Rev. David Inglis September 19, 2004

Luke 15:11-24

Before we hear the scripture lesson, I want to invite you try to get in touch with what your soul most longs for in this life. Go beneath the level of a nicer house, financial security, or, if you have a baby at home, two good nights of sleep in a row. Go real deep. What does your innermost being yearn for?

I asked that question of our Tuesday morning Bible Study group. As I read their responses, see how many of them resonate with you: love, peace, acceptance, and joy. How many of you have a deep desire for these things? Stay in touch with that desire as you listen to today’s scripture lesson. It’s one of the most familiar stories in the Bible. Like most of the Bible, it was told many times before it was ever written down and read, so I’m going to tell it to you today.

Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger son said to his father, ‘I want you to give me my share of the inheritance now.’ So his father divided his property between his two sons.

A few days later the younger son packed up all he had and traveled to a distant country. There he squandered his property in loose living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to go hungry. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him to feed his pigs. He got so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs started looking good to him. But nobody gave him anything.

When he finally came to himself, he said, ‘At home even the hired servants have more than enough food to eat, and here I am starving. I will go home to my father and say, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Please take me on as a hired hand.’ So he started back towards home.

His father saw him coming towards him in the distance. His heart was filled with love and compassion. He pulled off his cloak and began to run. As he approached his dusty, defeated son, his arms opened, and his son fell into them." Your bulletin cover shows the scene as depicted by Kristin Malone. In that embrace, don’t you see our soul’s deepest desires flowing into the son–love, peace, acceptance, and joy? He is coming home to his father, yes, and he is also coming home to himself. And so the father calls for him to be given the best robe, a ring for his finger, and shoes for his feet, to restore him to his place as a beloved son. What he has done and the mistakes he has made are not as important as who he is–the beloved son of his father.

Jesus never gave us a detailed description of God. But of all the things he said, this story perhaps helps us picture God the clearest.

Now let me take you to another divine embrace. This one is described by Betty Eadie in her book Embraced by the Light. Betty was recovering from surgery in a hospital when she began hemorrhaging. Before she could summon a nurse, she lost consciousness, experienced herself floating out of her body, traveling to her house where she saw her husband taking care of their children, and then traveling through a dark tunnel towards a distant light. She writes,

Here again we see a coming home to God and to oneself in a divine embrace of unconditional love. And we see a soul filling up with love, peace, acceptance, and joy.

Jesus began his ministry by proclaiming, "Behold, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the good news!" What is this kingdom of God that was the central theme of Jesus’ teachings and actions? I have been coming to experience the kingdom of God as the deep reality, the creative dynamic, the powerful potentialities that are created by God’s eternal embrace of unconditional love. That divine embrace will welcome us home to ourselves and home to God when our life on earth is over. But we don’t have to wait until we’re dead to live in it. That was Jesus’ point in his story of the prodigal son. That divine embrace can welcome us home to God and to our true selves at any point in our lives.

"Behold, look, wake up, the kingdom of God is at hand"–right here and right now. Jesus also said "The kingdom of God is within you"–or "in the midst of you," or "among you." The same Greek word can be translated all of those ways, and all of them are true.

As the quote from an unknown author in our silent meditation in the bulletin says,

You can watch the news or hear your children yelling at each other and say this talk of the kingdom and love and God are nothing more than spiritual hot air. But many of you have been touched by this kingdom and know its reality. You might have been inexplicably filled with a peace that passes understanding and surpasses all deserving. You might have experienced God’s embrace or amazing grace when you were at the end of your rope. You might have felt a bigger kingdom than this world surrounding you when you gazed up at the stars or watched a brilliant sunset, and felt your soul quietly saying, "How great thou art." You might have felt the door to that kingdom open when the barriers came down between you and another person, and you touched each other’s souls. I hope you have been touched by God’s kingdom here as we open ourselves to God’s renewing Spirit and reflect it into each other’s lives. This kingdom is indeed at hand, within us, in our midst, and among us.

What does it take to find it? "Repent," Jesus says. "To repent" means "to turn around," so we often think of it as meaning turning away from our sins. And that’s often part of what’s required. But like the prodigal son, the main part of repenting is turning toward home. To repent means to turn toward God, to know we need God and want God–and we want God and need God enough to make a change, to orient our lives towards God. To enter the kingdom of God, we have to leave behind the false kingdom we have created with ourselves on the throne, and let God be the sovereign of our life. We have to submit our willful egos to God’s perfect will of love for us and for all creation. And God always welcomes us into the divine embrace, because who we are is always more important than what we have done. We can deny and violate our true nature, but we can never erase it.

So Jesus says, "Behold, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the good news." What does it mean to believe this amazing, radically transforming good news? Wouldn’t it mean to open to it, to trust it, to place the weight of your life on it? What would it mean to live with the assurance that nothing you have ever done stops God from loving you completely and inviting you to come home to God’s eternal embrace? What would it mean to live with the awareness that no matter what trials or challenges you face, God’s loving presence surrounds you, goes ahead of you and goes with you to help you meet them? What would it mean to know that the kingdom of God always lies ready for you to discover it and behold it–with you, in our midst, and among us? What would it mean to live with the awareness that neither life nor death nor anything in all creation can separate you from God’s love so that you truly have nothing to fear? What would it mean to live in the awareness that every person you meet and hear about has a deep longing for the same things you do–peace, love, acceptance, and joy–and everything they do is an expression of those desires or a cry of pain for their lack of them? What would it mean to know that your divine purpose in this life is to fulfill your soul’s deepest desire by sharing love, peace, extending acceptance, and celebrating joy, so that God’s kingdom comes, and God’s will is done, on earth, even through you, as it is in heaven?

We here are created to be kingdom dwellers and kingdom creators. That’s what we’re about. And we are equipped to do just that. We can’t do it alone. But we can do it together, as we each offer our gifts and open our hearts and extend our hands in the spirit of love. We can feel the energy of God’s kingdom growing in us when we gather, can’t we? We can feel our soul’s deepest longing for peace, love, acceptance, and joy begin to be filled, as we receive God’s embrace just as we are, and share it with others. Isn’t that a beautiful, awesome thing that happens within us and in the midst of us and among us?

What is your soul’s deepest longing? Do you hear God’s call to come home to God, to come home to yourself, to live the life God created you to live?

Jesus said, "Behold, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the good news!" Let’s just take a minute to sit in holy silence together as we let ourselves come home to God’s eternal embrace and come into God’s kingdom.