that imply some people in our community are more deserving of acceptance and care than others?

Transcription

1 The Prodigal Son Thank you Father Colin Blayney for the invitation to preach as we join together as churches in Killara, Lindfield and Roseville during this Lenten season. Thankyou for the hospitality you and your parish of Holy Family have offered tonight. This is a wonderful initiative as we all journey towards the cross with our one Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and beyond the cross to Easter Day. And Lent is a season in which we experience the grace and hospitality of God in Jesus Christ. As I was preparing for tonight I remembered an experience of ecumenical hospitality that has had a huge impact upon me and my journey to ministry. I am originally a secondary music teacher from Adelaide. When I married a theological student and moved to Sydney I applied in the public and private school systems for a new teaching position. Almost immediately I had a message to phone the Principal of St Joseph s Girls High School in Kogarah. As a child I had piano lessons at a convent in a country town in South Australia so I knew something of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart and Mother Mary MacKillop now Saint Mary Mackillop of the Cross. When I spoke to Sister Jan Barnett the Principal she was interested in my music teaching credentials but soon she was also telling me about the ethos of the school and its religion programme and her hope that I might consider being a part of the religious education team. She was looking for a person of Christian faith from a tradition outside the Roman Catholic Church who would fit into the team and bring fresh perspectives from their tradition to the girls. She also employed a teacher from the Anglican and Greek Orthodox traditions. It was a wonderful experience to be part of a school community shaped by daily prayer and Christ s love. I will never forget the support and friendship of the religious and lay staff for each other as I started married life in a new city. I also learnt as a Protestant to value a spirituality that helped me encounter the mystery and holiness of God in symbol and sacrament a spirituality that continues to nourish me.

2 And in the sisters of St Joseph I saw strong and compassionate women with a vocation in leadership positions and I was inspired and encouraged. It was a special gift of hospitality and I trust that I offered something in return. This year in the Common lectionary we are following the Gospel of Luke and in his reading of this Gospel Brendon Byrne talks about its emphasis upon the hospitality of God and its essential purpose of bringing home to us a sense of the extravagance of God s love and grace for us. Have you seen the one of the films of last year the musical Les Miserables? I confess it is still on my must do list. However I am familiar with the story*. The hero Jean Valjean played by Hugh Jackman is released on parole after a nineteenyear stretch in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. He s a bitter and broken man when he s invited in for the night by a kindly bishop and he repays the man s kindness by stealing his silver. When the police under instruction from the hard-line Inspector Javert played by Russell Crowe try to take him back to prison, the bishop intervenes. The bishop claims that he had given Valjean the silver as a gift. The convict is astonished and deeply moved by such grace. It changes his whole life. Valjean rips up his parole ticket, takes on a new identity and commits himself to serving God. The mercy he s experienced now touches the lives of those he meets including the single mother Fantine played by Anne Hathaway and her daughter Cosette. The years go by and the forgiveness Valjean received from the bishop ripples out until it even reaches the self-righteous Javert. Indeed the heart of the musical is the contrast between the convict who has experienced grace and is transformed by the love of God to show mercy to others and the policeman who cannot move beyond his inflexible belief in his own righteousness and that those who falter and those who fall must pay the price. Les Mis as it is affectionately called, is the longest-running musical ever. Is it its vivid characters? - its stirring music? or is it its compelling story so deeply resonates with people?

