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Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.

Sometimes the Gospel sounds very little like it was written two thousand years ago and more like conversations I have heard recently. I’m not sure why but even though the story we just heard refers to a group from a different time, a different culture and probably centering around questions we may not have, it both sounds and feels familiar.

We have to be careful not to read into the text things that aren’t there but finding relevance inside the various stories helps us to see that these ancient texts are extremely useful to us who seek to live lives that are faithful.

The question about the legality of taxes has very little to do with what it appears to be on the surface. Matthew tells us that from the start of the story. They didn’t care what Jesus had to say, they just wanted to trap him in order to discredit both him and his followers. In my opinion it was a brilliant question, one in which however he answered would lead to his demise. “Yes pay your taxes,” and those who felt that the taxes were burdensome if not outright sinful would reject the answer and answer giver. “No, don’t pay your taxes,” and the civil authorities would silence him for breaking the law. It seemed like a no-win situation but Jesus didn’t fall into the trap they laid for him.

On the surface, it appears that Jesus avoided the trap but who ever says Jesus only responds to surface questions haven’t played close attention. Jesus was pointing to something deeper.

The last few years, but I suspect this has been a two thousand year challenge, Christianity has faced more challenges from within its own house than from outside. Of course we have seen it very clearly in recent years when a huge segment of the church have turned a blind eye to abusive behavior in exchange for political power. It takes some impressive theological gymnastics to achieve this but among many following the humble man of sorrows who preached peace, forgiveness and love has been found to be, in these people’s mind, too weak and powerless for 21st century mindsets. A recent book entitled Jesus and John Wayne has documented this phenomenon and one does not have to be a sociologist to see the effect this has had. To quote from the book “Jesus may have saved your soul but John Wayne will save your ass.” Render unto Caesar indeed.

Christianity began by being immersed in politics. For first century Christians, Caesar was considered divine and to stand up and against such blasphemy was life threatening. The crowds , in order to please the authorities would chant “Caesar is Lord.” In a direct assault on the empire, Christians began to challenge this by responding “Jesus is Lord.”

We don’t hear such blatant challenges to our faith in our day but this doesn’t mean it’s not there. More subtly many choose to pursue political power in order to attempt to move society to something more suitable to their affinities. Politics have become the new religion and the way people are fleeing from churches that have embraced a political gospel is stunning.

One may wonder if this really matters; if God is uncomfortable with this then will it really last? Probably not but there is something more insidious going on.

I try my best to filter the news or at least let go of the anxiety that often fills my heart when Government shutdowns and election denying court cases pop up on my screens. But when indiscriminate bombings of innocents happen, I can’t help but turn to God, not for some sort of antidepressant relief but to align myself with the suffering. That’s how I know I’m praying to the living God, not a political substitute, because God never chooses power over the identification with the weak, dispossessed or suffering. When we are grasped by God, we feel compelled to walk alongside those who have never had political power and never will.

Ultimately in the Gospel today, we are called to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s. God not only identifies with the innocent and suffering, both Israeli and Palestinian but also democrats, republicans and those who have never voted. The vulnerable, the rejected and those who feel as if this life has little value, belong to God and we are to render our love, our presence and even our identity to them. To those who hear this call can only respond with humility, not political power.

So how do we get there? Diana Butler Bass helps me see the path as she remind us that the humble are those who know their failure and are absolutely amazed that God has relentlessly pursued them , embraced them and accepted them anyway. Humility is the acceptance of grace. It is the acceptance of the Father’s shocking, unearned embrace in Jesus. Beware of those who are proud of what they do for God rather than filled by what God has done for them.

Sing to the Lord a new song; 
sing to the Lord, all the whole earth.

Sing to the Lord and bless his Name;
proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day!

She reminds us that:

Terrorists and tyrants always want to silence song. They don’t want creation’s music heard — the voices of God’s people to rise in hope and joy and praise. They shoot concertgoers, ban lyrics, boycott singers and troubadours, all in an effort to turn song toward themselves and make themselves god. 

Song and salvation are of a piece. Hear the music of creation, the very heartbeat of heaven. Listen for the voice. Lift yours. May we all join our voices together. The world needs the old songs. And it aches for new ones.

I spent a bit of time looking back on some social media posts. I didn’t recognize myself. If change is good, I have embraced the good.

It’s not that those comments were bad they were just self-promoting and full of theological pablum. Granted, I have gone through a lot over the last six years and as I take an objective look at where I am, God has done something profoundly important to me.

I’ll leave it here. “It is all about love, the question, though, is can we do it (love)?” Yes, I think we can. When we let go of formulaic faith presuppositions and embrace the mystery of love.

That’s it.

Our departure from Texas at the end of August was nothing like we expected. Julie became ill just hours before we were scheduled to end our time at Holy Comforter and head back home to Kansas. We didn’t know what was going on and since it was her illness, it is not appropriate for me to go too much into it. Suffice it to say that she had a bacterial infection that became systemic and we are very fortunate that we got home and immediately got medical care. She is much better now but it seemed rather apropos that we faced what could have been a tragedy on our last day in Texas.

There is much to say about our time in Spring but I’ll leave that for another time. I feel blessed that I was able to reenter full-time ministry for a year and felt like I was able to do everything that I wanted to do, especially making amends for some of the things that I had fallen into during my tenure in Katy. I preached boldly, clearly and held up God’s love for the marginalized and rejected in ways that I had not done in my previous tenure. I accepted the call to the church in Spring for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was to speak out of a place that my own deconstruction of faith had opened to me. It was meet, right and a good thing to call for a love for all, especially those on the margins, and especially for our LGBTQ+ siblings. I know I can’t undo the damage of what I created in my rather narrow, and dare I say bigoted, view of God’s love that had slowly crept into my preaching and theology in Katy. Indeed, that was the first to go as I found myself in what many have gone through: a deep and unsettling time of deconstruction. It was not always that way for me and my good friend and fellow-priest Mike Adams said on many occasions, “it’s good to have the old Darrel back.”

