Tag: Joseph

Mercy’s embrace and the scandal of grace

David HerbertLeave a comment

a sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent (C) reflecting on the readings for the day, 2 Corinthians 5:16-end and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-end – the parable of the Prodigal Son (and Merciful Father)

Today’s Gospel presents a well-known story about a father and his two sons. 

(It is ironic that on Mothering Sunday our gospel is about a father and his two sons. The story may, just as easily, be about a merciful mother, wayward daughters and resentful sisters.)

Beyond being just a family drama, this is a story about the Kingdom of God.

How do we know that?
Because in God’s Kingdom, the last come first, and the first come last.
The world’s order favours the eldest son, granting him the inheritance and privilege.
Yet, in this parable, it is the younger son who finds blessing, while the older son stands in the shadows, sulking in resentment.

This reversal is a hallmark of the Kingdom of God. It is a theme woven throughout Scripture, going back to Genesis, where God repeatedly upends human expectations.

Consider Cain and Abel. Cain, the elder, offers his sacrifice, but it is the younger, Abel, whose offering finds favor with God, igniting Cain’s jealousy and leading to the first murder.

Think of Jacob and Esau. Esau, as the firstborn, should have received the blessing, yet through divine mystery and human cunning, it is Jacob, the younger, who carries God’s promise forward.

Look at Joseph, the eleventh son of Jacob—his brothers despised him, sold him into slavery, but in God’s providence, he rises to power and saves them all from famine.

And then there is David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons, overlooked by his family but chosen by God to be king of Israel.

This is the pattern of the Kingdom of God—a new order where grace, not entitlement, reigns. And so we return to today’s parable, which could rightly be called “The Parable of the Merciful Father.” Here again, we see contrast: the younger and the older, the old and the new.

Paul captures this contrast beautifully when he writes: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17). In the Kingdom of God, status, wealth, and achievement count for nothing. The new creation does not weigh merits but pardons offences. This is the amazing grace that calls us out of darkness and into light.

That’s what’s new. And we often still don’t get it.
Still the picture lingers in our minds of Peter at the pearly gates, standing like an examiner, ruling people in or out of heaven on the basis of what they’ve done. Jesus, in this parable, shatters that image. 

What’s the prodigal to say for himself other than that he has squandered his wealth in wold living (and we all know what that means)? 

And the older brother.
What has he to say for himself other than “I’ve worked like a slave for my father. I have never disobeyed orders.”
But it is the reckless, wayward son who is embraced, and the rule-keeping, responsible older brother who distances himself from his father’s joy.

“The Return of the Prodigal Son”, by Rembran(d)t Harmenszoon van Rijn, c. 1669

Rembrandt has painted the contrast brilliantly.
You see the older and the younger. You see the light and the dark, you see the old and the new. Rembrandt highlights the father and the prodigal younger son. His boy has nothing on him – no weight, not even a pair of shoes, utterly dishevelled, totally loved.
This is the new order, the order of the kingdom of God, where, in the words of the psalm appointed for today (Psalm 32 v11), mercy embraces those who trust in the Lord and happy are those whose transgression is forgiven.

The other son, the prodigal’s older brother, Goody, goody two shoes, has been painted into a very dark corner. His body language is so different to his father’s. He is wringing his hands in anger and despair and looking down his nose in judgement at the scene he is witnessing. He is standing over the merciful reconciliation of father and son and resisting it with all his might.

This is the dark corner we all paint ourselves into when we self righteously resist the new which doesn’t weigh our merits but pardons our offences. It’s the corner where we so easily let anger and resentment take hold of our heart, where we insist on our righteousness and our just desserts.

The resistance of the older son/brother puts him at such an emotional distance from his merciful father, as distant from his father as his younger prodigal brother had ever been in terms of physical distance. He has rejected the new order. He is far from the kingdom of God. He has cast himself out into utter darkness.

Imagine the father’s grief. He has seen the return of his youngest, now he has to grieve for his older son who has put such distance between them. He now has to wait for his return, for him to see sense, for him to join his brother in mercy’s embrace. The family will remain broken until that happens. But what joy there will be when both sons have returned, brotherhood united in mercy’s embrace. What joy. What a party!

Where do we see ourselves in this picture? Are we wringing our hands with the older brother? Or, are our hands stretched out in mercy ready to embrace those who come first in the new rule of the kingdom of God, the lost, the least and the last? Or, are we like the prodigal – once far off, but now glad, rejoicing in the Lord, happy in mercy’s embrace? 

