Perspectives
Lent 4
March 30, 2025
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
I need two volunteers this morning. First, is there anyone here who has perfect or very good vision without glasses or contacts? Second, who has the worst vision and is wearing glasses?
If we take the strong glasses off of the person who needs them, they cannot see properly. Likewise, if we put strong glasses on otherwise good, strong eyes, they cannot see properly either. It isn’t a matter of effort; each can try as hard as they can, but that won’t help much if at all. We cannot see unless our perspective is correct. And we really do not see the world the same way.
In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is trying to teach the Pharisees and scribes a crucial lesson about perspective. They are criticizing Jesus for eating with sinners. In their view, they lived by standards set by God. “Those people did not and do not. We live by them, they don’t.” That seems very straightforward to them, but clearly it is not.
This morning’s parable, the Prodigal Son, is one of the two most beloved parables, along with the Good Samaritan, because it illustrates God’s heart, God’s desire to rescue us, and the way we need to see him and each other. To understand this issue of perspective, we need to recognize that this is the third parable Jesus told in response to their criticism. The first two were the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin.
How do sheep get lost? They wander off. Sheep don’t really have any sense, that was bred out of them thousands of years before. It’s really not their fault at all. Likewise, a coin is lost by negligence or by accident. It’s not the coin’s fault. People can get lost by accident. People can get lost by the grinding forces of events and circumstances beyond their control. This isn’t either of those.
The Prodigal Son is lost by choice; really a series of very bad choices. He chose to ask for his inheritance early. Patience is a virtue, and he was very impatient. Next, he chose to leave his home, his network of support and encouragement and wisdom. He chose to go to an unfamiliar place, a distant country, where he continued to make terrible choices. “Dissolute living” and squandering everything he had was extremely foolish.
Then, once he has spent everything he had, the famine comes, putting him in even worse circumstances. He is literally starving. All of these are very natural consequences of his foolishness, his sin of pride in himself, in rejecting his father’s house, his father’s wisdom, his father’s love, to satisfy his very base and short term desires. On one level, he very much deserves the fruit of his decisions. Just deserts, we say.
That is where the Pharisees would leave him. “You made your bed, now lie in it.”
We can see the contrast in perspectives. On one hand, tax collectors and sinners are like people whose vision is terribly impaired, such as they are not seeing clearly at all. What they really need is correction that must eventually come from within, but may be encouraged by offering them corrective lenses. Once they gain true vision, they can move forward in life.
On the other hand, the Pharisees and scribes are like people whose eyes should work perfectly well, but they have heaped on lenses of personal judgment that distort everything, and they’re no longer able to see the wayward and the sinful through God’s eyes. That is so wrong. God has always called his people home, called his people back to repentance, called his people back to his covenant.
And the story continues. The younger brother’s very heartfelt repentance, even though born out of his desperation, gets him on the right path. He’s being very practical about it, only expecting that being back in his home country, back in his network of support, he can at least labor and survive.
Judging people as they are, without regard to what they might become, imposes a cruel denial of their potential in God. This young man has his epiphany out of desperation, but most often God coaxes his people to repentance. He sends prophets to warn them and to call them. He sends leaders to lead them. He never just leaves them. Ultimately, he sent us Jesus.
That is a very clear caution for leaders in our faith not to get wrapped up in our own sense of righteousness and separating ourselves from the people in the world that God is calling us to reach. Next, comes a caution for everyone who is in the flow of faith, like you.
Let’s be honest, we could easily resent good fortune coming to those who do not by our reckoning deserve it. Any of us could be like that older brother, faithful in our day-to-day, living and working, faithful in our day-to-day prayer and service, quietly doing our best to follow Jesus. Then we see someone who got saved yesterday, or worse gets recognized publicly for doing something good when we’ve been doing good all the time and no one ever said anything publicly nice about us!
The father’s caution for his older son is at once a mild rebuke, but also a beautiful reassurance of the value of his steadfast faithfulness in all things. If we are right with God, when we are working toward being right with God, we have nothing to worry about. So don’t create something to worry about!
And to the extent that we stumble and fail as we all do, remember that any and every time we repent, our father, who art in heaven, is standing at the top of the road, not just waving at us and cheering us along, but running to us with his great love and joy.
Whatever the state of our personal vision, if we are in Christ, he is in the process of correcting it along the lines described by Paul in this passage from second Corinthians. We regard no one from a human point of view.
I want to be very clear here. Scripture does not support the idea that everyone is getting saved no matter what. They can be saved, but there is a choice we each need to make. Love is a choice. Love God, love our neighbor. Receive Jesus.
However, we do not know if, when, or how someone might be saved. You could have someone in the very depths of horrible sinful behavior, and attitudes that would be entirely condemnable. But then, Jesus gets hold of them. It could be years after your chance encounter with them or you are seeing them on the news or something. We just don’t know. Remember, it is their choice. God’s desire is for everyone to be saved, and we ought to be agents of that hope.
That doesn’t mean we put ourselves at undue risk. It doesn’t mean there are no consequences for crime or boundaries that need to be drawn.
It does mean that we are called to show each other a tremendous amount of patience and understanding. People have bad days, people make mistakes, people say things that may come across the wrong way, even though they intended it differently. People sometimes just say stupid stuff. And while there may be accountability for words and actions that don’t build the kingdom, we do not regard each other from that human point of view. We see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.
And we are to remember, always, that this very reconciliation that Christ is working between heaven and earth, he is working within each of us. That’s the basis for the T-shirts that say “God isn't finished with me yet.” Certainly I’m not seeing as clearly as I should. Certainly. So maybe your counsel will help me to see a little better, will help me be a little better, and maybe I can help you do the same. Not trying to force our own perspectives on others, but drawing us altogether into his perspective so that we can bless the world in his name.
AMEN