Actually it wasn’t the old Darrel because I didn’t have the theological bona fides to be able to understand where I was, what I believed and why I believed the way that I did. I now do.

An interesting thing happened on the journey of the past year. I wasn’t prepared for a chance encounter with the delegates from Holy Apostles at Diocesan Council. When I saw where they were sitting, I made a point to grab a moment and give my greetings. What I found nearly knocked the wind out of me. As I stretched out my hand to greet the delegation, the look I received was more than just “we’re not all that happy to see you.” Instead I saw anger in the eyes that looked into my own. I was taken aback. Surprised isn’t the word but I was amazed that I wasn’t welcomed like an old friend. I had given so much to that place. I had loved them, walked with them, challenged them and while I didn’t expect to be invited to preach on some Sunday I might have available, I was caught totally unprepared to meet such antipathy.

Later in the year, almost at the end of my time in Spring, I finally understood the anger. It seems that some had paid attention to my blog meanderings or social media posts (not Twitter because I don’t let just anyone follow me there!). A party was held in Katy and a dozen or so people showed up to greet me. During that party I was asked by a leader of the church there if I had “lied about who I was when I served as Rector.” What?!? It took me a minute or two to understand why anyone might think that. Then I got it.

Over the last couple of years, like in most things my deconstruction was fairly public. I don’t do a lot of things quietly and I shared here and elsewhere what I was going through. As I emerged from my experience of the “dark night of the soul,” I came face to face with the many mistakes I had made. I knew God loves but I had created a wall around that love, only allowing some to pass through. I faced this honestly and thoughtfully. As I began to see where I was spiritually, emotionally and vocationally, I made a decision to proclaim in word and deed God’s love. I suspect that some in Katy thought I had been deceitful (what I would have gotten from that eludes me) and dishonest about my theology. Honestly I wanted to scream “don’t you know I had to bury my son. Don’t you think that would have changed me?” But I didn’t. There is nothing good that could come from that but I did pay attention to what was going on inside of me.

I am not sure I had emotionally left Holy Apostles until this past year. I now have. Completely. When I think back about my time in Houston, it will be my time at Holy Comforter that will bring me a sense of God’s pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, those years at the church in Katy mean a lot to me. Many of those people are still friends but I truly was able to do what I felt called to do in Spring. God gifted me with a mulligan. I gratefully accepted it.

There really isn’t much purpose in going further into this although it does make some good fodder for unpacking in my writing. I am grateful for the time I had in both Katy and Spring and the God that saw me through both, remains steadfastly in my life/heart/ministry. I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring but I am sure I will live it out loud, like I do most other things.

Blessings to you and until next time, I remain

Darrel Proffitt

I have had an extraordinary year serving as an Interim Priest at Holy Comforter in Spring TX. There’s just a few things left to do and we will be leaving this coming Sunday (August 28th) after my last two liturgies and a luncheon following.

I have much to write about and I am planning on sharing my experiences as well as my reflections on this past year. I’ve mostly used my website as a way to share sermons but that is about to change. Stay tuned. I’ve got a lot to talk about.

Until next time,

Darrel+

The Gospel starts out so hopeful this morning: Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom..”  It would have been good for most of us if Bob would have stopped reading after this first verse and we could have all responded “Thanks be to God.” But Jesus takes what seems to be hopeful news and we, if we would have stopped at this point, would have all been giddy. But Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t end here. He didn’t stop. Instead he follows it up with this: “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”

This is where I tread lightly. It is too clever by half to try to water this down. “Oh, Jesus didn’t mean this.” Or “In the first century, they understood selling your possessions differently than we do.” I know there is a temptation to do that because I have done that. Many times. I don’t think I did this purposefully but in reality, as I look back, that’s exactly what I have done. I didn’t want to make anyone mad, especially if they were wealthy and gave a lot to the church. After all, I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me, do I?

When I arrived at Holy Apostles in Katy, I started my ministry on the day pledge cards were due. It was a big and important day. I have sometimes felt that my sermons were graded from time to time, and none more than on that day. If I had fallen flat, it would have had implications on the budget year. I didn’t know anyone and so preaching a stewardship sermon on pledge Sunday is something that I’ll never forget. And by the way, I don’t recommend it.

Somehow we got through that Sunday and I don’t remember much about what I preached. I did get an anonymous note that said “Good job Darrel,” and so I think my sermon must have limped by with a passing grade. But a year later it wasn’t so successful.

I had experienced some profoundly moving moments in the church I served before I landed in Katy by changing the way people turned in pledge cards. I thought it would translate well to my new church. So a year later, I thought it would be a clever thing to have people come up, one after another, immediately following the stewardship Sermon and place their pledge cards on the altar. Nothing wrong with that, right? Or so I thought. A week later I learned that one of the largest pledgers of the church was offended. “Why did we have to be so visible and have an altar call to place pledges on the altar,” I was asked. Before I could reply, this person made it known that they were leaving the church over that.  That is always a wounding experience for a priest but this was made worse by the fact that this family represented one of the largest pledging units of the church. They left and took there $70,000 dollar a year pledge with them. Ouch.

With that in mind, I read the Gospel this morning and quickly wondered how I might take the sting out of Jesus words or maybe just preach on the epistle or Psalm. Surely I wouldn’t stand up here and tell you to sell your possessions. I could spend the entire week, immersed in commentaries and biblical dictionaries in order to find a loop hole that would let us all off the hook. Especially if you pledge $70,000 dollars a year.  “Jesus didn’t mean what he said,” I could preach. Or maybe “you don’t have to sell your possessions if you pledge $70,000 a year.” But, as you probably know by now, I am not going to try to make this more palatable for anyone. But, I can also say, “don’t leave yet,” what appears as impossible and something no one can do, hang in there with me for a moment.

