4 Lent

 

March 27, 2022

Laetare Sunday

Luke 13.1-3,11b-32

+ Today is Laetare Sunday—the rose Sunday of Lent

Laetare is, of course, Latin for “Rejoice.”

And today we get to rejoice a bit.

We’re half-way through Lent.

It’s a little break for us from this kind of heavy season.

Of course, we still are pondering things like sin and repentance.

But Laetare gives us a time also for reflection and rejoicing.

And reflection, as serene as it might seem, can really be difficult too.

I don’t really like doing.

Because, reflection means looking at one’s self.

And, more importantly, seeing one’s self.

Really seeing one’s self.

That can be really hard.

For me, as I said, I do find doing such very difficult.

As I’ve been talking about over the last several months, I’ve been going through this time of spiritual deconstruction in my life.

 And I believe I’ve shared how as liberating as it has been, it has also been very difficult.

 Realizing that certain aspects of my spiritual life are simply “fluff,” that certain things that once held so much importance to me are actually now not able to sustain me or hold me is a hard thing to do.

 I will say that doing so is frustrating to me.

 I didn’t think that, at this point in my life, I would be forced to grow even more.

 Isn’t there an end to growing?

 Yeah there is. It’s called death.

 My parents at my age seemed to have it all figured out.

 They didn’t struggle with things deconstruction in their faith.

 My spiritual heroes weren’t dealing with these things at this point in their lives.

 Actually, most of my spiritual heroes were dead by the time they were my age.

 But the ones who did live to this age were definitely not struggling with aspects of their faith by this point in their life.

 So, I wonder, why don’t I have it all figured out?

 Instead, here I am, still growing, still changing, still have to reflect on my changing self.

 It’s exhausting!

 There’s something both comforting and disturbing about that realization.

 As I look back over my life, certainly I find some very solid mile posts.

 I know this might come as a surprise to most of who know me, but I have been a bit of a rebel in my life.

 No, not maybe the traditional rebel.

 But I have rebelled a lot in my life.

 Look at me, after all.

 I am a walking-talking, poster child for rebellion!

 I am a poet. That takes some rebellion in this world.

 I am High Church. That’s definitely a kind of rebellion.

 I am a progressive/liberal/inclusive/Anglo-Catholic PRIEST of all things! That’s all kinds of rebellious right there.

 And as if that wasn’t enough, I am a vegetarian, asexual/celibate, teetotaling socialist.

 All of that that is a rebellion against…well…everything!

 Now, for some people, that sounds great.

 For some people it makes them…interesting.

 Many people think the rebellious life is a romantic one.

 It’s so full of challenge and adventure.

 There’s never a boring day in the life of a rebel.

 I know you’re all so envious of that in my life, right?

 And all of that is, well, very true.

 But there’s a downside to being rebellious.

 What is the downside to being a rebel?

 There is never a boring day in the life of a rebel!

 That is one of the downsides.

 There’s no resting.

 There’s no day of not being a rebel.

 You don’t just get to have a day off from it.

 Up in the morning,--rebel.

 Before bed at night—rebel.

 And, let me tell you, as romantic as people might think it is, the fact is: the rebellious life can be a very lonely life.

 It can be very isolating.

 Rebels aren’t the only ones who get exhausted.

 The people around rebels gets exhausted too.

 Oftentimes, the rebel is all alone in the cause of rebellion.

 There are days when it feels like one is Don Quixote fighting windmills.

 And it’s exhausting.

 As I look back over my life and the choices I have made in this life—and more than the choices—the things I have just realized about myself and who I really am--I realize: I’m tired.

 It’s been hard at times.

 And I’m not the same person I was before.

 Maybe, to some extent, that is why I can relate so well to the story of the Prodigal Son.

 We have all been down that road of rebellion and found that, sometimes, it is a lonely road, as I said.

 Sometimes we do find ourselves lying there, hungry and lonely and thinking about what might have been. 

 But for me, in those lonely moments, I have tried to keep my eye on the goal.

 I am, after all, one of those people who habitually makes goals for myself. 

 I always need to set something before me to work toward.

 Otherwise I feel aimless.

 Goals are good things, after all. 

 They’re essentially mile markers for us to set along the way.

 The reality of goals are, however, that oftentimes—sometimes more often than not, I hate to admit for myself—they are not met sometimes.

 It was a really growing edge moment in my life when I stopped beating myself up and learned not to be too disappointed in myself when certain goals have not been met in my life.

 In our Gospel for today, we find the Prodigal Son has some big goals and some pretty major hopes and dreams.

 First and foremost, he wants what a lot of us in our society want and dream about: money.

 He also seems a bit bored by his life.

 He is biting at the bit to get out and see the world—a place many of us who grew up in North Dakota felt at times in our lives.

 He wants the exact opposite of what he has.

 The grass is always greener on the other side, he no doubt thinks.

 And that’s a difficult place to be.

 He only realizes after he has shucked all of that and has felt real hunger and real loneliness what the ultimate price of that loss is.

 It’s difficult place to be.

 But, I’ve been there.

 Many of us have been there.

 And it’s important to have been there.

 God does occasionally lead us down roads that are lonely.

 God does occasionally lead us down roads that take us far from our loved ones.

 And sometimes God allows us to travel down roads that lead us even from God (or so it seems at times).

 But every time we recognize our loneliness and we turn around and find God again, we are welcomed back with open arms, and complete and total love.

