This congregation is in the midst of a New Member class series that will complete next week. It is a wonderful group of varied backgrounds and interests and faith experiences. You will meet them on Palm Sunday when they exchange public commitments with God and with you as part of the membership ritual. When asked about their reason for wanting to join this particular church, several people said, "I visited various churches and, for me, at Westminster it feels like I am coming home." Now, we did not have a great deal of time to analyze what that meant for them. Several said they were grateful for the Church school program; others, for the variety of classes and mission programs; and others, for the encouragement to think and wrestle over sermon topics. Those are all important parts of church community life. But church studies, as well as my gut level feeling, tells me that the reason a church feels like coming home is that someone, or several someone’s, have looked each of these people in the eye during the past few months and said, "Hello, I’m glad you are here." In a way that was not superficial but was welcoming and sincere. It is not likely that they are feeling judged or analyzed or measured by the person in the next pew. If they were, it would be just like so many other places in our worlds where we do feel that way, where we sense that our faults are begin counted and we are not quite sure if we measure up to expectations. For any of us to feel at home here we need to experience God’s love and acceptance active in our relationships within this congregational, as well as a commitment to carry that love and acceptance out beyond the church doors.

In his Gospel, Luke recorded Jesus’ parable that we call "The Prodigal Son," a portion of which was read this morning. The section was introduced in chapter 15 with these words, "The tax collectors and sinners were all crowding round to listen to Jesus. The Pharisees and scribes complained saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’" Could Paul have been one of the Pharisees watching, listening and complaining about Jesus? Paul, who wrote our second lesson, the letter to the Corinthians, did not use the Greek name Paul during the time of Jesus’ ministry you’ll remember, but was Saul, a Pharisee. Luke wrote both the gospel and also the Acts of the Apostles. It is not until Acts that Saul is mentioned but he was certainly aware of Jesus during his ministry. At the time there were conflicts between various Jewish groups of which Jesus and his followers were one. The Pharisees were experts in the interpretation of the Jewish law and of ritual – the laws included who one should or should not welcome among them and with whom one could eat at the same table. Paul was a religious man, a member of a respected Hebrew family from the tribe of Benjamin and was also a Roman citizen. Circumcised when he was eight days old, he was taught the Jewish laws under one of the most well known teachers of the time. He boasted in a letter to the Church in Philippi, that as for the uprightness embodied in the Law, he was faultless. (Phil. 3:6). So, if he had been standing there listening to Jesus tell the story of the wandering Prodigal Son and the reunion with his father, or if Saul had merely heard of the story later through someone else’s telling; in either case Saul would certainly have had trouble making sense of it, might even have thought it was subversive. Like the older brother in the story, Saul could easily list the faults of the younger. Asking their father for his inheritance was tantamount to treating him as if he were already dead and a far cry from honoring their father as taught in the Fifth Commandment. The son squandered his father’s money and then returned home with the smell of the pig farms on his clothing. He had spent time with unclean animals, and in hunger even considered eating the cornhusks that were fed to the pigs. In the end, though, his loving father recognized him from far away and ran to welcome him home. Before even bathing, the son was dressed in the best robe and asked to sit at the same table with their father and the family. The party was planned and underway before the son barely had the chance to get the words out of his mouth asking for forgiveness. The older son was encouraged by the father to forgive his brother and join in the celebration but as the story ends, we are not told if he could bring himself to do so. If Saul heard this story directly from Jesus’ telling or was aware of it in the community, we wonder if he wrestled with the meaning. Could this story of complete reversal, of new creation of the life of the young son have touched a cord with Saul? Could it have brought to his mind a verse he would have known from the Prophet Isaiah, a remembrance of the return from the Exile of the Jewish people, "Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges; can you not see it?" (Is. 43:19)

But Saul went on with his life. He was a respected and feared man and not likely to have wanted to give up that position in society. He held a key role in the stoning of Jesus’ follower, Stephen. He did great harm to the young churches going house-to-house and putting women and men into prison. Still threatening Jesus’ disciples, he traveled to Damascus with letters of authorization allowing him to arrest and take back to Jerusalem any followers that he might find.

Then, suddenly, along the way to Damascus, Saul was blindsided. He and those near him heard a voice, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Get up and go into the city and you will be told what you are to do." Without sight for three days, Saul and his followers located a disciple, Ananias. Saying, "This man Saul is my chosen instrument," Jesus led Ananias to lay his hands on Saul. The scales fell away from his eyes and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Saul immediately began teaching and preaching in the synagogues that "Jesus is the Son of God," confusing everyone. It was Saul, that we now call Paul, who wrote the letter to the Church at Corinth, which included the message, "See, everything has become new!"

It is God who invites us to be in relationship with God and with each other. As the father reached out to both sons, as Jesus reached out to Saul, God reaches out to us assuring us that our faults are not being counted against us. Paul, from his own experience, told the Corinthians that God doesn’t judge by human standards and encourages them, and us, to do the same. Though he had persecuted and imprisoned others, he was still wanted as God’s instrument. Is it possible for us to truly believe, down deep inside of us, that we are not judged by the mistakes we have made? Or by our "accomplishments", the title on our business cards or by the make of our automobile or by the zip code of our address or by the grades or sports awards of our children or by the amount of our stock options? All that God asks is that we be ambassadors for Christ, refusing to judge by human standards and welcoming others to our community and to our table. As Ananias, the welcoming father, and finally Paul allowed themselves to be instruments, may we in this body of Christ, continue to do the same.

In closing, I’d like to share a quote from a new book called "CREDO," by William Sloan Coffin, (page 6.) "Because our value is a gift, we don’t have to prove ourselves, only to express ourselves, and what a world of difference there is between proving ourselves and expressing ourselves."