LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Lent IV + 2/18/07 + Saint Paul’s Church, Lake James

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Let me share a frustrating experience with you. I was in my study at home, talking on the telephone with someone who was seeking advice about a serious problem in his life. After a bit, it was clear to me that the most helpful thing would be for us to talk in person, so I reached for my appointment book. I know the spot on my desk where I always put that book, but it wasn’t there! I looked high and low, cradling the phone on my shoulder as we talked (I was trying to keep the conversation going smoothly while I searched for that “impossible” book.) After a few awkward moments, the book turned up under an unlikely pile of papers and I didn’t even have to admit my problem to the person on the other end of the telephone line – but it was a really frustrating and annoying experience.

The Bible has many references to and stories about loss. Remember the parable Jesus told about the housewife who lost a coin, or the one about the shepherd who lost one of his sheep? Or when Mary and Joseph lost track of the 12 year old Jesus on their way home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem? I suspect everyone here has, at one time or another, lost something of importance to us, so, when we hear about that kind of experience, we can empathize with others who lose something. That’s at least one reason most of us find it easy to understand the feelings of the father in today’s Gospel reading. He lost something, something very precious to him, namely, his younger son.

The term “generation gap” is often used to describe the rift which can occur between parents and children. The Parable of the Prodigal Son shows that that same reality existed 2000 years ago, and we would be safe in predicting that, unless the human race succeeds in destroying the earth before then, that same “generation gap” will be around 2000 years from now as well!

When I couldn’t find my appointment book, my first reaction was to blame it! I thought “where is that darn thing? Where did it go?” (as if it had disappeared on its own). Perhaps the Biblical housewife asked herself the same question about her missing coin. At any rate, there is a sense in which losses such as an appointment book, a coin, or a sheep have at least one thing in common. When I couldn’t find my book, it was through my own carelessness, my failure to pay attention with my mind on other things when I shifted a pile of papers on my desk and accidentally covered up the book. The housewife who lost the coin and the shepherd whose sheep strayed off were likewise concentrating on other things. But the Parable of the Prodigal Son is different. It is neither given as a story of a forgetful father nor as a psychological case history of a dysfunctional family. Rather, the Parable presents us with a vivid word picture of the very human self-centeredness of the son and a loving father’s readiness to forgive.

We are now half way through Lent. In our self-examination, when we consider that we have fallen short of being the people God calls us to be, if we are being totally honest with ourselves, the one thing we can’t say is “Well, God, it’s at least partly your fault!” On the contrary, the guilt, the blame, is ours. Today’s Gospel serves as a mirror for us, a reminder that, like the Prodigal Son, we have sinned. But what does that really mean?

In our day, the very word “sin” can sound a bit strange, a word which calls to mind the vocabulary of a by-gone era, or perhaps the ethos associated with some Christian denominations whose ministers stand in their pulpits and thunder out passionate denunciations – something quite alien to our so-very-proper and polite Anglican tradition! But however much we may wish to avoid it, or find ways of expressing things in more sophisticated (and less blunt) terms, there is a truth which each of us needs to face, which is that, at times, most all of us cannot seem to stop ourselves from going off in directions we know are wrong, saying things we know we should not say, doing things we know we should not do. And the plain fact is that the best word to describe that hasn’t really changed. It is still “sin.”

Preaching a sermon like this reminds me of the story of the well-meaning but rather blundering man whose parish had recently gotten a new Rector. Greeting the Priest at the door after Mass, and wanting to say something nice, he blurted out “I must say we at St. Swithin’s Church didn’t know what sin really is – until you came to be our priest!”

Sin is not a word, not a concept to be used only by religious fanatics or in hell fire and damnation sermons, or even by newspaper headline writers looking for a synonym for illicit sex. Sin is simply what happens when, like the Prodigal Son, we say to God “I’m going my way, I’m going to do my own thing, and I don’t really care about yours!” It’s what happens when we take the freedom God has given us and abuse it, winding up separated from other people and from God. It’s a very human and very common failing. Even the great Apostle for whom this parish is named experienced it. You may remember his emotional outburst when he said “the things I know I shouldn’t do, I do so often, and the things I know I should do, I don’t do!” How painfully familiar that sounds!

One of the often overlooked messages of the story of the Prodigal Son is that the father did not go after his son to try to force him to return home. God never compels anyone to receive or use divine grace, but (and it’s the biggest possible “but”) as the parable makes so clear, God is there, always there, waiting, loving, and ready to forgive.

When I was a college student, I used to like to drop into my home parish, The Church of the Advent in Boston, which, in those long-ago more peaceful days, was always open so that people could come in and pray. Usually I’d go late in the afternoon when the church was generally empty and so very quiet. Near the back, there is a wooden statue of Jesus vested as a priest in Eucharistic vestments. It’s not a big statue – perhaps three feet tall, if that. Unless some of the votive candles in front of it have been lit, it’s easy to miss in the shadows. But that simple statue, with arms outstretched always seemed to me to ask the question Our Lord poses to each one of us: “How about it – do I matter to you?”

Some years ago, I had the privilege of being the Priest in Charge of St. Peter’s Church in Springfield, Massachusetts, a wonderful inner city parish which is in a somewhat depressed section of that city. There is a shrine in that church, an almost life-size figure of Jesus. Originally, the statue was an elegantly polychromed wood carving of the Lord clad in white and gold vestments, with one hand pointing to his bright red heart. The statue stood in a chapel which was attached to the nave of the church. A number of years before I came to that parish, a fire had destroyed the chapel and, while the statue had been rescued, it was badly charred. In place of the sparkling white vestments, the whole figure was black charcoal from top to bottom, but still recognizable as a figure of Jesus. It seemed to me to speak all the more powerfully of the Rabbi from Nazareth who suffered because of human sin, but whose love remained then, and remains now, even as he asks for our love and faithfulness. Kneeling at that shrine and lighting a candle, I could just hear Jesus asking the same questions I heard in Boston, namely “How about it? Do I matter to you?” Questions he poses even now, even this moment, to each one of us: “How about it? Do I matter to you?”

May this Lent continue to be a time of renewal, of growth, of re-turning to God for each one of us. May the Parable of the Prodigal Son remind us that we have been, and are, prodigal sons and daughters, that we are lost appointment books, coins, or sheep, which is to say that we are sinners. We are those things, but also, and most important of all, we do well to remember that the coin, the sheep, and even my appointment book, did not stay lost – they were found!

Think of this: the Prodigal Son not only returned home, but was loved, welcomed, and forgiven by his father, even as you and I are loved, welcomed, and forgiven by God.

Ask yourself: What does that really mean to you? Does it matter? Does Jesus matter?

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig, Sr.

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