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         So, how is this Lent thing working out for you? Have you been using this 40-day period of fasting and penitence to do a serious spiritual inventory—to get right with God? Have you accepted our church’s invitation to adopt a discipline of forgiveness and reconciliation, symbolized by—of all things—a pile of rocks? Maybe you’ve adopted a more traditional approach, and you’re counting the days until Easter, when you can go back to your chocolate, or television or dessert. Or, maybe you’ve had enough of sackcloth and ashes, and have given up . . . Lent.

         Well, I have to confess: I love Lent. I love the community focus on turning inward, the encouragement to deepen our relationship with God, the adoption of concrete disciplines and rituals that might seem silly any other time of year, and even the blatant invitation to repentance: to turn around and go home to God.

         And so it is that on the fourth Sunday of Lent the Lectionary gives us the Parable of the Prodigal Son, as if to say: “Hang in there! Don’t give up!” Even as we wallow in new awareness of our sinfulness, this story reminds us that our compassionate Father-Mother God is running to greet us, to take us into His loving arms; to pour out upon us Her radical, restorative forgiveness; to welcome us home; and to celebrate our return with the biggest party we’ve ever seen.

         But let’s not get carried away. It is Lent, after all. This story also challenges us to be more like our merciful, reconciling God. It calls us not only to forgive and accept the “other,” no matter what she has done to us; not only to include the “other,” no matter how different he is from us; but also to reach out to, genuinely welcome and truly love all the “others” in our lives. Loving as God loves requires more than being willing to open the door when someone knocks. It means opening the door wide and then going out into the streets to call people in.

         But this dream home to which God softly and tenderly calls each one of us isn’t quite finished yet. This is the home that we, God’s children, are building with God. This is the home that becomes ours as soon as we invite everyone in—especially those people we’d rather keep out, the ones we feel don’t deserve to be let in, the people who have judged us and treated us as if we don’t belong, those who have broken our hearts, or rebuffed our attempts to reach out—even our oppressors and enemies, even the troublemakers and evildoers.

Speaking of home, . . . .

         About three years ago, I began searching for a church home. The intentional community and house church I had been a part of for almost 20 years had lost critical mass, so I needed a new place to worship. On top of that, I felt quite clearly that God was calling me to ordained ministry in the institutional church—I just didn’t know which one.

         Well, after shopping around a bit, I began leaning toward the United Church of Christ. About that time, the UCC kicked off an advertising campaign called “God is Still Speaking”; it included a 30-second television commercial known as the “Bouncer” ad. As the commercial begins, bells are ringing and scores of people are filing into a large church building. The camera then focuses on the front steps, where two big, burly guys are standing behind a rope line and determining who gets in. When two white men approach—appearing to be a gay couple—one of the “bouncers” says in a stern voice: “No. Step aside, please.” The bouncers proceed to let in many other people—all of them white—while turning away a Latino man and an African-American girl, among others. “No way,” they say. “Not you.”

         Well, the Pharisees and scribes were the “bouncers” of 1^st-century Judaism. They fancied themselves as the keepers of the rope line, and they did not like all the riff-raff and ne’er-do-wells Jesus was inviting to what they believed was their party. It was bad enough that Jesus didn’t join the scribes and Pharisees in openly condemning the tax collectors and sinners, but that he actually welcomed them and ate with them, . . . That was just a scandal.

         Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ grumbling with three parables featuring a common, lost-and-found theme. The first two—the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin—are pretty straightforward. But after illustrating how God delights in welcoming home the lost, Jesus turns his attention to the uneasy relationship between the lost and the so-called saved, the self-righteous and the sinner. “There was a man who had two sons,” Jesus begins.

         First, the story goes, there’s a younger son demanding his inheritance—that is, treating his father as if he were already dead. That’s bad enough, but then the son then sets out for a foreign land, where he blows all his money on sinful living and ends up worse off than the pigs he has been hired to feed.

         Finally, after much suffering, the younger son “comes to himself.”  He is too ashamed of himself to think he might reclaim his place as the son of a wealthy man, but he hopes this connection will at least save his life. And so he turns toward home.

         And you know the rest of the story:

         How the spurned father, seeing his wayward son from afar, is “filled with compassion.” Throwing off what little dignity he has left, he runs down the road to embrace his beloved child, who now is little more than skin and bones and smells like . . . swine, to put it politely. The son begins to blurt out his rehearsed repentance speech, but the father interrupts him. “Hurry,” he tells his servants. “Bring out the best for him; pull out all the stops to celebrate the fact that my child who was dead is alive again; he was lost but now he is found.”

         Suddenly the scene shifts, and we remember: Oh, yeah, doesn’t this guy have two sons? And, sure enough, there’s the first-born: the dutiful, responsible son who has always followed the rules, respected the traditions and colored between the lines, knowing that his good behavior would be rewarded. But when he finds out that his father has killed the fatted calf for that no-good, spoiled-rotten, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life kid brother of his, he is filled with anger and resentment.

         Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Not that any of us has ever harbored such feelings, of course, but we know people who have. Out of fairness to the older son and these other people, it’s worth noting that his concerns were not only for himself. His brother had disgraced the family and rejected the culture and, well, the way his father was treating him just wasn’t fair. The older son was a member of his temple’s social witness board and, well, didn’t someone need to stand up for justice?

         Or, think about the black people of South Africa. They suffered genocide, dehumanization, forced removal, impoverishment, dehumanization, the break-up of families, oppression, torture, deprivation, murder, imprisonment and a thousand daily indignities for more than 300 years. When they finally won their right to vote, when a black man (a former political prisoner) was elected president of their country, didn’t they have the right to take back what had been stolen from them?