3 Lent is an opportunity to be real and honest with ourselves - an opportunity to we look within ourselves to clear away those things which squeeze God out of our lives and which push each other away. On the other hand it is also an opportunity to open our hearts to the love of God and nourish our relationship with God and with each other as brothers and sisters. And this week Les Miserables poignantly opens up the tensions in the parable Jesus told involving another three contrasting men - two brothers and their father. Jesus tells a family story filled with inheritance disputes, sibling rivalry, accusations of parental favouritism, rejection, pride, jealousy, leavings and home-comings, extravagant grace and reconciliation and resentment. I am sure each one of us can find something in this story which resonates with us and asks questions of us in our Lenten reflections. The younger brother demands his inheritance, leaves home and throws his inheritance away in reckless living. He reaches rock bottom, remembers home and returns disgraced and humbled. And so I wonder: as we look into our lives - is there something of the prodigal son in us? Are there times when we treat our relationship with God our Father lightly - perhaps with a sense of impatient entitlement so that we take what we need of God s goodness but go our own way? Do we get so immersed in our busy lives and burnt out by the demands upon us that we sometimes forget who we are and our baptism and essentially live as those around us - as if we have no heavenly father? Do we listen to those voices around us that say I love you if you are good-looking and intelligent and cool and make me laugh - I will love you if you succeed in your career and make useful connections I will love you if you produce - if you deliver if you buy what I have to sell to you,.. are we listening to those voices

4 that imply some people in our community are more deserving of acceptance and care than others? These are the voices that speak to our deep human longing to love and be loved promising if only we do this or that we will have what we crave for but it is love that is always dependent upon conditions which we may or may not be able to fulfil - and when like for the prodigal son situations change, life comes crashing down. And what about the older son who stayed at home and worked and developed the family property? dutiful and loyal he hasn t thrown his money away He s done the right thing the ideal son? - and yet it seems to me that while he and his father have lived together, they are not close - the older son uses the language of slavery and earning his place in his father s home rather than the language of intimacy and the heart. Perhaps parent and child have never stopped to tell each other what they mean to each other - While he has never left home, this son is as lost to his father as the one who did. When he hears the sounds of the homecoming celebration, this son is angry and resentful. He stays away. I wonder when you examine your heart this Lent have you ever felt like the older son? Taken for granted? Alienated? As if you have worked hard only for others to just waltz in and take - are you like Javert who could not bend in his conviction that those who fall must pay the full price? Do you find it difficult to let go sometimes to enjoy the fresh enthusiasm of another who has just discovered the grace of God? Is your life in the church sometimes feeling just like duty? I don t know about you but this familiar parable never fails to touch me in tender spots. And the Father? in terms of first century middle eastern culture he is foolish in the eyes of Luke s listeners it is a scandal that a man of such standing in the community would give a younger son his inheritance so early with the freedom to leave home. And they see a father who forgets his dignity to rush outside to welcome his errant son home falling on him in an embrace and throwing an

5 extravagant party when he should have waited in the study for his son to knock and crawl in to explain himself - then at least made him sweat it out while they negotiated what next. And They see a father who further humiliates himself by going out into the field to try and reason and persuade his loyal son to come in. Friends Jesus shows us a God like that father one of scandalous grace who never stops loving us and who cannot conceal the joy of us coming home and who longs for the moment when others among us overcome our sense of duty to live our life joyously in relationship with him. (The restless energy of the adventurous one and the steadfastness of the responsible one both have so much going for them and God like this father simply longs for his family to be restored. ) Many of us have heard this parable many times but tonight we are invited to pause and reflect afresh upon the extravagant grace and hospitality of our God - it is limitless unconditional but never cheap - it is love such as it takes all God s Son Jesus Christ s commitment and courage - and costs him his life. Yet Jesus in the telling of this story offers this love of God to you and to me - to us all whatever our background or circumstance. Jesus invites all of us to experience that transforming grace that Valjean so responded to but Javert tragically could not embrace in Les Miserables. It is within this hospitable grace that we journey this Lent. We come together tonight from different church traditions not as super spiritual people but because we are all God s beloved children. We come together not because we are strong but because we are weak not because of any goodness of our own but because we need mercy and help. We come together as an expression of the hospitality of God Christ s call to us as the church is to be a fellowship of grace and reconciliation. God rejoices when we share fellowship together. And to God be the glory. Amen. Laurel Barr *Sophie Lister, Damaris Trust, Les Miserables : God s Grace on the Big Screen, Christianity Today, 11, January

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