In the midst of telling people to stay alert, Jesus inserts a brief encouragement to be alert, he says, be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.” Why? Because a thief is coming. If we don’t stay awake and alert, this thief will break into your house and steal everything.

Ok… how did we get from selling all our possessions to staying alert because there is a thief that lurks around? I am glad you asked. Who is the thief? As you unpack this lesson, it becomes clear that Jesus is talking about fear. But before I get there I want you to notice what Jesus did NOT say: He did not say sell ALL your possessions and then give alms. And so the question becomes clearer. Do we know that spending all our time, energy and money on ourselves or our family doesn’t give us any sense of comfort, peace or security? I know we forget that because we are bombarded with ads on TV, on the internet or whereever we browse around that our time is best spent in accumulating stuff and keeping it for ourselves. We heard about this last week with the farmer who tore down his barns to build bigger ones and yet ended up in the same place we all eventually will find ourselves: dead. But Jesus isn’t talking about dying here… he talks about living. And when we center our lives around material things and ignore the plight of others, comfort, peace and security aren’t found anywhere. It is impossible to find them when we hoard our own wealth and refuse to share it with others. You see it is not about selling all our possessions to give to others but, now I am going from preaching to meddling, when was the last time we sold ANYTHING in order to help someone else.

Now if you’re following me you might ask a simple question: OK, if I sell something to help others, what’s in it for me?” Now if you asked that question, I think you need to spend sometime in the wilderness discussing this with God. You know, it’s not always about us. Why is it that we have to get something in order to give something? 

I could make this all religious and tell you that you will get eternal life if you obey this command. I know it will hurt but just keep focused on Heaven. Can you imagine what the line leading to heaven would look like, what the people who grudgingly gave up stuff and now they were getting their heavenly reward? I. can’t think of a larger collection of people who would still be grumbling over selling something to give to someone else. But I will let you in on something that seems like a secret but isn’t: you don’t earn your way into heaven. Grace gets you there as it will everyone else. No, don’t give because you think it will be repaid you in a great big old mansion in the sky.

That’s not what Jesus is talking about. He’s talking about a thief to breaks into your house and steals your contentment, your joy, your hope. That thief has another name. It’s called fear. And fear steals and destroys. The only way to escape the demands of this fear is to find contentment, hope and joy. And the only way this thief is destroyed is by understanding the power of giving. And if you don’t feel you can give, sell something in order to be able to do so. It’s worth it, again, not because of a heavenly reward but because generosity is a reward for us now.

And there is another thief. Alyce McKenzie refers to God’s own self as a thief. But this holy thief is a “burglar who returns to steal our false priorities and overturn our unjust structures.” When this thief  breaks into our carefully guarded lives that are undergirded by a fear of scarcity, you know we just don’t have enough for ourselves, let alone enough to give to others, which immobilizes us and keeps us stuck. Jesus loves us too much to leave us there. As the Holy thief, God replaces our fear with what we wanted all along but didn’t know how to get it: joy, hope and contentment. And ultimately that is what Jesus continues to do for us, seeking to rescue us from a life of meaninglessness. 

But Jesus doesn’t force anything on us so we tend to wander through life with nothing more than a glimpse of what direction we should head and a whole lot of dissatisfaction in only finding emptiness in those things we thought would bring us contentment. I think it would help us if we focused less on heave and more on our lives we are living right now. It’s not that heaven isn’t a real place but we’re not there, we are here among so many people who do not know there is a better way to live than to simply acquire more and more.

In describing our world, the Obery Hendricks says it this way: “We are living in insane times. Like purveyors of a bad Orwellian joke, [there are those who have ] hijacked the meanings of justice and equity and cynically perverted them into their very opposites. The Hebrew Bible and the Gospel of Jesus both command all who hold them dear to care for the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable, yet [many] preachers shamelessly interpret the Bible in ways that serve America’s rich and ignore the suffering of its poor.” And we are left with lives all around us in shambles. It seems to me that as followers of Jesus we should leave this world better than we found it. This means more than buying poor people stuff that will end up distracting them as much as they distract us. It means that we are called to stand up and against anything that treats undocumented immigrants like lesser forms of life, or supporting and hungering after unprovoked wars of domination and thinking security is found in a blossoming IRA or a rather dangerous looking firearm. No. We might think that way from time to time, but Jesus has a way of meeting us where we are and taking us to where we didn’t know we wanted to be but once there, find exactly what we were looking for. It is Jesus’ desire to make us like him. What does that look like? He challenged scripture inerrancy, broke church laws angering the religious-right of His day, hung out with fringe groups and did NOT use any weapons when the govt of His day came to kill him. 

Today we baptize a baby, Ian Noel. His journey is just beginning. We have an opportunity to help him and his family to live fully into his new life in Christ.  What do you say that we bend over backwards to witness to Ian that a life in Christ leads to an understanding that in order to truly live, we are called to be generous in our love, our possessions and how we support him and others with our time, talent and treasure. That, my friends, will leave a legacy and is the only way to live a life that makes a difference.

