partiers and whingers

SERMON PREACHED AT St ALBAN’S, KUROW

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT (March 27^th) 2022

 

 

READINGS:

Joshua 5: 9-12

Psalm 32

2 Cor 5: 16-21

Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32

 

It’s not hard to find points of contact between our reading from Paul and our gospel reading. Luke, recounting the Jesus parable of two sons, takes us to imagery that is at the heart of Paul’s instructions to the stroppy Corinthians to involve themselves – ourselves – in lives marked by reconciliation. It would be lovely to say the Christian community received Paul’s great message and Christ-bearers got on with the task of loving one another thereafter. After a few decades of involvement in Christian circles I am sad to say this doesn’t always appear to be so, though there have been rare occasions when a figure like Desmond Tutu has emerged to model reconciliation on once warring factions.

There are other moments of reconciliation in our readings. The wandering Hebrews become reconciled to their renewed relationship with God – though it takes a few decades – and settle somewhat controversially into the land God promised them, where they renege on their promises once more. The psalmist becomes reconciled to the complexities of human existence and its frailties – God knows we know them at least in theory in our strange world of 2022, even in New Zealand – and seeks some sort of safe haven in God’s presence. But I want us to reflect on where we might stand in the striking Jesus Parable that has, at least since the writings of Kenneth Bailey in the 1970s, come to be known as the Parable of the Two Sons.

For I for one know my propensity to go astray, to sow wild oats – though I was singularly unsuccessful in my attempts to do so throughout my wilder days! – yet equally to sulk when others receive the preferment that I consider should be mine. I won’t name names but I can’t help thinking of one New Zealand politician having a little whinge this week past when he felt that disadvantaged minority groups in this country were being given preferment that he considered to be his white middle class entitlement. But I too can whinge like that, at least in my thoughts: how dare so and so have a better car, a better job, a better house than I do?

In such times, too, I tend to forget to look downhill. I fail to ask myself how dare I have three too-large meals a day, have a large house that could fit several families in many parts of the world, and head for bed at night without the fear of Putin’s obscene bombs heading for my family. Perhaps I too forget that my life expectancy – even as already realized – is greater than that of many who do not share my whakapapa, my educational opportunities, my literacy and my numeracy (pathetic though the latter is), because I have been far more greatly advantaged by dint of my living on the right side of the tracks.

Perhaps for once I will allow the better part of preaching valour to be brevity. I simply want to suggest that, though Jesus ends his story with a sulking older sun and a nonplussed but rejoicing younger one, it is you and me who are invited to complete the story. Do we become a people of joy, who join in celebration with the younger brother who has indeed thrown his life away, yet returned penitent? Do we receive and welcome him (will I, as and if Covid settles receive and welcome those with whom I’ve vehemently disagreed these past many months? When? Do I still resent those who stood on the opposite side of the Springbok Tour debate all those decades ago? How long is too long? How soon too soon?). And equally will I share a celestial beer with the older brother who has so vehemently drawn a line in the sand and said “never”?

I suspect the answer would be “no” to both – were I not to enlist the help of God. And it is to enlist that help we are called to pray each Lent.