The Parable of Steps 4 and 5

A Sermon by Dean of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, the Very Reverend Dr. Michael Sniffen, Co-Founder and Vowed Member of the Community of the Incarnation

The Return of the Prodigal Son (1920), Anto Carte, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lent 4C 2025 - Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

In the name of the God who meets us in the far country, in the pigpen, in the silence of night, and on the road home. AMEN.

If you’ve ever found yourself walking in the dark—not just the physical kind, but the deep inner dark where you can’t quite tell where you are or who you are anymore—then you already know something about grace.
You know, perhaps, that it does not always arrive on the mountaintop, or with the sunrise. Sometimes it slips in quietly when we are at our most lost, most uncertain, most ashamed.

Tonight, we walk into the familiar story of the Prodigal Son—but maybe not with floodlights this time. Tonight, we walk by feel. We walk by the dark.

My fellow Priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, in her luminous book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, invites us to ask: what if darkness is not the absence of God, but the dwelling place of God? What if what feels like disconnection is the very beginning of return?

The younger son in our gospel tonight makes the kind of decision only someone running from themselves can make. He gathers up everything—his inheritance, his illusions, his entitlement—and walks off into a distant country.

There, the story goes, he squanders everything in dissolute living. You can fill that in however you like. If you need inspiration, you can watch the current season of White Lotus. But notice: the turning point doesn’t come with a plan. It doesn’t even come with regret. The turning point comes with hunger.

“When he came to himself…” That’s the phrase. That’s the awakening. That’s the moment of encounter.

“When he came to himself…” there, in the wreckage of his choices, in a pigsty, in the belly of want and shame, he begins to remember home. Not as an entitlement. Not as a reward. But as a mercy. He remembers a father whose servants have bread. He remembers that maybe—just maybe—he can return not to status, but to relationship. Not to control, but to belonging.

This Lent, we’ve been exploring the questions that arise in the dark. Not the kind of questions that seek answers so much as the kind that seek Presence. And isn’t that the heart of the prodigal’s journey? Of our journey? A return not to certainty, but to presence. A return to embrace.

In the Community of the Incarnation, we embrace the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are an integral part of our spirituality—not as a ladder to climb but as a spiral of returning, of remembering. And in Lent, Steps Four and Five stand out as waypoints on the road home:

• Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

• Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

These are steps that take us directly into the dark. Not to be punished—but to be found. These steps are not about wallowing in guilt. They are about honesty that heals. Truth that sets free. They are about recognizing that our alienation—like the younger son’s—is not the end of the story, but the beginning of homecoming.

...“When he came to himself…” there, in the wreckage of his choices, in a pigsty, in the belly of want and shame, he begins to remember home.

This is nothing less than Step Four.

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

It may not be written in a journal. It may not happen in a meeting. But the son begins to face the truth of who he has become—and what that truth costs him. The illusion is gone. The story he told himself—that he could find freedom without belonging, joy without relationship, life without love—it crumbles.

And in its place, something tender and true begins to rise: a desire for mercy. This is not just a realization—it is the first prayer of a new life.

He rehearses his confession. He tells himself the truth: “I have sinned against heaven and before you.” He lets go of the fantasy of deserving, and takes hold of the hope of being received. This is the beating heart of Step Five:

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

What begins in the dark with honesty becomes a pilgrimage home. A movement toward the other. A risk to be seen and known and not turned away. He returns not only to his father, but to his own humanity. And in that sacred return, we see what these steps are really about: not moral accounting, but radical restoration.

Steps Four and Five are not mechanical. They are not sterile. They are the stuff of holy vulnerability. They are the practice of becoming real again—of shedding the masks we’ve worn in the far country, and trusting that we are still welcome at the table.

So if you find yourself tonight in a kind of pigpen—in shame, in confusion, in distance—know this: the invitation is not to fix yourself before you return. The invitation is to take the first true step. To come to yourself. To begin that searching and fearless look within. And to trust that your confession—however tangled, however trembling—will not be met with judgment, but with embrace.

We all have far countries. We all have moments when we feel so disconnected—from God, from others, from ourselves—that we wonder if we’ll ever find the road again. But perhaps disconnection is not the opposite of spiritual life. Perhaps it is the beginning of a deeper spiritual life. Perhaps God is not waiting for us at the end of the road but walking it with us. Perhaps the pigpen is not God-forsaken at all.

Taylor reminds us that “new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb—it starts in the dark.” And I believe the prodigal’s return started there too—in that dark night of hunger, of truth-telling, of remembering.

And what does he find when he returns? He doesn’t even get the full confession out before he is interrupted by grace. He is not shamed. He is not scolded. He is embraced. Robed. Fed. Welcomed home not because he deserves it, but because he is loved.

That’s the invitation tonight. Not to earn our way home, but to allow ourselves to be loved back into life. That’s what Steps Four and Five offer us: not condemnation, but the courage to look honestly at our lives—and to let God meet us there.

Beloved of God, your darkness is not wasted. Your disconnection is not final. Your story is not over.

Let this Lent be the season you come to yourself. Let it be the season you take the risk of looking honestly at your life—not to prove anything, but to be healed. Let it be the time you speak your truths aloud, to God, to yourself, to another trusted soul—and let grace interrupt you mid-sentence.

The road home is rising to meet your feet. The dark is the place of divine encounter. The Father is already running toward you.

The Very Rev. Dr. Michael Sniffen is a co-founder of the Center for Spiritual Imagination and serves concurrently as Dean of the Cathedral of the Incarnation and Dean of the Mercer School of Theology. An expert in ritual theory and the role of pilgrimage in spiritual life, he teaches worship, preaching and the arts in several graduate programs. He has served as a fellow of the Center for Christianity in Global Contexts at Drew University and as a founding member of the Racial Justice Advisory Council of the Brooklyn Community Foundation. Michael was a lead organizer in the Occupy Sandy mutual aid movement. He was commissioned in 2021 as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy Chaplain Corps. Michael has a particular interest in building community among those who consider themselves 'spiritual but not religious.'