There is a lot of drama going on in this morning’s Gospel. Let’s take a close look and see how the story reveals a lot more than what it may seem like on the surface.
The whole story unfolds quickly but it begins slowly. We hear that Jesus is in Bethany, a familiar place to him, waiting for one of the major feasts of the Year, Passover. It’s just six days away and there was a lot to do in preparation, if not for the meal, at least to prepare one’s heart for this important festival. The feast of the Passover commemorated the Exodus from Egypt and the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery, which marked the birth of the nation of Israel and is considered by the Jewish people to be the single most important event in their history. The delivery itself was both miraculous and divinely orchestrated entirely by God. The Jewish people believed that God had sent Moses to Pharaoh to deliver this message; “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness”
At first blush, the entire story seems to be about money: Judas has a rather shaky motivation for speaking up against the extravagant use of costly perfume, but I am not sure any of us would argue with him about finding another way to use the money that could be earned by simply selling it for what it was worth. You probably know this from hearing the story before, but a denarius is a Roman silver coin that weighed about 3.85 g and hence would have a modern value of 74 cents. So, a 100 denarius represents a100 days of an agricultural worker who would have worked for 12 hours each day.

I am not sure that the original story had all the parentheticals inserted which questioned Judas’ motivation. Maybe it was but I like the story without questioning Judas. We are told, parenthetically that Judas was about to betray Jesus and that he was a thief. My problem with this extended criticism of Judas is that it makes it a story that I can quickly ignore and simply place at the feet of Judas. Judas wasn’t concerned about the waste, he was just trying to steal money. But what if Judas was truly concerned, not only with the optics of this, but the wastefulness of it all. I find myself in agreement with Judas if this were the case and suddenly find myself thrust in the middle of this controversy. Perhaps it would be better just to criticize Judas and move on?

Note that Jesus is at a friend’s house. Not just any friend but he was among close friends that had scene some pretty amazing things. At this point, the whole Lazarus is dead and now Jesus calls him out of the grave thing had already taken place. The buzz, though probably a bit muted by this time, still filled the air. Jesus was different, everyone around him knew it. It was not just his teaching, which consistently blew people away, but there was this miracle that could be explained away. And these people were eyewitnesses who would probably quickly rally to Jesus side it Judas were to keep up his criticism. Frankly, I admire Judas’s hutzpah. Of all places, times and around these people, Judas dares to suggest that such wastefulness speaks poorly about their cause. We know Lazarus was sitting at the table, Martha was serving, and Mary isn’t. At this point I would not be surprised if we read that Martha cut Mary out of any family inheritance because, in only one short verse, we hear that it is Mary who is about to commit the faux pas and pour thousands of dollars of perfume on Jesus.

Have you ever been in a position where you witness an act or a statement and feel complete embarrassment for the person at the center of the controversy? If you’re like me, you look for an exit from the scene, hoping to get away before everything comes crashing down on the person who, for whatever reason chose to either say something or do something totally inappropriate? For me, that’s how I feel when I try to read the scene with fresh eyes. It’s not Judas, or Jesus that I feel embarrassment about, but Mary. What was she thinking?

At this point it’s helpful to remember that the Gospels aren’t simply historical events that someone took the time to write down for posterity. I am not saying that they aren’t history, but I am saying there is a reason why the particular stories, out of all the things Jesus did, were written down for subsequent generations. The whole purpose of sharing the Gospel was to make a point. There are four Gospels, and some rearrange the events that took place differently from one another and other gospels have stories that are unique to them. This isn’t because the stories are made up but that the audience to which the Gospels were written are different from one another. The whole point of the Gospels is to show the uniqueness of Jesus; getting weighted down by asking questions of the Gospel that make assumptions that come from a 21st century mindset is to miss the point.

There is a reason that Lazarus was in this scene. Remember that he just been raised from the dead and Jesus was headed to Jerusalem where he would face death himself. Death was in the air. You could smell it. The perfume was hiding that smell, but it was there. Death is the last enemy and God was about to do something about it. Death is bigger than anyone or anything. I suspect people in the first century would agree that God could do anything, but death was the final voice in all human relationships. That is, until Jesus.
The whole purpose of Lent is to be reminded that death is part of what it means to be human. We’ve been reminded of this during the pandemic. We are frail and weak. Even a microbe is strong enough to end all of what we see around us. Yet we have this story and what seems to be happening here is a profoundly important reminder of who God is and what God is doing. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, God will have the last word, not death.
There are many small deaths we experience all the time and there is the final blow that will end with all of us leaving this life. We call that death too. We spend a lot of our time, energy and money to deny this to ourselves, and the saddest people among us are those who deny their own frailty. But, as always, there is good news in this story.
We know how this all ends and we so desperately want to get there. Enough of Lent. Enough of death. Enough of these stories. Yet if we get into a big hurry to get to the delicious parts, you know, the empty tomb, the road to Emmaus, Mary, supposing him to be the gardener, then miss the call.
Jesus allowed his body to be anointed because death was around the corner. But it was right there with them too. Lazarus was there as a reminder that no one gets out of this life alive. It’s like being poor, they are always with us unless we make a decision to live in the shadow of our own death. Does it matter, since we know that we will all die, how we live our lives? It’s all about rewards and punishments in the life to come or is there something more profound than even that?
Just because Jesus said that there will always be poor among us does not mean we aren’t supposed to do something about it. There are poor among us but we are called to place their struggles at the center of our attention. One day there will not remain a day to reach out and make a difference. We live under the shadow of death but the light that keeps peaking out behind those clouds are reminders that we are to live our lives in ways that make a difference to those who have lost hope or meaning or love or a sense that God even cares.

Jesus body was anointed with expensive perfume because he was about to take on the last enemy, death itself, in a way that will forever remove the sting. But don’t lose sight. We’re not just called to hold on until we face our own death and wake up in paradise. Too many Christians do this and become so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. We are called to live right here, right now, and in our very presence bring hope to a hopeless world.

You see following Jesus has everything to do with loving others in ways that truly make a difference. Jesus said that the reasons to love will always be with us, in the hungry children who go to bed at night, not knowing when there next meal will be; in the abused spouse who keeps hoping that her abuser will change; in the person who just learned their mortgage will be foreclosed; in the waiting room in the hospital where parents wait to hear if their child has cancer; those opportunities will always be with us. And so will Jesus, calling us into those scary places where we might not have any answers but we do have a shoulder to cry on, and hands to hold somebody tightly.

