An Outrageous Father and a Ne'er do Well Son

So, the Prodigal Son, better named the Outrageous Father, is a story about a father with two sons.

The younger one is an upstart, full of himself, confident of his own ability.  He asks for and receives his part of the inheritance (effectively saying to his Father, "you are as good as dead to me") turns all that cattle into cash and takes a trip to a  foreign land where he immediately spends all his money. Then there is a famine and no one knows him and no one will help him.

He gets a job feeding pigs.  Think about that for a moment:  a Jew feeding pigs....and he is so hungry he is tempted to eat the pig food.  "Aha! he exclaims."' My Father treats his hired hands better than this....I will go home, apologize profusely and offer to work as his servant."

And so a plan is hatched.  He rehearses his speech before he arrives.  "Father I have sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son."  You have to admit, it's a very good apology.  This young man is repentent and humble, a very good combination for getting our sympathy.

We are more than ready to make a path back into the family for this son.  Perhaps a few years of difficult work.  Perhaps he will always be a hired hand.  Perhaps he will have to take his meals at the 'kids table' in the future.  But we can see a way back for this son.

So can the father.  He sees him far off and runs to meet him - throws his arm around him and does everything but dance a jig. " Hurry! he calls. "Kill the fatted calf.  My son has returned and we must celebrate."

So if God is the Father in this parable, then we can well imagine that God has enough love to welcome back the younger son, even to throw him a party.  It gives us comfort to encounter this God because we want a God who has enough love to cover us when we act like idiots and wander off into our equivalent of pig country and find ourselves stuck in the mud.

We are grateful for a God whose love is this big because this is the God we want to encounter as we prepare our repentent cries and seek the Lord's favor.  We want to face a God who has room in his heart for a broken person, especially one who is repentent and humble.....as it should be, especially for those who are working very hard to be good. These are exactly the kind of people God's love should cover.

If only Luke had stopped there, we could have twisted this little parable into any number of interpretations that require the broken ones to work their way back to the Father.  We could have rested easy with a God who loves the occassionally lost one.

The problem is there is one more son, and his is an entirely different story....that, and on any given day, we are either one of the two.

The preaching life...a spiritual journey

Now, this may be of absolutely no interest to you, but if we are going to be talking about spiritual growth then perhaps it has some pertinence.  Many folks will ask, "How do you do what you do?"  and generally they mean 'stand in front of a lot of people and talk.'

But the larger, and to me more important question, is how to tap into the Spirit's guiding, how to find a message in ancient stories about the faith and help folks see the connection to the conundrums of present day faith. And that gets at the spiritual life of the preacher.


A recent quote posted on facebook got me to thinking about this when contemplating the parable of the Tax Collector and Pharisee (Luke 18). The Pharisee was arrogant, self-serving and self-congratulating when presenting himself before God.  The tax collector couldn't even look up to the heavens and begged "Lord have mercy on me, a poor sinner."  We all know that the Tax Collector gets it and the Pharisee doesn't.  We know there is a tendency among people of faith to ground our relationship with God in 'right behavior' instead of in God's mercy and grace.  The preacher's job is to re-align folks and to do that, the preacher must put away her own self-serving and self-dependent ways first.  Some thoughts..........

It is called the parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee.  It’s at the very least a parable about prayer, but of course, there is much more at stake here than prayer.  It’s one of those scenarios where the words spoken reveal so much more than was intended.

Jesus sets it up for us with a point by point polarization between these two men, standing their ground in the temple. In the end it is the humble outcast tax collector who is standing in the light of God, for he went home justified.  My fear is that I am the Pharisee.  How do I become the tax collector?

How do I strip away my alb, stole and collar….my fancy prayers and professional liturgy and advanced education…How do I strip away my place at center stage and an office of my own so I can get all the way down to my underwear…and stand in humility before God?

