Each text for the Fourth Sunday in Lent declares God’s
forgiveness for wayward people, indeed, God’s own people. These texts brim with joyful affirmation that
God delights in welcoming sinners who find their way home.
Moses’ successor recounts the
renewal of Passover now that Israel has arrived to the plains of Jericho. “Today I have rolled away from you the
disgrace of Egypt” (Joshua 5:9). It is a
fresh start, and the people will make a new life in the land of Canaan.
Psalm 32
bathes the reader in the blessing of confession and the subsequent experience
of knowing one’s “sin is covered: (v.1). The assurance of lavish welcome
invites the sinner to draw near to God and enjoy the release of guilt.
Second
Corinthians 5:19 declares: “ . . . in Christ God was reconciling the world . .
. not counting their trespasses against them . . .” Considered by many the apex
of Paul’s doctrine of salvation, this text speaks of God’s own movement toward
the estranged. Not content to wait for
inner conviction to prompt repentance, God offers to the world a “general
pardon,” in the words of Jürgen Moltmann. God would rather take human sin into the
divine life through Christ than allow it to remain a chasm of enmity.
The Gospel
reading from Luke offers the best-known biblical story of forgiveness (Luke
15:1-3, 11b-32). Celebrated in
literature, art, stage, and music, the saga of the prodigal stirs our
imaginations as we think of God’s extravagant welcome. Many artists and writers have been
transformed as they have contemplated the welcome that is at the heart of
Gospel faith. Of his first encounter
with Rembrandt’s masterpiece, Henri Nouwen writes in The Return of the Prodigal Son:
all my
attention was drawn to the hands of the old father pressing his
returning boy to his chest. I saw forgiveness, reconciliation, healing; I
also saw safety, rest, being at home. I
was so deeply touched by this image of the life-giving embrace of father and
son because everything in me yearned to be received in the way the prodigal son
was received. That encounter turned out
to be the beginning of my own return.
More than any other
liturgical season, Lent calls us to identify our transgressions and return to
God. Sometimes waiting for us, sometimes
running toward us, God welcomes us and rejoices that the dead have come to life
and the lost are found. I long for such
embrace; don’t you?
Molly T. Marshall
To learn more about Central as a
formative, creative, and progressive seminary, please visit www.cbts.edu
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