LENT IV, Year C: March 14 2010

Preacher: Fr Andrew Greany

This morning we continue our reflections on the form of general Confession which we've been using during Lent. Last Sunday Dr Jessica Martin underlined the way in which this confession speaks of what we have been, what we are and what we shall be, rather than what we have done, what we are doing, and what we shall do.

This morning I would like to say a little more about 'what we shall be'. 'We give into God's hands', Jessica said last week, 'the future selves which are unshadowed by the past, and unmarked by the present'. This is a wonderful way of expressing what Jessica called the absolute liberation offered and won by what I would call the movement of penitence and confession: the process of being lifted out of the groove of the habits of selfishness, narrow-mindedness, self-absorption, dead-end existence. And what better illustration is there of that movement and process than the story of the prodigal's return which forms this morning's gospel? Realising his state of being in that far country, his alienation from the being that he truly is, that is, the child of a loving father, he faces in a new direction — and his future was to be found in the joy of that great banquet which his father prepares. The father, in giving directions for the preparation of the banquet, directs what the returning prodigal is now to be: a participant celebrating his restored membership of his true home and household.

So it is that in the Christian tradition, restoration to fellowship at the altar is the goal and the fruit of the process of repentance and confession. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is as much about our future, how we \textit{shall} be, as about our past. But our other two readings this morning are also a gift to us as we reflect on 'what we shall be'. The children of Israel, we hear in Joshua chapter 5, are to 'eat the fruits of the promised land': once again, it's the imagery of eating and drinking which is employed to express the sense of liberation which the people are to experience in a promised land. Is there in our Communions, our eating and drinking of the heavenly banquet, the joy, the sense of celebration and fellowship which are suggested by the banquet prepared for the prodigal, or by the Israelites' feasting on the fruits of the promised land — indeed by the celebratory meals which people might be sharing today on Mothering/Refreshment Sunday? That's a question which it's entirely appropriate to ask ourselves when we reflect on confession and absolution; because it is indeed to celebration that God is directing to us when we come to ourselves, acknowledge our alienation, and find our merciful Father coming to meet us, and laying the table for His banquet.

2 Corinthians 5, our Epistle today, offers us more; we read that 'if anyone is in Christ, he is (notice the verb again), he is a new creation.' The promised land for the Christian, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, is new life in the risen Christ. It's fascinating that one of this year's recommended Lent books, Paula Gooder's This Risen Existence, concentrates not on the Passion, but on the Resurrection narratives. Likewise in Lucy Winkett's Our sound is our wound, there is a chapter given over to what she calls 'The Sound of Resurrection'. This sound, to quote from page 106 of Winkett's book, is a song which saves us 'from our sin of self-preservation at all costs', a sin which separates us from God. 'We are saved', she goes on, 'from the mire of mixed motives, selfish ambition and violent competition that disfigures our lives. We are saved from the vacuous over-activity that characterises a frightened life, and from the temptation born of insecurity to trivialise and dehumanise others.' Or, in the words of James Alison in Undergoing God, we are invited to undergo a shift of perspective, becoming aware of a generosity which wants 'to distract us from my self-absorption in too small an identity, always defended against some other person or group'. And again, the word, or the sound, of God directing us is heard: Jesus crying out at the tomb of Lazarus: 'Lazarus, come forth, from the stifling cave of death'; or speaking his word to Mary Magdalen: 'do not be shut up in the dark and self-indulgent cave of your own grief, but go and tell the news to the others', and so will she become a person of new life, her being directed outwards to others, sharing good news. In her hearing of the word of the Lord, in her proximity to Him, she is made a new being, she is in Christ, a new creation.

This mid-Lent Sunday offers us an opportunity to re-assess our keeping of Lent. The Collect for Ash Wednesday invited us to lament our sins and acknowledge our wretchedness; we recognised in today's Collect the bands, the constraints, of those sins which by our frailty we have committed. Lent does not let us evade the reality of our involvement in the alien place, the prodigal's distant country with its careless self-absorption and neglect of the gift of fellowship offered to us in our true home. But Lent is also and always a season of hope; as St Benedict says, a looking forward to Holy Easter, to the celebration of new creation, life in Christ. So last week's Collect prayed that we might find the way of the Cross to be the way of life, and peace. We prayed today for deliverance from the bands of sin — or, if you like, that God would direct us to a new way of being.

It's good, I think, that our two remaining studies on passages from Ezekiel are both about the gift of life: the dry bones of chapter 37, and the living water flowing from the temple, of chapter 47. Perhaps God will be using those to direct us in what we shall be, a new creation.

But I suspect that the problem remains, that we are afraid: afraid, even resentful, like the older brother in the story of the prodigal, of the place of celebration, the giftedness of others; he just couldn't accept the gift of his brother's return. I suspect that it's some sort of fear which holds us back from the sacrament of reconciliation, because we somehow don't want to see that it's about being directed to a new experience of being in Christ. Lord God, compassionate, direct what we shall be, take away our fear of the fullness and newness of life and peace which you hold out to us in Jesus Christ.