Christ Centered Lenses, Parable of the Prodigal Son: Sermon for Lent 4, 2019

Sermon Lent 4

Text: Luke 15:11-32, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

We have two of my favorite texts today. The Parable of the Prodigal son and the passage from 2 Corinthians 5.

         When you’re going through the process to become a pastor one of the things you have to do is write a big long paper at end with lots of parts, one of which is a sermon on a text they assign to you. The year I finished the 2 Corinthians text was the chosen text for all the graduating students. So, we spent a good portion of a year looking at and working on the text. When you spend that much time on something you can get to the point of saying, well, I never want to see that again! Or at least not for a while. There’s a joke about favorite songs, that you’ll get a new favorite song and then play it over and over again until you hate it. So, in some ways it’s nice that I still love this text.

         This is an autobiographical text from Paul. Paul is writing to the Corinthians about the need to see things through Christ centered lenses, seeing things how God sees the world, and how different that is from how we usually see things. And he uses himself as an example, his call story, conversion really, is all about sight.

         Paul’s conversion story.

Paul directly understands the idea of seeing things in a new way, because on the restoration of his sight he goes from persecutor to evangelist. His entire point of view shifts, he actually does see things new, not from his point of view, but Christ’s point of view. And through that seeing of things new, Paul declares the need for reconciliation. Of seeing the need for restoration of relations between peoples and between people and God. Forgiveness.

         Paul wants us to have this ministry of reconciliation and forgiveness as our frame of reference when we look at other people. Using Christ centered lenses to see the God loved person they are. Christ calls us to love our neighbor, and even love our enemies, Christ centered lenses has us love them, not because they do good things for us, or because we’ll get things out of helping them, but simply because they are people, people created, loved, and cared for by God. Christ tells us to get beyond our stigma’s, our sexism, our racism, our stereotypes, and see all people as Beloved Children of God. That is what it means to look through Christ centered lenses.

         So, the parable of the prodigal Son. We’re going to sing Amazing Grace as our Hymn of the Day, and that song embodies this text, but it also embodies the easy interpretation of the text. We’re the lost younger son, who has turned away, and upon returning God has run to meet us, forgiving us, welcoming us back, saving and loving us. That’s all true, but the parable is harder than that.

         This text becomes hard, because it’s not just about us. The parable is introduced by telling us who it is that Jesus is visiting with. “¹Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

         The tax collectors and sinners all hear this parable and think Amazing Grace! I was lost and am found. And the Pharisees and scribes say, those people? They only see through their lenses, where Christ is looking through his eyes, he doesn’t see tax collectors and sinners, he sees beloved Children of God in need of welcoming, in need of forgiveness.

         While it would be wonderful if we were only the younger son, forgiven before we can even get our full confession out. On the way home he’s practicing, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ But, when he get there, he only gets through,  ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ And he doesn’t finish the phrase, instead his dad run, grabs, and hugs him. It would be wonderful if that is all we are.

But, we’re also the older son, we’re the Pharisees and scribes at times. Who gets irritated, bitter, huffy, resentful and vexed at the situation. It’s not fair. Why does he get forgiven? I’ve been the good son, I’ve done the good things, he hasn’t. He ran away, he wasted his inheritance, he was improper. Why should they get the help? They’re sinners, they’re druggies, drunks, homeless, criminals,  to go back to last week and the barren fig tree, they’re wastes of soil.

         We love amazing grace, until that person gets it.

         That’s why Christ centered lenses are so important. Because they’re the answer. It’s reconciliation. It’s forgiveness.

         It’s seeing things from God’s point of view, which the father in this parable does. He doesn’t see that his younger son has wasted what he gave him, he doesn’t see that his son messed everything up, he only sees that his son is in need, and he runs to help him. His concern is not about properness, but about needs. We’re called to be like the Father. We are indeed the younger son, who were lost and found, saved and claimed in the waters of baptism. We then need to not be the elder son who says, those others can’t have what I’ve been given, but be the father who runs to bring people to what we’ve received. 

         There is a saying that the church needs to be a hospital for the broken, not a club house for the self-important. The church exists not to help us tell ourselves that we’re great, but to feed ourselves so we can go out to feed others.

         I got home late on Wednesday and the movie Sister Act was on, which I hadn’t seen in quite a while. In it Whoopi Goldberg, a lounge singer hiding as a nun after she witnessed a murder, turns the convent she’s hiding in around through song, but also through getting the to get out from behind the iron bars surrounding the convent. They go out into the community and care for the people there. They talk to the homeless, the drug dealers, the gang members, the tax-collectors and sinners of our day, and they don’t try to get rid of them, but they love them, they care for them, they welcome them in.

That’s the view Christ wants for us. Not to seclude ourselves in thinking we’re elder sons better than every one, who want to exist in a clubhouse for ourselves, but to live in a world where we go out to find the lost, and bring them back and see that we are brought back as well.

         Amazing Grace means a grace so amazing it reaches out to us, to the whole world, loving in a way that will go to the cross to save all people.

         Christ centered lenses are seeing the impact the cross makes.