4th Sunday of Lent…

Written for and given at the Lynnville (IL) UMC on March 21, 2004. The Scripture is from 2 Corinthians 5: 16-21…

        During the years that I was one of the sponsors of the youth group at Wesley Chapel, one of the things that I looked forward to each spring was the three-day weekend/retreat they used to hold each year in Decatur. Known as YAR, for ‘Youth Annual Retreat’, we would take from two to sometimes six of the kids from our group to join with up to six or seven hundred other high-schoolers from throughout our conference. Part of that weekend involved splitting up into small groups of about ten youth for a number of sessions, usually held in the adult sponsor’s room, that were keyed in to what the general theme was for that year. (One year I was fortunate enough to have ten freshman girls in our group. THAT was an experience I’ll not soon forget!) The main focus for the youth, though, were the general sessions where everyone assembled in the huge meeting hall.

        Each year there would be a praise band to lead the singing and get everybody out of their chairs and moving and having fun. This would also be the time for taking care of general announcements as well as ‘house-keeping’ duties. But the main feature of each weekend during the General Sessions was listening to that year’s guest speaker. One year they had an African-American guy teamed up with a Caucasian girl who spent the weekend addressing the issues of equality and prejudice. Another time featured one of the leaders of Youth Specialties, one of the largest Christian youth-oriented organizations in the country at that time. But one of my favorites was the year they had a professional actor-turned youth evangelist.

        In his opening segment he started by telling a bit about where he was from and some of his history and background. He then began to talk about how, as a teenager, he had started running around with the wrong crowd, began to argue and fight with his parents, and eventually took what money his father would give him and left home. As you might imagine, things went from bad to worse for him, and over the course of time he found himself broke and alone and hungry and hurting. Somehow, he made his way back to his hometown and soon found himself on the street where he had grown up and his parents still lived. He hid in some bushes and watched his house, but was too ashamed to walk up to it. As evening approached and it grew dark and cold he worked up the courage to walk up to the door, but still stood there for some time before ringing the bell. After ringing it, however, he again lost his resolve and ran back to hide in the bushes. He watched as his father came to the door and looked out… he even came out into the yard and looked around. It was good to see his father… but as he watched him from the bushes he reflected on all of the wrongs that he had committed in his life and wondered if his father would ever be able to forgive him.

He watched as his father began to search the yard and began to worry that he might be discovered, but after a short bit the father went back into the house and shut the door. And then a strange thing happened… from the bushes he saw his father open up the curtains over the big picture window and stand in front of it, looking out. He stood there for ten minutes… he stood there for thirty minutes… an hour… soon, it was the middle of the night and his father was still standing at the window, watching and waiting. The man in the bushes came to realize what he was waiting for… he was waiting for him! After all these years, after all his sins, after his rejection and leaving of him those years ago… his father was still waiting and watching for him to return. Finally, he stood up and walked out of the bushes and towards the house. When his father saw him he rushed out, and without a word, ushered him back home where he belonged.

        By this time, there was not a sound in that entire assembly as each person there, youth and adult alike, sat taking in the words of this mans story… I would well imagine there were even more than a few tears being shed when at last he announced, “I have to be honest… this isn’t MY story.” You could feel a shift in the room as collectively all of those there began to think they had been scammed, when he added, “I borrowed it from the greatest story-teller there ever was… this is the story of the Prodigal Son!” Again, you could feel a shift as most there came to realize what had just happened… the power and majesty of the love of God for His children had just been shown to each of them in a very personal manner… in a way that brought it home to each person on a level that they could connect with and relate to!

        The Life Application Commentary tells us that, “At one time, Paul had evaluated Jesus from a worldly point of view – that is, “according to human standards.” As an educated Jew, Paul was looking forward to the Messiah. But the Jews of his time were looking for a political Messiah, a powerful person who would free them from Roman rule. Instead, Jesus had died, even suffering the Romans’ most cruel punishment: crucifixion. Because Deut 21:23 says “anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse”, the Jews considered dying on a cross a sign of God’s disapproval. According to human standards, Jesus was an insignificant man who died like a criminal — not a person who deserved worship.

But, Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus road radically changed his thinking. All of his learning and all of his training under the teachers of the law and the respected Gamaliel had not led him to the truth. The wisdom of the world had not pointed him to the Savior of the world.

So in today’s verses he pointedly says that he no longer thinks of Christ in that way. And if Christ is no longer to be thought of in a worldly manner, then any one who is IN Christ is also changed and becomes a ‘new creation; the old is gone, the new has come!’ He goes on to say, then, that, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” Now, on the surface, that is not the easiest passage to understand… just what is Paul talking about here?

Let me read the same verses but this time from the New Living Translation…

So we have stopped evaluating others by what the world thinks about them. Once I mistakenly thought of Christ that way, as though he were merely a human being. How differently I think about him now! What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!

All this newness of life is from God, who brought us back to himself through what Christ did. And God has given us the task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. This is the wonderful message he has given us to tell others. We are Christ’s ambassadors, and God is using us to speak to you. We urge you, as though Christ himself were here pleading with you, “Be reconciled to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

‘Be reconciled to God!’ In Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son, we find one of the most poignant and beautiful examples of reconciliation… that of a father to his son. His story was set, of course, during the time which He was on this earth, and hopefully many of that day could see the parallel between the father in the story and God, our Heavenly Father. And if they could see that, then hopefully they could also see that the prodigal son was them… and that no matter what they had done… no matter how badly they had sinned… their Heavenly Father was ready to welcome them back into His loving arms.

Fast forward to today. How many times have each of us heard this story over the course of our lives? I’m sure that those who grew up in the church first heard it when they very young in various Sunday school classes, and have listened to it be preached umpteen number of times by umpteen preachers. We have read it in our Bibles, we have read it books and magazines, some may have even seen it on TV or the internet in various forms. And for many of us, each time we hear it, however we hear it, we think, “Yes, that father really loved his son to welcome him back like that.” We fail to make the connection to ourselves and our lives today!

When that speaker got up in front of those hundreds of kids at YAR that year, he told a story that they could connect with! He told about problems with dealing with parents, he told about problems with being accepted by their peers, about drugs and sex and living what many are told is the ‘good life’… these were things that each person sitting there could relate to, at least on some level. And when he then turned it around and turned it into the story of the prodigal son, some could see, for perhaps the first time, that they were the prodigal son… they were the ones who had moved away from God… they were the ones who were afraid to come back home, thinking that their sins were too great!

But Paul tells us that God has reconciled the world to himself… through Christ… and will not count men’s sins against them! And I stand here today to remind you that the ‘world’ is us! It is each and every one of you sitting here today, as well as myself! WE are the prodigal son that Jesus is speaking of in His story! And it is God who is watching and waiting for us to come back to Him! There is no wrong… there is no sin… that is too great for God to forgive… after all, He IS God! Furthermore, there is no fear… there is no self-pity or self-piety or self-doubt… there is no hole so deep for us to get into… that is too great for Him to accept and help us with!

There is a term used these days by divorce lawyers to describe a situation where two people just can no longer seem to get along… ‘Irreconcilable differences’. In its use they infer that the people involved have problems and differences that are totally insurmountable, giving just cause for each of them to go their separate ways and live separate lives. But to God, there is no such thing as an ‘Irreconcilable difference’… through the sacrifice of His Son on the Cross of Calvary, there is no sin too horrible for God to forgive. And for that reason, we can always find Him waiting and watching at the window… waiting for us to come home to His open and loving arms. For whatever direction our lives have been, whatever downward path we might have found ourselves on, whatever sins we have committed, whether real or imagined, slight or great… the price of our forgiveness… our redemption… our ‘reconciliation’, if you will… has already been paid… in full!