Sermon on the 4th Sunday of Lent on Sunday, March 27, 2022 in Houten 1)
Dear sisters and brothers, Jesus was deeply moved to see people exclude each other. Excluding someone else actually means that the other person does not exist for you. You act as if the other is air.
How is that possible? What thought is hidden behind that way of life? Certainly not the awareness that our lives are a gift from God. A gift to ourselves, but also to others. So we are fundamentally related as creatures of God. That’s why it hurts so much these days to see people firing rockets at apartment buildings where people live, to see people buried in rubble, to see people on the run, to see people behind barbed wire in camps. Even though we can’t do anything about it ourselves, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect us, and that we can be indifferent to it. It’s intolerable. It is disgusting. Human dignity is at stake. We humans have been given life by God to support and enrich each other, to make the community flourish, to be diverse as we are, to live in peace with each other.
Even where there is no war and where there is no barbed wire, there are iron curtains in many places that separate people from each other. In families where someone stands up for themselves and becomes a black sheep, denominations that cut off all contact if someone goes their own way, not to mention invisible dividing lines through racial and class differences. We should not be satisfied with this as human beings and certainly not if we believe in God. He gave us with life to one another to live in communion. We must not resign ourselves to that hardness of heart if we follow Jesus who calls us children of “his heavenly Father”. We must do everything we can to find and strengthen the bond.
In the parable that Jesus tells, he gives us his vision of how we should treat each other 1). He put that vision into practice himself by interacting with all kinds of people, including men and women who were rejected in his circles and ignored as if they didn’t exist because they did not live up to the expectations of decent people. He let himself being excluded to save humanity and the world. The parable is commonly known as the “parable of the prodigal son.” But doesn’t that name mislead us? You might as well speak of the parable of the embittered son. Or why not rather “the parable of the merciful father and his sons”.
Notice the father who gives his son the freedom to make his own choice. He did not oblige him to continue working in his father’s business, so to speak. That was very common until not so long ago. The son goes his own way. He makes wrong choices. Not because he developed his own talent, but because he is guided by pleasure. He makes wrong choices. Not because he developed his own talent as if this is a sin. But because he is only guided by pleasure. He sinks deep. He comes to realize that the pigs he ultimately tends are better off than him. He longs to return to his father’s house, if only as a day labourer. He repents and turns back.
It is striking that his father is always on the lookout. Actually all the time, maybe for years. In his heart he has never forgotten his son. His heart is like a magnet that attracts the son. If we humans deeply repent of a transgression, God was already at work drawing us to Himself. He does not scold his son, but immediately orders his servants to prepare a feast.
But the father does not limit himself to the son who has returned. The other son does not come to the party because he is angry that his brother has been accepted into grace. He has always worked hard but there was never a special party for him. The father does not shrug, but goes to the brother. He tries to persuade him to turn around: Why aren’t you at the party? Why aren’t you happy. All mine is yours anyway. That brother of yours was dead and has come to life, he was lost and has been found.”
We must pay attention to the father with which Jesus, of course, refers to God the Father. He is a merciful Father who likes to let his children make new beginnings. Both the son who left him, and the son who always stayed at home but without joy, without spontanety.
Let us enjoy Easter to make a new beginning for ourselves and for each other. Because we turn from wrong ways, because we desire to return to God. In our repentance we may feel God Himself as a loving Father at work. We can also make a new beginning by no longer being bitter because God is merciful to sinners and gives new life. Let’s just be happy and do nothing more than forgive ourselves and hug each other. May we blossom as a new spring in the world so longing for a new beginning of freedom and peace.
Martin Los, pr
1) Sermon on the Gospel of the 4th Sunday in Lent 27 maart 2022
picture: Stained glass cathedral South Carolina Prodigal son Wikipedia