Our Lenten journey is nearly over. But before we move on take a moment and smell the death in the air. That death is hopelessness. But smell again and breathe deeply the expensive perfume that does more than shield us from the stench of death. Indeed, it smells like hope. Because even in the midst of death, hope cannot be destroyed. As long as we refuse to buy into the lie that says it doesn’t matter how we live, our hereafter will be all about streets of gold and harp playing. How we live does matter and loving others is the only way we can help all those who struggle to find a God who has overcome and now calls us to share that hope with others by the way we love.

It’s been a minute or two but today we hear Jesus teach in a way in which he thrived. He often taught through the use of parables, a fascinating way to describe either a characteristic of God or to make it clear how those who follow Jesus are to live.

A former student at the same Seminary I attended in the Chicago area once said “the parables of Jesus faces two obstacles at the outset. The first and more troublesome, oddly enough, is familiarity. Most people, on reading the Gospels’ assertion that “Jesus spoke in parables,” assume they know exactly what is meant. “Oh, yes,” they say, “and a wonderful teaching device it was, too. All those unforgettable stories we’re so fond of, like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.” Yet their enthusiasm is narrowly based. Jesus’ use of the parabolic method can hardly be limited to the mere handful of instances they remember as entertaining, agreeable, simple, and clear. Some of his parables are not stories; many are not agreeable; most are complex; and a good percentage of them produce more confusion than understanding. Robert Farrar Capon. Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Kindle Locations 34-38). Kindle Edition.

But not this morning’s parable, the story of the Prodigal Son. It is one of the most beautiful images of who God is and how God loves each one of us. We do know that Biblical scholars see this is an authentic teaching of Jesus because it goes against what anyone would have thought as acceptable behavior between a father and child in Jesus’ day or the relationship between God and us in any age or culture, mostly it shows us a compassionate God that forgives without condition, exception, limit or even real contrition. The problem in this parable isn’t confusion. Indeed it may be that the parable is clear, concise and radical. The radical love of God is always controversial and many seek ways around it to diffuse the power of love. Fascinating, isn’t it.
One of my favorite books based on this story is Henri Nouwen’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” There is a famous painting by Rembrandt which hangs in St. Petersburg Russia called “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” Back in 1992 Henri Nouwen received permission to visit the museum which houses the masterpiece, and during the night after the museum was closed, Nouwen spent literally hours and days alone sitting in a chair gazing at the painting, studying every detail in hopes of discovering its spiritual reality. He then wrote a book based on his observations of that painting.

In his book, Nouwen states, “I see before me a man who went deep into a foreign land and lost everything he took with him. I see emptiness, humiliation, and defeat. He who was so much like his father now looks worse than his father’s servants. He has become like a slave. What happened to the son in the distant country? The sequence of events is quite predictable. The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less I am able to hear the voice that calls me Beloved, and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world.” Nouwen draws a beautiful analogy between the father’s forgiveness and being the one receiving the forgiveness. “Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing . . . As long as I want to do even a part of that myself, I end up with partial solutions . . . I still keep my distance, still revolt, reject, strike, run away . . . As the beloved son (daughter) of God, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father.” What Nouwen is suggesting is that once you receive the forgiveness of God, you have an obligation to pass that forgiveness on to others and that our quid pro quo mentality of thinking and acting is no longer acceptable, at least not for children of an all-forgiving God. Enough of Nouwen but I would recommend his book to you.

So back to the parable itself: In the story from Luke chapter 15, you will notice that although the younger son asked for the money first – the money he would get as an inheritance upon the death of his father – the older son took the money also. In the painting, you will notice that the older father looks almost blind and is bent over, leaning into the embrace of his son. The father’s mantle and arms are extended wide and welcoming to enfold the son and bring him closer into his heart. Notice that the older son stands stiffly erect to the right and his hands and mantle are closed, and his robe hangs flat in a posture of stiffness, coldness, and hardness. The young man held and blessed by the father is poor both emotionally and physically. He left home with much pride and money, determined to live his own life far away from his father and his community. He returns with nothing; his money, his health, his honor (which is even more important than life and death to the culture in which Jesus lived), his self-respect, his reputation . . . everything has been squandered. Notice in the painting that his head is shaven. No longer the long curly hair of youth but the head of a prisoner who has lost his freedom and even his identity. When a man’s (woman’s) hair is shaved off, whether in prison or in the army, as in a hazing ritual, he/she is robbed of one of the marks of his/her individuality. The clothes Rembrandt gives him are underclothes, barely covering his emaciated body. In contrast, the red robes of the father and the older son speak of status and dignity. The kneeling son has no cloak, and the yellow-brown, torn undergarment just covers his exhausted, worn-out body from which all strength is gone.
We as a people have a hard time with allowing God to be God. Countless times through the centuries, theologians have emerged to “toughen up” our image of God. Too much of this love stuff and you’ll create a whole generation of people who takes license to do whatever they want to do. And how can we control people if they just go willy-nilly on us. So instead of focusing on God’s love, they’d rather talk about justice or wrath or create an image of hell that includes everyone who doesn’t agree with them. The list is too long to mention but eternal conscious torment, sprinkled together with an emerging understanding of a God that seems capricious and cruel is pretty heady stuff. This why an atheist who refuses to believe in God because they’ve been led to believe the God they must believe in is capricious and cruel, actually has a moral conscience superior to many Christians.

And this is the very reason that many attempts have been made to interpret the Prodigal Son in a myriad of ways that avoid the reality that Jesus is saying that nothing can ever separate you from the love of God. Nothing. Not squandering your inheritance on wine, women, and song. Not staying at home and squandering a special relationship with belly aching and criticizing that God loves people that are unlovable. And after all you don’t live like THOSE people. What’s in it for me? Well, everything is in it for you, whether you identify with the elder brother, the prodigal son, the father or maybe even the fatted calf.

