Sermon for 4th Sunday in Lent: 6 March 2016

Sermon for Sunday 6 March 2016

4^th Sunday in Lent

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

The Rev. Carrie Ballenger Smith

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

***

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

In a way, I think it’s a bit silly to preach a sermon on this parable. The story of the Prodigal Son itself says it all: The one who was lost has been found! The Father welcomes us home! God is merciful! Amen, thanks be to God, now let’s sing the hymn of the day!

But of course, even the most familiar teachings of Jesus have the power to speak to us again and again.

And I think today, in this context, in this time and place, we desperately need this parable of the Prodigal Son.

Friends, I know you are well-acquainted with the God of justice.

You know the God who welcomes the stranger.

You know the Christ who has broken down the dividing wall.

You know the Jesus who stands with the oppressed and turns over tables in the marketplace.

You know the Holy Spirit who inspires people to speak truth to power.

I know you know this God, because I see your lives of faith in action. I see how so many of you have committed your lives to working for peace and justice for all the people of this land. I see how you have sacrificed comfort and risked much to be where you are and to do what you do.

I see how many of you even came to church on a beautiful Sunday in Jerusalem, to give thanks to God for this sunny day before going out to enjoy it!

I see your faith, and the way you live it out, and I give thanks to God for you.

In fact, I think the Pharisees would have no problem at all with you guys hanging around with Jesus. If the sinners and tax collectors were the “wrong kind of people” for Jesus to eat with, then surely you are the right kind...

If you had a part in the parable of the Prodigal Son, you’d probably be the older son…you know the one who stayed. The one who thinks he doesn’t need the Father’s mercy, but would love a party anyway...

But the truth is, even if we’ve been lifelong church goers;

Even if we are diplomats;

Even if we are activists;

Even if we are missionaries;

Even if everyone around us thinks we have it “all together” ;

Even then – and perhaps especially then – we hunger to know the God of mercy, forgiveness, and love.

Even if we are the son who stayed;

we need to hear again that God is merciful, because as the older son in Jesus’ parable misunderstood his father’s heart, so it can be dangerously easy to start thinking that our good work for peace, or for the poor, or for human rights – or our good work taking care of our children, or making a home, or studying, or running a business – is the real reason God sees us as lovable, as worthy, as precious children.

And we are lost – as lost as the son who found himself feeding pigs in a land far from home – if we don’t know in our heart of hearts that God’s mercy is also for us.

Recently I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Robert Enright, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin who is world renowned for this studies on forgiveness. During our Redeemer Lenten gatherings last year, we encountered him as one of the speakers in our video called “The Power of Forgiveness.”

It was enlightening to meet Dr. Enright in person. I especially appreciated hearing him describe the “Forgiveness Education” curriculum they have been instituting in places like Northern Ireland and now Liberia (and, inshallah, soon here in Israel and Palestine). With this curriculum, young children do practical lessons in forgiveness. For example, children will put on silly plastic sunglasses and try to “see” what the other person is feeling. They practice forgiving little hurts, so one day they will have the skills to forgive bigger ones.

I had heard about this portion of the curriculum before. But in this recent meeting here in Jerusalem, Dr. Enright told us about similar efforts to teach mercy. It goes like this: if a child in school has made a minor mistake (arriving late for class, for example), occasionally the teachers will employ mercy instead of punishment. The class will discuss the infraction, and what the appropriate punishment should be. And then, the teacher will explain that this time, even though punishment is appropriate, the student would be receiving mercy instead. Not “getting away with it”, but receiving a gift in place of the deserved punishment.

I must say, when I first heard of this I was skeptical. I imagined the classrooms I grew up in, and the classrooms I taught in when I was a public school music teacher, and I could just imagine how this would play out. I pictured students saying, “Awesome! No punishment! Let’s do it again!”

But then I thought: so what.  Who ever said mercy was reasonable? Who ever said saving the world through a cross made sense? The mercy of God we have known through the cross of Jesus Christ has always be a scandal. And just imagine the power of this experience for these children. In a world of vengeance and of violence, these students get to experience the power of mercy – both receiving it, and giving it. In a world where power over others rules the day, these children experience the power of vulnerability and owning up to mistakes, as well as the power of showing mercy toward another human being.

And one day, when they need to access this knowledge, it won’t be theoretical – it will already be there.

One day, when they find themselves needing to offer mercy to a friend, or a spouse, or a co-worker, they will have the skills they need.

One day, when they hear someone say “God is merciful”, they will know deep down what that word means.

And one day, when they find themselves far from home, in a pigpen, with an empty belly, they will know the heart of their God in heaven, and may turn towards home—and toward the cross, through which the world has received extravagant, unreasonable, unexplainable mercy.

I wonder what it would be like for Christians to proclaim a merciful God as loudly as we proclaim a just God. I wonder what it would be like to hear politicians advocate for God’s mercy with the same vigor as they advocate for God’s morality.

I wonder what it would be like to have mercy activists here in Palestine and Israel, to work alongside peace and justice activists for example.

Can you imagine it?

I imagine that with God’s mercy as the center of our lives – at the heart of who we are, and the guiding principle in all our relationships --  we wouldn’t have to spend all that energy pretending not to need mercy ourselves. We wouldn’t need to spend our time masking our privilege, or protecting our power, or putting on a happy face to hide our own struggles with doubt or depression or despair.

If God is merciful, then we need only to come home.

If God is merciful, we need only to turn towards God, with all our imperfections, with all our failings, with all our knowing that our loving parent has already met us on the way.

If God is merciful, and through Christ we are forgiven, then we have nothing to lose by offering that same mercy to others.

Pope Francis has declared 2016 a “Year of Mercy”, and in light of that I would like to end with a prayer he wrote for the occasion:

Lord Jesus Christ, 

you have taught us to be merciful like the heavenly Father, 
and have told us that whoever sees you sees Him. 
Show us your face and we will be saved. 
Your loving gaze freed Zacchaeus and Matthew from being enslaved by money; 
the adulteress and Magdalene from seeking happiness only in created things; 
made Peter weep after his betrayal, 
and assured Paradise to the repentant thief. 
Let us hear, as if addressed to each one of us, the words that you spoke to the Samaritan woman: 
“If you knew the gift of God!”

You are the visible face of the invisible Father, 
of the God who manifests his power above all by forgiveness and mercy: 
let the Church be your visible face in the world, its Lord risen and glorified. 
You willed that your ministers would also be clothed in weakness 
in order that they may feel compassion for those in ignorance and error: 
let everyone who approaches them feel sought after, loved, and forgiven by God.

Send your Spirit and consecrate every one of us with its anointing, 
so that the Jubilee of Mercy may be a year of grace from the Lord, 
and your Church, with renewed enthusiasm, may bring good news to the poor, 
proclaim liberty to captives and the oppressed, 
and restore sight to the blind.

We ask this of you, Lord Jesus, who lives and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.