Quite likely we see ourselves all over the place. Perhaps we see ourselves in the older brother – yes we can be like him. Perhaps we wish ourselves to be like the merciful father. Perhaps we know there’s joy in heaven when we’ve allowed ourselves to fall into the arms of love.

As I looked at Rembrandt’s painting this week I remembered my confirmation and my ordination. Do you remember your confirmation and kneeling just like the prodigal is kneeling in Rembrandt’s painting? It’s the same scene isn’t it?

It’s as if Rembrandt has painted me out of the dark shadows into the light, onto my knees in mercy’s embrace. I can feel the hands of mercy on my shoulders confirming God’s love for me, discounting all my sins – and myself confirming my commitment to the rule of God that puts the last, the least and the lost first in his heart. And from those hands I take the ministry of reconciliation that he commits us to, according to Paul in his letter to the Corinthians.

Jesus leaves us with a question. How does the family find healing? How can the brothers be reconciled? Is it only through the ministry of reconciliation that the father has committed his younger son to. Surely the younger brother has to share the same longing for his brother as his merciful father had for him. Surely the younger brother has to wait, his arms ready to embrace his long lost brother, discounting his anger and resentment and pardoning the ways he has offended.

The questions we are left with:
Will we join the work of reconciling love?
Will we stand together with Christ as people of mercy?
Will we set aside resentments?
Will we choose the scandal of grace?
Will we make way for joy?

Making choices, making life

David HerbertLeave a comment

A reflection on the stories of creation in Genesis 2 and the storm on the lake in Luke 8:22-25. These are the readings set for the 2nd Sunday before Lent (C).

This image was created by AI from the words of the sermon. Interestingly and controversially AI has made a choice for a white Adonis – more filmstar than gardener!

In the beginning everything was so good, and so well made.
Everything was generated from the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

This story of creation is not the history of creation – as if this happened, then that happened, and the rest is history, sort of thing.
This story of creation is the theology of creation, and is true.
It is true for those who believe in God, who see God in all our beginnings, who trust in God’s blessing. It is spiritually true, not scientifically true.
Spiritual truth stands the test of time.
It is so true that it moves us to wonder and reverence.

It comes from a faith that sees God’s blessing in the beginnings of all life, that sees heaven and earth knitted together by a God who in the first place only ever wanted to give life. It comes from a faith that sees God loving everything he has made, delighting in what he has so well made.

It is a faith which realises that without God we are nothing.
Here God brings man to life by getting into his face and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, and the first breath of language.

God brought to the man in the garden everything he’d made from the dust of the ground.
This was to see what he’d call them and whatever he called them, that became their name. 

God wanted to see what he called them.
That is something we’ve stopped imagining isn’t it?
Do we imagine God being interested in the names we call things, and the names we call people?
How different our world would be if we did have that imagination to name others in a way that would please God.
How different our world would be if, with that imagination, we didn’t demean the creatures of God’s making.

Our naming, our calling, the language we use, is part of the choice that is fundamental to the book of Genesis. In a world where language so much divides us we could usefully reflect on the choices of words and names we make and how they reflect our relationship with God and creation. 

The choices we make about language can be mighty acts of creation.
But remember, it takes time to call someone “lovely” in a way they will understand and take to heart.
It takes no time at all to voice a hurtful call that will break the heart of a relationship.
Our words have creative power and they have destructive power.
The choice is ours to make.

From the beginning there is choice.
There’s always been choice. 

Besides our naming and calling there’s the choice of obedience and disobedience.
The choice is there for the couple in the garden.
Can we get away with eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
There was only one thing forbidden by God and that was it.
The man and the woman only had to be obedient in that one thing and they weren’t.
They were disobedient and took the law into their own hands. 

This was their first bad choice, and the rest they say is history.
One bad choice led to another, and then another and then another in rapid succession.
They got dressed to cover their shame (bad choice, but perhaps necessary), they ducked their responsibility and blamed something else (the serpent) and they hid themselves from God.

One rotten choice after another.
Hot on the heels of these choices comes the story of the children of the first procreation, the story of Adam and Eve’s two sons, Cain and Abel, the story of the first murder, a shocking murder, fratricide, the killing of brother by brother.
God had tried to help Cain. “Why are you angry?”
(Perhaps we all need God to ask us that question in our anger.)
“Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?
If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?
But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” (Genesis 4:6-7).

That’s the choice.
That’s the choice for Cain and it’s the choice for us.
Sin crouches at the door.
We must rule over it.
That’s the way with sin, isn’t it?
It makes itself small and then looms large.
It makes itself seem so small that we often think that we have done little wrong. 