Back to my seminary colleague: “Creation is not ultimately about religion, or spirituality, or morality, or reconciliation, or any other solemn subject; it’s about God having a good time and just itching to share it. The solemn subjects – all the weird little bells, whistles, and exploding snappers we pay so much attention to – are there only because we are a bunch of dummies who have to be startled into having a good time. If ever once we woke up to the fact that God finally cares only about the party, then the solemn subjects would creep away like pussycats (“Thank God! I thought they’d never leave!”) and the truly serious subjects would be brought on: robes, rings, shoes, wines, gold, crystal, and precious stones (“Finally! A little class in the act!”). So now, if we were to sum up the parable thus far, it would be nothing but hilariously good news: the father, the prodigal, and the fatted calf are all dead; they are all three risen (the calf, admittedly, as a veal roast – but then, you can’t have everything); and everybody is having a ball. As Jesus put it succinctly: “They began to be merry.” Robert Farrar Capon. Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Kindle Locations 3839-3845). Kindle Edition.

That’s how it all ends. God wants to make merry and keeps tripping over God’s self to get people to once and all quit being so grim and join the partygoers. We really do have a choice. Do we want to jump in line behind all those stern, judgment loving, hoping for more wrath and less love, type of people who I swear must look at God and expect God to say, “nobody down there better be having fun because I will zap you.” Or shall we take Jesus at his word and explain the party given to us who don’t deserve it, can never earn it and maybe never even memorized scripture by saying “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.” I know what line I’m standing in. Why don’t you cast away all the grimness, the stern and angry God so many want to be true but is a mere figment of a lot of people’s imagination and join me. It’s time to party. And Jesus approves. There’s a reason that his first miracle was at a wedding feast. Quite frankly God is a party animal. The only question that is left is this: Can you let go long enough to respond to the invitation to love and be loved? As for me, that is a no brainer.

There is a lot in the Gospel this morning about tragedy and what it might mean to us. We all face tragedy both personally and as a people. What does it mean to us? Is God getting even with us? Do tragedies reveal a God who is wrathful and seeking to punish us? Just in case you check out before I’m done, let me answer that up front, and the Gospel will underline the truth of this: No. That’s not what Jesus is saying. In fact, he is saying something very important to each of us about where God is when the world is set on fire.

When it comes to tragedies, I find it easy to put my focus on war, especially when it’s far away from me. I do experience frustration when I must pay more to fill up my gasoline tank in the car but when it’s something far away from me, it keeps me from any self-examination I might be forced to do. In a way, this is what the questioner is doing when he asks Jesus about these two events that are recounted for us in this mornings Gospel. The questioner refuses to focus on anything that might cause any sort of self-reflection. I suspect that the questioner hoped Jesus would go after Pilate, the first century authoritarian leader who ruled with violence and terror. But Jesus seems to ignore Pilate in his response and turns the table on the crowd in order to make this personal. And it’s not just personal for them, it is for us as well.
Jesus asks the crowd if those who had been innocently killed were worse sinners than others because of the suffering they endured. Most of the crowd wrongly understood punishments were from God, especially the kind these Galileans faced and they were directly proportionate to the crime or sin people committed. In other words, the more you sin, the more you will be punished. Or as Jesus asked: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way [because] they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” And then to make his point even clearer he brings into the conversation another event that had taken place. Eighteen people had been crushed under a tower in Jerusalem had died. In this rather random event, the prevailing theology that Jesus was now confronting would have suggested that random events like both were evidence of God’s retribution. With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Yet I cannot tell you how many times I have heard countless people suggest that God is the one responsible for similar horrific tragedies. I am old enough to remember that some so-called preachers blamed the tragedy following Hurricane Katrina as divine retribution. I don’t want to list other such accusations but there are many, many people who believe that God is actively punishing people for random acts of violence and tragedy that have happened through the years. But listing them isn’t important. What is important is how Jesus responds. He emphatically says NO this isn’t why these things happen.
It’s ironic that the remainder of this morning’s Gospel is often twisted to miss the point Jesus is making. At first blush it sounds like Jesus is saying unless you repent, you’re going to find the same divine retribution. This is a classic reason why you should not form a theology around a verse, but we need to go deeper, motivated by what we know is what all scripture points to: the unmerited, undeserved love of God available to all.
Jesus does say that the crowd needs to repent. The word here is metanoia, and it literally means to change your mind. Jesus is saying that the crowd’s understanding about injustice and unrighteousness is wrong. God is not the author of either. And when he says that unless they change their mind, they risk dying just like the people in the two examples. But hold on a second, this means that unless they change their minds they risk dying “suddenly and unprepared.” There is no promise that they can avoid death, even one that might be as tragic and catastrophic as the two examples that are described. But if they change their minds about how God is present in the world, even during cataclysmic catastrophes, they will be prepared for whatever they face, and their lives will bear fruits that come directly from both an understanding and experience of God’s love. God’s love even (and maybe most especially) in the context of suffering and death.

