Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
This is an interactive manuscript. To follow links, click the highlighted words below.
The Lord’s statement to Joshua, “I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt”, reminds me of a song by one of my favorite bands, Mumford and Sons. The title of that song is “Roll Away Your Stone”. The final verse goes like this:
It seems that all my bridges have been burnedBut you say that’s exactly how this grace thing worksIt’s not the long walk home that will change this heartBut the welcome I receive with the restart.
That fits perfectly with the Parable of Prodigal Son.There the Prodigal has burned all his bridges. He has taken his inheritance from his father, which in Jesus’ day would have been the equivalent of saying, “I wish you were dead.” The Prodigal falls so spectacularly that he ends up wishing he could have the food of the pigs he is feed. Pigs, of course, are unclean animals according to the Law.
The Prodigal finally decides to go home and take up the least position in his father’s house. He would be worse off than when he started, but not worse off than where he finds himself now.
Yet when he returns, his father has an unexpected reaction. He doesn’t even let his son finish his speech. He immediately opens his arms to his son and summons the household together to prepare a feast in thanksgiving for the return of his son who he thought was dead.
The Prodigal’s life restarts here. Even though he squandered everything he was given away, he still is welcomed back with love and open arms. Though he may be back home, everything is now new for him, especially considering he was willing to come back home in the role of a slave.
This is the message we receive from all of our Scripture this morning, that God is making everything new. The Hebrews on entering the land of Israel no longer have to eat manna, the food from the heavens that apparently did not taste very good leading the Israelites to partake in a lot of complaining. Now they can eat the fruits of the earth in a new land. It’s only appropriate that they mark this start by celebrating the Passover, itself a reminder of God’s rolling away the stone of slavery to lead them to their newfound freedom.
Paul tells us that in Christ Jesus, we are no longer flesh, but instead a new creation. Christ Jesus has done the work to save us from our sins, sins like those of the Prodigal, so that we too might be accepted by God, our Father, with open arms.
Change can be a scary thing. It brings with it something new. Yet what is new, particularly through the eyes of Faith, is better than what we knew before. It means no longer being a slave to sin. It means no longer eating bad tasting food as we wander in the wilderness. It means letting go of ourselves so we can pick ourselves up from the mud and the pods of pigs to return to the home and the feast our Father has prepared for us.
Sometimes, as with the Prodigal, that change is, in a sense, a return. It can never be a complete return to how things once were, yet it can be a return to something better than what we knew before. Like the Prodigal, we may learn the depths of our Lord’s love for us. We can return to the patterns of goodness we knew once before with an eye to better appreciate being in the House of the Lord. We can be more grateful for the life our Lord wishes us to live.
This in many ways is what we are returning to now after the Pandemic, a world that is different and hopefully better for our time in the mud with the pigs. Perhaps God is working something similar in us for our life as a parish too.
That is something for us to ponder, and it would be remiss not to also include the warning we hear at the end of Jesus’ Parable. It may be tempting for us to like the elder son, angry at the Grace our Prodigal siblings have received after all our work. But we don’t do the work out of hope for reward. We do it out of love for our Lord. We must never forget, too, that we are all recipients of God’s Grace in one way or another. We’ve all burned our bridges at one point in time. We’ve also all received the unearned welcome back home from Lord. Our response to God’s love, our change from that moment, speaks to everything.