3.29.09 Lost at Home

Prayer of Calling: God, Our Creator and Redeemer, you are the one before whom we are laid bare. Our fears, our hopes, the things we hide from others and try to hide from ourselves are open to you. We pray that we may understand that your knowledge of all of this is within the context of the loving intentions you have for each of us - to come to know you as our redeemer, as the one who change us from the inside out so that we may come to be like Jesus in whose image we are made and in whose image we are to be remade. We ask this in Jesus name, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever AMEN.

Last week we looked at the parable which is commonly referred to as the story of the prodigal son and considered together some of the lessons it teaches us about the gospel. Last week, we mainly considered the picture of God's love in the way the father met his returning rebel son. We called attention to among other things:

* the way in which he met him coming home, intercepting him and protecting him from the shame the village would surely hurl his way
* we considered the love of the father as the occasion and cause of the younger bother's repentance
* we loved the quote of Volf: the father's.... "eyes that searched for and finally caught sight of the son in the 'distance' tell of a heart that was with the son in the 'distant country'... the father kept the son in his heart as an absence shaped by the memory of the former presence (Volf)".


This week we took up the lessons about the gospel that can be learned by the older brother's negative response to the father's love for his younger brother.

The first thing to keep in mind about the older brother is that he represents the religious leadership of Jesus' contemporary Israel. These people were always shocked and scandalized by his desire to have dinner parties and social engagements with those considered to be outside of God's covenant love - the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the gentiles, the half-breed Samaritans and the like. And, it is a similar confrontation with these people about his table fellowship that occasions his telling of this story in Luke 15. Tim Keller observes: "When the message of the gospel is clear, moral people tend to dislike it, while irreligious people are intrigued and attracted. The way to know that you are communicating and living the same gospel message as Jesus is that “younger brothers” are more attracted to you than elder brothers." He goes on to say "The gospel does not agree that there are spiritually two kinds of people in the world — 'good' and 'bad'. Instead, it says there are just two different kinds of “running from God.” You can run away by breaking the rules or by keeping them. But you are running nonetheless."

Keller's point in all of this is to draw us deeper into our thinking about what problem the gospel is meant to solve. The gospel means that we can be made new from the inside out as we follow Jesus in faith and repentance. Embedded in the meaning of the gospel is the claim that everyone needs this. Whether one delights in being a rebel and the other takes pride in being good both need Jesus to make them new. This is one of many aspects of the meaning of the gospel that make it the unique message that it is - the assertion that human beings do not search for what they ultimately need unless God's grace as revealed in Jesus informs that search.

We concluded our reflections by considering the provocative words used to describe the character, Hazel Motes from Flannery O'Connor's, Wiseblood, about whom it is said in her story: " he knew the best way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin". This Jesus that Motes sought to avoid was the Jesus of Southern Fundamentalism who is the savior only of those who come to hate themselves more than God hates their sin. In that sort of world the trick is to make credible your profession of faith through the subtle indicators of self-loathing while at the same time wearing a religious facade in order to trick everyone into thinking you are relatively free from actual sins (accept for the culturally acceptable ones) => the result is that the real Jesus and genuine Christian community is kept at arms length.

Finally, the really good news of this story is that the father refuses to be un-fathered by either son which reminds us that God does not give up and does not play favorites. The religious leadership - the older brother types - who lambasted Jesus for sharing his table with "sinners" also nailed him to the cross. About those people Jesus said: "forgive them".

1. When we come to Jesus we come out of the shadows and into the light. When he told the story, what light did he shed on the "older brother" types who were listening in? Do you have a part of you that is like the older brother? What sorts of beliefs and circumstances have built up that part of you? Under what sorts of circumstances does it rear its head?

2. What do you think about that O'Connor quote about avoiding sin in order to avoid Jesus? Do you feel like you have your own version of this?

3. What role do you think Christan community has in helping us see ourselves more clearly (e.g. being in community with others can make us resentful of older brother types if we are younger bother types and vice-versa).