Then Jesus shares a parable about a fig tree that has not produced fruit in three years. “The significance of fruit bearing is a theme throughout Luke. John the Baptist’s preaching in Luke 3:7-14 describes just, interpersonal dealings as the fruit of repentance. In the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:43-45, Jesus states that a good tree produces good fruit and similarly a good person produces good from the goodness of their heart. In the parable of the Sower in Luke 8:4-15, Jesus explains that those with good hearts hear the word of God, hold fast to it, and patiently produce fruit. With this evidence, the fig tree represents the human heart.” (Jeremy L. Williams)
And how easy it is to spend our lives on how bad other people are and fail to live our lives n such a way that bears good fruit: loving and accepting and allying ourselves to those the world rejects. We cannot bear such fruit when we are constantly taking everything that happens and making it about ourselves or assigning fault to others because of the way they live. This is wrong and like fruitless fig tree, we simply waste our opportunity to be part of the plan God is unfolding before us, loving the unlovable and standing alongside the rejected.
Jesus is not addressing, and will refuse to address, the specifics of the tragedies that were mentioned but uses them as a springboard to face the existential questions of our existence, why God put us here and how we should look to God during struggles, suffering, racism, wars and unrest. Where is God?
God is in the suffering and the loss. God is with the mother and unborn child who were killed in the bombing of the Ukrainian hospital. God is with those who wait in waiting rooms as their child faces an uncertain surgery. God is there with the grieving parents as they watch their adult son leave this world, connected to an IV machine and intubated. God is with those clinging to life having been invaded by a virus that now keeps them from breathing.
No one sinned to cause such struggle. If that’s what we believe, we need to have our minds changed; or to use the words Jesus did, we need to experience metanoia. For God understands our suffering. Not in just a way where he acknowledges our suffering, but God is physically and emotionally present in our loss and suffering. God participates with us, in our struggles.
When we get our mind and our heart around this, we come to a basic understanding that we are called to walk with those who struggle and to love them by being willing to participate, just like Jesus does. How that happens is different from person to person and situation to situation. But removing ourselves from the struggles of others or, even worse, to blame their struggles on God somehow causing the loss, is to be like a barren fig tree.

I read this week that it is important to note that “One of the themes of Jesus’ … ministry that becomes more and more prominent the closer he gets to Jerusalem is his dire warning about the impending fate of Jerusalem. Jesus is informed about some Galilean pilgrims who were probably involved in a political uprising against the Roman occupation and were subsequently put to death by Roman soldiers in the Temple complex—thus mingling their blood with the sacrifices. Jesus’ response is to tell them not to imagine that these Galilean victims were worse sinners than any other Galileans. Instead, Jesus says if they don’t rethink their intentions they will all perish in the same way. Jesus then brings up an incident of a recent building collapse in Jerusalem that had resulted in eighteen fatalities and comments on it by saying, “Do you think that they were more blameworthy than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you! Unless you repent, you will all be destroyed in the same way.” What is Jesus saying? Is he talking about Galileans and Judeans going to hell? Yes and no. Jesus isn’t talking about a postmortem spiritual hell, but an impending literal hell. Jesus has been calling Jerusalem into the kingdom of God and the way of peace by the practice of enemy love and radical forgiveness. But for the most part Jerusalem has rejected this message of peace, believing instead that when the time comes God will fight with them in a war of independence and help them attain freedom by killing their enemies. In response to this enormously dangerous holy war assumption, Jesus warns Jerusalem against resorting to violence by telling them that if they don’t rethink war and peace according to the kingdom of God, they’re all going to die by Roman swords and collapsing buildings. And this is exactly what happened a generation later. After four years of violent revolution led by a cadre of false messiahs claiming that God was about to give Israel victory over Rome, General Titus and the Roman Tenth Legion marched on Jerusalem. On August 4, AD 70, after a brutal four-month siege, the Romans launched their final assault. Hell had come to the holy city. Buildings collapsed from the bombardment of catapult stones (the hundred-pound hailstones of the Apocalypse), the city was set ablaze, and hundreds of thousands of Jerusalem’s citizens were killed by Roman swords. In the end Jerusalem was reduced to a smoldering Gehenna—the garbage dump where the fires are never quenched, and the maggots never die. This was when Jerusalem went to hell.

In the 21st century, the [satan] still tells big lies. In an age of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons capable of eradicating all human life, the way of war is still foolishly romanticized and deemed a legitimate way to shape the world. But Lent is a time to repent, to rethink, to reimagine. Today let us heed the warning of Jesus and remember that there is no way to peace…peace is the way. Zahnd, Brian. The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey (p. 84). Kindle Edition.
Wars and rumors of wars will always be with us until the Kingdom arrives in its fulness. But don’t lose hope. God calls us to work for justice and pray for peace. And if God is on our side, who can be against us?

Our Gospel this morning starts off with an unusual warning that the Pharisees give to Jesus. We usually expect them to be conniving and conspiring to trip Jesus up or set him up to come across as a fraud. We hear of plots and plans to silence Jesus. Jesus was threat to them on many different levels: He was constantly challenging them as having put the burden of the law above loving others. It’s the Pharisees who question him when he heals on the sabbath, or the disciples do something to seems to violate the spirit of the law. When you think of allies to Jesus, the Pharisees are probably at the back of the line.

Yet, here it is, they warn him to “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” Herod has, at least briefly, supplanted the Pharisees as objects of scorn. I’ve thought about this and am not sure why Luke puts it the way he does. Was it that the Pharisees were taken with Jesus at some level: perhaps the healings and exorcisms were worth following Jesus, albeit from afar? Or maybe there was some real compassion, for Herod, while Jewish, was still a pawn for the Romans. It may have been something like “well he’s not the savior we’re looking for but at least he’s a pretend Jewish savior.

