Lost and Found, Part Three

Text: Luke 15

The lessons from this parable and the larger chapter are many. Our concern in this context has been with those aspects which will assist us in the disciplines of confession and repentance in keeping with Lent. It's an extended period over which to take such stock; yet without doing so, we will be far too likely to settle for a surface inspection while the interior of the soul slowly crumbles.

That's likely what had happened in the lives of the Pharisees to whom Jesus addressed this timeless parable and whose resultant attitudes were personified in the older brother. It is doubtful that they had begun their love for the Law in a manner accompanied by a disdain for the people who listened to their teaching, or who had decided they were not needful thereof. Yet over time they developed a hardness which itself seems to have become institutionalized. Hence, when seeing Jesus spending time with the rejected and rejecting ones, they became indignant. Perhaps the most poignant contrast in this parable resides in these phrases:"your brother" and "this son of yours." The father wants his older, obedient son to identify with his disobedient sibling; the son rejects the association, referring to his brother in a manner which throws responsibility squarely upon his father, questioning his sense of fairness in the process.

Human anger is seldom if ever an attractive trait. When mistakenly identified as righteous indignation, it's face does not improve in the least. When displayed over the inclusion of people within the sphere of God's grace it becomes absolutely demonic--for who but the demons would prefer that the reach of such grace be limited?

Are there any people in our own lives whom we would rather refer to as God's own problem rather than fellows of ours on our journey, as people whose very presence we deem a blight on all things decent and orderly--and "godly?" Who are the tax collectors and sinners in our world? When they return to their Father in heaven, will we join in the joy of the Father, or sulk because we've worked so long and hard at doing the right thing without due recognition? Finally, will we not only join the celebration, but work--and work we must--to develop the heart of the Father in our own lives, so that we are going out to the road and seeking them ourselves?