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“Generosity”
Joshua 5:8-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Rev. Sandy Nuernberg
Oakland-Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, WI
Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 18, 2007
Prayer: Lord of Compassion,
as you welcome the wayward, embrace us now with your mercy, fill us with your
Holy Spirit, and clothe us with garments of your grace as we hear your story of
the lost and found. We ask that you feed us at the table of your love, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
I’ve heard recently from other
pastor friends of mine in this area that there are ‘mini Easter’ sermons on
Sundays during Lent. You know, the ‘alleluias’ and ‘hosannas’ and all that
joyful fanfare that are mentioned; but if ever there was a Sunday in which to be
joyful, this 4th Sunday in Lent is a fine example of our being
recognized and loved by our God, with alleluias and hosannas! The greater joy of
God’s generosity of compassion, forgiveness, and reconciliation are abundant as
we travel closer to Jerusalem, closer to the cross of Christ and Christ’s love
made known to us.
In Luke’s parable, “There was a
man who had two sons,” we find a familiar love-story of Jesus made known to many
of us, don’t we? It’s not told anywhere else in scripture. Of the more than
sixty parables taught by Jesus in the gospels, more than half (33) are in Luke;
the Jesus narratives (9:51-18:14) include
19 of these, and 11 of these are only found in Luke. The ‘prodigal Son’
is one of them, or as some scholars have called it, the ‘loving or generous
Father.’ It is an appropriate text for today along with our epistle on
reconciliation in II Corinthians where we become ‘ambassadors for Christ, since
God is making’ God’s appeal through us (v. 20). During this time of Lent we are
leveling with ourselves (on a plateau) and with God; we are focusing less on our
sinfulness and more on God’s compassion and forgiveness of our sinfulness. We
are in a period of greater stability, yet are still growing into someone better
in the sight of God and ourselves. These texts help us in our faithful
maturation of who we are; they are the joy in the establishment and restoration
of the love and generosity of God for/in us.
Our parable concerns the three
actors, the visual imagery and all the comparisons we have in our own lives of
these men; when the younger son ‘came to himself
( v. 17)’, and when the father ‘ was filled with compassion, and ran and
kissed him’ (v. 20), and when the elder
son became angry and told his father, ‘I have never disobeyed your command
(v. 29)’. And as we know this is one of
the three ‘lost’ parables, (sheep, Matt.
18:12-14), the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son. We can rightfully
assume as the text tells us, Jesus is talking to those who are lost; the tax
collectors, sinners, the Pharisees, and the scribes
(v. 1-3); these were people that Jesus
loved. They were lost souls taking different paths; tax collectors were Jews
selling themselves to the Romans in assisting to collect their countrymen’s
taxes, sinners were those being quite neglectful of religious laws. In contrast,
the Pharisees and scribes were the ‘Hoyle’ as they say in English terms (maybe
at the card table!) But also maybe in their own eyes; they were righteous, fair,
and in the ‘correct way’ of life, perhaps the holiest. At any rate, Jesus sought
out these lost souls.
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with
them.” In this early first century it was something to be in company with these
persons, it was something quite different to be breaking bread with them, to be
eating with them. Have you ever been somewhere socially and seen a celebrity, a
‘famous’ person in the company of others and wished you were right in their
midst? I remember feeling pretty good, actually ‘sassy’ when I was behind the
ropes, scoring for, and standing next to Tiger Woods when he made his debut at
the GMO golf event in Milwaukee in 1996, and I observed others were hoping for
that same position. We knew little about Tiger’s future at that time, but I
reveled in his maturity, at the throngs of people around him, his smile, and of
course, what his task was in golfing on the PGA tour.
Last Friday, Kammron Taylor, the
UW basketball player who we might say ‘came to himself’ in the second period of
a ‘must-win-to-move-on’ game in Chicago for the Badgers, said of Michael Jordan,
who was in the audience, “If I ever met him, I think I’d probably die!” Jordan
has been Kam’s basketball ‘idol’ since childhood. The strategy in our text is
that Jesus is showing God’s love for those in his midst, those most in need; God
is receptive to, and forgives all those who turn to God. In God’s eyes, there
are no persons lost, no hopeless souls, and thus, the father recognizes and
receives his younger son with joy and with open arms of compassion and even a
kiss! Here it seems that both father and son are found, if they were ever
lost; there is relief of the son from the pig sty, and there is joy of the
father in finding his son back home, perhaps the climax of the story.
In the second part of the parable,
we find that the elder son is disgruntled in his own non-recognition and in the
way the recognition of his brother was carried out, or if it perhaps should have
been done at all. Most sermons I’ve heard are like the title, the prodigal or
profuse son; they rarely consider the elder son and his concerns over the years
living right at home with and around his father. This elder son might ask, why a
celebration for someone, especially a sinner, squandering all that was given
him, in living a corrupt life, and then in partying with the trimmings of fine
clothing and gourmet food to boot? Can’t you just see his face of disgust? Isn’t
there some kind of punishment for the seriousness of our sin?
Really, there are no losers in
this story, and there is generosity; the father recognizes all the right things
his elder son has done. The rest of the story with him might be another party to
thank his son for his goodness, or to allow his son to recognize that each of
his sons is entitled to his inheritance in his own way, and that the father
would be available ‘always’ in forgiveness and in love for his sons in all they
accomplished or did not accomplish. Rightly, it seems that the father lavishes
his sons, each of them, with his inheritance and his love until they are not
considered losers, but winners. Christ Jesus is with everyone in love as
winners, never losers.
The Corinthians text is familiar
to the Luke text in that we knew Christ as human, in the flesh, in God’s
reconciliation of us to God, we have become new creations in Christ; in
our repentance and turning toward God and God’s generous love and forgiveness of
us. Paul is quite boastful here, telling of us once knowing Jesus from the
‘human point of view’ as he himself was on the road to Damascus. But he levels
with us that in our new creation, it is all from God. This text and its words
are used by your pastor weekly in worship as we confess our sins before God and
pray together publicly our prayer of confession. Like our confirmands who ask,
“Did Jesus ever sin?” we know that Paul reassures us that God made Jesus Christ
‘to be sin who knew no sin’ so we might be more like God.
We are coming to the cross of
Christ, you and I, to celebrate and behold a newness, a brand new world in which
to understand the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are coming from the
recognition of our sinfulness, to our repentance, our calling upon God for
compassion and love, and into a reconciliation from our world into God’s realm
of ministry and reconciliation with one another. Our task is in the declaration
that God is our judgment and keeps no record or account of the world’s sins, not
wanting to ‘get even’ with our world and our sinful nature of anger, hate, and
greed. God is not angry, but is loving, and generous and asks us to live as
loving neighbors and friends, not as enemies in war battling each other. Being
reconciled to God is joyful and will celebrate with alleluias and hosannas; that
we are an active force bringing about reconciliation in the world. This is the
joy and the good news of the gospel for us this day!
Thanks be to
God. AMEN.
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