The Ministry of Reconciliation

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. 17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 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. 20 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. 21 For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 So he told them this parable: 

“There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ 

20 So he set off and went to his father. 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. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

25 “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ”

The parable of the prodigal son and his brother doesn’t just have one point, but surely the core of the story is the character of the father, whose younger son demands his inheritance and the Father consent to the son’s desire.  The son, predictably, squanders the wealth and finds himself a rock bottom.  For having humiliated his father, he experiences his own humiliation. He gets what he deserves; justice has been done.  He’s found himself the worst possible job, feeding the unclean pigs, and he’s so hungry that he longs to eat their slop.  He comes to his senses, recalling that even the slaves/servants in his father’s house were well fed, so he resolves to go home, no longer as son, but as a slave.  The son, having essentially said to the father, “I no longer have a father; you’re dead to me” can only expect that the Father will declare upon seeing him, “I no longer have a son; you’re dead to me”.  The son rehearses what he will say when he sees his Father, motivated not only by his humiliation, but also out of fear, to forestall the condemnation he assumes would: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son”.  Even so, he might still expect the father to tell him to get lost.  

But the climax of the story is that the father sees the son from afar - perhaps because he has spent all these years scanning the horizon for his son’s return - and, filled with compassion, runs out to meet his son and throws his arms around him.  The son manages to say the words he had rehearsed, but it’s almost as is the father doesn’t even hear them, instead immediately calling for a robe, ring, and sandals - to restore the dignity of the son - and to prepare a celebration.  For, “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’

In the time and place when Jesus first told this parable it would’ve been unimaginable that a father would receive his prodigal son like this, essentially doubling down on the indignity he’s suffered.  The most appropriate response would’ve been to reject the son as he had first rejected the father.  Or perhaps the more tenderhearted would’ve thought that the father should still desire the son’s restoration, but only after he’s made restitution, after he’s paid for his sins, after he’s suffered in the way that he’s made others suffer.  Tit for tat, and all that.  In this parable, however, the father makes no such demands, but restores the son immediately, to extent far beyond what the son had even dreamed possible.  That the son repented and returned to the father seems to have been more than enough.   

The older son objects. “Why celebrate this son who has humiliated you!? I’ve been a good son and you’ve never thrown me a party!” He speaks for many then and now who see in the father’s action a fundamental unfairness, even a disregard for the consequences of the prodigal son’s actions.  Does it not matter that he he wasted everything?  I can tell you that, if one of my boys wandered in the wilderness, seemingly never to return, I would desire nothing more than for him to come home, and I would certainly celebrate, however much it had cost.  Of course, the father in this story is none other than God the Father, whom we are to imitate, but one way our heavenly father is different than any earthly father is that his estate is not finite, but infinite, that whatever the son lost can be restored.  The older son thinks he now faces the prospect of sharing a diminished inheritance with his miscreant bother, but in fact, all that the Father has already belongs to him, and indeed it all belongs entirely to any and every of God’s children.  God’s economy operates not out of scarcity, but out of absolute abundance.  The inclusion of another never reduces our share.    

God is a God who grants us an inheritance as his sons and daughters even as we reject God and squander our wealth.  God gives us the freedom to wander in the wildness in the hope we will return to our true home.   And rather condemning us, God waits expectably full of compassion, ready to embrace us if only we would come to our senses.  God desires to be reconciled to us; God is ready and willing to suffer indignity that we might be restored. 

The ultimately indignity God suffered, of course, is to take on human form, and not only that, to suffer humiliation upon the cross.  "For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  From a merely human point of view, this all looks foolish, scandalous, embarrassing, and indeed Paul, in his former life, regarded Christ in just this way.  But then Paul encountered the risen Lord, which changed everything, made a mockery of the wisdom of this world, and inaugurated a new age which was coming and now is.  

To be “in Christ” is not just to have undergone some kind of personal change that leaves you a new person in the same old world - rather, when Paul speaks of being “in Christ” he means that you participate in Christ’s eternal life, you have died and been raised to new life, you live in the age to come, when all will be one. 

And, having reconciled us to God through Christ, God gives to us the “ministry of reconciliation”, that God entrusts to us “the message of reconciliation” (whether we want it or not!).  The natural way of reading this, especially for people like us is that, having experienced this reconciliation ourselves, we will necessarily what to share the good news that, through Christ you can be reconciled to God, and here’s how you do it.  As people who have learned to no longer see things from a human point of view, who have found themselves “in Christ” living in the age to come, we would feel compelled to invite people to join as well.  

The trouble, it seems to me, is that so few of us have had the kind of experience which validates Paul’s words here, and doubting that experience ourselves, it then scarcely makes sense to describe to the non-Christian what it means to come to faith in terms that do not apply to us.  Paul’s Gospel often seems quite alien to our actual reality.  And few of us have been the prodigal, having rejected God only to repent and return, to experience the reconciliation we hadn’t thought possible.   Are these just stories we tell, ideals we espouse - or do they actually name and give shape to our reality? 

A foundational conviction of this community is that for belief to be believable, it cannot merely be a message floating about detached from our lived experience, that words - however true - need to become flesh in order actually to be encountered, experience as Truth.  So if we want to others - if we want ourselves - to believe that we need and can be reconciled to God, even that God will reconcile all things to himself, then the ministry of reconciliation entrusted to us must not be an abstract message but, yes, an incarnation, however imperfect, of the truth we proclaim.  If we want to convince ourselves and others, then we must seek to live as if reconciliation is possible.  

There are all kinds of relationships in this world where reconciliation seems impossible.  To hope for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians seems naive, and indeed our idealism is unlikely to have any impact on that conflict, or others like it.  What we can do, however, is to be a community of people who, wherever there is conflict, or estrangement, or distance, seek to be reconciled to one another.  This is hard work, work which can only be done in the hope that reconciliation is possible.  In the same way that the Father runs to the prodigal son, in the same way that God, in Christ, does not demand we come to him but rather condescends to us, so we must be those who close the distance between ourselves and others, not stay where we are waiting for them to come to us.  We cannot force reconciliation any more than the Father could make his son return home, but wherever we see apparently irreconcilable differences, we must stand ready to meet someone halfway - if not more.  And rather than being a church who waits for people to come to us, we might need to think hard about what stands between us and others then doing the necessary work of moving their direction.