Like all children, my children love stories – and like all parents I often find myself the story teller. Sometimes the stories come from books: Dr. Seuss, Frog and Toad, Magic School Bus, Curious George. But sometimes the stories are stories I make up. These are never very good stories as far as stories go, but my children love these because there is always a little boy or a little girl in the story. They love these stories because they know they’re in it. They see themselves in the story.
The same is true for us and the parables of Jesus. Truth be told, we like stories too. And when we hear parables we see ourselves in the story. This may be why Jesus’ teaching ministry was so powerful. The gospels tell us that he never taught them without a story. And the gospels also tell us that people were amazed at his teaching. When Jesus taught, the crowds gathered around him, on one occasion pressing him so badly that he taught from a boat pushed out into the water. In his teaching people found themselves. They heard God’s voice and saw their lives.
Of all the stories Jesus told there are none that show us our lives and God’s nature like the story of the prodigal son. There are so many dimensions and levels to this story, and we can easily find ourselves connecting with it in a number of ways.
Many of you resonate with the waiting Father. In the three stories that Luke 15 clusters together, there is a person who loses something: A shepherd searching for a sheep, a woman searching for a son, a Father waiting and looking every day for his son.
To lose something is painful. Earlier this summer I lost a marriage license. As the wedding ended I reminded the couple that I needed the license. They reminded me that they had given it to me at our last meeting. I pretended to remember this and then went straight to my office and looked in my files. I had the envelope to mail the license but no license. I searched everywhere. (Let me add at this point that if you’re reading this and I did your wedding earlier this summer – I’m talking about someone else). The county office involved helped us correct the situation, but about two weeks ago I was moving my office and guess what I found? I felt great rejoicing just like the stories describe.
But your pain may be far more serious than the irritation of losing car keys or a marriag license, especially if (like the younger son) someone you love has gone off. It may be your child. You thought you had raised them to value certain things or to be a certain kind of person, and then one day they made it perfectly clear to you that they weren’t who you thought they were and they had no intention of being who you wanted them to be. They might not have left, they may still be under your roof this very day – but you feel like you’ve lost them.
Some of you have lost a spouse. The person you love has re-directed their affections. They may be in love with their work. They may be in love with someone else. Whatever it is, they’ve gone to a far country, and even when they’re at home they are distant.
There are children here today who have lost their parents; children who perhaps hold on to a hope that Dad or Mom will come home. They may be waiting for mom or dad to get home from the office; they may be hoping they’ll come home again to live.
Our experiences of loss help us connect with the waiting father. But as Jesus told these stories it was clear that we are not the shepherd or the woman or the Father. In this story we are to see ourselves in the sons. We are the ones who need to find our way home. The parable we commonly refer to as the prodigal son is actually a parable about two sons. The story Jesus tells falls into two scenes or acts that focus on each son – both of whom need to come home.
This is obvious when it comes to the younger son. He disgraced his father and his family by asking for his inheritance before his father was dead. His request in effect said “I can’t wait for you to die.” This was far more than a personal insult to the father. The entire community would have known this. He disgraced his family and alienated himself from the community. After this request he had to go to a far country. He couldn’t stay there.
But the older son is also in need of finding his way home. At the end of the story, when the father throws a party for the younger brother, the older son cannot come in. He stands off at a distance – angry, resentful.
This is where we find ourselves. Some of you are far from God because at some point in your life you became convinced that God and faith and religion were the major barrier to having a good time and enjoying the good life. You decided you’d had enough. You walked out on it.
Some of you are a long way from God and you’ve been in church all your life. But though you’ve never walked out you’ve lost the capacity to enter into the joy, the celebration of being a child of the father. You’ve become dutiful.
Your distance from God today may be the distance of youthful rejection; it may be the distance of duty without joy – but whatever it is, the parable calls you to find your way home. That can happen in two ways and we’ll take a look at those in the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment