Tuesday, March 8

Luke 15:11-20

“There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that county, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.

Years ago, when I was working with high school students, I overheard a group of kids comparing notes on their respective curfews. Some had to be in at 10 pm every night of the week; some got an extra hour of “freedom” on weekend nights; but most were complaining that the curfews established by their parents were either too restrictive or unfair in some way.

Finally, a young man who had been quiet up to this point – and was not typically part of the group - spoke up with the rather surprising claim that he had no curfew at all. He said that he could stay out as late as he wanted any night of the week – and that sometimes he stayed out all night and never came home.

Predictably, the other students were green with envy. “That’s awesome!” they said, “Your parents must be the coolest parents in the world! I wish my parents were like that!” The young man just smiled and nodded, obviously enjoying the attention and envy of the other students.

But I knew something that they didn’t. I knew that this boy’s parents didn’t set a curfew for him because they didn’t care what he did. They were too busy with their own alcohol and drug-fueled lifestyle to pay much attention at all to what their son did with his life. I knew these things because the boy told me. Of all the students the group that night – he was the most sad and lonely of all of them – because he knew his parents didn’t care enough to set boundaries for him.

Like many young people, the younger brother in Jesus’ story assumes that gaining freedom from his father’s rules, boundaries and expectations – along with receiving his portion of the inheritance early - would lead to greater happiness. He was wrong. The combination of money, freedom and immaturity led to a pig-sty instead.

The younger brother didn’t set out to lose everything - he actually set out to find happiness. But he wound up destitute. He didn’t set out to get lost – he wanted to “find himself” – yet he wound up in a far country, friendless and alone.

How often we believe the same lies the younger brother believed – that his father really didn’t have his best interests at heart; that he would never really be happy in his father’s house! How often we swallow the same bait; hook, line and sinker – that the pursuit of pleasure will make us happier! How often we succumb to the same temptation to believe we can make our own rules!

I always wondered why the father in Jesus’ story not only allows the son to take his inheritance early (knowing what the boy would like do), but doesn’t go after him in pursuit? Jesus had just told the story of the shepherd who went after his lost sheep; and the story of the woman who search after the lost coin; so why didn’t the father go looking for the boy?

I think I began to understand this parable more after I had children. There is a difference between a sheep, a coin and a young man. Neither the sheep or the coin have a will – that is the capacity to choose between right and wrong. But the boy does. That father knows he has loved his son. The father knows the son knows he is loved by his father. The father knows the boy knows right from wrong. But the father also knows he cannot force the boy to love him in return; he cannot force the boy to choose right over wrong. So the father’s greatest expression of love to his son is to let him go. He lets the son take his inheritance, blow it all on wild living, and wind up living like a pig – because he knows the son will never truly know his love, his heart, his grace and his joy, until he recognizes the lies, recognizes his sin, and surrenders. The father lets the son go because he loves him.

But the father also waits. The father also watches. And the father stands ready to forgive, to restore, and to celebrate. He loves us enough to let us go – and he loves us enough to welcome us home again!

Brian Coffey

Monday, March 7

Luke 15:11-32

“There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that county, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look, all these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours, who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”

“ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,

a tale of a fateful trip,

that started from this tropic port

aboard this tiny ship.

The mate was a mighty sailing man,

the skipper brave and sure.

Five passengers set sail that day

for a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

The weather started getting rough,

the tiny ship was tossed.

If not for the courage of the fearless crew,

the Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost.”

If you grew up, more or less, in the 70’s – chances are you recognize – and can hear in your head – the theme song to “Gilligan’s Island,” a goofy T.V. sitcom about 7 castaways lost on a desert island.

Or maybe you were a bigger fan of “Lost in Space” – a futuristic show about a family stranded somewhere in outer space and can still hear the robot shouting “Danger, Will Robinson, danger!”

More recently, many of you probably watched the popular series, “Lost”, that tells the (almost endlessly interesting and endlessly frustrating) story of a group of people who crashed onto a mysterious island and became lost in both space and time.

These shows, and our fascination with them, reveal two things. First, there are all kinds of ways to get lost; and second, getting lost can seem fun and exciting until we actually get, well, lost!

In Luke 15 Jesus tells three “lost” stories; a story about a lost sheep; a story about a lost coin; and finally, this story about a lost son (actually TWO lost sons). These stories are Jesus’ way of teaching us that there are lots of ways to be spiritually lost. Most of them start quite unintentionally – after all, no one intentionally tries to get lost, rather, we all THINK we know where we are going! Yet, even though we don’t intend to get lost (the younger brother), and may not even know we are lost (the older brother) – lost we are.

