MOST RECENT SERMON

Text of a Sermon Preached for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C. Luke 15.11-32

Today’s gospel is mostly known as the parable of the prodigal son, the son who is wasteful, reckless, spendthrift.  This shows the church’s focus on sin over its focus on grace. For this incredibly rich story rests and falls on grace, shown through the love of a forgiving father. But the parable is not called the ‘Parable of the Forgiving Father’. And the second half of the passage is focused on the elder son. But it’s not called the ‘Parable of the Two Sons’. Also, through our title we focus on the individual, not the communal, something at odds with the parable itself.

Now as the head of a Jewish family, the father engages in many outrageous, extravagant and socially shameful acts of love – just as Christ himself did. Agreeing to divide his property was a public dishonouring. Running out of the property to meet his son was an act of disgrace, as was the public showing of compassion and affection – and the Greek here is lovely, it literally means “having run, fell upon the neck of him and kissed him”.

If we focus on this parable as an independent story, we miss a lot. For it is part of an interdependent three-fold set of lost and found parables in this chapter of Luke, increasing in intensity.

In the first two parables, the lost sheep – one out of a hundred, and the lost coin - one out of ten – are returned by the effort of the seeker, the shepherd and the cleaning woman. In our parable today, the restoration of the single human person – one out of one - comes through powerlessness and the turning of the heart.

The father allows his son to leave – he could have refused. Once his son has left however, he waits patiently, he does not exercise power and seek his son, but waits with his invitation of restoration. He is able to see his son ‘from far off’ because he has never stopped looking for his return. He has to wait, accepting powerlessness, until the son turns his heart; human restoration, unlike that of sheep or coins, is not by human effort, but by acceptance of the ever-present love of God.

And what has happened to the younger son? It is not so much his ‘dissolute living’ that’s the problem, it is his hiring himself out to one of the citizens of a foreign, Gentile, country. The Greek has other connotations for this word, “joined”, “glued”, “united”. He has lost himself in this union to someone who is not part of his family, not part of his culture, not his actual life - just as we also lose ourselves when we unite ourselves to selfish acts, to lives that we pretend are ours.

The younger son has so lost his Jewish and family identity he feeds pigs, and wishes to eat what they eat. But … perhaps because he is so lost, so far at the bottom, a place that we all know in some shape or form, perhaps because he is there, he actually remembers who he is.

As the text states, he “came to himself” – his heart is turned and he returns to seek out his proper identity – but now not as an individual looking out just for himself, as he did previously, and not as even as a member of his family, but simply as part of an interdependent community, as a hired hand.

By seeking connection, by seeking community, by accepting love, he that was lost is found, he who was dead is alive again. 

But … and there is a really BIG but here … the parable only tells half the story, literally half. Because this family, this community, to which the son returns consisted not only of fathers, and sons, it also consisted of women and girls. There was a mother, either alive or dead, as well as a father, most likely daughters, certainly women and girl slaves.  Not one is mentioned. All are lost to the biblical record; all are dead to history.

This is the patriarchal legacy of our scriptures, which were overwhelmingly written by men about men and for men.

The church has, like the younger son, hired itself, united, glued itself to empire and patriarchal society. In doing so, we the Body of Christ, have, like the younger son, lost ourselves. We have created doctrines of exclusion masked as gender complementarianism; we have denied God herself.

But our God is Living God, and She Changes Everything She Touches, even the patriarchal church. And the Good News is that we as church, even bonded with patriarchy and male privilege, we are still invited to come to ourselves, as the son came to himself. We are invited to find what is lost, to restore the fullness of life to women, girls and all others excluded in our churches through their sexuality or gender difference or race or neurodiversity or any other form of difference.

Today, in the secular world, and in more and more churches, we are celebrating the Transgender Day of Visibility, a day where we remember, see and celebrate transgender people made in the Image of God. This is a day, created specifically in response to the erasure of people, like the erasure of women from the pages of our bibles. This day counters the pretence that trans people do not and have never existed, or do not legitimately exist as equal, right and whole.

Transgender Day of Visibility was celebrated for the first time just over 15 years ago. Since then, its expansion has been remarkable. It has been endorsed, celebrated and added to government calendars all over the world, a wonderful growth, a wonderful inclusion of love. Its creator is an American psychotherapist, Rachel Crandall Crocker, who was raised Jewish and describes herself now as both Jewish and universalist Christian. She attributes her inclusive ethics to her faiths.

Though always a secular day of celebration, Transgender Day of Visibility is a perfect example of Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams’ understanding of Mission. The Archbishop once wrote Mission is ‘finding out where God is active in the world and joining in’.

Today, Transgender Day of Visibility, is a day where God is active, a day where God is calling us to join in.

And being sacred scripture, alive and speaking to us right here, right now, our Gospel is God not only calling us to join in but also showing us how to join in.

This third parable in Luke is the intensification of the other two – we have moved from finding a lost sheep, 1 in 100, to a lost coin, 1 in 10, to a single lost person, restoring them to community and interdependence, to new life.

And now, we, as the Body of Christ must be the Fourth Parable.

We are called today, to be living scripture, a living parable to the world so loved by God. We are called not to find and bring to life an individual person, but to find and bring to life the stories and lives of women, girls, trans people and others excluded by the church.

Because as the Body of Christ, while one member of that Body continues patriarchal silencing and exclusion, we all suffer, we all are affected.

And so, as the Fourth Parable of the lost and found to the world, as Living Scripture, let us open ourselves to the disturbing Holy Spirit as She calls us to be noisy, to be bold, to be honest and to reveal the silenced wounding in our church. For only then, will there really be, as our reading from Corinthians states, a new Creation, only then will the old pass away, and only then will everything become new,

In the name of Christ, Amen.