Christ Episcopal Church
March 10, 2013
4 Lent C
When Don and I were young, newly married, and both in school, grocery money was tight. One of our staple foods during that time was something we called "tube soup." I am quite sure the soup had another name on the package, but I have no idea what that name was. In a tube shaped package about a foot long, there were all kinds of dried beans and a flavoring packet. Add one quart of water, simmer for several hours, and presto, we had a nice pot of bean soup, for the total cost of about a dollar. We ate a lot of tube soup, and at the time, we thought the soup was quite good. The meal was required little effort, was nutritious, and cheap. What more could we have wanted during those years when we were young, busy, and broke?
Once we moved into the Promised Land of new beginnings called employment, we moved beyond tube soup. Money was still tight, but not that tight, and we could add some variety to our diet. But we always look back with nostalgia on our tube soup days. Once, long after we had left school, I actually found tube soup in the grocery store and bought some. We made the soup once again, nostalgic for the good old days, and after eating the soup, decided that tube soup should remain a relic of our past.
This morning, we watch as the Israelites celebrate their first Passover in the Promised Land. God has sustained them in the wilderness with manna, bread from heaven, which the Israelites had alternated between appreciating and detesting. But the manna had sustained them for 40 years as they journeyed with Moses to the Promised Land. Now, Moses has died, and Joshua is their leader as they enter the Promised Land After 40 years in the wilderness, quite likely there is no one still alive who actually left Egypt. The Israelites enter the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, and to mark this new beginning in their lives, their menu changes. No longer does God need to provide them with manna. Now, they will feast on the crops of the Land of Canaan.
We might easily think that from the entry into Canaan, their first Passover in the Promised Land, and their new diet of fresh crops, life for the Israelites would be easy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Canaan was occupied with people who had never heard of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and had no intention of turning their land over to these foreign people. The story of the conquest of Canaan is a story in which God’s people are sometimes faithful, sometimes do what is evil in the sight of God, sometimes they think they are being faithful when they are actually doing evil, and sometimes life is just plain hard. The change in their meal from manna to fresh crops does not mean that life will be easy, but the change does signify a new beginning for the Israelites as they move from being desert wanderers to being the people of a land. What does not change is that the Israelites always belong to God.
In the gospel lesson, we hear another story about a meal that marks a new beginning for someone. As an eldest child myself, and as the mother of two sons, I have a lot of questions about the story of the Prodigal Son. Are my younger brother and sister being encouraged to squander their inheritance in dissolute living, before they are actually due to receive a dime? Am I, as the eldest, to welcome them home with open arms when they return poor, dirty and hungry? The father throws a huge party for the younger son when he returns. Are we really called to be like the younger child rather than the dutiful, obedient, hard working, faithful older child? Jesus has got to be kidding.
As the mother of two sons, I wonder where the mom is in this parable. What is she thinking as her second born leaves the nest for what will no doubt be a disaster? What is she feeling for her first born when her younger child returns? Does the mother even exist? There is no answer to these questions, but they are fun to play with.
So, who are we to imitate in this parable? Are we called to be the dutiful elder brother or are we given permission to be the irresponsible younger brother who gets the party? The parable ends before we find out whether the younger son actually changed his ways and got his act together, or whether the elder son ever saw the wisdom and grace in his father’s forgiveness, and I, for one, would like to know how the story turned out. But Jesus’ point is not what either child did or did not do. Nor is the point which child is the winner and which is the loser. The point is what the father did. The parable is about God and God’s outrageous forgiveness. The father demonstrates God’s forgiveness that is there before we even ask, the forgiveness that we received at our baptism, the forgiveness that surrounds us, that knocks on the door to our hearts, the forgiveness that begs to be received and lived. The father demonstrates the undeserved, unearned forgiveness that is available to everyone, both younger sons and daughters who have made an utter mess out of their lives, and righteous older brothers and sisters, no questions asked.
But the father demonstrates even more than God’s outrageous forgiveness. The father could have simply said "I forgive you. Come in, sit down, have a cup of tea, then get to work." But instead the father throws a huge party, a celebration, to welcome home his errant son. Outrageous forgiveness is communicated through equally outrageous hospitality. In the reading from 2 Corinthians, Paul calls us to be ambassadors for Christ, agents of reconciliation. Our Book of Common Prayer tells us that the mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with Christ. As the church, the body of Christ, we are called to imitate neither the elder son, nor the younger son in the parable, but the father. We are called to communicate God’s outrageous forgiveness by being a community of outrageous hospitality, hospitality that treats everyone who walks through the door of this church, whether the visitor, each other, or ourselves, with the same hospitality and joy that the Father showed his younger son upon his return. We are called to proclaim that this table, God’s table, is the very banquet of reconciliation that the Father in the parable threw for his wayward son. This meal will not make us perfect anymore than the meal of crops from the ground of Canaan made the Hebrew people perfect, or than, in my imagination, the great banquet made the younger son perfect. But this meal does mean that we belong to God, that God has claimed us as the Father claimed the errant son, and that we are forgiven and given the gift of a new beginning over and over again. The hospitality experienced in this place and at this table is not our hospitality, but God’s radical hospitality of new beginnings.
Amen.
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