Luke 15: 11-32

Laterally Luke…Lent 4…New 2019

[Please note: Next week’s Gospel is Johannine, so go to jottingsonjohn.blogspot.com]

When Jesus tells a story like today’s, He must surely hope His hearers will go home wondering how this applies to what’s going on in their home & to their family. When we preach the story today, it needs to be with that same expectation, but in today time; not back in Jesus’ time. How does what Jesus says apply in our home, in our family? To the lostness apparent in so many families, & communities? Can we make the Gospel present to our hearers in such ways as will help them ‘return’ in some sense, from any lostness they’re experiencing. And, in the process, be more aware of & compassionate towards others in theirs. In other words, how can we preach God’s unique kind of ‘foundness’?

In Jesus’ story, the father loses a son; in fact, two sons! The ‘prodigal’ loses the plot, & his family, till he comes to his senses & returns home to his father’s (unexpected) welcoming love. I find myself asking further questions of that family & its relation-ships. Is mother long ‘gone to God’, or simply watching from behind the curtains where biblical stories often hide the womenfolk? Are there sisters, too, but out of camera shot? Or other women in their lives? What about in ours, today?

Today’s families, in a far more complicated world, are themselves more complicated than what Jesus presents to us as a simple farming family engaged in basic farming. Even such a family, if it exists today, will be finding life more complicated. Whoever we are, however we live, some of the relationships we live with & maybe struggle with today are complex indeed. As well as fathers & mothers & sisters & brothers we have in-laws (& out-of-laws!) same-sex relationships, mixed relationships of many kinds. Whom can we see when we look from our pulpits? What about Jim, here, & Betty there? Tom & Tom, there? And the rest? Or are we being deliberately blind?

Peter Gomes¹ gives us insight into preaching this or other parables: ‘A parable invites us in… turns us around, & it sends us right on out again; that is what a parable is all about.’ 

So, we preach this parable, we hear this parable, we enter into this parable. How is it going to turn us around? Yes, us; not someone else long ago & far away, or even a contemporary? How is it going to send us ‘right on out again’? In better shape for the rest of our journey back to our true Home? ‘What must I do to be found’ is at least as important a question as, ’What must I do to be saved?’!

Brian 

Afterthought: Are, ‘this son of yours’ the saddest, unkindest, most dismissive words in Scripture? May we never use expressions as hurtful as this! In any case; to anyone!

¹ Strength for the Journey, Harper San Francisco, 2003