The Fourth Sunday in Lent-Rev Melanie Lemburg

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg

The Fourth Sunday in Lent-Year C

March 30, 2025

 

        A few weeks ago, I was leading a weekend on conflict transformation for a group of lay people in the diocese.  We were talking about Jesus’s teaching on his process of reconciliation for the church in Matthew 18—you know this part?  If someone in the church sins against you, go to them individually and try to resolve it.  If that doesn’t work, take someone with some spiritual maturity with you to try again to resolve it, and if that doesn’t work, bring in a group of wise leaders from the church to help mediate it. As I was teaching this passage to this group, they were really wrestling with it, in a way that felt earnest and faithful, and about half-way through the discussion, I realized that the ones who were the most vocal had in mind a specific relationship that was still unreconciled, and hence their wrestling.   

        Our readings for today have both overt and covert connections with this concept of reconciliation.  In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, we see Paul hammering this concept of reconciliation in our portion for today.  He uses the word reconciliation or reconcile at least five times in these few verses.  The Greek word that Paul is using here is a word that implies a change, so it’s important for us to make that connection between reconciliation and change in relationship.  And Paul is emphasizing that reconciliation happens on a number of levels:  God reconciles us all to God’s self through the life and actions of Jesus Christ.  God also works to reconcile us to each other.  The image of reconciliation is both vertical (as in restored relations between God and people) and horizontal (as in restored relations among people).

        And it’s important to realize that for Paul, this notion of reconciliation is not just theoretical.  Something has happened between his first letter to the Corinthians and this second letter that has damaged Paul’s relationship with the community at Corinth.  Some work has been done to be reconciled (probably in a letter that has been lost), but there is still a breach evident in this second letter as Paul writes to defend his ministry to the Corinthians and also to combat the influence of a group of teachers who he refers to as “the super-apostles” who he believes are leading the church at Corinth astray from the teachings of Jesus. 

        And in this passage, we see Paul reiterating that the ministry of the gospel is a ministry of reconciliation.  Reconciliation is what Jesus has done (and continues to do through the work of the Holy Spirit), and it is the work we are called to as well.  It is through this reconciliation that God brings about the new creation, and it means a change in reality for individuals, for Christian community and for all of creation.    

        In the gospel passage for today, we see Jesus telling a series of stories as he tries to bring about reconciliation between the tax collectors and sinners and the religious elite who are grumbling about how he is spending time with tax collectors and sinners.  He tells a series of three parables in which something is lost and the person searching for the lost item makes great effort to restore it and then hosts an elaborate celebration to which others are invited.  First, it’s a story of a lost sheep, then a lost coin, and then finally our reading for today, the story of a lost son. 

        Seen in that light and in the light of the Corinthians passage, what can this almost overly-familiar story of Jesus have to teach us about reconciliation?  It teaches us that in order to be truly reconciled, we have to put aside our own notions of fairness, because how the father acts in Jesus’ story is both nonsensical and completely unfair.  The younger son has asked for his share of the property that he would have inherited upon the father’s death.  And the father gives it to him.  Now, this isn’t just a matter of going to the bank and taking out half of the money that is deposited there.  This would have entailed selling off property and animals in order to achieve this, but the father does it and doesn’t appear to even question it.  And after the younger son squanders it all and comes crawling back, the father doesn’t question it again.  He simply rejoices and proceeds to throw a party to which all are invited. 

        The older son gets hung up on the ridiculousness of it all, the unfairness of the situation. And we get that, don’t we?  We pay a lot of attention to what is fair…until we are the ones who are in need.  But when we are in need, we are quite eager to see fairness thrown out the window.  Like the younger son, we, too, make mistakes.  And there are times in life when we need to ask for help and when we need to be vulnerable in seeking reconciliation in relationship.

In the story, the older son is reminded by his father of his relationship with his brother. The father speaks the truth in love to his older son, and the he invites the older son into the celebration, but we don’t know what the son ultimately chooses.  Does the older son relinquish his understanding of fairness and come to the celebration of his brother’s return, or does he hold on to his resentment, refusing to be reconciled?  Like all of us, he has a choice to hold onto his resentments and his frustrated expectations of how his brother should live his life and how that life compares to the life the older son is living. 

True reconciliation requires honesty.  It requires vulnerability, and it requires being open to being changed by God in and through our relationships with each other.   Reconciliation means getting back into right relationship with someone.  It is finding a path forward together.  It means allowing room for both to be changed through the gift of God’s spirit in relationship with God and in our relationship with each other.  Reconciliation is so much more than just forgiving, and it is more than forgiving and forgetting (and infinitely more than forgiving but not forgetting).  It is a healing of what is wounded or broken which then makes the relationship stronger for having been healed. 

In light of this well-known story, I invite you contemplate these questions this week.  How have you been like the younger son and received unexpected help, grace, or reconciliation in your life?  How have you been like the older brother and rejected an offer of reconciliation?  What relationship in your life might God be inviting you to seek reconciliation as you continue to prepare for Easter this year?