meddling in the oppressive political and economic practices of the occupying army that were maintaining power by dividing and eliminating the opposition. Furthermore, parables are riddles and not allegories – they can’t be pinned down as easily as allegories.

To give you some context, in Luke’s Gospel narrative we are in the midst of the story of Jesus’ final trip with his disciples from the Galilee to Jerusalem, which means geographically, right in the middle of Samaria. So if there were Pharisees and scribes grumbling (or murmuring – the same word for what the Israelites were doing in the wilderness when they complained that the food back in Egypt was much better. If there were Pharisees and scribes in the middle of Samaria, they were followers of Jesus. According to Luke, Jesus had plenty of friends who were Pharisees. The complaining is not coming from the outside, but from the inside of Jesus’ group. Can you imagine? They were annoyed about the notorious sinners who were being attracted to the Jesus movement, and they were hoping Jesus would do something to stop it. They were hoping that Jesus would send the offensive people away if they couldn’t behave appropriately. [1]

Perhaps you noticed that our appointed reading from Luke skipped some verses (4-11a). What follows the words, “So he told them this parable,” is: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices, and when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors [who apparently were minding the other 99], saying to them ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” After that, Jesus tells another parable, saying: “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons…”

Jewish New Testament scholar, Amy-Jill Levine teaches that faithful Israelites, of which Jesus was one, all knew their Bible stories of families with two sons: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, and they readily identified with the favored younger son in each case. [2] They would have been rejoicing about the found sheep, the found coin, and the found son. When this whole passage is read, it’s clear that the sheep and the coin didn’t repent, and it’s clear that the prodigal was not the object of a search. (Prodigal, by the way, means recklessly generous, wastefully extravagant, lavishly imprudent, and that word wasn’t introduced into scripture until this story was translated into Latin in the early 5^th century.) [3] Nobody seems to have been out looking for the younger son, wondering why he hadn’t written. The father saw him coming from a distance – so maybe that counts for looking. Although the son expressed willingness to repent, he never actually did. First century listeners might have heard not contrition in the younger son, but conniving. A proverb from a fifth century rabbinic commentary wryly notes “when Israelites are reduced to eating carob pods, they repent.” [4]
But the younger son is not the point of this story. Eugene Peterson points out in his book, Tell It Slant, [5] there are actually four parables here, not three. Each of the first three, the sheep, the coin, and the younger son, have the narrative element of one getting lost – first one of one-hundred; then one of ten, then one of two. Each of the first three have the narrative element of being found or returned to the group. And each of the first three have the narrative element of a celebration. The shepherd, the woman, and the father all call together friends and neighbors for a celebration. Unfortunately, the father neglected to call the older son in from the field before the older son heard the music and dancing. This is the part of the story that just tap dances on the last nerve of every oldest child, of every unusually obedient child, of every hard-working dutiful child anywhere in the birth order. Am I right?

So here’s the thing. The older son is lost too: lost to his brother, lost to his father, and lost to the celebrating community. Eugene Peterson explains, he is “a son who has never done anything conspicuously wrong, who has kept the rules, who has worked hard on the farm.” His father begs him to join the celebration. The verb used here is parakalei. Parakalei “is a coming-alongside word. A wooing, inviting, welcoming, encouraging word that draws … into the singing and feasting and congratulating community of the lost and found…[it’s a] word associated primarily with the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.” [6]

The fourth story has no ending, so the listener must provide the ending. This story is not actually being told to the Pharisees or scribes, or to the tax collectors or other notorious sinners. It’s being told to us. Each one of us is the lost one being invited to the celebration. In Peterson’s words, “Jesus told the first three mini-stories ‘on the slant’ in order to bring in this fourth story of a lost person who has long since lost any sense of being lost.” [7] sin of Christian self-righteousness to iatrogenic illness – illness inadvertently caused by healthcare, like a staph or c diff infection picked up while being treated in a hospital. The sin of Christian self-righteousness is inadvertently picked up in church. We are the ones, for example, who know how worship should be, how sermons should be, how prayers should be, how music should be, how mission or outreach should be.

Peterson says, “the best protection against [the sin of self-righteousness]…is an acute awareness of our lost condition in which we so desperately and at all times need a Savior…We are as lost as any wandering sheep, as any dropped coin, as any prodigal son. For as long as we hold on to any pretense of having it all together, we are prevented from deepening and maturing in the Christian faith…as long as we avoid recognition of our lostness we are prevented from experiencing the elegant profundities of foundness…as long as we insist on maintaining safe moral grids in which we always know where we stand (and where everyone else stands!) these poses of self-sufficiency, we disenfranchise ourselves from the company of the found sheep, the found coin, the …found brother and the celebrating angels,” [8] and we refuse to attend the party.

In an invitation to move from alienation to reconciliation – the father of the two sons seeks to reconcile them. Rather than eliminating the opposition, the competition, this story calls us to reconcile, to re-call that we are members of The Body – Jesus’ Body — God’s Body. We belong to one another – in the story hear the words, “this son of yours…this brother of yours” – they belong to each other. I’m reminded that the Greek word that gets translated “devil,” diabalo, forms the root of diabolical, and the word diabalein, which means to separate, to tear apart. The tempter tempts us with separation, alienation from one another. The Biblical value being asserted in this story is completeness of the group – wholeness even across differences. [9] When the older brother complains bitterly, the father responds not with judgment, but with compassion: “You are always with me and all that is mine is yours, come to the party.” The parable doesn’t choose between the sons, but urges both to attend the celebration. [10] The parable says, go into the celebration. Whoever we are, whatever we’ve done, wherever we’ve been, we belong to one another. We are to be reconciled to one another. Come to the feast of Love.

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