 That, of course, is what most of us get from this parable.

 But…

There’s another aspect to the story of the prodigal son that is not mentioned in the parable.

 The prodigal has experienced much in his journey away.

 And as he turns back and returns to his father’s house, we know one thing: that prodigal son is not the same son he was when we left.

 The life has returned to is not the same exact life he left.

 He has returned to his father truly humbled, truly contrite, truly turned around.

 Truly broken.

 And that’s the story for us as well.

 In my life I have had to learn to accept that person I have become—that people humbled and broken by all that life and people and the Church have thrown at me.

 And I have come to appreciate and respect this changed person I’ve become.

 That’s the really hard thing to do.

 Accepting the change in myself is so very difficult.

 Realizing one day that I am not the same person I was 10 years ago in 2012 or even a year ago is very hard to do.

 Who am I now?

 Who is this person I look and reflect upon?

 I sometimes don’t even recognize myself.

 God at no point expects us to say the same throughout our lives.

 Our faith in God should never be the same either.

 In that spiritual wandering we do sometimes, we can always return to what we knew, but we know that we always come back a little different, a little more mature, a little more grown-up.

 No matter how old we are.

 We know that in returning, changed as we might be by life and all that life throws at us, we are always welcomed with open arms by our loving God.

 We know that we are welcomed by our God with complete and total love.

 And we know that, lost as we might be sometimes, we will always be found.

 And in that finding, we are not the only ones rejoicing.

 God too is rejoicing in our being found.

 In our being re-constructed.

 That is the really great aspect of this parable.

 But, there’s still one other aspect of this story that’s important to remember.

 It’s the part about the other brother.

 Because sometimes, we might realize that we were never the prodiga, after all.

 We were the good and faithful child in this story.

 This was recently driven home to me.

 Now, as most of you know, I received a calling to be a priest when I was 13 years old.

 I was a 13-year-old Lutheran boy who suddenly, out of the blue, started telling people I wanted to be a Catholic priest.

 It was unusual to say the least.

 And back then—in the 1980s—it was even more unusual.

 In junior high and high school, this did not make me a popular person by any sense of the world.

 After all, back in those days, the majority of people who went to my junior high and high school were, like I was, Lutheran.

 I always joke when someone says they went to a Lutheran high school like Oak Grove that I did too. It was called West Fargo High School.

 But back then, proclaiming one’s faith, saying you wanted to be a priest, not dating, not going to dances, not being interested romantically in other people made you an object of ridicule.

 And, in high school, there was one girl in particular who was kind of mean about it all.

 She actually went out of her way to be mean and spiteful and make fun of me for my faith, for wanting to be a priest, for not being interested in the things other teenage kids were interested in like dating and dances and things.

 For years, whenever I would think about her, I would kind of curl up my nose.

 She was the face of all those people I rebelled against to a large extent.

 But, to be clear, it hurt to be mocked for something I held so dear.

 It hurt to be made fun of for my faith.

 Well…one day when I was Facebook, I happened to see that this person was a mutual friend of one of my Facebook friends.

 Even though I didn’t really want to do it, I decided to troll her page, just to see what happened to her and her life.

 Well, the first thing that came up was her profile photo.

 It showed a much older woman—a woman who has kids and grandkids.

 Definitely not the preppy, vain teenage girl she was 35 years ago.

 But the banner on her Facebook profile photo proudly proclaimed under her face:

 JESUS LOVES YOU

 Geesh, even I don’t post things like that on my page (maybe subconsciously because of the ridicule I received from people like her all those years ago).

 Now, you would think I would’ve been happy about her faith in Christ.

 But…I wasn’t.

 My first reaction to that banner was:

 What??? Seriously??? You’ve got to be kidding.

 This person, who was the very face of my persecution for all these years, is now a born-again person proclaiming that Jesus loves us.

 The very FACE I associated with criticizing my faith was name framed with the words JESUS LOVES YOU.

 Like the good son in our Gospel reading for today, I fumed about it.

 I said, “NOW she’s a Christian! Now she proclaims her faith, while I always felt like putting a bushel over my flame because of people like her. I have always been follower of Jesus, even back then. And now she comes along and gets to claim being a Christian after being so terrible about it back then? This is insane.”

 But then, God, as God often does, like the father in our Gospel story today, scolded me in that way he does.

 God said (not literally mind you): “Seriously??? You’re upset about this? That’s the wrong reaction.”

 Then came those words from our Gospel reading,  

 “You are always with me, and all that is mine if yours. But we have to celebrate and rejoice because this loved one was lost and has been found.”

 I realized that God rejoiced in her just as God rejoiced in me.

 And that I should celebrate that, not complain about it and rage against it and lament about how unfair it was.

 So, yes, de-construction is good.

 But it’s ultimately pointless if there’s no re-construction.

 It is all pointless if we don’t realize that.

 God rejoices in us.

 All of us.

 God rejoices in embracing us and drawing us close.

 So, let us this day rejoice in who we are, even if we might not fully recognize who we are.

 Let us rejoice in our rebelliousness and in our turning back to what we rebelled against.

 Let us rejoice in our de-construction and in our re-construction.

 Let us rejoice in our being lost and in our being found.

 Let us rejoice especially in the fact that no matter how lonely we might be in our wanderings, in the end, we are always, without fail, embraced with an embrace that will never end. 

 And let us rejoice in our God who embraces us and rejoices in us.