Where Are You Living And What Are You Celebrating?

Good Morning Friends,

Here we are on the Lenten journey from Transfiguration to Transformation…from Fast to Feast. And there is a message here in the crossing that we need to bring home for its relevance of how we experience Jesus in this life and the next and forgive me for not being better at communicating this elusive thought. It relates to how we can get so caught up in seeking power in traditions and in the habits of life that we lose our creative edge and sound mind. It relates to our desire for exclusivity that is played out in the parable of the Prodigal Son and the story of Naaman and sometimes in places of institutional worship. So, it is no longer politically correct to ask, but I ask anyway about our home fires. It is a question about perspective and priorities and healing. So, Where Are You Living And What Are You Celebrating?

Scripture: Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.

2 Kings 5:1-15b (NRSV)

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Luke 4:24-30 (NRSV)

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward.

Hebrews 11:24-26 (NRSV)

  
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable:

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”‘ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 (NRSV)

Message: The definition of prodigal has multiple meanings. We have come to associate it with all the aspects of one of the most well-known parable stories in the Bible. It is both characterized by the wasteful and demanding son but also the lavish father. The story is traditionally referred to as “The Prodigal Son”, but this title is not found in the Gospel. The story might be called the “Lost Son,” to parallel the stories of the “Lost Sheep” and the “Lost Coin.” But it also might be titled, “The Two Sons,” for in the end it is the resentful, envious, and narrow-minded older son that had not had a change in the direction of his life which the Prodigal Son literally demonstrates. The story of the lost son is the most complicated of the three and takes the longest to tell. The first two are about things we own and the third, the story of the lost son, is about relationships… something we cannot and should not try to own… though some may try. Here is the story of a son that withdrew from his father’s love, was thoughtless, and wasted what the father had given him and violated his father’s moral values. This is an in-your-face story for the Pharisees, but I also think in time it is a prayer for Gentiles…. a prayer for those at war to return home. Here we too can either relate to the lost son, the resentful older son, or the father. We too are forced to face our sins and be encouraged to conclude that we can be part of the coming home celebration when we worship together. All we need to do is to say, like the lost son, that we are sorry, that we were wrong and ask to be forgiven. The door is open. The light is on. For all those who have chosen not to worship collectively they have lost something of great value and may not even realize that their church home would welcome them back with great celebration.

And So, sometimes the people who ask where people live are doing so for reasons of discrimination… even subconsciously. The Bible often discloses the places of events and the homes of people as a way of helping us understand how people can be ill-treated by those in power. We all have heard the stories about Jesus, as a prophet being rejected in his own hometown of Nazareth and yet finding power and authority a short distance away in Capernaum. Familiarity can stifle all sorts of things. But there is a deeper message here regarding what we accept and what we reject related to our desire for exclusivity. You see, Jesus was not in an elite community power group that Satan all so seductively tempted him to join. So too Moses rejected the temptation of such worldly power looking ahead to a greater reward. We too need to look for something that is more substantive than merely wanting to be in the group of the people in the know and welding power even beyond those in elected and appointed positions of power. In today’s scripture we see that Naaman, a Syrian, desires such power but is frustrated when he is confronted with the reality that his healing of leprosy will not be realized because of position or wealth or worldly power but in being cleansed by the power of God. Friends, there are multiple systems or hierarchies at play in this world and the most seductive are unwritten. C. S. Lewis calls it the Inner Ring. And no, it is not a secret society. And though it is not inherently evil, our desire for a position in the inner circle of things derails us on the journey and is tied up in the misguided pride of life. For if we seek this invisible way of power, we are not looking for virtue of kindness or loyalty or humor or learning or wit or any of the things that can be really enjoyed. Typically, we just want to belong to power. And that is a pleasure that cannot last and is a bad thing we see on the edges of today’s scriptures. You see, the world is full of delightful confidentialities and intimacies to capture our attention that masquerade as love. And if we claim this type of power, we come into nothing that is worth reaching and in fact turn into our own worst enemies. Maybe we are even seeing this played out on the world stage as well as in the challenge of good leadership closer to home. When Jesus forces people of his hometown to face this humbling reality, it is met with violence much like taking away an addict’s favorite drug. The true road lies in quite another direction. Friends, if you live in the quest for power, it will break you if you do not break your desire for it. God has designed a world where equal access to the love of God is the foundation. Our role is to be a conduit for that sharing of community love manifested on the journey of our lives. Loving God and loving others are the means for us to truly live the way we were intended to live. In today’s scripture from Luke, we read about the story of the lost son, the prodigal son. The story speaks to this topic. It is preceded in the same chapter with stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin all in response to the Pharisees grumbling and growling about Jesus eating with sinners. In each story something is lost. In each story something is found, and, in each story, we are asked to come and celebrate. Jesus and the angels in heaven do love to celebrate, and especially so when a life is the focus of what is found. The story of the lost son is the most complicated of the three and takes the longest to tell. The first two are about things we own and the third, the story of the lost son, is about relationships…something we cannot and should not try to own… though some may try. Here is the story of a son that withdrew from his father’s love, was thoughtless, and wasted what the father had given him and violated his father’s moral values. This is an in-your-face story for the Pharisees. They can either relate to the lost son, the resentful older son, or the father. They are forced to face their sin and encouraged to conclude that they too can be part of the coming home celebration if they would but say, like the lost son, that they were sorry, that they were wrong and ask to be forgiven. Sometimes I think about heaven being my true home.  In today’s scripture and devotional, we are invited to imagine coming to the celebration. We are asked to decide where our heart is, where our true home is and what it will be like to celebrate the joy of coming home eternally.

Pray we have faith in Jesus. Pray we live into the Spirit of Christ. Pray that our worship experiences never become so familiar that the whole creative aspect of worship disappears leaving only a fleeting worldly pleasure. Pray we keep the fire of a holy purpose alive in us extending the circle of love into every community both near and far. Pray we be wary of desires to be part of worldly elite power brokers. Pray we understand our longing to identify with a place of power is short lived and shows just how prejudiced we are. Pray we reflect on our anguish when we are excluded from the next inner circle and motivated to choose another path to glorify God. Pray we are not just good neighbors, but good news as well.  Pray that God lavishly shares His abundant and sufficient grace with all of us. Pray that the goal of our love would be to share it. Pray that we find that which has been lost in our lives. Pray that we remember the joy of returning home. Pray we have an attitude of gratitude. Pray we are called home to the joy of every sin confessed, of every relationship transformed when we respond in the affirmative to Christ’s invitation from heaven to come celebrate. Pray we have compassion for the lost for we too have been lost. Pray we put forth the effort needed to reach the lost in all walks of our lives so we might be found. Pray we be persistent in the quest. Pray we truly believe that people who are spiritually lost are too valuable to give up on. Pray we repent when our compassion, effort, and persistence wanes. Pray we never get disconnected. Pray we never lose our identity. Pray we discover in us a commitment to love. Pray we experience the joy and value of finding the lost. Pray we let God get His hands on us and bring us home.

Blessings,

John Lawson