Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
“The New Creation“
Rev Jeffrey Cheifetz
Joshua 5:9-12
9The 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. 10While 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. 11On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. 12The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.
Psalm 32
1Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
2Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah 5Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah 6Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. 7You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah 8I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. 9Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you. 10Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. 11Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
16From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. 17So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
15Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3So he told them this parable....11b “There was a man who had two sons. 12The 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. 13A 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. 14When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. 25“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29But 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. 30But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
Once upon a time, when I was just becoming acquainted with personal computers, I assisted my wife with the final editing of a paper for her seminary class. I agreed to look it over to edit it, but when I was finished, in my inexperience I neglected to push the “save” button prior to exiting the paper. In an instant, it disappeared entirely. When I realized that I could not get it back, I felt as though I had come to the edge of the precipice, that place where there was no possibility of being forgiven. Of course, since this story is all about me, I will not mention how Diana felt about it! A co-worker who tried various ways of recovering that paper told me later that when I came to him, I looked as white as a sheet. Oh, the conversation between myself and my wife that ensued - I don’t even like to remember it. The only thing I could do was to spend most of the next 2 days reconstructing it from her written notes, bibliography and all, until it was done. From that time on, she has looked askance at me every time I have suggested that I do something for her on the computer.
I prefer to place the memory of that incident right next to all the times I have done helpful things for her, and in the context of knowing that in our almost 30 years of marriage, we have experienced many things together, and are more deeply committed to one another than the day we were married. In the light of that span of time, the memory of that lost paper fades almost into insignificance. Almost. For without our willingness to repair the damage together, our relationship might have been deeply damaged.
The stories of all of our journeys surely include incidents such as these, including times when the willingness or ability to fix the damage and heal the relationships did not exist. The memories of those times can haunt us, especially when we feel badly about ourselves to begin with. The silver lining is that those memories can also serve as helpful correctives when we feel a little too full of ourselves. Sometimes we need to be brought back down to earth a little bit, and reminded that we need to have a little more humility.
How do we handle such memories? And how do we deal with these kinds of incidents in the present moment? With a deepening sense of shame about who we are that damages our self-esteem, and denies the truth of God‘s deep love for us? Or are we able to refer back to the rock bottom affirmation of the Christian faith captured in our Book of Common Worship, taken from the verses 1 Timothy 1:15 and 1 Peter 2:24: “Hear the good news! The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, that we might be dead to sin, and alive to all that is good. I declare to you in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Amen.”
Our shared faith in the God who forgives our sins of commission and omission, has been very important to Diana and myself. This God refuses to let us sink into the utter darkness of guilt and shame. This God specializes in healing the wounds that haunt us. This God gives the gift of new beginnings. And God knows how badly we need the grace of new beginnings in our relationships, and in how we see ourselves.
Such was the need of the Hebrews who crossed the Jordan River on the last stage of the journey from servitude to a new place. Their parents and grandparents had been slaves to Pharoah in Egypt. That history remained very personal. It was their family history. It was their history as a people, and it stayed with them, ruled their attitudes, and threatened to define them for the rest of their lives. They struggled to believe that they were a beloved and rescued people who were destined for a different kind of life.
We all come from a place where we were hindered from becoming all that we could be. We have memories that define us for all time, if we allow it to happen, as less than adequate, as damaged goods, as failures. We are trying to prove that we are more than that. We pray and struggle and strive to overcome bad habits, addictions, anger, old pain, broken relationships. We find ourselves in the wilderness between where we were and where we want to be, and all we know is that somehow we have been given the grace to survive for this long, and all we know is that God loves us. We want to cross the river into the promised land.
When the people did just that, the text records that the manna, the gift of God for the past generation, ceased being given to them. They survived the wilderness journey, they crossed over, they remembered the activity of God that had released their parents and grandparents from slavery. And now, in this land that was new to them, they now had to take responsibility for feeding themselves. The grace of God had delivered them into a new way of being, a new way of seeing themselves, a new identity. That is what God gave to them. That is what is given to us.
Consider Jesus’ parable, the one he told on the good upstanding religious authorities of his day. The younger son broke all the rules, scandalized the town, embarrassed his family, and wasted his inheritance. He was the scoundrel. The older son was sober and responsible, honored his father, worked hard, and was well-thought of by the town. He was the one every parent wanted as a son-in-law.