Jesus is also teaching us that someone is looking for us. There is a shepherd trudging through the wilderness looking for one lost sheep. There is a woman sweeping every inch of her home looking for just one lost coin. And there is a father waiting and watching – his eyes focused on where the road meets the horizon – looking for a figure he will recognize as his son – coming home. This same father waits, too, for his other son – the one standing in the back yard with his arms folded and back turned – refusing to join the celebration inside.

All these images, of course, reveal to us the heart of the God who is fierce and relentless in his love for each one of us. He pursues us like a shepherd looking for his lost sheep; like a woman looking for a lost coin, like a father looking for a wayward son, or, to use an analogy many of us have experienced, like a parent looking for a lost child in a mall – because we are of inestimable value to him. And he wants us to come home.

My guess is that, if you are reading this devotional, you have already come home. If so, thank God for loving you enough to come after you, to find you, and to rejoice over you! But it is possible that, while you are reading this devotional, you are also – at this moment – far from home. You sense that God is pursuing you – but maybe you fear that you have strayed too far – or that you’ll just end up disappointing him again. I think the younger brother in Jesus’ story may have felt that way too. I think he expected his father to be angry. I think he hoped – at best – to become a servant. Yet, his father threw his arms around him, kissed him, and said, “My son was lost and is found!” He feels the same way about you – so come on home!

Brian Coffey

Friday, March 4

Friday

So he got up and went to his father.  “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. “The son said to him,  ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants,  ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.  For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. 

-       Luke 15:20-24

All week we have been reflecting on the younger son in this parable.  He has rejected the love of his father and he has wandered far from his family and his spiritual home.  He wanted control of his own life and he wanted to get away from anything and anyone that would remind him of his heritage.  He ended up broken, alone and desperate. 

Now he is returning home.  He is going back to the village and community that he left behind.  He is returning to the family that he rejected and scorned.  He is returning to the father that he treated with such contempt.  I wonder if he ever thought he would see them again (I wonder if he ever wanted to).  Imagine his fear and shame as he traveled the dusty roads home.  He had turned his back on his community and his family and they in turn would have thought of him as an outcast.  It would be one thing to come back someday as a rich man with servants and camels, etc. but he is returning starving, penniless and in rags.

Can you imagine what must have been running through his head as he pondered what kind of reception he would receive?  Would the townspeople mock him as he entered the village? Would his father turn him away with shouts of rage at what he had done?  Would his father ignore him entirely and deny he ever knew him?  Would his older brother look upon him with a smug “you deserve this” expression?

This son got two things right and one thing completely wrong.  First, he got his confession right; “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” he understood that his sin was indeed an offense to both his heavenly Father and his earthly father.  Second, he got his condition right when he said that he was no longer worthy to be called a son.  But he got the heart of his father totally wrong.  He thought the best he could hope for is that his father would perhaps take him back as a servant or a hired hand, but never a son again, that privilege was gone forever because of his terrible choices.

He must have been struck with fear when he saw his father running at him from a distance. In the Middle East, it was considered humiliating for men over age forty to run. As the father ran, he would have had to lift his robe—another humiliation.  Why was his father running?  He must be so enraged, was he going to strike the boy down right there?  But, as the father drew closer, the son would see not anger—but joy.  When the father reached him, he did not strike him, he embraced him and kissed him as a son!!

As this son experiences the father’s visible, costly love for him, his speech melts away (notice that he never even gets to the part where he pleads to be taken in as a hired hand).  All that is left is this feeling that he is not worthy to be the father’s son, the grace of the father is too overwhelming. Then the father restores the son—showering him with the best robe, providing shoes for his feet (slaves were bare-footed, sons wore shoes), placing a ring on his finger (a signet ring would give him the power to transact business in the name of the family).  All that this son thought he had lost forever because of his sin is instantly restored to him the moment he repents! 

From the son’s point of view, he had messed up so bad that he could never be taken back again.  But clearly, from the father’s perspective, this boy never stopped being his son.  It was the father’s costly, unexpected outpouring of visible love that turns the son’s heart toward him—perhaps for the first time. The son’s job (repentance) is simply to accept the embrace of the father.  This is our job too!


Jeff Frazier

Thursday, March 3

Thursday

So he got up and went to his father.  “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. “The son said to him,  ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants,  ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.  For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. 

–      Luke 15:20-24

Jesus states it so simply in his story that we may not at first recognize the powerful significance of it - “so he got up and went to his father.” Before this younger son got up and went he had been reflecting on his desperate condition and deciding in his heart what he would say and do when he saw his father.  Perhaps he had even been resolving to change his ways for good if he was given a second chance.  But, all of his reflecting and deciding and resolving would mean nothing at all if he had not “got up” and started for home.  I wonder if this boy had come close to returning home before?  Perhaps as the money was running low, and the friends were starting to leave him, and times were getting tough, he thought about returning.  He may have even decided to go back before but just not followed through with it. 

How often we resolve to do this or to change that, yet our resolutions come to nothing, no significant action taken and no real changes.  The month of March has just begun, and that means (along with that fact that Spring is hopefully just around the corner) that over 80% of the people who made a new years resolution just 2 months ago have already broken it and/or given up on it.

In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.  But someone will say,  “You have faith; I have deeds.”  Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.  You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that — and shudder.     – James 2:17-19

I don’t know about you, but I have had my share of “false starts” and good intentions in my spiritual life.  I know what I ought to be doing and I even resolve to do it…but then I either slide right back into the same disobedient patterns.  Proverbs 26:11 puts it bluntly for us, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”  Have you ever seen a dog do this?  Our dog can have a bowl full of fresh food and clean water and still want to go sniff and eat whatever disgusting things she can find out in the back yard! I know its kind of a gross image, but that is the point.  We are just like that when we refuse what the Father offers us.  Imagine this boy, sitting in the pig slop day after day, until finally he gets up, and starts for home.

I don’t know what God is doing in your life.  I have enough trouble paying attention to what He is trying to do in my life.  But I do believe that God is at work in all of us.

Who do you need to apologize to? 

Who do you need to forgive?

Who do you need to reach out to?

What relationship do you need to get out of?

What secret are you hiding that you need to bring into the light?

What habits or behaviors does God want to change in you?

What financial choices is God asking you to make?

Whatever it is that He is telling you to do or to stop doing, don’t waver or hesitate, GET UP and GET GOING!


Jeff Frazier

Wednesday, March 2

Wednesday

 When he came to his senses, he said,  ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.        

                                                          - Luke 15:17-20a

I must admit that I have sometimes wondered if this younger son’s decision to return home was truly the result of a broken and repentant heart, or if it was more of a desperate survival tactic motivated out of self-preservation.  After all, which of us hasn’t turned to God is a crisis, begging Him to help us out of whatever fix we were in, and promising to change our behavior if He will bail us out one last time?

However, if we dig a little deeper into the historical context of the story, it becomes clear that returning home is no “quick fix” for his money problems.  He would have had to endure extreme shame and the scorn of his family and entire village. Dr. K.E. Bailey describes what this process might have been like in his book The Cross and the Prodigal.  “As the son comes closer to his home, he feels fear and shame. He wished his father dead; left family and community; and now he has lost everything. He expects to face his father’s and brother’s anger and rejection. Further, the community would reject and banish him, as was the custom.  Any Jew who lost his family’s money among foreigners would face the Kezazah ceremony (literally “the cutting off.”) The Kezazah would be performed by breaking a large clay pot at the feet of the prodigal as visual symbol that the community rejected him forever.”  So this lost son would have understood that to return was not going to be easy. 

Another reason for believing that his motives were not entirely selfish is the content of his rehearsed speech. He is at least saying the right things, he acknowledges his sin against both his heavenly and his earthly father.  He also recognizes that he cannot presume to re-enter his old life on the same terms, as if the whole thing had never happened.

Still, I think we have to admit that this son, like all of us, is probably a mixed bag when it comes to the true motivations of his heart and his reasons for returning home.  Did he long for his former life as his father’s son? – Quite likely.  Was he thinking with his growling stomach? – Also very likely.  Was he completely genuine and repentant in his confession speech?  Are you?  Am I?  The truth is that none of us are 100% in anything we do.  However, as we will soon find out, the restoration of the son does not depend on the quality and sincerity of the son’s speech, but on the grace and compassion of the Father!

Biblical scholars agree that this is the turning point of the story (at least for the younger brother), this is the moment when his life begins to change.  The phrase “When he came to his senses” actually means when he came to himself.  When he remembered who he was.  All of the things that he had sought his identity in were gone; money, women, freedom, friends, etc., and all he has left is the faint memory of the son he used to be.  As far as he was able, he turned his heart toward home. 

This is the beginning of repentance.  We do not have to have our act together.  We do not have to know all of the right words to say and we may not even understand all of the words we do know.  All our Father asks of us is that we “come to our senses” and return to our Him.


Jeff Frazier

Tuesday, March 1

Tuesday

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.  After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.  So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.  He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.  “When he came to his senses, he said,  ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’  So he got up and went to his father.  

                                                                                                                    - Luke 15:13-20a

When Jesus says that this younger son set off for a “distant country”, he is telling us something very important about this boy’s heart.  The term used for distant country means that he went so far from home that he was a stranger in that land.  Why didn’t the son just go to the next village or the nearest town?  If he didn’t leave the region, he would still be known as his father’s son, and he wanted to get as far away from his father, his family and his faith as possible.  He wanted to be in a place where nobody would know him and there would be nothing to remind him of who he was or where he came from. 

