4th Sunday in Lent--Year C

4th Sunday in Lent—Year C March 10, 2013 There is a restlessness in my soul. Sometimes I try to fill it by busy--ness. Sometimes I try to fill it by mindless pursuits. Sometimes I try to fill it with accomplishments, perfectionism, food or drink, shallow, soulless books, or other things. There is a restlessness in my soul, a kind of lost-ness. I see it in you too, this restlessness in your souls. I see how you try to fill it with various and sundry things—with some of the things that I use to try to fill my soul and with other things: exercise, always thinking about or planning the next big thing, a kind of literal transience—moving from place to place physically, spiritually, and in relationships. I see this restlessness in dissatisfaction and complaints, in the ways that you drink too much or use too much prescription medication (or other kinds of drugs); I see it in your anger and in your hopelessness and in your depression. I know this restlessness that drives you, for I feel it too. I see this restlessness in the journey of the Prodigal Son in Jesus’s famous parable, and I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t why it is so well known, so well beloved—because it gives a face to our restlessness. It is this restlessness that causes the younger son to leave his comfortable home and go searching to fill his restlessness. It is this restlessness that motivates him to make bad choices, to squander his money, and it is this restlessness that leads him to what the AA community calls “his rock bottom,” sharing the food and dwelling place of the pigs he has been hired to care for. And the intriguing thing about this parable is that it is in that one moment, when he realizes that he is truly lost, when he realizes exactly where his restlessness has brought him, it is in that moment that Jesus tells us that “he came to himself.” In a famous quote that speaks across the centuries, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” It is what Paul is talking about in 2nd Corinthians when he writes, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation…We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” It is what the children of Israel experience in our reading from Joshua today as they are nearing the end of their 40 years of wandering, restlessness, exile, and homelessness. And they stop, just outside the promised land, to keep Passover as God has taught them, before they return home. It is what is meant by this meditation from SSJE brother Curtis Almquist titled Desire. “God is our desire, behind our desire, before our desire, beyond our desire. God is using this potent, sometimes gnawing gift of desire—which springs from God’s own heart—to lead us, like with bread crumbs, to a door which we might not have otherwise chosen or even recognized in this life. Instead, that door is home.” (Curtis Almquist’s meditation for 3/7/13) “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” So what is one way to still our restlessness, to find our home and our rest in God? It is in and through worship. In the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lenten book for this year, titled Abiding by Ben Quash, Quash writes about how we are caught between this paradox of our call to abide in God and the inherent nature of being in exile that comes with following Christ. He writes about how the younger son in this week’s parable “came to himself” and returned home from his self-imposed exile, and he says that the same thing can happen to us in worship. The younger son heard the call of his father’s home across the miles, and so can we. He writes, “Worship is the response of our whole being to the call of God; it is a repeated ‘turning towards home, running towards the embrace of God’s welcoming arms.” For us Episcopalians, our liturgy makes it very clear that worship is about offering our hearts to God. Every week, I say to you, “Lift up your hearts!” And you say back to me, “We lift them up [un]to the Lord!” We gather here week after week after week because our restlessness drives us away from God toward other things; we gather here because, as the old hymn puts it, we are “prone to wander”; we gather here because we deliberately choose to be in exile, and so week after week, we need to deliberately return to God, in and through worship, again and again and again. We come here week after week so that we may “come to ourselves” and heed the call of the loving parent to return home. This week, just as I was sitting down to write this sermon, I ran across a lovely little song that gets right to the heart of our restless wandering and our return home to God that we are invited to join the Prodigal Son in. The song is called “Home to You,” and it is by a group called The Peasall Sisters. Here are the first verse and the chorus. “I’ve been travelin’ this road for miles/trying to get to where you are/and though you’re tellin’ me the way to go; but I just can’t hear you over my heart. Give me grace to make it through the night. Give me faith so I can see the light. Give me strength so I can make it home…to you, home to you, home to you.”i. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” So I say to you, “Lift up your hearts!” “We lift them up [un]to the Lord!” i. Here's the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KIF7xMBgBc&sns=fb