God has a dream

God has a dream

Lent 4, Year C
March 30, 2025

The Reverend Dr Adam J Shoemaker

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or arrogant or boastful or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love Never Ends.

I speak to in the name of the God who loves us, Creator, Redeemer, and Giver of life. Amen. Please be seated.

We have heard one of the most evocative parables of Jesus that comes as the culminating story of the 15th chapter of Luke's gospel, a parable that has become known as the parable of the prodigal son: a parable, a story, that Jesus tells about a father and his two sons, one of which asked for his share of the Inheritance early, which, at the time, would have been akin to wishing his father dead. But the father willingly gives it over and the son then takes that wealth and travels off to a distant land where he blows it all on what the text describes as “dissolute living”. The King James version reads “riotous”. Words invite us to use our imaginations to fill in the blanks. Then a famine strikes the land and, out of cash, this young son hits rock bottom—he is literally slopping around with the pigs, a cursed existence for a self-respecting first Century Palestinian Jew.

But in this moment of weakness, in this moment of vulnerability and peril, as sometimes happens to us in life, he comes to his senses, comes to himself. He realizes how far he has sunk and decides, however difficult it may be, that he will get up and head home, and beg his father—even if it means being taken back as one of his father's hired hands. But then we are told that, while this son is still far from home, far off on his journey home, his father sees him—meaning his father has been searching for him the whole time. His father has been yearning for his son's homecoming the whole time. His father has never given up on him, and he desperately runs out and meets his son, embraces him, puts a robe on him and sandals on his feet. He calls out to his servants and tells them to kill the fatted calf for this son of his was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and has been found.

Everybody begins to celebrate, everybody that is except the father's other son, his older son, the diligent one, the rule follower. He is out working in the field as always and when he finds out that his father has not only welcomed back this irresponsible, no good younger brother of his, but killed the fatted calf for him, put on a big party, he becomes angry and refuses to go in. He refuses to celebrate his father runs out to him and tries to bring him home but he pushes his father away indignantly. Then I believe that the father gazes upon his child with eyes of great compassion and he says, “Son, son. You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we simply have to celebrate and rejoice for this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life, he was lost and has been found.”

So my friends this parable, that become known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son might be better titled, the parable of the forgiving father. For at the end of the day, this is a parable about the love of the father. At the end of the day this is a parable about the love, amazing grace, and compassion of our God that is all and unconditionally to all of us or who we are or where we find ourselves on our life. That is good news, very good news.

But the rub in my experience is to take a moment to step back and prayerfully reflect on the place of this older son at the end of the story, who I believe is standing in for the Pharisees that Jesus is arguing with. This older son who was left entrapped by his own resentment, by his own indignation. He is unable to celebrate this miraculous moment of reconciliation. He is able unable to find Joy. He is diminished. Herein for me lies an important lesson for us as we find ourselves on this fourth Sunday of the season of Lent, this Sunday of refreshment, as we move ever closer to the celebration of Easter, to the celebratory victory of God's love in this world. Gratitude and resentment cannot coexist. For when we are so caught up and driven by resentment and indignation, we are unable to see our life as a gift. We are unable to see the love that God wants to extend to us, that our neighbors so often extend to us, as a gift. When that happens, we are diminished, and all those around us are diminished. We all lose.

But we live in a world full of resentment and indignation, do we not? We live in a world that tempts us to turn on one another, to look at our neighbors and especially our neighbors in need, our neighbors who are suffering, who are in vulnerable places, to look at them with indignation and suspicion. I hear Jesus imploring us in the telling of this story today to not do that, to not allow our hearts to be hardened by the world in which we live as crazy and chaotic and mean-spirited as it may be. Our hearts are to remain vulnerable, as risky as that can feel, and open to God, open to our neighbor, and especially our neighbors who are suffering. As the late Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero, that human rights advocate who was martyred at the altar 45 years ago last week, once famously said, “There are some gospel truths that can only be seen, glimpsed and understood through eyes that have cried.” We must not allow our hearts to be hardened; we must not turn away from God's love and the needs and suffering of our neighbors so that we might be better equipped to be God's Easter people in this Good Friday world of ours, to help God transform this world from the nightmare it so often is into something closer to the dream that God intends.

With that, I'd like to close by sharing a little part of a book once penned by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a book that some of you might be familiar with that is titled “God has a dream.” In this little book, Archbishop Tutu writes this:

“I have a dream, God says. Please help me to realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts, where there will be more laughter joy and peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing. I have a dream that swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, that My children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God's family, My family.”

My friends, in light of Jesus' words for us today and in light of the world in which we live, may we as followers of Jesus keep our hearts tender. May we remain open and trusting in the love of God and open to the suffering of our neighbor. We can help God transform this world from the nightmare it so often is into something closer to the dream that God intends. Amen.

 © 2025 Adam J Shoemaker

Image credit Photo by Pink Pixie on Unsplash