The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
March 25, 2001

Mission Impossible
II Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:11-32

Note: This sermon begins with a person planted in the congregation to interrupt the preacher right as the sermon is to begin, saying they have a package to deliver. When the package gets to the front, the Mission Impossible theme song begins to play, loudly at first and then dropped to the background.  [to play a WAV clip of the Mission Impossible theme while reading this sermon, click here] The package is ripped open to reveal a small tape recorder. The tape is played:

“Robin and James, today you will be initiated by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s body, the church. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to join Christ’s work of reconciliation. You will be using gifts God has given you in this task. Your team on this mission will be baptized believers throughout the world. Good luck Robin and James…. This tape will self destruct in five seconds….”

The theme music to Mission Impossible comes up loud again and then soon reaches the end of the song. The sermon begins.

The tape gave Robin and James their Mission Impossible. Robin and James are to carry out Jesus Christ’s ministry of reconciliation in the world. Reconciliation means to bring something into harmony. To bring things torn apart back together. If that’s true, then how can we reconcile God to the world? Well God has already done the God part. God is ready and willing to mend this fallen world of ours, but the creation, we humans, need to do our part, to reconcile ourselves and our lives to God. No single one of us can make much of a dent at all in changing this world for the better. Not only is the job of reconciling this world to God not easy, it is impossible. Fortunately, Robin and James do not have to reconcile this world to God on their own. Baptism calls all Christians to carry out Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world. We are all working on Robin and James team.

In describing today, James has been saying that he is going to be Batmantized. I think he is probably on to something there. Along with his baptism comes the superhuman task of carrying on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world. It’s what every super hero wants to do. Isn’t Batman’s job really to get the whole town into shape? Doesn’t billionaire Bruce Wayne really want to have a bad-guy free Gotham City? The big difference is that Bruce Wayne as Batman has to go it almost alone. Oh sure there is the boy wonder, Robin and the on again off again assistance of Bat Girl, but most of the time it’s only Batman standing between Gotham City and chaos. James, you are close. You have been given a job worthy of a superhero, but the better analogy is Mission Impossible. That’s the show with a team working together to pull off the job no one could do alone.

Let’s look together at this morning’s reading from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Paul writes that if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. When you stop looking in from the outside and decide to take that step of faith and say yes God I do believe in you and your Son Jesus, the Christ, then “Poof.” It is just like magic. A new creation is made. One minute you are the same old mortal creation and then once you come to faith, you are in Christ and “presto chango” all the old things pass away and you become bright and shiny new. God says “Let’s forget all the past that was bad. Let’s work on reconciling the bad stuff in your life and redeem the problems of the past for the good.”

This act of reconciliation does not happen all at once. God begins a new work in us as we come to believe in him. That new work of reconciliation is an ongoing process. Reconciliation takes time. God slowly shows us how we might let go of baggage from our pasts. God shows us how we can join in the work of reconciliation.

We have a great example of reconciliation in this morning’s Gospel reading. It is usually called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Though I have also heard it better described as the Parable of the Faithful Father. For in the story, one son takes his inheritance early, before his Father has died. The son, who is now known as the Prodigal Son, takes off and quickly spends the money his Father gave him and finds himself slopping the hogs and eating alongside of them out of the trough. The once favored son has sunk so low, but not so low that he doesn’t remember that he can go home. The son plans to return as a servant to his Father. But even before he gets home, his Father runs out to greet him. The Father loves him and warmly welcomes him home. Then there is the second son who stayed home. He gets pretty darn mad at the warm welcome his good for nothing brother receives. The Father is unimpressed reminding the jealous son that he has always enjoyed his Father’s love and all that the Father has will be his. The Father calls on his elder son to join him in rejoicing that the lost son has returned.

The usual way of looking at this parable is that we, at different points in our lives are, either the Prodigal Son or the Elder Jealous Brother. We may be the Prodigal Son, the one away from God needing to be reminded that no matter what we have done, we have not gone too far to return to God’s love. God wants to reach out to us no matter how we have lived. God wants to welcome us home and start over again. On the other hand, we may be the Elder Jealous Brother, the one who has remained faithful to God who doesn’t understand why the person who whooped it up in wild living gets to get away with it. Then the Father reminds us that the one who went off to squander their inheritance did not really get to live a better life and we have always had God’s presence in our lives. In either case, the Faithful Father is God.

However, the service of Baptism calls on us to seek and serve all persons as if they were Jesus Christ and to strive for peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. That sounds a lot more like we are asked to be the Father in the story. We are the ones to accept the Prodigal Son back and we are the one to counsel the jealous brother. We are the ones to carry out the work of reconciling the world to God. The truth is that we are at times all three of the persons in the story. We are the prodigal son, the jealous son, and the faithful father. Sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we get it right. But always God is calling us to acknowledge that we are all three. It’s OK that we don’t always do everything just right. It’s OK that we can’t always play the role of the faithful father. For in the end the Faithful Father really is God’s role. We are just called to do what we can with the gifts God has given us.

I’m sorry Robin and James, but baptism will not solve all of your problems. Look around you at your team on this Mission Impossible. We are all a group of flawed folks doing the best we can. God is always with us, beside us, inside us, working in us, through us and in spite of us to reconcile this fallen, sinful world to the Godly ideal.

We are all to pick up where Jesus left off. We become Jesus’ eyes to see what is wrong in this world. We become Jesus’ heart to love others. We become Jesus’ hands to hold someone in need. In doing this, we don’t become Christ. We become Christ’s ambassadors. We go out into the world taking our faith with us. None of us can be the super hero and save the world on our own. But each of us can join together to form the team to take on the Impossible Mission that Jesus began with his ministry, life, death and resurrection. Each of us can try to live into the Baptismal Covenant we are about to join Robin and James in reaffirming. As we try to make that covenant real in our lives we will be joining Christ in the ministry of reconciliation.

Amen.