I was thinking the other day about the Gospel.  It still trips me out that something so simple and beautiful can become so complicated and even ugly.  We have this knack for perverting even the purest things.  Instead of grace that leads to loving God in return we created religious legalism or sinful license.

 

Going through the story of the prodigal son, I get struck time and time again at how counter cultural and counter intuitive grace is.  I know that a lot of you struggle to feel accepted by God - a feeling that stems from various places but is rooted deep within a system of living that approves production and shuns personhood.  Every person is somewhat reduced to a product in a culture that is built on consumption.  So we seek ways of proving that we are worth investing in, being with, loving, liking or just keeping on the planet another day.

 

Then Jesus comes along with a radical picture of people who are unworthy and unable to “make something of themselves” any longer.  They can’t contribute to the social order any longer because they have been damaged by their own “prodigality.”  They have divorced themselves of relationship and at best are looking just to be related to as an employee in the cosmic plan of humanity.  They are wounded, broken, perverted, and depraved.  But there is a longing for something…something beautiful. They are homesick for Eden in a very real way.  They are imprinted with something that is deeper and better than all the other imprints that seek to tell them who they are.  They remember they have a Father and they turn toward him.

 

The shock comes when we are invited to a party that God is throwing for his repentant sons and daughters.  Becca Burch and Joe Barker sang about it on Sunday in a beautiful way.  A banner with your name in capital letters, a smoke machine and angels rejoicing as heaven opens up and God wraps us up in his embrace.  It’s an incredible contradiction to the way we are taught to live and find value and an incredible hope for those of us who still carry deep wounds from life in the “distant country.”  We’ve a great promise that God who has come to us in Christ has a new beginning and another dream for us - that we would know the joy of being sons and daughters of God.  It is great to be on this journey to the Father’s house together.