The book of Genesis concludes with stories about Joseph and the right choices he made.
He goes from being a tactless 17 year old (37:2) to become a powerful and self-disciplined man by the choices he make.
He refuses sex when it’s offered him on a plate, and he refuses to retaliate against his brothers for their jealous bullying, instead he saves their lives and the lives of all in Egypt.
Sin was always at his door, but he nails it.
His good choices undo some of the harm caused by the bad choices of his brothers – including their jealousy of Joseph, their intention to kill Joseph (another fratricide) and their intention to deceive their father into believing his son was dead.

The picture painted by Genesis is that in all our beginnings is God’s love of life, love for our life and blessing in abundance.
There are all the blessings of creation, all the animals, the flora and fauna, and all living beings – all to enjoy.
There is almost too much to choose from and choices become challenging and difficult decisions have to be made. 

From the beginning it’s the choices we make that intrigue God.
He wants to see what we will call others.
He wants to see how we will manage the passions he has given us to work the garden and take care of everything.
He wants to see how we manage our emotions.
He wants to see the choices we make when all around us people are choosing to hate and despise others.
He wants to see the choices we make about brotherhood and sisterhood. He wants to love all the choices we make.

Genesis is a book about beginnings, but is also about the mean time, when times get mean in the midst of life, when life gets challenging and difficult, like the time depicted in today’s gospel in the crossing of the lake (Luke 8:22-25).
At first, it’s all plain sailing, so much so that Jesus fell asleep.
Then a squall came down on the lake, and the boat was swamped and they were in danger.
They panicked.
“We’re going to drown!”

Isn’t this the way life goes?
First it’s plain sailing – then as we grow up life gets rough and we have choices to make.
The choice is whether we become doomsayers – “we are drowning in this, or in that”, or whether we remain hopeful, constant in love, believing our blessing.
When the storm subsided, when all was calm, Jesus asked those who were with him, “where is your faith?”

They were amazed.
“Even the winds and the water obey him”.
Their choice was to follow him.
How do the choices we make show our faith and our choice to trust that God is with us in the storms of our lives, longing to love the choices we make within those storms – whether we choose life, whether we choose peace, whether we choose kindness, whether we choose obedience?

Here’s the link to the readings

Changing the order of things

David HerbertLeave a comment

It is a privilege to be supporting newly ordained ministers: a group of people in short-term posts on their way to taking on posts of greater responsibility. They are a people in transition who manage remarkably well to avoid being anxious about what might or might not happen to them. They are going through the appointment process, which is also, of course, often a disappointment process. The process of appointment and disappointment is a confusing one. There is not always an apparent justice.

I have always been intrigued by the element of surprise in (dis)appointments and the more exciting appointments I have been involved with have had an element of surprise. Ruth was overwhelmingly surprised when she was appointed churchwarden. Jack was surprised when he wasn’t, though to his credit, he came to terms with his disappointment with great grace.

Ordinarily, there should be justice in appointments, and succession planning should follow well understood procedures. But there needs to be processes of disruption. I have been reading the story of Jacob’s blessing of Joseph’s two sons Manasseh and Ephraim (Genesis 48). They were born in that order and should, by rights, have been blessed in that order. Jacob himself “stole” his father’s blessing from his older twin Esau. Of Jacob’s twelve sons, Joseph was the last in line, inspiring murderous resentment amongst his brothers. (The stained glass pictured above shows Joseph’s blessing). Disappointments abound in the Bible. The choice of David by the prophet Samuel was a surprise to David’s father. David was not the first-born, but the last-born – and still so young. Each of his older brothers was presented to Samuel. Each was dis-appointed as Samuel turned the line of succession on its head (1 Samuel 16:1-13).

The New Testament takes up the theme. Everything is in the wrong order. Even the birth of Jesus is in the wrong place. The wise ones went for Jerusalem and finished up nine miles wide of the mark. (Matthew 2). Jesus, himself set the cat among the pigeons by describing the disappointment process. He said “The last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16) before being challenged by the Mum who claimed her two sons had the right to the best seats in the house (Matthew 20:20-24).

All these stories are a reminder that there has to be room for manoeuvre and that there have to be processes of disruption. Prayer before appointments is an invitation for the Holy Spirit to confirm or disrupt the natural order of things. Sometimes the order of things has to change if things are going to change. The story of Manasseh and Ephraim, (or is it Ephraim and Manasseh?) is a reminder of that. It represents the hope of a new order, in which those whose appointment comes as a surprise live for the sake of others and not for themselves. That is why the order is changed.

A new order is one in which all those who come last in things come first – a great disappointing for some.

The stained glass is by Maria Stolz of Renaissance Glassworks Howard Lake, MN 55349

Here is another post on the theme of disappointment and leadership.