The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30, 2025
March 16, 2025 | by Bruce Epperly
| Reading 1 | Reading 2 | Reading 3 | Reading 4 | Reading 1 Alt | Reading 2 Alt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joshua 5:9-12 | Psalm 32 | 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 | Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 |
Today’s readings focus on seeing more deeply into ourselves and those around us and
committing ourselves to self-awareness as a prelude and partner with God awareness. The
Delphic Oracle’s counsel “know thyself” awakens us to ponder our God awareness and the
quality of our images of God.
The words of Psalm 32 are both harsh and revelatory. While they reflect one aspect of the
divine-human relationship, as a process theologian, for whom God is neither punitive nor
transactional, I believe that the Psalmist is focusing on his own moral and spiritual journey of
alienation and reconciliation with God rather than the threat of divine punishment. The author of
Psalm 139 asks God, “search me and know me.” To stand under “divine scrutiny,” as Howard
Thurman says, is to recognize that there is nothing we can ultimately hide from God. Our friend
Jesus, “knows our every weakness” so we can “take it to the Lord in prayer.”
God’s awareness – and our awareness of God’s awareness – is both revealing and healing. The
Celestial Surgeon must operate to excise our self-deception and prepare the way for inner and
outer integrity. In the language of process theology, this occurs through the presentation of divine
aims relevant to and yet contrasting or critical of our current values and behaviors. Robert Lewis
Stevenson describes the “severe mercy” of divine healing:
If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:-
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!
When the Psalmist hid from himself, denying his alienation from God and his neighbors, he
experienced disease of body and spirit. Our emotional states can heal and harm. Long before
complementary and mind-body medicine, the Psalmist recognizes that our negative attitudes,
anxieties, and antagonisms can harm our physical well-being. Medical scientists speak of the
impact of forgiveness and unforgiveness on health, as well as the faith factor in health and
illness.
Placing himself before divine scrutiny, the Psalmist discovers the heights and depth and shadows
and light of his own experience and finds insight that transforms his behavior and attitudes. In
trusting God, we can trust ourselves and accept the loving acceptance God intends for us.
Two phrases capture the spirit of II Corinthians 5: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one
from a human point of view” and “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything
old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!” First, every person has depths
unseen and unspoken. Everyone is more than flesh and blood, or an abstraction to elicit our
contempt or pity. Saint Pelagius asserted that every newborn bears the face of God. Social
activist Dorothy Day noted that “she speaks to everyone as if they an angel.” Behold, the child
of God in your household, on social media, on the borderlands, at the checkout stand, or even the
White House.
In that spirit, we should not see ourselves from a human point of view. We should not conform
to others’ ideas about us and the limitations placed upon us by our social order. Looking beyond
appearances, we should honor the unique wonder of our being. We are God’s beloved worthy of
affirmation and respect, and so is everyone else, even when we must challenge their behavior or
political policies.
“You are a new creation.” God’s “mercies are new every morning” and so is your life. The pure
conservative goes against the nature of the universe, as Whitehead says. In the spirit of the
prophets and Jesus, God calls us toward the future. We are more than the past, more than our
limitations or traumas. We can begin again. God has a vision (aim) for us in our pain and
sorrow, and each step of the way God’s aim calls us forward to the next step of self-discovery.
The occasion of Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Child is the religious leaders’ criticism of the
company Jesus kept: people from the wrong side of the tracks, the unclean and lost, as a result of
ethnicity, class, occupation, health condition, or previous behavior. Turning the tables on his
critics, Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost boy, proclaim that God’s love for
those whom we perceived lost or unworthy knows no limitations. God loves the unrighteous as
much as the righteous, the poor as much as the rich, and the alien as much citizen. There is no
outside to God’s circle of love; everyone is at the center.
God’s love for the prodigal son and the lost parts of ourselves is all about a party! Long before
the lost child confesses his sin, they are welcomed home in the hearts of his parents. Their love
encompasses him and follows him into the depths of depravity. There is no quid pro quo or
transaction to “get saved.” There is no bullying or threatening, although we may have to face the
consequences of our behaviors. We are already in God’s care, even in the far of country of sin,
addiction, heartedness, hate, and we simply need a community or friend to alert us to our divine
identity. “Come home” to yourself. See yourself, reclaim your dignity, as the father (and
mother) tell their son that they are worthy regardless of past sins.
The older brother, in his righteousness, is equally lost. He is the theological and political buzzkill
for whom grace must be earned, love requires prerequisites, and outsiders don’t belong. A party is prepared for him any time he wants, too, but he must open to his parents’ love. He must let go
of the need to be special to realize that he is special: as Augustine says, God loves us as if there
is only one of us and, as I add, God loves all of us as if there is only one of us. God’s love never
fails us, never lets us down or abandons. Come to the party prepared for you! Claiming our
divine identity in ourselves and our neighbors, reach out in love and reconciliation. And come of
God’s joyful feast.
Let our churches be grace givers and love finders. Places of sanctuary. Safe places of welcome
for all of God’s wondrously diverse children. Praise God!
Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD (https://ww.westmorelanducc.org/) and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary. He is the author of over 80 books including:“Homegrown Mystics: Restoring the Soul of Our Nation through the Healing Wisdom of America’s Mystics” (Amazon.com: Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing