Year C Lent IV Joshua 5:9-12 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

In the Book of Joshua, from which our first reading today comes, the story of Israel is written as an origin story. Here is where we were, here is where we then went, here is where we are now going.

Here is where we were! The Children of Israel have quite a history. They have been taken captive and carried away into Egypt, an exile God allowed because they had turned away from God. There, in Egypt , their lives have not always been exemplary. Moses has freed them and led them into the wilderness where, still getting into trouble for their misdeeds, think of the golden calf, they have wandered for forty years. They have survived, eating the mana from heaven provided by God. But their history is marred by sin.

The Lord said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." And so that place is called Gilgal to this day.

God, infinitely loving and forgiving, has “rolled away” the past, that is what Gilgal means, to “roll away”, and the Children of Israel have been forgiven. They have been forgiven for the turning away from God that allowed them to be taken into captivity in Egypt, forgiven for the stain they feel because of the lives they led during their Egyptian captivity, forgiven for their misconduct, their sin, forgiven for breaking their covenant with God. Their hearts must have rejoiced.

Here is where we then went! The people who settled in Gilgal were not the same people Moses led out of Egypt. In the Old Testament we hear about the incredibly long lifespans of people like Miriam and Moses, but the average person did not live into their hundreds. Even if one left Egypt in their twenties or thirties, add to that forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and it becomes clear that the people who left Egypt are no longer alive. The forgiveness God has given is for all the Children of Israel as a nation, and those who receive this forgiveness accept it not only for themselves, but for those who went before them.

Now, they have come at last to a place just barely within the borders of the Promised Land, and there they have settled. The food they now have was most likely planted by others, but is now theirs as they possess the ground in which it grows. They have harvested it as their own. They have come home.

While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho.

What do we human beings do as the time of a great event moves away and becomes a great event that happened in our parents or grandparents lives, as that great event moves ever farther away from us into history? And how do we continue to recall the love and forgiveness of God keeping it always before us? To insure we do not forget, we set aside a day, or a week, or even forty days of remembrance.

So the Children of Israel would not forget, they establish the holy remembrance called Passover, an eight day time to refresh their hearts and minds and souls. They will eat the Passover meal so that young and old alike will remember, rejoice, and be thankful to God for God’s love, faithfulness, and forgiveness.

Here is where we are now going! Life happens, and, as in our own lives, temptation is never far away. It doesn’t take long to forget one’s blessings. At a private level, fear, jealously, anger and resentment can be haunting. At a public level, leadership (political, clerical or community) has rarely met a battle it didn’t want to fight. The Children of Israel are starting with a clean slate, but in the future they will have challenges to their faithfulness.

Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.”

Today’s parable, like all of Jesus’ parables, is meant to shock, and in that it certainly succeeds.

A young man tells his father, “I wish you were dead. Then I could have the fortune that’s coming to me”. In families there is meant to be a bond of love and trust between parents and children, fathers and sons. The words from the young man break that familial covenant, and yet, almost unbelievably, the loving father liquidates half his holdings, and gives the son what he asks for.

They boy, as we know, takes his inheritance and squanders it in sinful pursuits. He spends his exile tending swine. To the Jews swine are unclean, so for any Jewish person, tending swine is a disgusting and disgraceful job. Yet the son, starving and desperate, only looks with hunger and longing at the slop which has been thrown into the pig sty.

Finally, the son turns his footsteps homeward, and on approaching his destination he is met by his ecstatic father, full of joy at the son’s return.

The father … ran and put his arms around his son and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'

But the father, who loves his children deeply, has already forgiven the son, who has returned home with a broken and contrite heart. And to celebrate this homecoming and the forgiveness the son has received, the father gives orders for a great feast to be celebrated.

… Get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.

But there is another son in this story, a son who is extremely annoyed by the fuss being made over the runaway returned home. We may be able to see ourselves in him more than in the prodigal. When invited to the feast, the second son “became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’”

In other words, I will not take part in this great feast of Love, because you are not making, and never have made, me the center of attention. This son, unlike his brother, never physically removes himself from his father’s house, never squanders his father’s riches on sinful pleasures, and yet, through an act of will, through anger and jealousy, he, like his brother, removes himself from his Father’s Love.

So - how does all this apply to us? You’ve probably already seen the connection. Human history is filled with deviation from the will of God, with acts of violence and hatred, with things done and left undone, all of which offend God. By itself, the human race was so sinful we had no hope of freeing ourselves from our sins, of leading holy lives, and at the end of our journey entering eternal life in light and joy. Our loving, Heavenly Father had to come down to save us.

How we remember this salvation and incorporate it into our daily lives differs somewhat from the story of the Children of Israel and of the Prodigal Son, because Jesus left us a different kind of feast, a gift so mysterious it goes beyond our understanding. In dying for us and rising again, Jesus won for us the chance to be the people God calls us to be, to live in His light and spread His love, to end our journey by coming home to Him.

In the communion service, before the blessing of the bread and wine or grape juice, there is a general confession, a time when we are meant to recall and fervently regret our sins, so that we may be forgiven for them before we rejoice in receiving communion. The minister pronounces the absolution, confirming that God has, indeed forgiven us. Then we are drawn into the mystery of our redemption and given renewed spiritual energy through the partaking of the bread and wine or grape juice.

For those of you watching us on YouTube and who are able to do so, we invite you to come home to St. Bart’s and share the Feast with us in person.

The desert, and our human nature, will always tempt us to wander into sin, but through Jesus, and especially in receiving communion, we are fortified, strengthened, deeply loved, and forgiven.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; keep us always in your Presence, and our hearts constant in your Love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.