Good morning Rehoboth,

                This week I am going to be a little like you all. I will be at some church in Minnesota, sitting in the pews wondering what direction the pastor will take. This Sunday at Rehoboth we have the honor of having Dennis Jones from Banks UMC preaching and leading worship. But, even though I am not preaching this week, I still want to give you all my ramblings on this much-beloved parable. Whenever we see a parable, our initial instinct is to try deciding which character God is, which one is Jesus and of course where do we fall in the story. Last week we heard about the fruitless fig tree, and I made the move that we all are like the tree which has been given a little more time. This week’s parable is a little harder in that respect because it seems to me that we can be all of these characters at different times.

                We often focus on the prodigal son. The son that returns after galivanting around and being wasteful. There are times in my life when I have left the path that Jesus has laid out for me. Not, that I have ever left the church or stopped believing, but I have stopped acting as I believe in him. There are moments in all our lives when we need to return to our father in heaven. There are times that we need to remember who we are and whose we are. That’s a message for a particular time that resonates with me, and it raises the question in my heart do we as a country need to return home? Have we as people forgot who we are and whose we are? I think the simple answer is yes, but the hard part is what does that look like. What does it look like for our country to return home to Jesus? I don’t think it means we need all Christians in government, and I don’t think it means we need to be reading the bible in schools. I think it has more to do with the way we love. We don’t love as Jesus told us to, and having all Christians in government and reading the bible in schools is not going to make us love like Jesus. And so I wonder what would it look like for us to return home to Jesus?

                But, while I think there are a time and place in which we feel like the prodigal we also have those moments when we resonate with the son that didn’t leave. We sometimes forget about him. This son worked hard; he never strayed all while his brother who wasted everything and disowned his family is given a party. The brother sees this party as the prodigal getting his inheritance. He thinks that because he has come back, the father will give him more. In the church, we sometimes think this way. If “that” person makes it into heaven there will be less room for me. We think that there is a limited number of rooms in heaven and those should be reserved for those that don’t ever leave the church. We don’t like to think that the person that strays and comes back is given the same as the person that never strays. It’s hard but grace and mercy are not fair. We should hope and pray that everyone comes back home, but it is hard.

                Lastly, we can sometimes feel like the father. We are sitting and waiting for those we love to come back. We see them when they are far off, and we run to them. We don’t always think like the son that didn’t leave. We sometimes are searching out those that are lost. I think wherever your heart is this week you can find hope in one of these characters. I don’t know which character I resonate with this week, probably the prodigal but I wonder what you see in this beautiful story of God’s love for us?

May your week be filled with the love and peace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thank you for listening to my ramblings

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Lee