by Lilly Lewin
This week’s lectionary gospel passage is Luke 15: 11-32 “The Prodigal Son,” or “the Forgiving Father.” This is a meditation I wrote originally for Rembrandt’s painting “Return of the Prodigal” but I suggest you take some time to reflect on some other paintings of this famous parable. The one below is by artist Jesus Mafa from Cameroon. It’s a beautiful example of the return. I love the woman with her arms raised in celebration. Perhaps the mom of the prodigal? What was she like?
google search for other images to use in your reflection here and here.
The Return of the Prodigal Son
REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van Rijn c. 1669 The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Consider the Painting. Look at it closely. Spend some time. Allow God to speak to you. Look, Consider and Listen…
READ THE TEXT …put your imagination to work…picture the story in your mind.
Smell the pigs and feel the wretchedness of the younger son. Use this painting from the National Gallery in Washington, DC to help you with this.
- Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
- French, 1824 – 1898
- The Prodigal Son
- probably c. 1879
Look at the encounter between father and son…both the encounter with the returning son and the son who stayed at home. What do you see?
When you read the story Jesus told…where do you see yourself?
Do you feel like the younger son or the older son?
Or maybe you feel like the dad in the story?
Or one of the servants surprised by the son’s return?
Take some time and consider this …
What do you notice about the younger son?
What do you notice about the father?
How about the older son and the servants?
Look at the painting.
What are you feeling like lately? Have you been running away?
Do you need to be welcomed back home? Have you squandered your inheritance or abandoned things you once loved?
Are you feeling like the younger son?
How does it feel to have a Father, God, who welcomes you back home even when you’ve thrown everything away?
How does it feel to have God embrace you? Picture God the father hugging you close.
Do you need a new robe today?
Do you need to be thrown a party and to be celebrated and honored?
What would that be like in your life right now?
Have you been feeling like the oldest son lately?
Working hard and doing all the right things but being frustrated?
What if you’ve been faithful and steady? What if you’ve stayed true to what you’re supposed to be and do? How does that feel today?
We all need a reminder of what we have, the blessing of Father God, the honor of being the “oldest” child. We all need to be reminded that God is just waiting for us to receive this honor, love, and embrace!
Is there anyone in your life that you are envious of …any prodigals that you’ve resented? Talk to God about this.
God is waiting to bestow grace, mercy and God’s forgiveness on YOU!
God longs to embrace you and throw you a party even if you haven’t gotten lost.
Take some time to day to open your heart to receive this gift. Use the art to help you receive it in the days ahead.
©lillylewin freerangeworship.com
by Christine Sine
We are now well into Lent and at this point many of us begin to flag in our commitments. Busyness crowds in and distracts us. Other priorities (like book launches!) demand our attention. This prayer is one I wrote a couple of years ago that I find provides a good refocusing exercise for me.
Take a few minutes to recenter yourself. Sit quietly, hands in your lap, palms upwards ready to receive from God. Close your eyes. Take a couple of deep breaths in and out, Visualize them flowing into your body. Relax into the presence of God. Imagine God in you and around you. Penetrating your soul, giving life to your spirit. Enjoy the wonder of God’s warm embrace. Remind yourself of the commitments you made at the beginning of Lent. What do you need to do to refocus on this important season of whose intent, as I read in Walter Brueggemann”s devotional this morning is to see how to take steps into God’s future.
By Jean Andrianoff —
No doubt the most famous wall in the world is the Great Wall of China, a colossal feat of human engineering. In its 2,700-year history, only one invader successfully breached this wall: Genghis Khan of Mongolia.
This literal wall between China and Mongolia mirrors a figurative wall of antagonism between the Chinese and the Mongols, as ancient as the Great Wall itself. When we lived in Mongolia in the mid-1990’s, the hostile feelings remained. Mongolians we spoke with had little use for either of their neighbors—neither Russia on the north nor China to the south. While we found they outspokenly despised the Russians who represented 70 years of Soviet domination of their country; Mongolians’ enmity toward the Chinese was even more intense.
