Texts: Psalm 32, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Imagine a young man setting out to establish himself in the world. He asks his parents for some money so he can get out on his own and experience life. Eager to move out, he wants to find himself in the world. So he leaves home, heads out to the big city, and with his new-found freedom, and an inability to create a budget or stick to it, he spends all of his money on things he shouldn’t have, with the result of losing everything he has. He becomes jobless, homeless, and hungry. Epic fail! So the son swallows his pride, figuring his best bet is to go back home and hope his parents take pity on him and let him move back in. There is nothing too remarkable about this story in our culture. The young man is on a quest to find himself as an individual. He fails at this project and has to return home. He might have hurt his parents in the process, but really, what child hasn’t hurt his or her parents at some point down the road? The parents welcome him back home, saying, son, we’re so glad you’re back, come in and you’ll get filet mignon and a big homecoming party! For many of us, this sums up the gist of the parable of the prodigal son, and it is a story many of us can relate to on one level or another. It is a story we have heard from a young age, a story told both within the church and without. The beauty of a good parable like the prodigal son is that it can speak to us, meeting us where we are, whether it is the 1^st century Palestine or 21^st century West Virginia. But there is also a danger that comes with a parable we are so familiar with. It can become limp and lifeless from so much handling. Because we have heard it so many times, it is easy to think that we have gleaned everything we possibly can from such a story, so we either just leave it on the shelf most of the time, or if we do actually pick it up, we skim it and think, yup, I’ve got it. It’s a story about how God will always receive us back home, no matter how far we have wandered. And yes, it is a story about that. But there is still more. If God’s word is living and active, then there is always more. We can never come to scripture and say, “Oh yes, I’ve completely gotten it now. I don’t need to search any further.”

Today we are going to search further this parable that has traditionally been called the parable of the prodigal son. Right off the bat, this traditional title directs us towards reading this parable in a particular light. We read it in light of the younger son’s journey that leads him both far and near. This story is about him! Of course, we also focus on the father and his willingness to receive his son back home. But a lot of the time, we forget about the older brother. He doesn’t seem to be as significant of a character as his younger brother. There are three major characters; a father, and two sons. This is a story about a family. It’s a story about a dysfunctional family. In fact, just for today, let’s re-title it “The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family.” I wish I could say I was creative enough to come up with that on my own, but I borrowed that from a preacher named Barbara Brown Taylor.

So this is the story of a 1^st century, Middle-Eastern dysfunctional family. How might Jesus’ audience have heard this story? What would they hear that we can’t hear as readily today? Let’s try to hear this story with fresh ears, with the ears of a 1^st century resident of Palestine. 1^st century Palestine was largely agrarian society, where possession and cultivation of land was crucial to the well-being of a family and the surrounding community. Land was everything, and it took the cooperation of both the family unit as well as the surrounding community to live and prosper on the land. In this world, the community took priority over the individual and success came through cooperation and sharing of resources. This is something of a foreign concept to many of us as we have been instilled with the American value of rugged individualism. More important than the individual in the eyes of the community was the standing of the family name. So this brings us back to our parable today.

The younger son goes to his father and says, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” First of all, this is a big-time slap in the face to his father. The inheritance would have only been divied up upon the father’s death. In making this request, this younger son was basically saying to his father, “Father, I can’t wait for you to die!” If this father had been a typical Middle-eastern patriarch he probably would have slapped his son upside the head and said, “No way. You can just forget about that.” This son’s request is unthinkable in this culture, and the father would have been expected to refuse. Instead, the father in this story acts in an unexpected way. He turns his cheek to his son’s insult and grants his son’s request and gives him his inheritance, which, in this case, would have been his share of the family farm. And we know that this must have been a fairly wealthy family, since they had enough money to have servants and hired hands for the fields and plenty of goats and a fatted calf. So the son has his pretty hefty inheritance. But here is the real kicker. In order to turn his inheritance into liquid assets, he would have had to sell his portion of the family farm right out from under the rest of the family. Normally, under Jewish law, a son did not have the right to sell family property until after the father’s death. Not only did he take away the land from his family, which was crucial to their livelihood, he also took the profit from its sale and used it only for himself. Not to mention that when he sold the property, it would have become public knowledge within the community of what the son had done, and it would have shamed the family. It would have humiliated the father. It would have been shameful enough of an action to merit the younger son’s banishment from the community. But the younger son got out of dodge before any sort of banishment ceremony could have taken place. He took his money and ran!

Where does he run? A far-off city. We don’t really know too much about what he did or how he spent his money, but we know that he squandered away his inheritance quickly and soon became hungry and homeless. A detail is added to the story to tell us just how far this younger son has strayed. He takes a job feeding pigs, an animal that the Jewish people considered to be unclean or unfit for eating. The son has lost everything in a far-off land of pagan pig-lovers. Wow, he really is a long way from home.

Here is the point of the story where the prodigal son begins to realize he might have made a mistake in leaving home. It is a moment of repentance, but repentance that is only half-hearted at best. His reasoning for going home is not so that he can re-united with his father and re-establish that broken relationship. Instead, it is more of a business plan. It’s a plan to get food in his belly and to start getting a minimal paycheck as a hired hand. He doesn’t want to go home to become a son again, he wants to go home to be a worker. Nonetheless, hitting rock bottom has made the prodigal son realize that he needs to swallow his pride and head back home.

The prodigal son turns around and heads back home. He even plans out and rehearses the speech he will give to his father when he gets home: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” The first part of this speech is actually a quotation from Pharaoh when he asks Moses to lift the plagues on Egypt. We know that those words didn’t truly indicate a change of heart, but that they were meant to manipulate Moses to doing Pharaoh’s will. The son is doing the same thing here. He just wants to butter the father up so he will be more likely to accept the son’s proposal.

The son approaches his hometown. I mentioned earlier that the younger son was in danger of being banished from the community. In Jewish society in that day, there was something called the quetsatsah ceremony, which the younger son would have surely been confronted with if he ever showed his face around town again. He would have known this, and the father would have known this.

Let’s switch gears and look at the father now. All this time that his son has been gone, he has probably been looked down upon in his community. After all, he did not act like a strong Middle-eastern patriarch should have in granting his son’s request. Nonetheless, he was still a part of the community, even if everyone looked at him like he was something of a fool. Here we come to my favorite verse in the whole story: “While the son was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” This verse reveals a lot. First and foremost, the father obviously never gave up hope that one day his son would return home. If he didn’t believe that it would one day happen he would never have been looking in the first place. Who knows how long he looked for his son, glancing out the window, taking daily trips out to the gate of his property, hoping one day he would see his son coming. And one day, as he is scanning the distance, he thinks he sees something. Could that be his son? The father knows that he has to reach his son before the rest of the community could spot him and perform the banishment ceremony. So the father makes a plan: he needs to reach his son before anyone else can. So the father does something that no respectable patriarch would have done. He runs. The dignified, respectable patriarch would have waited in his home for his son to come to him, giving explanation for his actions, and then he would rebuke his son. But this father gathers up the hems of his robes and runs. He doesn’t care what the community thinks when they see him acting like a fool, running towards his son. For the father knows that if he can make a public reconciliation with his son then no one in the community would dare to suggest that they perform the banishment ceremony. To act in the way the father did was to act in a way that would have been completely humiliating. For the father, the priority was reconciliation, not his own power or position. He sought out his son at great cost to himself.

As he embraces his son, his son begins his rehearsed speech, but he doesn’t complete it. He does not ask to become a hired hand. Instead, he accepts his father’s love and consequently accepts to be found. This is the moment of genuine and complete repentance, and the restoration of the relationship which was always the father’s priority, even if at first it was not the son’s. The father then orders a banquet. This banquet is not just for the son, it is for the whole community. This banquet is meant to restore not just the son to his family, but also the son’s place within the greater community. It is a feast of reconciliation for anyone who will come to it.

But then of course, we have the elder son. He is not at all thrilled to see his baby brother. After all, he broke apart the family, took part of the livelihood and left the older brother on his own to care for his father and the land. And then he lost everything! It isn’t surprising that the older brother is angry at the father’s response. He has been shamed by his baby brother, why on earth would he want to welcome him back? Why would his father act in such a weak way? He tells his father just as much with angry words. But again, his father who should have rebuked him, offers him words of grace. Once again, the father demonstrates that he is the worst Middle-eastern patriarch that there is, as he continues to humiliate himself in front of everyone at the feast. This is a weak father who can’t even put his own sons in their rightful place! What are these words of grace? They seem like weakness, vulnerability. This father has no backbone or authority!

Yet with all of the events of this story and the actions of the father, it becomes evident that at the center of this story is the message or reconciliation. This reconciliation is costly to the father. It doesn’t come for free. He is willing to shame himself, becoming weak in the eyes of the community, in order to reconcile his family to himself.

We are in the midst of the season of Lent, in which we recall the passion of Christ: his shame, his weakness, and the high cost he paid to reconcile us to himself, to make us a part of God’s family. True reconciliation is costly. It is difficult. It requires vulnerability. For God, the cost of reconciliation was the cross, and as Jesus stretched out his arms on the hard wood of the cross, he did so so that we might come within the reach of his saving embrace. And he did this while we were still far off.