When we leave home (spiritually) and run from God, our natural inclination is to avoid contact with people and places that will remind us of it.  A friend once told me that during a period of spiritual rebellion in his life he actually stopped going to a particular coffee shop in the morning because he knew that the pastors often hung out there and he didn’t want to face them. 

Have you ever avoided a person or place (even church) simply because you didn’t want to be reminded of what you knew in your heart was wrong?  When we do this, we are actually cutting ourselves off from the very things that God may use to bring us back, but some of us just have to learn the hard way. 

We don’t always see it at the time, but the road (all roads) away from home always leads to brokenness, pain and despair.  Many commentators have called this passage a description of the younger son hitting “rock bottom”.  Clearly this kid is in bad shape.  He is in bad shape financially because there is a severe famine, i.e. a terrible economy, and he has spent everything he had.  He is bad shape physically because he is starving to death.  He is in bad shape relationally because “nobody would give him anything”, apparently he has no friend willing to help him at all.  He is in bad shape spiritually & morally as well.  His association with the pigs is a significant indication of how far he has fallen.  To a Jew, pigs were unclean animals and no self-respecting Jew would go near a pig, let alone touch them or handle their slop!  

I once asked a man I know who has been in a recovery program how someone knows if they are at rock bottom and ready for help.  He told me that a person who is at “the bottom” is not asking the question, is this rock bottom for me?  They know!  

Sometimes this happens to us like this younger son, through the severe external consequences.  But sometimes we come to the bottom in more subtle and internal ways.  I think it is even possible to come to the bottom by reaching the top.  It is not at all uncommon for a person to achieve great wealth and success and find that it is empty and meaningless.  However we get there, reaching the bottom means that we come to the end of ourselves and we recognize our desperate situation and our great need for our Father!  While this is usually painful, ultimately it is a good thing, because it is often at the bottom that God meets us and begins to restore us.  In fact, I have known parents of prodigals who, instead of praying for their child to be protected from pain, have actually asked God to bring them swiftly to the place where they recognize the path they are on, pain and all.

Father keep us from leaving home, but if we do wander, bring us swiftly to the painful place where we recognize our sin and return to You – Amen.


Jeff Frazier

Monday, February 28

Monday

Jesus continued:  “There was a man who had two sons.  The younger one said to his father,  ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.       - Luke 15:11-13

When I was about 6 years old I ran way from home (sort of).  I vaguely remember my mother telling me that I was not allowed to do something that I felt certain a 6-year-old boy should be allowed to do.  I felt strongly that her rules were totally unjust for a boy of my intelligence and maturity, and that I could no longer remain in such a restrictive environment.  I'd teach her a lesson, I would strike out on my own and experience the world the way a young boy was meant to – totally free and unrestrained.  Actually I don’t recall having any of those thoughts. I think I was just a mad and ornery little boy.  I packed a few things for my journey (comic books and cookies mostly) and headed out into the wide world.  I got as far as the end of our cul-de-sac and sat myself down under a group of pine trees in the corner of my neighbor’s yard.  After about twenty minutes, the cookies were gone, and I got tired of waiting for my mother to come looking for me.  I do recall wondering why she hadn’t organized a neighborhood search party or called the police.  Finally I got up and went home.  I think my mom probably knew where I was the whole time because she didn’t seem to worried when I walked in the back door.

Clearly the story Jesus told in Luke 15 was not a cute little tale about a young boy running away from home. But it is a story about what it means to leave home.  It is a story about selfishness, pain, and broken relationships. Jesus gives us a picture of what our rebellion against God actually looks like.  This young boy left home in every way that a person can leave home.  He left his physical home, his ancestral family home, his relational home, and the home of his faith as well. 

Most of us probably don’t think of ourselves as runaways from home, but the truth is that spiritually speaking, we have all leave home in one way or another.  We all reject the love of our Father.  We all demand our rights and want control of our lives – We all leave home.  In his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen writes that “leaving home means ignoring the truth that God has fashioned me in secret and molded me in His image…leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one.”

If home is a loving and obedient relationship with the Father, then we have been running from our spiritual home since Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve ran and hid themselves from God in the garden.  We leave home whenever we doubt the truth of God.  We leave home whenever we reject the love of God.  We leave home whenever we fail to seek or to offer the forgiveness of Christ.  We leave home whenever we resist the work God wants to do in our lives.  We leave home whenever we think we know better than God and demand control of our own lives.  We leave in a thousand big and small ways every day. 

How have you left home?

What tempts you to run from your Father?

Father, Help me to know that my one true home is with You.  Jesus teach me that all of my running and wandering will never gain me what I already have in You.  Holy Spirit keep me from any thought or deed that would lead me away from my home with the Father – Amen.

Jeff Frazier