“…in a denomination where many clergy no longer adhere to traditional doctrines such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus.”

This is untrue. The bishops of this diocese, the clergy of this parish do not deny the resurrection of Jesus. It is a central tenet of the Nicene Creed we say, and of the Apostles Creed. The celebration of Easter will be and always has been the center of our liturgical year. Time after time, we affirm from the pulpit that Jesus Christ died on a day in our human history and on the third day rose. On Good Friday and Easter Eve and Easter Day we will tell that story, tell that good news here at the heart of the city once again.

And in the face of the death of people we love, we trust that they will be held in God’s love, with Jesus in the resurrection life. Hope in the resurrection is a core value of this congregation, of the whole church, as the people of the resurrection.  

By the way, I note that the translation of the Nicene Creed we use most often in The Book of Common Prayer, on page 358 – the translation we will use this morning -- is a translation accepted and used ecumenically by the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches as well as the Episcopal Church. Whatever separates the churches, our central belief in the resurrection of Jesus in no way differs from theirs.

I note that Terri has joined me in making this statement.

We are a people who believe in the resurrection. That is who we are – based on who we believe Jesus was and is. Now, this to not to say that I or anyone else for that matter understands how the resurrection took place or takes place. There is a limit to what we can see.

What we can see. God gave us Jesus, so we might see in him what God is like. In what he said, in the stories he told – like today’s unforgettable story of the welcome home of the prodigal son – we see God’s mercy and compassion and welcome. And we see what God is like, when we remember what Jesus did. How he faced arrest and death in self-giving love, laying down his life for us. My faith and hope is that when we die, when those we love die, we are held in that love, which nothing can break. 

A second comment this morning is that, for those of you who are visitors, our local Starbucks coffee shops are sending volunteers, and the parent company is contributing financially to our monthly Neighbors in Need dinners – we’ll have one Tuesday evening – for fifty people from the neighborhood who could use a meal. It has been such a pleasure to have our friends from Starbucks join us. And they’re here with us today, bringing coffee – including cappuccino and latte – and cookies for the coffee hour following this service.

A meal for some people who can use one. How good that in this house of prayer at the center of which is Jesus’ Meal here at Jesus’ table, we have a meal for some people who could use one. And as I say this, I remember that we are people – very human people -- who can use – who deeply need, who in the deepest places of what it is to be human need this Meal God gives us!

We cannot see God, so God sent us Jesus. We cannot see Jesus, so he gives us story to read, and he gives us some utterly simple actions from daily life to be signs of God’s presence with us and love for us in him – washing with water in baptism, and this meal of bread and wine. Jesus gives us this meal, this Supper, to be the center of the church’s worship. This feast, this celebration, to be at the center of our life with him as his friends and disciples.  

And we who are fed with God’s mercy and love at Jesus’ table, are called to put on a meal for those who need one – corned beef and cabbage here on Tuesday, or the feast of learning at a school, or gifts of healing at a hospital.

Jesus was the great storyteller. I believe Jesus was the Son of God, and also son of Mary – the Nicene Creed is careful to say both. Divine and human. He was born with the fullness of God’s love within him – his whole mission and ministry would be to bring that love to the world, to express it in his life. But of course, the son of Mary also had to learn to be a human being, how to talk, how to handle Joseph’s carpenter’s tools. He had to learn to read and write and one suspects he learned early the great stories of the Hebrew Bible – of Abraham and Isaac and Joseph and Moses. A great human school for learning to tell a story.

Today’s is one of the greatest. It is one of two stories of Jesus, the other the story of a man left mugged on the lonely road to Jericho, and being helped by a Good Samaritan – which only appear in Luke’s Gospel. I am curious why these two stories didn’t make it to any of the others? Maybe chance. Maybe the other writers didn’t know these stories. I am not surprised the writer of John’s Gospel left these out, the writer of the Fourth Gospel leaves out all sorts of things, from Jesus’ birth to the last supper itself (which he leaves out in order to tell about what happened after supper, when Jesus took the role of a servant to wash the disciples’ feet, giving them and us, his disciples today, his example of loving service.) And maybe these two stories were too strong – Harold Bloom at Yale came across an ancient Jewish writer who re-wrote the opening books of the Old Testament leaving out precisely the strong stories I love so that scholars ascribe to a writer to whom they have given the scholarly nickname of “J.”

For me today’s Gospel is the heart of this Lent’s readings. God call you and me to come to ourselves regularly, as part of our prayer, and ask forgiveness.  

“But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!’”

We have a deep human hunger for being put right with God, for being forgiven, for being back home with God.

“’I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son…’”

So we come to God in the prayer of confession. God is not trying to put us down – God is welcoming us back. God does not ask that we wallow in our sins, God asks us simply and directly to acknowledge our sins and then forgives us, and invites us to rejoice in the forgiveness God gives.   

I have a special love for Jesus’ description of the father’s welcome home to his son:

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

A radiant picture of God’s welcome home.

Jesus gives this Feast to celebrate our being home and forgiven and loved. And to feed us with that compassion and mercy and love.

You and I are the prodigal in the story, the one who has wandered from God, but we are also often the older brother – angry that this one who has just showed up is equally welcome. How interesting that this story, which is indeed about God’s forgiveness of us, shifts profoundly to our welcome of the other person – Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

“'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.’”

This is God’s reward to God’s faithful servants – who are always with God and all that is God’s is theirs – the fullness of God’s love.

But if the love God gives us is the love we see in Jesus – and it always is – that love given to us will always be marked by our welcome home to others, the welcome in this story. The reward to the faithful servants is a love which always itself must welcome and forgive, even to the cross.

I would like to close with some words from Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, from a Mission he gave at Oxford many years ago.

To be a Christian is to be very closely united to Christ as living Lord, not alone but in the fellowship of the Church. It means an existence in which our self-centredness is constantly challenged and defeated. The more Christ becomes your true centre, the less can your own selfish pride be the centre. The more you are drawn into the fellowship of those who belong to Christ, the less are you entangled in your selfish pride. That is why again and again the Christian life has been called a ‘death to self’; it is the growth in us of Christ’s own self-giving unto death. The Sacraments depict this: Baptism was from the beginning the means whereby the convert died to the old life whose centre was the self; and, having been buried symbolically beneath the water, he stepped out into a new life whose centre was Christ in the midst of the Church’s fellowship. Holy Communion deepens our unity with Christ who, through the media of bread and wine, feeds us with himself. But it is always himself as given to death. It is his broken body, his blood poured and offered.

                      Michael Ramsey, Introduction to the Christian Faith, page 53-54 

Deepen our unity with you, Jesus. Feed us. Give us your true self, as given to death, your broken body, blood poured and offered – your love. Hold us in that love until we are welcomed home to heaven, with you in that love. Amen.