Perhaps this is what Paul had in mind when he wrote the part of the letter to the Corinthians which was one of our Scripture readings today: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us, we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” What does it mean that this message of reconciliation is entrusted to us? Does it simply mean that we are to proclaim that God has reconciled us to himself? Or does it mean more? Where are there areas in your own life, in our congregational life, and in the life of our surrounding community that need reconciliation? The cost of reconciliation can be high. There is risk that comes with opening your arms to embrace another. As the theologian Miroslav Volf says, “I open my arms, make a movement of the self toward the other, the enemy, and do not know whether I will be misunderstood, despised, even violated or whether my action will be appreciated, supported, and reciprocated. I can become a savior or a victim. Possibly both. Embrace is grace, and grace is always a gamble.” Are you prepared for this message of reconciliation that has been entrusted to you?

We are in the position of the elder son from our story today. The father has given the message: “All that is mine is yours.” Now it is up to us to decide whether or not we will accept his words and reconcile both with him and with our brother. Are you ready?

Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7, Psalm 29, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

“Neither flesh of my flesh nor bone of my bone, but still miraculously my own. You didn’t grow under my heart but in it.” This short poem sat framed in my house growing up. It was a poem about me from my mom. I was brought into my parents’ house when I was about three weeks old; they adopted me through Catholic Charities. Yes, I have always known I was adopted, no, I don’t feel any desire to seek out my biological mother. Why? Because the words of that poem truly sum it it. While I did not grow inside my mother’s body, I am still hers. I am fully my parents’ child, and even though I don’t share their DNA, anyone who knows both me and my parents can tell you, I definitely resemble them in mannerisms, and I am getting to that age where I, myself, am starting to realize that at times I act like my dad, and other times, I sound an awful lot like my mother! I have been adopted into my family. But it is my family! We, here, have been adopted too. We have been adopted into God’s family!

Today we hear the story of the baptism of Jesus, and we hear God’s words to him, “You are my Son, the Beloved, in you I am well-pleased.” At first when we hear this story, we may simply think that it is a story about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and that those words spoken by God as the Holy Spirit descends like a dove are meant only for Jesus. But if we look more fully at the meaning of our own baptism, we find that those words are also for us. This baptism of Jesus is a significant event. In it, we witness one of the few places in Scripture where we explicitly see all three persons of the Trinity working together. As the Son is baptized, the Spirit descends, and the Father speaks from heaven. The baptism of Jesus points to the way in which God works in our own midst: always with all three persons of the Trinity in consort, and our baptism is no different. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we are clothed in Christ, in his death and resurrection, and in that, we may stand before God as his daughters and sons.

Just as in his baptism, God affirms Jesus’ identity as his dearly beloved Son, in our own baptism, our identity is affirmed. We too, are now called dearly loved children of God. What does it mean to you to hear those words? To have God say to you, “You are my child, the beloved?” Do you feel like you are? Do you know it to be true? There are times where God can seem distant from us, and we can sometimes feel like anything but loved. Yet in baptism, through the touch of the water, God gives us a tangible sign that we are, in fact loved, and that we will always be his children. This is God’s gift to us, and we hear the sentiment of what baptism is in today’s Old Testament reading. Listen again to the words of God relayed by Isaiah: “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. ²When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. ³For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour, I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia^* and Seba in exchange for you. ⁴Because you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. ⁵Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; ⁶I will say to the north, ‘Give them up’, and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth— ⁷everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.’” God speaks these words to us! To you, and to me! Are they not the words of a loving and present Father?

Baptism is about God’s love for us. While we generally associate baptism with a personal choice, a personal confession of faith, or with a promise to raise a child in a household of faith, baptism is about much more than that. In fact, it is probably fairer to say that baptism is first and foremost a sign of God’s choice for us. There have been debates throughout the ages over the merits of infant baptism versus adult baptism. Some believe that only adults should be baptized because they believe a personal profession of faith is necessary. Others believe that it is ok to have infants baptized. In the Methodist Church, we do both, because we believe that baptism is a sign of what God has done, is doing, and will do in our lives. It is about the love of God that precludes all of our own actions and choices. Baptism is one of the two sacraments of the church, the other being communion. The definition of what a sacrament is can be summed up in these words: an outward sign of an inward grace. In other words, it is a sign that we can, touch, see, witness. It is an action that we can understand, and that action points to the deeper ways that God is working. The act of baptism points to the deeper reality that God chooses us through his Son Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Growing up, I always knew that I was adopted, and one of the books my parents read to me when I was little to help me understand was a book called “The Chosen Baby.” The title tells it all. They used it to help me to understand that I was sought out, that I was picked specifically, that I was chosen. As we remember our baptism, we are remembering that we are first chosen by God, before we can ever even respond, before we can ever even choose back. This is what we call God’s prevenient grace, that grace that precedes us in all things. As 1 John 4:19 reminds us, we love because He first loved us. Yet, our baptism is about more than just God’s choice for us. It is also about how we respond to God. Whether we are baptized as infants, children, teenagers, or adults, our baptism on some level is about a response of faith. It may be on the basis of our parents and surrounding community, or it may be our own. Nonetheless, baptism is in part, about human response to God’s choice for us. It is about saying, yes, I want to be a part of God’s family. We too, are given in the unique act of baptism, a way to respond to God’s love for us. While we only need to be baptized once, every time we witness a baptism, and every time we reaffirm our baptismal covenant as a congregation, we are remembering our baptism, and we are making a continual choice to respond to God’s love for us. But what exactly happens in baptism? What is it really about?

