Loving God, you patiently wait for us, yearning for us to come to you and to be healed.  Turn our hearts to you this day by the power of your Spirit, helping us to experience your love and mercy through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    The gospel that we have heard today is one of the best known parables that Jesus tells.  Most often, it is referred to as the parable of the Prodigal Son.  For some, it has perhaps become all too familiar.  For others, it is a powerful story that points us to God’s love and grace.  My prayer is that today it will be a story that touches each of our hearts and draws us closer to God.

    First, however, the elder brother.  In most discussions that I can recall about this parable, people seem to totally understand why the elder brother is so angry.  “It’s not fair,” we cry.  “Why does the bad kid get all of the love and the attention and the party?  What good did it do the elder brother to be good and work faithfully and stay at home?  He should have gone out and wasted everything like his brother, and then maybe he would have had a party, too!”

    We look at ourselves, too, and wonder why we’ve ever bothered to do what is right.  Why bother to go to church or to live a good life or to follow the commandments?  Why bother if you can just repent later and everything will be okay?  All in all, we really don’t like sinners who repent.  We wish that we would have spent some time wasting our lives, too.  After all, we’ll just be forgiven in the end, right?  However, this is one of those cases where perspective is everything.

    Many of us like to think that we are good people, and we live a good life, and we try to do what is right.  Yet, when we stand next to God, we are really like a filthy rag by comparison.  We could never do enough to overcome our own sinfulness and to make ourselves righteous and holy in God’s sight.  When we stand before God, it is always as a sinner – except for one thing.  By water and the Spirit we are cleansed and covered over with Jesus’ perfect life, so that when God looks at us he sees Jesus’ righteousness and holiness instead of our sinfulness.

    In order to help us to reflect on our relationship with God this morning, there’s an image on the screen of “The Prodigal” - a famous painting by Rembrandt.  It focuses on the point in the story when the prodigal son returns and is embraced by his father.  As perhaps you can see, the son’s clothes are tattered and torn, and he has one shoe on and one shoe off.  While he probably had a cloak when he left home, it was most likely sold in order to make ends meet.  He has far less hair than anybody else in the painting, and he is kneeling, begging for his father’s mercy.

    As he kneels there, our eyes are drawn to the father’s hands, which rest on the back of his son.  He embraces his son with love and forgiveness.  An added detail, which may not be visible to you, is that one hand looks very masculine, and the other hand, quite feminine.  Usually artists do not do these things by accident!  The son is being embraced by the fullness of God.

    Earlier, I mentioned the idea of being covered over with the righteousness of Christ.  You might notice that in the painting, the father seems to have a very large cloak – large enough to cover his son, as well as anybody else who might kneel there.  The son is covered over by love and forgiveness and mercy.

    Now, you might recall that in the parable there was a great distance between the father and his son.  The son had been off in a distant country spending his inheritance and living it up.  He was indulging himself in pleasures, living only for today with no thought for the future.  It was only when he found himself in need that he thought at all about his father or his home.  And all the while, his father was waiting, yearning for his son, and praying that he would come back to him some day.

    As you think this morning about your own life, when was the last time that you were close enough to God to feel God’s embrace?  Is there a great distance there that keeps you separated from God?  Perhaps all of your attention is taken up by other things: family concerns, or spending your inheritance, or keeping up with your schedule, or making ends meet, or “what will people think of me?”.  Perhaps you fill every waking moment with other things, never giving a thought to the God who waits for you to come home and longs to embrace you.

    On the other hand, perhaps you fill every waking moment with nothing at all.  We tend to forget that sin is not just about doing bad things, but that failing to do good is just as sinful.  And so, doing nothing at all can keep us separated from God, and so can filling our lives with trivialities and selfish pursuits.

    Today, all of us are being invited to remember not only who we are, but whose we are.  We are being invited to return to God, seeking mercy, forgiveness and new life.  We are being invited to come to God and to experience God’s embrace.

    Do you notice in the painting how there is a space there right in the middle?  It is purposely painted so that there is room there in the father’s embrace for others to come and to kneel there.  There is room there to come and to feel God’s embrace, and to know what it is to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start.  There is room there for you and for me.

    You might recall that we started out today being indignant and angry along with the elder brother.  However, when we focus only on his perspective, we totally miss the joy that is to be found living within God’s embrace.  God’s welcome to each one of us is just as gracious and loving as the father is in Jesus’ parable.  When we come believing in Jesus Christ and cleansed by the waters of Baptism, we are received as God’s own precious child.  And once we have experienced God’s embrace, we don’t want to leave.

    As we live within God’s embrace, we experience the love of God in our hearts and approach the people around us with an attitude of love.  In God’s embrace, we are aware of how our sins have been forgiven, and we rejoice with others who turn their lives around to seek that forgiveness as well.  In God’s embrace, we are free to live as the people whom God created us to be, using the gifts that we have been given for the glory of God and in the service of others.

    We need to be aware though, too, that as soon as we become judges of other people and of God’s forgiveness and mercy - like the elder brother was in the parable - we have stepped outside of God’s embrace in order to make ourselves the judge and the jury.  We are certainly free to do this, but isn’t there far more life and joy to be found within God’s embrace?

    And so, imagine yourself there, within God’s embrace, today.  Give thanks for the love and the forgiveness and the acceptance that you find there.  Allow your heart to be filled with God’s love and mercy, even as you invite others to come and to experience the same embrace.  God has made us a new creation in Christ.  Let us give thanks and live within God’s embrace.  Amen.

Lent 4(C)                                Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
March 14, 2010                            2 Corinthians 5:16-21
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2010 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved