March 30, 2025 – The Fourth Sunday in Lent
Zane Scarlett
Today is the fourth Sunday of Lent. Rose Sunday. That time in Lent when our lectionary forbears decided that we can take a small break from the darkness of Lent. After last week’s Gospel about people dying sudden and violent deaths, a little lighter tone is welcome. The theme running through today’s lessons is “coming home.” “Home” can mean many things, but I think at its core “home” means where you want to be and where you feel you have a part. Home can be with family. Paul told the Christians of Corinth that we are a new creation in Christ and that we are all family because of Christ. The old cliché is that “home is where the heart is.” If the heart is love, then home is wherever one goes to find the love we all desire. We want to be recognized, to be seen, to be loved. When we find that, we are home. That might be back to where we came from, or it might be someplace new.
When I was younger, I used to hear of people going off to find themselves. That was a large movement back in the 1960s. A lot of young people left home and family, left school, left society, and went in search of who they were. I never did that; maybe I was not lost so did not need to be found, or maybe I just did not know enough to look. Maybe I’m still looking and have not found it yet. Some of those people who did leave, later came back. Some found what they were looking for somewhere else.
All of this may sound strikingly similar to today’s Gospel lesson. A young man who leaves home and family to find himself out on his own. After wandering and being tempted in a foreign land, in his wilderness, he comes to realize that his true self is back where he left it. His true identity is as a beloved member of his family. His true worth can only be found where he is seen and loved for who he has been all along. He belongs back with the father who loved him enough to let him go out and find this truth for himself. Of course, Jesus told this parable in hopes that the Pharisees and Scribes might understand why he was associating and eating with tax collectors and sinners, and to express the inexhaustible love and forgiveness that God has for us all. A love for those who leave and for those who stay. A love so great that God will allow us to leave and search other places and fail in that search, and when we find ourselves and return home to family, God will embrace us and celebrate and love us and welcome us home. God stands at the side of the road looking for our return because God’s house is empty without us. God’s home is our heart.
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the John Denver Sanctuary in Aspen, Colorado. This is a garden area in the heart of town that is a memorial to the music and the person of John Denver. I think that he was a spiritual person in search of himself. In one of his more autobiographical songs, “Rocky Mountain High,” he wrote “He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year, coming home to a place he’d never been before.” John Denver was one of those persons who found himself somewhere other than where he had begun. When he came to Aspen, Colorado, he was reborn and found himself at home in the mountains, in nature, in the love and acceptance that the people of Aspen had for him. It was a new place, but it was home. It was where he belonged.
In our Old Testament lesson, Joshua has brought the people of Israel across the Jordan River into the land that had been their goal for forty years. This group of people who crossed the river was not the same group that had left Egypt. That group of people had been wandering because they had forgotten their faith. That lack of faith had kept them from the fulfillment of God’s covenant. So until that group had all died the people of Israel could not find a home. This new group of people declared their desire to follow the Lord by being circumcised. Circumcision was an action that bound them together as a group and it was a sign of God’s covenant with that group. God’s covenant was that these people of Israel would possess this land. This act of faith was one of the things that had been neglected during the wandering in the wilderness. So as the first act in this new land, Joshua circumcised all of the males of the group. The Lord saw this as a good sign, as an act of faith, and declared that the disgrace of having been an enslaved people was removed from them. They were now a free people. This was a new family of people in a new home and they were free. They were reborn into a home where they had never been. As a celebration of the joy for this new life, the people shared the Passover meal, in remembrance of their being brought out of slavery by the miraculous actions and love of God. This further showed their determination to follow the Lord in this new life. This too pleased the Lord, and as a sign that they were now home, the people were able to eat the food produced by the land, their land. They no longer had to eat the manna that symbolized their wandering. A price of their freedom was that they would have to provide for themselves. But they were home. God had been watching for them, God had been waiting for them to complete their wandering, and God welcomed them when they finally found themselves and found whose children they were. We are like those people of Israel. We have been enslaved to sin and we want to be free. Jesus came as a man who taught and lived and showed us the way to freedom. He died so that we could find the way out of our wilderness. He rose from the tomb so that we can have a home with him. Like the people of Israel, we should show our gratitude by living and showing our faith. God is waiting to celebrate with us.
In this season of Lent, as we wander with Christ in the wilderness that is life, as we fast and pray and meditate on who we are and where we should be, as we confess our failures in our relationships with God and with each other, let us remember that we have a home. If it is a place we have always been, or if it is a place we have never been before, God is standing by the road watching for us, waiting for us to arrive. God is waiting to celebrate with us with a meal. As we hear in the invitation to communion, “this is the table of Jesus Christ. So come to this table…you who have been here often, and you who have not been here for a while or ever before…It is Christ who invites you to be known and loved and fed here.” That is an invitation to come home. It is an invitation to be with your family. So come on home, le