Because humility is not the place I regularly inhabit.  It seems so easy to get lost, to lose track of the radicalness of following Jesus – the emptying and filling that comes by God’s hand.  I am not overwhelmed with my need for reconciliation with God....and I’m not talking about the large betrayals that are truth in my life, but those hidden moments of quiet despair: when I must face the fact that my skills, and gifts and experience are not enough for the task before me…..and they will never be enough. 

Not enough to serve as I’d hoped to serve – both the people of God and the good news of Jesus Christ. Or perhaps more truthfully, not enough to perform the way I had hoped to perform.  And with that I fall into the great chasm of right behavior and religious sensibilities, losing hold on the kingdom of the cross…. and I am no good to myself or God’s people.

Joel Green in his commentary says that the Pharisee is a man who depends on himself, stands before God without need of God’s mercy and who uses his holiness to exclude others who he disdains.  This is a man whose life is set in opposition to the Kingdom of God. I do not want to be that man.

Yet I know that somehow I want to be the one who in humility receives compassion and restoration from God while retaining all the prerogatives of station and office. So I know that these are the very things that need to be stripped away – these are the things that stand in my way, that keep me from the God I seek to serve. 

To have any kind of integrity, this is the truth I must carry into the pulpit and into the world….along with these words

“Lord, I am not worthy to receive, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

And for a moment, I can step into the pulpit, to pass on – as one broken person to another - the words of grace I have first received, and the healing I have found in the one called Jesus.

For this and all mercies you grant us O Lord, we give thanks.  Amen

To war or not to war

Power is like acid on metal.  It will corrupt, and do it quickly.


We can wish that everyone who is given power uses it to the benefit of all mankind. That won't make it so.

People will convince themselves that their motives are honorable and their actions necessary - no matter what it all looks like to the rest of the world.  We are convinced that at the core, in our heart, we are good, generous people......until we are not.

Human beings take care of themselves and their own self interests. We are blind to the evil that lies within each of us, waiting  to be expressed.  We say, with confidence, "I'd never do that" and then when pushed up against the wall, we go right ahead and do it.  And feel justified; feel no need for repentance, amendment of life, reparation to the victims.

Nations are the sum total of their citizens.  The US has been blessed with a history of balancing interests and relying on situations to right themselves and yet the Civil War points us to a time when our own system failed us.  We couldn't solve that one without killing hundreds of thousands of our own citizens; our social system continues to struggle to right itself and offer true equality to all.

Therefore, we do not have all the answers for all the nations because we are made up of self-interested humans just like they.

The people of Syria and Egypt are struggling mightily against the self-interests of people whose use of power can not be trusted, operating in systems that do not offer the potential for peaceful resolution.

I have no answers, only prayers.  Many will die in this struggle of darkness and light, so I pray for the leaders of all nations that they might have wisdom, courage, discernment and patience.....and a good dose of humility would help as well.

Lord have mercy.

Pride, bragging and the love of God

We have recently survived (although continue to feel the consequences of) the great self-esteem era when feeling good about yourself was no longer tied to hard work, moral uprightness, courage, even kindness and honor.  It didn't take very long for even our youngest children to figure out that praise given cheaply was worth nothing in the long run.  For the theologians among us, this is exactly what Bonhoeffer was talking about when he spoke of 'cheap grace.'

Perhaps this self-esteem era is the reason we trip over any number of folks who are filled with pride with no real substance.  That kind of pride turns into arrogance fairly quickly.  And I could do with fewer arrogant people in my world.

Jesus says, "Do not think too highly of yourself"   [BTW Your mother had the same advice.]  Don't fill your inner void of unworthiness with false pride, bravado and bragging. Rather, take a lower place and put your energy to honoring others.    Which is exactly what Jesus will do for you....because you are loved by the God who created you and the Savior who came to call you into life.  You are a beloved child of God.

The irony of knowing you are beloved will lift you to heights while at the same time leave you humbled to your very core.  Then you will truly understand the call to 'seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.'  

"Your humble servant....."

Is it possible to trust humility? 

Don't we really think that there is some hidden agenda that we just can't discern yet?

Could it be that we have no idea how to act around true humility?

Can you name someone you know that you'd describe as 'humble'?