I don’t know. But they clearly stepped up. I wonder if that surprised Jesus. Maybe. But I also wonder if the Pharisees are surprised by Jesus’ response. Often, we forget that the Pharisees aren’t bad people. I think there is a tendency to lump them in with all the bad guys in history. They were like Isis, we might think. Or maybe just misguided fools or have their heads around a misguided attempt to keep in control of their faith. But if we look beyond our preconceived ideas, we find something else. Josephus, the historian of antiquity, actually presents Pharisees in a positive light. Even Luke shares many stories of how Jesus is invited by the Pharisees to many dinner parties. Sure, they often degenerated into power contests between Jesus and them, but it’s not a difficult stretch to see how the Pharisees found Jesus as a more intriguing figure than a threatening one.
I like the idea that the Pharisees weren’t bad guys. I mean, let’s be real here. The Pharisees were experts at this religion thing. They obeyed the law as well as anyone can. They memorized Scripture in their spare time and upheld even the most difficult law. They were even innovators, separating themselves from the other religious party that held sway in ancient Palestine, the Sadducees. The main difference between both religious groups is that the Pharisees believed in what the Sadducess felt was a religious innovation: the resurrection. Of course, I have always remembered this difference between the two because they didn’t believe in the resurrection, they were sad you see.
But it helps me when I see that the Pharisees were not angry atheists or trying to change an historical understanding of their faith. The Pharisees may have counted Jesus as one of their own, which I again find fascinating. But they did share something with Jesus that may have led to them to warn Jesus about Herod. They were all captive to the empire, Rome.

Ironically, we have more in common with the oppressed minority of which Jesus was part than we may imagine. That’s important to know, because as Rachel Held Evans reminds us: “It’s easy for modern-day readers to forget that the Bible was written by oppressed religious minorities living under the heels of powerful nation-states known for their extravagant wealth and violence. For the authors of the Old Testament, it was the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and Persian Empires. For the authors of the New Testament, it was, of course, the massive Roman Empire. These various superpowers, which inflicted centuries of suffering upon the Jews and other conquered populations, became collectively known among the people of God as Babylon. One of the most important questions facing the people who gave us the Bible was: How do we resist Babylon, both as an exterior force that opposes the ways of God and an interior pull that tempts us with imitation and assimilation? They answered with volumes of stories, poems, prophecies, and admonitions grappling with their identity as an exiled people, their anger at the forces that scattered and oppressed them, God’s role in their exile and deliverance, and the ultimate hope that one day “Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the pride and glory of the Babylonians, will be overthrown by God” (Isaiah 13:19).
It is in this sense that much of Scripture qualifies as resistance literature. It defies the empire by subverting the notion that history will be written by the wealthy, powerful, and cruel, insisting instead that the God of the oppressed will have the final word. As Pastor Rob Bell observed, “This is what we read, again and again in the pages of the Bible—fearless, pointed, courageous, subversive, poetic, sometimes sarcastic, other times angry, heartfelt, razor-sharp critique of people, nations, systems, and empires endlessly accumulating more at the expense of everybody they’re stepping on along the way.”
And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing: resisting the power of the Empire. “Tell that Fox”, he says to the Pharisees when they warn him that Herod desires his death. He knows his life hangs in the balance and he refuses to bow to the power of the Empire. You can’t sit on Herod’s throne at the same time you hold on to the cross. Jesus knew that. He calls us to remember the same is true of us. We can serve God or empire, but not both.

It’s fascinating that the temptations Jesus faced from the satan in the wilderness are not being fleshed out in Jerusalem. There is seductive power in following empire and there is self-emptying humility in taking up our own cross and following where Jesus has led. This is the very reason why it is easy to make our faith into some sort of free ticket into heaven. Get saved and it doesn’t matter if you follow the empire or Jesus, some tell us.

The Kingdom of God is different than the Kingdom of the empire. And to live into the values of the Kingdom of God isn’t something that comes to us naturally. There just seems to be so much to gain from seeking power, fame and wealth by any methods either available to us or through crushing those who stand in our way.
We started our Lenten journey just a week and a half ago yet let’s admit to feeling as if we have been in a very long Lent- for two years we have suffered a lot of losses- loss of joy, loss of lives, loss of civility and now the loss of peace. It seems to be the perfect time to echo the words of the prophet and cry “how long O Lord, how long?”
Perhaps listening to the prophetic word of God is exactly the way we respond to a world that seems to be careening off course. “It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination,” wrote Brueggemann in his book, The Prophetic Imagination, “to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” Evans, Rachel Held. Inspired (series_title) (p. 119). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
At this point it is easy to keep all of this at arm’s length from where we live and what we face. Yet it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see that we face similar temptations. Jesus knew that Jerusalem was the place where God was manifestly present but also the place where prophets go to die. Despite that knowledge Jesus responds by using a metaphor that is deeply personal and loving.
Go and tell that Fox, Jesus begins but then after confronting the empire, he reveals his heart of love toward those who succumb to the temptations that power brings. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” The people that control the power structure do not know what to make of prophets, so they characteristically try to silence them. Jesus knew this but, as in the wilderness, does not fall prey to the temptation to point out to the powers that be that God’s kingdom will not sit silently. After all, even though the powers of this world try, poets cannot be silenced.
But as the Gospel story unfolds, let me interject a simple request: not yet. There’s too much to consider still during this Lent. I am not talking about giving up chocolate or fasting on Fridays. I am suggesting that Lent is an opportunity to examine our hearts, to see where Jesus is quietly and politely asked to take a back seat and, please sir, don’t make a scene. But acknowledging that is just part of the journey. It will reach a crescendo until the right time where we face the truth and reality that we were there when they crucified the Lord. Every time we supplant the Kingdom of God with the power of the empire, another nail is driven through his wrists. And he allows it, over and over and over again. But quietly amidst the sound of nails piercing the flesh of Jesus, we will hear, imperceptibly at first, an invitation to allow God to hold us close, like a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

There is an end to all of the struggles and temptations and the way we tend to buckle under the empty promises of Empire. But not yet. I encourage you to face your own demons, your own temptations to strike out on your own and get what you might think belongs to you. Because unless we do that, we will continue to live a life of delusion, empty of God’s power and love. But if we risk this journey, we will embrace and be embraced by a God who so desperately desires to shelter us from the storms and use us to share God’s love to those who have not yet come to terms with that God will one day gather us all like that beautiful hen gathering her brood under her wings.