Hello my friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in docks.
Welcome back.
To day 14 of our series,
God is.
As we begin today,
I'm just going to advise you to take a nice deep breath in.
And out.
And to just intentionally bring yourself fully into this moment.
Knowing that you are here.
Because you belong.
And in that belonging.
You are loved.
And today.
.
.
I want to start with a story that we touched on yesterday,
The one that we normally call the prodigal son.
But I've been wondering whether.
.
.
We've been calling it the wrong thing.
There isn't,
As we noted yesterday,
One son in the story,
There are two.
And both of them are trying to work out what home.
Mains.
One leaves and the other stays.
One breaks the rules,
One keeps the rules.
One ends up believing he's unworthy,
And the other one believes he is ultra-deserving.
And both of those sons,
In different ways,
Have misunderstood their father.
So maybe the story.
.
.
Isn't about getting back into the house.
Maybe just as much the stories about discovering.
We've never been outside.
Of the house.
So let's start with the younger son.
We know the story.
A son asks for his inheritance and he leaves,
He wastes it and everything falls apart.
Eventually he finds himself feeding pigs.
And dreaming about the food that the pigs are eating because he's got none.
And then.
.
.
He decides to go home.
But listen to the speech he prepares.
The one he rehearses,
Yes,
He rehearses a speech.
He knows exactly what he's going to say to the father.
It goes,
Father,
I have sinned against heaven and before you,
I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
So he's got it all sorted.
He's worked out the appropriate level of shame.
He's prepared to negotiate.
Maybe he can become a servant,
Earn his way back in.
He can then at least survive near the house.
But note that he thinks he has to re-enter.
The economy of merit.
But then something unexpected happens.
The father runs.
The father doesn't wait.
And this is an important detail because the father doesn't stand at the doorway with folded arms or wait for the son to crawl all the way home or demand an explanation.
He doesn't say,
Where have you been?
What happened to the money?
How could you do this to me?
He runs.
And then he embraces the son and kisses him.
And before the son can finish his speech,
The father's already starting to talk about a celebration.
Bring the robe,
Bring the ring,
Bring the fatted calf.
My son was dead and is alive again.
No probation period,
No six month rehabilitation plan.
He is home.
But the question is,
Was he really ever outside?
And this question won't leave me alone.
It bugs me all the time.
Where was the father's love while the son was away?
Did it stop?
Was the father thinking,
Well,
Until he comes to his senses,
He's no longer my son.
Or was the son always the son,
Even when he was lost,
Even when he was foolish,
Even when he was far away,
Even when he'd made an absolute mess of his life?
The son experienced himself as separated from the father.
But was he ever really separated from the Father's love?
And I think that's the difference between alienation.
And rejection.
We can feel far away from someone.
Without them having stopped loving us.
We can run from home.
Without homes ceasing to exist and we can forget.
That we belong.
Without that belonging disappearing.
And this is a part of what Jesus is saying.
About God.
Then,
There's the older brother.
Just when we think the story's finished,
Jesus introduces the other sons.
And suddenly the whole thing becomes more uncomfortable because the older brother is furious.
He's done everything right.
He's worked,
He's obeyed,
He's stayed.
And now what?
This?
A party for the failure?
A celebration for the one who's wasted everything?
And he says in effect,
I've earned more than this.
And the father.
.
.
Goes out to him too and that's something we often overlook in this story.
Yes,
The father goes out to the younger son,
But the father also goes out to the older son.
The father literally leaves the party.
To go and find the older brother.
Now one son was lost in a far-off country,
But the other one was lost.
In his own righteousness.
But the father still went looking for both.
And this is where the story ends.
Becomes very contemporary because we like to think that people are lost because they've done something wrong.
But you can be lost while still doing everything right.
You could be deeply spiritual or religious and completely misunderstand God,
Obey every rule and still live as though love has to be earned and spend your whole life in the Father's house,
But never actually feel like you're home.
The younger brother says,
I'm not worthy to be your son.
The older brother says,
I've earned more than the other son.
And the father seems to say to both,
You don't get it.
You both already belong.
And that's.
.
.
The heart of the story.
That home isn't something you earn your way into.
Home is where you belong,
My friend.
And that should completely change.
How we might understand salvation,
Because salvation.
.
.
Isn't gone opening the door because we've finally satisfied some condition for entry.
It's discovering that the door was never locked.
Maybe.
.
.
We've been standing outside because we assumed we weren't welcome.
We've been running away because we assumed the Father had stopped loving us.
We've been working ourselves to exhaustion because we thought belonging had to be earned and all along.
The door was open.
We've been asking.
In this series.
God is.
We've talked about God as mystery,
God as more,
God as I am,
God as present.
God is in all things,
God is closer than we think,
God is flesh,
God is Jesus,
God is the way,
God is the word.
Today.
God is home.
Not home as in a physical location or a somewhere that we eventually get to after we die,
But home as belonging.
As the place where you don't have to perform,
As the place where you can stop pretending,
The place where you can tell the truth.
That place where you can finally exhale.
That's what grace feels like.
It's God saying,
You were always mine and everything I had was always yours.
Yours.
And yeah,
I think there's another layer.
Here as well.
If God is home.
Then spiritual life is about becoming at home.
In our own existence.
I think maturity in the spiritual sense.
You know,
Becoming self-sufficient or turning inward and declaring ourselves divine,
But actually learning to inhabit the life that we've been given.
Our bodies,
Our stories.
Our relationships,
Even our limitations and our failures and our griefs.
All the ordinary stuff.
We spend so much time trying to become someone else that we never actually arrive in our own lives.
But grace invites us home here.
Now.
This life.
This body.
This moment held within God.
The father doesn't say welcome back,
At least not in the way we might expect.
In fact,
The father doesn't seem particularly interested in calculating the distance that the son travelled.
But he is interested in the fact that the sun is here.
And that's what grace does.
It stops the scorekeeping and the accounting and the spreadsheeting.
It stops asking how far did you fall?
How badly did you fall?
How much do you owe?
And instead asks,
Are you ready to come home?
Because the door is always open.
And I'm thinking maybe that's exactly what we've been trying to say these last three days.
We talked about grace and grace being God's posture.
And we talked about God already saying yes.
And because of those two things,
Home.
Isn't a place we have to earn our way back into.
But home is the truth that we're slowly learning to trust.
You were never outside the father's love.
You may have felt outside,
You may have run away,
You may have forgotten,
You may have resisted,
You may have built an entire life around the belief that you had to earn your place.
But my friend,
God's love was never keeping score.
The father wasn't calculating a debt.
The door wasn't locked.
The welcome was never withdrawn.
And underneath all of our fears and our anxieties.
There is a voice that's been quietly speaking.
Calling out to us all along.
Come home.
And harm.
Is where you discover that you have always.
Always.
Being loved.
And may the Grace,
Peace and Love.
Of being able to breathe and be home.
Remain with us today and always.
Until tomorrow,
Friends.
Peace.
Abide with you.
Bye for now.