         Or when black South African women met face-to-face with the security police and government officials who had tortured and murdered their husbands and sons: Didn’t they deserve to see the perpetrators brought to justice?

         And last fall, when P.W. Botha, a former prime minister and president of South Africa, died at age 90: Did he deserve any honor? After all, he had authorized the jailing and torture of anti-apartheid activists, and he had defied international pressure to end the incredibly perverse system of apartheid, which he had described as “good neighborliness.”

         Back in our parable, the older son, whom one could hardly describe as a victim, is nevertheless thinking along similar lines, which—let’s admit it—don’t seem all that unreasonable. Come on, shouldn’t the younger son be punished for what he has done?  Shouldn’t the father teach him a lesson—to make sure he knows that he won’t get away with this kind of thing again? Concerned about justice and who deserves what, the older son focuses only on deeds—the evil his brother has committed compared to the good he has done. He does not even acknowledge his connection to the prodigal or to his father, practically spitting out the words “this son of yours.”

         But the father speaks only in terms of relationship. His concern is not for one son over the other but what is best for the entire family. “Son,” he says lovingly, “this brother of yours, this child of mine,was dead and has come to life.”  The fatted calf has been killed to celebrate not only the prodigal’s return but also the restoration of the family; the robe and the ring are for the prodigal, but everyone is invited to the party.

         In the new South Africa, opportunities for justice and revenge have played out this way:

         When the black majority won control of the government in 1994, it began working with all people—black, white, brown and mixed—to create a nation for all people. Among other things, the new government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that, in private record-gathering and public hearings, sought to expose the truth of the nation’s past—not to guarantee restitution to victims or offer blanket amnesty to perpetrators, but to make possible a different future. As chairman Desmond Tutu has said, the commission sought to “balance the requirements of justice, accountability, stability, peace and reconciliation” and, in so doing, “rehabilitate and affirm the dignity and … inalienable personhood” of all South Africans, particularly those who had been silenced by apartheid. Endnote 1 Instead of insisting only on justice for victims, the commission focused on what would be best for everyone, a system that would promote healing, and thus enable reconciliation.

         And when P.W. Botha died last October, the black president of the new South Africa ordered that all flags be lowered to half mast. He offered a state funeral for Botha and, when the family chose instead to have a private memorial, President Thabo Mbeki attended the ceremony.

         The story of the lost sons ends with the older son still outside. We don’t know if he continues to sulk or eventually joins the party.  In a similar way, I left you in the middle of the UCC “Bouncer” commercial. Well, after the bouncers have locked some people out of the church and let others in, the screen fades to black, and the following words appear: “Jesus didn’t turn people away.” Then, on another screen: “Neither do we.” Finally, as the camera pans a diverse crowd, a voiceover says, “The United Church of Christ: No matter where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.”

         Well, you know what they say: God moves in mysterious ways. I so strongly believe that God is still speaking, and I was so excited about the inclusiveness portrayed in the “Bouncer” ad, that a television commercial was the tipping point that brought me—a person whose television stays unplugged 95 percent of the time and who doesn’t even have cable—into the UCC. That’s funny, but here’s the “mysterious” part: Now that I am blessed to be part of this denomination that prides itself on openness and inclusiveness, I realize that openness and inclusiveness are not enough.  

         We as a church and as individuals may think we’ve got our “inner bouncer” under control; we may even pat ourselves on the back for the welcome we extend to all people based on who they are. Here at CCC, our inclusiveness is printed at the top of our bulletin and announced from the pulpit every Sunday. Like most of us, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

         But when it comes to what some others have done to people like us, or what they believe about the Bible, or what they think about the war, or what kind of car they drive, which political party they’re in, or where they live or how they smell . . . We want justice, we want fairness, we want correctness and sameness. Or maybe we’re willing to put up with diversity and difference and disagreement; we’re just not going to go out looking for them.

         But the subversive message of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the radical word of the new South Africa, the good news of the Gospel is that relationship trumps justice, that connectedness is more important than agreement, that our common humanity—which includes doing wrong and being wronged and each person sitting in her or her own pool of tears [Endnote 2] --overrides our differences. While we sometimes want retributive justice and conditions, uniformity and reward, God offers mercy, forgiveness and a seat at the table, equality, diversity, and identity in relationship. In South Africa it’s called ubuntu: The spiritual connection we all share as children of God means that our destiny is tied up together. We become ourselves only through relatedness, through community, by caring for one another. We honor one another even as we acknowledge the pain we cause each other.

         “If repentance for the younger son [in the parable] means learning to say “Father” again, writes Henri Nouwen, “then for the elder son it means learning to say “brother” again. . . . In the world of the parable, one cannot be a son [or daughter] without also being a brother [or sister].”Endnote 3

         But Lent is not only about repentance. The prodigal son, our New Testament reading, and the miracle of South Africa all remind us that Lent is also about forgiveness and reconciliation. We are called to be door-openers in God’s kingdom, not gatekeepers. Jesus calls us to work together with our sisters and brothers to build a welcoming home on a foundation of mercy and forgiveness, relationship and reconciliation.

         High on a hill above Pretoria, there is a place called Freedom Park. Still under construction, it is part monument to a horrible past, part living testament to all the cultures, colors, languages, histories and traditions that have made South Africa what it is, and part hope—hope that by acknowledging, grieving and celebrating all aspects of South Africa’s past, all the people of South Africa can work together to build a new future. Freedom Park symbolizes the power of forgiveness, the possibility of reconciliation, and the liberating embrace of human connectedness that allows a black South Africa woman to say, as she recalls her encounter with the apartheid official who ordered the murder of her husband:

         “I hope that when he sees our tears, he knows that they are not only tears for our husbands, but tears for him as well . . . I would like to hold him by the hand, and show him that there is a future, and that he can still change.”Endnote 4

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