Following the recipe.....

I love to cook and enjoy experimenting with new recipes.  If I’m thinking of cooking something I’ve found on-line, I often read the comments. Some of them are very helpful, but others are astounding, even nervy! For example, I read comments like these for a recipe I recently tried: 

“I don’t like fish sauce; can I use Worcestershire and soy instead? But will soy add too much salt?”

“Would this work with fish instead of pork?”

“I don’t want to cook this if it smells up my house.”

“This seems like a lot of work.  Can I skip the step of sautéing the veggies?”

And then the perfect comment – a reply to some like those I’ve mentioned:  “Just make a different recipe. If you don’t want to do all this, you aren’t really ready to cook this.”

Some folks seem to approach their faith this way:

“I don’t like that commandment.  Can I do this instead?”  

“Would it work to worship at the golf course instead of at church?  Can’t I get close to God in nature?”

“Will this affect how I live?  Will it sometimes be unpleasant?”

“This seems like a lot of work.  I don’t want to have to do stuff when I come to church.  Can’t I just sit in the pew and skip all that?”

And so the answer to all this is similar to the reply to those posting on the recipe site: If folks aren’t willing to do what it takes, then they probably aren’t ready to be real Christians.  Not to be too harsh, but maybe they should decide if this calling is really for them.  Maybe they should just take it easy and order the religious equivalent of takeout -- no effort, no fuss, no investment.  

Unless we are willing to follow the directions (given to us in the Bible and the lives of the faithful), and follow the Christ, we won't be able to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  

I made the dish, by the directions in the recipe, and it was pretty good!

“This was my life”

It is hard to fathom the destruction that the floods of Florence left behind. Yesterday, we traveled one of the roads that has just been reopened.  All along the way, debris is piled high.  And it is this way all over our county.

Bulldozers and dump trucks will come and pick it all up at some point but almost two months later, folks are still cleaning up.  We drive along and see houses all open, windows up and doors wide open.  People are trying to dry things out.  And there is no need to lock anything up since there is nothing left to protect.  A favorite restaurant is now a pile of rubble. The owner and all his employees have lost their livelihood and they won’t get it back.  

A small trailer park looks like a ghost town, with vacant windows and doors, all dark and smelly.  The people who lived there will have to try to go back.  I can’t imagine moving back into a trailer that was filled with filthy water.  But they likely still owe on the trailers, and they probably have nowhere else to go.

All kinds of stuff is piled up by the road:  refrigerators, sofas, family Christmas ornaments, pink insulation, photograph albums, baby clothes, furniture passed down for generations.  And it is all ruined.  

Friends told me of one woman standing in her front yard.  She pointed to the shell of her house and said “That was my house.” But then she looked at the pile of stuff out by the road and said, “That was my life.”

It is heartbreaking. 

The Parable of the Loving Father

I recently spent several days in Montreat, North Carolina.  There is a chapel there with a very large fresco that is the focus of the worship space.  

The fresco tells the story of the prodigal son.  You see the son and the father in the center, the prodigal on his knees, the father’s hand raised in blessing.  And there is  something in the scene that would have been unheard of in the courtyard of a Jewish home -- pigs!  They are there because this fresco tells the whole story of the prodigal.  To the right is the older brother.  He stands alone, in his fine robes, scowling at what is happening.  There are servants bringing a robe and other things. And there is the fatted calf.  In that part of the painting, there is the clear outline of a cross. I suppose the artist painted it that way to remind us of Christ’s sacrificial love – like the love of the father giving up his entire estate for his children – both of them, not just the prodigal.

That’s one of the surprises of this story.  It was the younger son who asked for his share of the inheritance, but the father divided his estate between his sons.  He gave everything he had to them.   The younger son got what he asked for, but the older son got his portion, too.  The father gave it all away.  Everything he had was given to these two boys to do with as they wished.  The one threw it away.  And the other clutched it so tightly that he could not see the value of what he had.  Reading between the lines, he was obsessed with getting and having.  He was leading a joy-less life.  You can see that from the painting, can’t you?  Is he happy to see his long-lost brother?  Not exactly!

In fact, the only one who might be happy here is the father.  He is not smiling, though.  It seems to me that he has a look of worried concern on his face.  The younger son is stricken with guilt and shame, the other son with greed and resentment. Both of them have failed their father.  Both of them are sinners.  One threw away the father’s gifts and the other hoarded them and refused to let them go.  Both sons look miserable.  

But the father has both of his boys back at home. And he will do whatever he can to welcome them home, both of them – the prodigal and the older brother.

The poet Robert Frost once wrote these words:  "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." 

In all the thousands and thousands of years since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, all that long history in our fallen world, we have been trying to find our way back to paradise, that first and truest home, that place where everything was as God intended for us.  

And maybe this story is a reminder to us that we no longer have to look for that place.  We know where to find welcome, acceptance, unconditional love.  Whether we have squandered all the gifts God has given us, or whether we have held them so tightly they have become squashed and useless, God still welcomes us.  

(Slightly revised from a meditation shared at our monthly vespers)