Lent 4C – 2022 – Stuck in a Ditch with the Prodigal - JC Olbrych - St. Mark’s Charleston
Some years back I was making a retreat at Holy Savior Priory near Pineville - it was a house and retreat center for the Order of the Holy Cross – an Episcopal Men’s religious order (did you know there are Episcopal monks and nuns?) .. I had gone for a day of quiet sometime in Lent.. the house was set back from the highway and the access was by an unpaved road several miles long, leading through woods, soybean fields, and cow pastures. The day passed quickly, and I felt anxious to get home and back to town for a meeting later that night.
As I traveled in my car down the length of that red dirt road, I came around a curve – moving just a little too fast and ran right into a big mud slick. After a few moments of being sickeningly out of control, the car slid into a ditch on the side of the road. What a nuisance! I was unhurt. The car was unhurt, and I thought, alright, let’s get out of here. I tried to maneuver gently out of the ditch... nothing happened. I tried changing gears and rocking the car back and forth. Still, nothing happened. Growing angry (now, remember I had just spent all day praying), I got out of the car and walked around to see what the problem was. Then I saw it.. two wheels suspended in the air and not a snowball’s chance of getting myself out of that ditch. No recourse but to walk all the way down that long road back to the main house and get help.
I stomped down the road. I said to myself, “What’s the matter with these monks.. why don’t they pave this blank road. They must have known that mud was there, why didn’t they at least put some gravel down?” and many other words to that effect. At some point, I began to notice that something was happening in the pasture along the right side of the road. Every single cow, or so it appeared and there were thirty or so, had come over to the fence and seemed to be watching me as I came stomping by. I had the strangest feeling.. it was as if each one commented as I went by.. “the problem is the road?” the first one seemed to say wordlessly with deep brown eyes. “Poor Jennie” from the next one. “It’s the monk’s fault? “ from another and so on,,,
By the time I had made it back up the road to the house, I felt like I had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced by those cows, but I was still angry and frustrated. Tom got the tractor and a rope, and we had ridden down almost to the very end of the road where the car was when he turned to me and said, “Just how fast were you going?” He pulled me out the ditch, gave me a hug and sent me on my way... I did not have much to say to myself on the way home.. Some retreat , I thought. Some retreat indeed.
The topic of the sermon on this fourth Sunday of Lent is repentance and honestly it’s a little challenging to think about how to talk about our need for this, but if we can grasp this image- of being stuck in a ditch that we can’t get ourselves out of, it will be easier to understand. Because, in our life in God, the only thing that gets us out of the ditch is repentance.
I want to take a moment to remind you of the meaning of the word repentance. The Greek word behind this one is metanoia which literally means a turn or change (meta) of mind (noia). So, repentance is a 180 degree turn or a transformation of one’s thinking.
Being stuck metaphorically in a ditch was something the younger son had to grapple with in today’s parable from Jesus. He had, in the most ungracious way, demanded his inheritance, had blown it all, and found himself working for a farmer taking care of – and living with - the pigs. That was about as low as you could get as a Jew. He got so hungry that the slop the pigs were eating started to look good to him. That was moment of reckoning. I love how Jesus puts it... and when he came to himself. That was the moment when the reality of how stuck he was finally hit home. It’s the moment when we finally can ask – where am I, what am I doing? - and to look with open and honest eyes and hearts at what our situation truthfully is. Not what we would like it to be.. not what we fantasize it might be ..but what it actually is...seen clearly and honestly.
The car is stuck in the ditch, the young man has blown it badly, we find ourselves stuck - seemingly locked into a situation with no way out.
As you all know, there are many ways and reasons we get stuck and we keep ourselves from that key moment of repentance – that moment of coming to ourselves...Sometimes it’s because guilt about the past is too heavy or we continue carrying painful unhealed memories which keep us shackled to the past.. things done and left undone which brought injury to others and ourselves...or we realize how far we have wandered away from God and ourselves– perhaps in anger, perhaps in indifference ... but wander, we have...
I once knew a woman, a very active church member, who as a result of a horribly traumatic death of a family member said, “I realized I stopped speaking to God for years.. I kept going to church and kept going through the motions, but I was not speaking to God because, I blamed God for what had happened. What I did not realize”, she continued, “was that God was as grieved as I was and, that, by turning away, I robbed myself of the comfort and the peace that only Jesus can give.” That was also repentance – perhaps not in the way we would normally think of it.
Repentance brings resolution in which we can at last hand over the burden to God who heals, forgives and gently turns our faces to the present and to the future and in doing so restores hope. We still have to deal with the consequences of our actions (or inaction) but the air is clear and we get pulled out of the ditch.
Can you see this movement toward the future and the restoration of hope in the parable?
The young man had the grace to realize that he could not return home in the same capacity as the beloved younger son. He had burnt his bridges pretty well. So, as we heard.. he said even the hired hands at my father’s house have enough food, I will go back and ask my father to hire me as one of his field hands. He took honest stock of his situation, he remembered the generosity of his father, and he turned toward the future - all of these part of the process of repentance. And, what a response he received, what a welcome from the father who had never given up and who kept looking for him on the road - looking for him long before the young man came to himself.
So three parts to repentance: three R’s
1.Recognizing what our actual situation is- what is the ditch in which I am stuck? Recognizing how badly we have stumbled...And that we need help and that my, your, our life needs to change and we need to be willing to turn it around.
2. Remembering who God is as revealed to us in Jesus Christ ... the God of grace, mercy, healing, forgiveness and new life.
3. Reaching out to that same Jesus Christ – and holding on to his cross – for he is the one who through his reconciling death on the cross has pulled all of creation out of the ditch.
So, recognize our need, remember the great love and mercy of God in Christ, and then reach out to that same Jesus Christ and hold fast to the Cross.
And – here is something else to hold onto .. at the very moment when we are able to finally turn around – to repent- when we come to the crossroad times...we can trust that God is standing right beside us....God always gets to our crossroads, to our ditch before we do and meets us threre. Just ponder that for a minute.
There’s something I’d like to show you in the prayerbook –
Please turn with me to p. 42.. its the declaration of forgiveness that follows the Rite I, Morning Prayer confession....
Here is what I want you to notice and remember. Look at the order..
1. The almighty and merciful Lord grants us absolution and remission of all our sins... that’s the very first thing happens...this is the father keeping an eye out for his lost son or daughter...this is the ground and fact of forgiveness....
2. Which leads us to true repentance...and look what follows next...
3. Amendment of life – when we trust that God has forgiven us, and we have truly repented... then our lives change...
4. and that change is sustained by the fourth element –the grace and consolation of his Holy Spirit – that is, a deepening awareness of Christ living in us and with us in a companionship that can sustain us forever.
So, the question for us this Fourth Sunday in Lent – Where are you stuck? Where are we stuck as a church? As a nation? Where do we need to get honest and repent so we can get out of the ditch?
I want to invite us into a moment of silence – and suggest that you ask God, in trust and faith in his mercy and abundant forgiveness, to show you where you need repentance...
Silence...
Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, you do not desire the death of sinners but rather that we might turn away from all that separates us from you... and that, turning toward you, we might live in newness of life through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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