My older brother and I once worked up a musical narration of the parable of the Prodigal Son told from a first-person perspective. We would talk a little, sing a little, and with what we hoped was a touch of dramatic effect, got the points of the story across -- he, the older brother; me the younger. And we had fun with the telling; had fun in the telling of it together.
I recalled that memory this morning during worship at my home church as the minister first read and then preached on this familiar story. We have travelled to Texas, my wife and I and two friends, on a sort of "heritage tour," and home church, at least where my family is concerned, is almost synonymous with home.
Perhaps the memory came to me simply because of the narrative connection -- but then I have heard and preached, myself, on the story a dozen times or more over the years and no been similarly taken aside by the flashback. Perhaps it was because this younger son, not 50-years-old, who has moved so far away from home, had returned. And though I don't feel as though I have "squandered my inheritance in dissolute living" -- I have been serving churches all these years, for heaven's sake -- I nonetheless always return to the welcoming embrace of the congregation that formed me full of humility. At other times and in other places I can find myself feeling some cockiness if I'm not careful. But not here, not among these people who know better. Whatever the joy with which they welcome me, no matter the pride they express about me, I know -- and they know -- that I have been among them as squirrely grade-schooler, goofy and gangly teenager, and awkward adolescent. In other words, they know me naked.
It's not that I ever embarrassed them or gave them cause to be ashamed. It's just that they know me, not as a role but as a person. I am not "Pastor" here; I'm simply "Tim" -- Chris and Merita's son; Craig's little brother. Me, with all the accretions of time and accomplishment stripped away.
If it's not quite like the Prodigal returning home, it's close enough for me. the issue is not what I've done or left undone; it isn't about success or failure. The question is never "why," but simply "where have you been?" and the assurance that "it's great to have you home." And nothing else really matters --
-- to them or, come to think of it, to me.
2 comments:
It is wonderful!!!!! Thanks for every word and many "in between the lines" thoughts I felt. med
For more than two weeks this story has been with me. I have come to the conclusion we are all prodigals. Each of us leaves home,and even when we haven't actually left, we do get "lost". It is in our lostness, or disappointment, or desert time that we need to be welcomed by the church as people searching for solace, not judgement. There is much I have to learn about forgiveness and living in my own skin. Sometimes I am cut to the core by something I do not understand. In that moment of bleeding I am not the prodigal but the other son. I want to know why, when I try to do what I believe God calls me to do, the road takes another twist and takes me to a place in my heart that is not "God like" in any form. I don't want to stop leaving home on trips that God asks me to take. What I do want is be to embraced by Grace when the journey causes me to end up in the desert.
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