Fourth Sunday in Lent: March 18, 2007.

Joshua 5:9-12

Psalm 32

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

First Reading

There is movement in the texts for today. Joshua testifies to the movement of the people of Israel from wilderness to Promised Land, from wandering to possession, and from manna to milk and honey. Paul calls on the Corinthian congregation to move into a new life characterized by reconciliation with God, and so a life as "ambassadors of Christ" (v. 20). Jesus tells a parable that portrays the movement from lost to found, from outcast to son.

The reading from Joshua is preceded by one of those texts that make modern folk squeamish. Just after the waters of the Jordan have yielded their course to allow the Israelites to pass over, the command comes to recircumcise all the males. Scholars debate whether this is a second enactment of circumcision or the inclusion of uncircumcised relatives gathered along the way. In any case, this rite of initiation into the community of God's people is undertaken as a preparation for both the celebration of Passover and the taking of the Promised Land. The text does not explain whether God's "rolling away" of the shame of Egypt (Gilgal is from the Hebrew word that means "to roll") comes as a result of the group circumcision or as a precursor to what follows, or both. This Passover features a home-grown menu, not the manna that has come each day for a generation. This is a turning point. They now move from promise to fulfillment.

"From now on ..." (v. 16), Paul says as this section of the letter opens. Immediately preceding this verse, Paul has lifted up the death and resurrection of Jesus as a constitutive event. Cross and resurrection have brought about a fulfillment, an end to the old ways. "From now on" things are different because we are reconciled to God in Christ. But this new status is not a personal possession, something we hold on to for ourselves. Instead, it makes us purveyors of the new way. Before, we were ambassadors of death and sin. Now, we have a new diplomatic mission to all the cosmos: to bring peace between God and everything through our lives lived under the rule of reconciliation.

The parable presented in Luke is perhaps so well known that the interpretive danger is in overlooking the richness of the parable as the obvious overwhelms us. First, the fundamental problem is in losing sight of the subject of the plot: the father. The parable is about "a man who had two sons" (v. 11). The two sons do not play the lead in this show. They portray a kind of movement from one life to another in the form of negative movements.

The younger son chooses to move away from status as a son by asking for the inheritance, which means he wishes the father dead. He moves, in progressive fashion, to life as a complete nobody, living with pigs. The older son too moves away from his status as son when he declares himself more like a hired hand (v. 29). The Gentiles and the Pharisees have moved from life to death.

The father has a way of moving all back to new life. As the younger son formulates a plan to simply move up a notch from nobody to slave, the father welcomes him as a son. The older son, who wishes to wallow in his self-loathing rather than eat with a sinner, is assured of his place with the father as his child. In the end, it is the party the father throws that offends everyone. From the occasion that prompts the feast to the seating arrangements at the table, the father's graciousness and desire to bring new life is just--well, wrong. Isn't it?

Pastoral Reflection

"This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them" (Luke 15:1). Whether we are honest about it our not, this is still one of our beefs with Jesus. The church today, whether through big social concerns or more local animosities, still has a hard time believing that the gospel Jesus brings is for everybody. The Corinthians have been busy building up exclusions to the guest list just a couple of decades after Jesus. Certainly Luke's intended audience felt the sting of the older son's gentle rebuke as well as the acceptance of the younger son. Perhaps one place to start for the preacher is by bringing out the Pharisee in all of us. The parable, read closely, is like a movie with an ending that leaves us hanging. Does the older brother go in? Can he reconcile with his father, let alone his brother? This unwritten ending suggests that this is the character Luke is aiming at us. It would be fine if the younger brother returned as a slave, perhaps to bread and water. The scandal is in the feast. If we can lift up these elements in our telling, it will make it tough to avoid the parable's meaning and make it hard to write the Pharisees off as simply religious cranks.

Fred Craddock points out that a great deal of preaching on the parable from Luke focuses on the son instead of the main character, the father. He says we do this with the parables that precede it as well. We focus on the lost coin and sheep instead of the finding and the one who finds. (2) It is the finding and the celebration that drives home the parable and makes it transformative. If Holy Communion is part of the worship when this parable is preached, one approach may be to unlock the joy and scandal that are present at the table each time we celebrate.

Another pitfall for preaching the parables in general and this one in particular is the temptation to explain. Parables, like strong narratives, may need a little set-up to bridge the contextual gap, but they are intended to invite the listener into the parable's landscape to get caught up in the story. Some hearers will resonate with the lostness of the younger son. Some will burn with the anger of the older one. Some may even see in the father a call to become more like the one who welcomes the sinner. To see the latter, we will need to lift up the costliness of this whole turn of events for the father. Both sons treat him as dead--one by asking for the inheritance early, the other by seeing himself as a slave. In order to welcome home the lost son, the father humiliates himself by running to meet him and incurring the wrath of both neighbor and older son when he throws a feast. This is all in character for a God who will go to a cross in order to communicate to you and me that we are welcome, we are loved, we are redeemed.

This parable is also an enactment of the biblical story of God and God's people. The people of Israel are always, it seems, returning home. Today's reading from Joshua can be seen as the embrace of the father as their wandering comes to an end and new life in the Promised Land begins. That it occurs around the Passover meal makes another connection between the two texts. God has welcomed home the lost without ever neglecting the faithful from the beginning of time. Will God do so with us? With some annoyance, we know the answer. TVO 

2. Fred Craddock, Luke (Louisville: John Knox, 1990), 186.