Monday 16 April 2007

This week begins back in the parable of the father with two sons.
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." (Luke 15:1-2)

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 squandered his property in dissolute living. (Luke 15:11-13). 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 to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! (Luke 15:14-17) 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. (Luke 18-20a)

Oh what control we want to have! Oh how we can attempt to put the world together the way we would like it to fit together. Oh how everything needs to be about me - mine. The younger son sets up his plan. This plan of his will save his behind. This plan will put him into a position he can accept - a plan with which he can get things back under control. No, it won't be as it was when he was home, but it will be better than it is with the pigs. I wonder how much of our religious contemplation has to do with how we would have our lives go on from here to there? I wonder about how much of what we do as religious people can simply be ways that we have decided with save our skin or make us look good or be safe simply in the way we have decided is safe. I find it interesting that he is trying to be something other than what he is. He's is going back to become a hired hand...when he is a son. Does being a child of God or being a child of a loving parent simply have to do with what we have or don't have, what we able to make of ourselves? Or...are we sons and daughters - forever. Even when we have been trying like mad to be something other than who we are, does that mean that we are not exactly who God and a loving parent would consider us. How quickly we try to take control of the universe in which we live.

Connection: You are the beloved of God...you are more than you can imagine you are...you are the sons and daughters - of the Creator...of the one who remember loving relationships...of the one whose promises to abide with us have no end...of the one who has claimed us and does not let go even when we think we have cut all the strings we have put in place.

Lord, Who Rescues, Delivers and Remembers, it is by your grace that this day opens up into something beyond our plans and controls and wants. We give you thanks for being the one who waits as we wander and walks with us when we are fumbling along with our own ideas of who we are. Praise to you, O God. Amen.