Just prior to baptism, during the prayer of thanksgiving over the water, the pastor prays these words: “Pour out your Holy Spirit, to bless this gift of water and those who receive it, to wash away their sin and clothe them in righteousness throughout their lives, that dying and being raised with Christ, they may share in his final victory.” In these words, we hear what is going on in baptism. First and foremost, we are recognizing that God gives the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s own spirit to live inside of us, guiding us, sustaining us, transforming us. It is about having our sin washed away and putting on the righteousness of Christ, but it is also about being baptized into Christ’s death. It is about death to self and being reborn into a new life characterized by sacrifice and a willingness to follow Jesus. It is about fully sharing in the life of Christ, which also includes his glorification. We too, are marked as dearly loved children of God, so God says to us also, “You are my child, the beloved, in you I am well pleased.” Baptism is a radical act because it acknowledges the way that God changes us, and we acknowledge the way that we want to be changed, willing to be identified with Christ in his death, willing to put away the old person of sin and put on the new person of Christ. These are heavy words, with a lot of weight to them, and they deserve to be taken seriously.

Around here these days, we see mostly infant baptism, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is good to baptize our infants who will be brought up in church, and it makes sense to have them baptized young. However, historically, while infant baptism has been a practice of the church for most of its history, it has not been the norm until more recent years. Instead, adult baptism was much more frequent. You see, infant baptism only happens with families who are already in the church, but adult baptism is based on a conversion model. When adults are baptized, it is almost always because they were not brought up in the church, or they didn’t stay in the church. Adult baptism reflects a reaching out beyond the church walls. We are not seeing a lot of adult baptism these days because we are failing to reach out to the community in ways that effectively communicate the love of God, and we are failing to show how life is different for Christians. Sometimes the church looks too much like the rest of the world.

In the early centuries of the church, adults who wanted to be baptized went through three years of what was called the catechumenate, or three years of preparation and learning before they could be baptized and come to the Lord’s Table for Communion. During those three years they would learn the lifestyle of the Christian: works of mercy, care for the poor, the orphan, and the widow. They would study the stories of the Old Testament, and only during the final year of the catechumenate would they study the New Testament. Finally after those long three years of preparation, their moment of baptism would come. Naked they would come to the baptismal pool, literally making 180 degree turns as they were asked to renounce satan and sin, and to make a turn towards Christ. They would enter the pool, being immersed in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and as they came out they would be anointed with fragrant oil, symbolizing the seal, the gift, of the Holy Spirit. They would then be clothed in a white robe representing the righteousness of Christ as they would finally be ushered in to share in their first communion, that Holy meal of Christ. The newly baptized understood the weight of the baptismal act. After three long years, they had learned that to be a follower of Christ meant that their life would look and feel different from the world around them. To be a Christian, in many ways, means to be different from the world. To be a Christian means to put on the righteousness of Christ and to live a life of peace, of sacrifice, of love. Are we taking our own baptismal vows this seriously?

When I was adopted, I was issued a new birth certificate, with my new name, given to me by my parents. There was no real trace of my old life prior to my adoption. I now belonged to my true family, to the ones who would love me, raise me, teach me, who would be there with me. My life could never be the same again. When we are baptized, it is like we are getting that new birth certificate, for we are reborn of the water and of the Spirit and brought into our true family, God’s family. Our life can never be the same again.

Today as we reaffirm our baptismal covenant as a congregation, consider the significance of your own baptism: what it means for God to first choose you, and what your life looks like when you respond to that choice. What does it mean for the choices you make, the encounters you have? Maybe you were baptized as an infant, and the baptismal vows were made on your behalf by someone else. But today as we reaffirm our baptism, you can claim those words for yourself. Are you ready to claim the life that God gives to us? Are you ready to let the Holy Spirit transform you into a person who looks more like Jesus Christ? Today let us remember our baptism and be truly thankful for all that it means. Amen.