One day the younger son woke up to the true state of his soul, and returned hat in hand hoping for no more than handouts. The older son took great pride in his work, had a bit of a martyr complex, and was well aware of how much he had earned.
Much to his own amazement, the younger son was breathlessly welcomed home by his father, given a ring, the best robe, and new sandals, and was the object of a lively celebration complete with music, food, and dancing. The older son became angry and self-righteous, disrespected his father, and refused to attend the party.
Of course, the parable was meant to point out to the Pharisees and scribes that they were like the older son, and that the tax collectors and sinners were like the younger son. The Teacher hoped that the former would understand that they and the latter were members of the same family, become more aware of how their self-righteousness and pride got in the way, and take a more grace-filled attitude toward them. And, the Teacher wanted the latter to understand that they were already deeply treasured and loved, and that if and when they woke up to the true state of their souls and returned ‘home’, they would find that a joyful welcome back into the family awaited them, just as the younger son found true for himself.
Of course, the parable thus interpreted reminds us, as we look at those people who call themselves Christian while being so very different than we are, that God loves those who belong to the NRA as much as those who belong to NOW. The same goes for Republicans and Democrats, those marching against the war as well as those marching in support of it, homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, those looking for a home and those who already have them, our friends and our enemies, soldiers and pacifists, and so on and so forth.
We already know this, because we know it is central to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we already have quite enough of a struggle to live as though it is true. We know our own resistance to this truth, and we know that if we began to live it out more fully, we would no doubt begin a revolution in healed relationships here and everywhere.
The parable also reminds those of us who have invested ourselves in maintaining and growing the church: those of us who uphold the traditions and customs and theology of the church; those of us who give of our resources to support the church; those of us who preach and teach and give care and govern; that in order to read the parable rightly, we must see ourselves not as the younger son, but rather as the hard working, faithful older child of the father. Without us, the institution would be in trouble. Yet, the parable warns us that without our knowing it, our faithfulness can conceal a deadly, life-denying, angry, self-righteous shadow side that is just as lost as the decadence and irresponsibility of the younger child. We too can become prodigals who have left our true home. Will we see the need for confession, and forgiveness, and join the celebration to which the whole family has been invited?
More than even these truths, however, this parable is really about the father who had two sons. His younger son, in asking prematurely for his share of the inheritance, crassly suggested that he wished his father were already dead. Instead of disinheriting him and throwing him out of the house, the father gave his son what he wanted. Therefore, he had to give his older son the rest of the estate, leaving him utterly dependent upon that older son.
The father watched his younger son disappear over the horizon, with no guarantee of ever seeing him again, and spent his days hoping for his return. He heard through the grapevine that his son was breaking Jewish law by feeding pigs. And when he did return, the father disgraced himself in the eyes of the townsfolk by gathering up his long, flowing robe, and running headlong to meet his son. Interrupting his son’s shamed confession, the father told his servants to clothe his son and begin preparations for a great feast; for after all, his son had returned to the family as though from the dead.
And when his older son became angry and stubborn and refused to obey his father, he pleaded with him, and finally declared that the older son always had at his disposal whatever he needed, and that he just had to join the party because his brother, who had been so very lost, had returned, and was found again.
Jesus told this parable to reveal his own understanding about God. The father in the parable is like the God in whom Jesus had faith, and in whom we trust, to whom we give our lives. This is the God who freed the Hebrew slaves from servitude and led them in the Exodus. This is the God who knows the memories of our past better than we do, and who gives us a new understanding of who we are and Whose we are. This is the God who breathlessly waits for us, hoping with all God’s heart that we will appear on the horizon on our way back home. When we do so, we show our willingness to cooperate with God to repair the damage we have caused.
This is the God who sent his Son into the world, to share a table with sinners, that we might receive good news: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
Amen.
Charge to the congregation:
Remember this: God is the source of new beginnings. In Christ God wipes away our sin and makes us into friends, and then empowers us to carry the message of friendship to others. Go, therefore, as the Psalmist says, and “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Ps 32:11)