Christianity at the time was young in Mongolia; only a handful of believers were more than ten years old in the faith. When we arrived in Mongolia in early 1993 there were an estimated 200 followers of Christ in the country. Most of these new Christians were young in chronological age as well, young adults comprising the majority of the members of the rapidly emerging church. Eree’s family was one of the few entire families to have embraced the faith. This capable young woman, who worked in our office, invited us to dinner to meet her family. We found her parents to be warm, engaging, and enthusiastic about their new-found faith. They had been among the first believers when Mongolia had opened to Christian witness. One of the things they told us that evening gave me an entirely new perspective on Paul’s words to the Ephesian Christians:
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. (Ephesians 2:14-18, NIV)
Eree’s mother told us of an encounter they had with a group of Chinese Christians, and how gratifying it felt to fellowship with these people who seemed more like brothers and sisters than ancient rivals. To her, this experience gave truth to Paul’s words and verified the power of the Gospel to break down ancient prejudices.
Never again have I read this passage without thinking of Eree and her family and how the great wall of hostility between historical enemies was shattered by the costly reconciliation of Christ. Yes, the passage was originally intended for Jews and Gentiles. Like the literal wall separating the Chinese and Mongolians, a literal wall in the temple courts separated Gentiles and Jews, so that Gentiles were excluded from the inner courts where sacrifices for sin were performed. But with the death of Christ, the figurative wall of separation this represented was abolished, with both sides now having equal access to the Father.
While I understand this concept, I have not lived in a context where I have experienced the Jewish/Gentile division. However, seeing the Chinese/Mongolian wall of prejudice swept away among new believers in Christ has given me a fresh perspective on the power of God to break down walls that separate even the most ancient enemies. No matter how great the wall we face, God’s power is more than adequate to break it down.
By Ana Lisa de Jong —
I wonder is God a God of rules,
and rituals
and certain ways of doing things?
There is place for tradition,
and practices that give symbolism,
and meaning
to what is important.
But I think that God,
who is Being,
calls us to respond in the same vein.
Behold,
we come at the prompting of His Spirit
in our understanding of the Word.
And in our need,
and in our gratitude
and we lay down all semblance of
appearances
and we lay down
in the dust,
all our motivations,
our desire for attention
or affirmation for doing things
correct, or well.
And we open our hearts,
which always starts
with forgetting what
we have learned,
and learning to listen
to something new.
God is always in the creation
business,
always about surprising
and arriving in some
new and different
way.
That might mean throwing
off tradition
and appearances
to the winds
and following his
sandaled feet
and the footprints
left in his wake
where-ever they lead.
Living Tree Poetry
March 2019
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By Rodney Marsh —
Jesus said Jesus then told the crowd and the disciples to come closer, and he said: If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross and follow me
Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life:
Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it.
Jesus too had a three stage process for living a fulfilling life:
Forget about yourself
Love your neighbour
Follow me
If anyone is to learn to love their neighbour they must first learn to pay complete and compassionate attention to persons other than themselves. Unless we learn to give up our self-centeredness and pay attention to another we will never live a happy, fulfilling life (that’s what Jesus taught). “Paying attention” is not just necessary for love it is love. It is how Jesus loved God. Through pure attention, Jesus saw God, saw God in others and saw God in the world around. He alone could say, “I and the Father are One”. He showed us that when we see the image of God (the purity, goodness, divinity) in the other, we open ourselves to God’s love. Allowing God to love us is the way we love God, and this openness to love is the way to the joy of discovering our unique place in the world. We learn to be happy with who we are and who others are. The price we must pay for this happiness is giving up our ego-self as the centre of all things. When we pay this price and pay attention to God in our neighbour and in the world, we find our true ‘self’ in the love of God. This is the promise of Jesus. It is why Jesus also warned, If you want to save your life, you will destroy it and then promised, but if you give up your life …, you will save it. That giving up our life and the receiving of it back is the journey of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday and then to Easter Day. It is a journey that begins now and continues so long as God is pleased to give us life.
Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it.
Forget about yourself
Love your neighbour
Follow me.
Jesus and Mary (Oliver)
March 24th is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero. His life and words are well worth reflecting on during this season of Lent. So much to reflect on that can give us guidance in today’s world and I wanted to make sure that we did not pass by this day without reflecting on his commitment to the message of Christ.
The following prayer was composed by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw. The words of the prayer are attributed to Oscar Romero, but they were never spoken by him.
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent
enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of
saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw
Also take time to watch this important short animated film about his life:
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