352 Prodigal

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Prodigal”, originally shared on March 26^th, 2025. It was the 352^nd  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What has three main characters, two Prodigals, and is found in only one Gospel? And is about you? Today, we’re going to find out.

   The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the best-known stories in the Bible. It’s very often studied by people who are not really interested in the authority of the Bible but just want to study it as literature.

   It kind of sounds like it belongs in the Old Testament, it contains such sweeping themes and starchy drama, but it is a parable told by Jesus and is only found in the gospel of Luke.

   It’s called the Parable of the “Prodigal” Son because of the son’s excesses. “Prodigal” means excessive, wastefully extravagant, spending money recklessly, lavish. It has the same root word as “prodigious”, as in “rotund President Taft had a prodigious waistline”. A “prodigy is someone who is exceptionally talented.

   Here’s the setting, in Luke 15:1-3,

15 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ² And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

³ So he told them this parable:

   A parable is “an earthly story, with a single heavenly meaning”, as my Confirmation pastor told me. Note that is has “a heavenly meaning”. It’s not an allegory; it isn’t full of symbols that all stand for something. It usually has just one meaning.

   Now we jump from verse 3 to verse 11. Wait, what? Why?

   Because there are two other parables stuck in-between: The Parable of the Lost Sheep and The Parable of the Lost Coin. Spoiler alert! All three are about what the Pharisees (and a key person in the parable) see as God’s prodigal generosity.

   Jesus says that in a parable about something else that’s precious and that can be lost, in Luke 15:11b-20a. We’ll start with the opening verses, in Luke 15:11b-12,

 “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 

   Did you hear that. The younger of two sons goes to his father and says in effect, “Dad, I can’t wait for you to die. I’m young. I want to enjoy the money you’re going to leave me while I can. I want to live large. I want to have fun. I want the money now.” (Arrrgh!)

   And his father says, “Yes”!

   What would you have done if you had been this father? This is the first taste we get of the father’s prodigal generosity.

   We speculate that my great-grandfather, Terje Berkedal, came to this country because Norway practiced primogeniture during the time in Norway called “the hundred-year hunger”. Primogeniture meant that all the parents’ property, the inheritance, was left to the oldest son, who would then take care of the rest of the family. That kept the farms from being divided into properties too small to support anyone.

   But it assumed that families all got along, and that older brothers would be benevolent and competent managers. That may not have been the case for my great-grandfather, because he left Norway for the United States and never looked back. He never wrote back, either. He cut-off all ties and our family in the United States didn’t know who our family was in Norway until the Internet Age.

   When I and my family went back, we were the first people with the family name to visit Norway in about 120 years. Our family in Norway hadn’t known that we existed!

   Our relatives showed us the book of our family history, and next to our common relative’s entry it said in Norwegian, “We think he died.” It’s regrettable but understandable that he left for greater opportunities, as many people from Norway and from other countries have done over time.

   This parable, however, tells about a young man who didn’t want opportunities or even to support himself. He wanted to indulge himself with his father’s money. And he did.

   The parable continues with verse 13,

¹³ A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.

   His older brother would later accuse him of spending his money on prostitutes. Maybe he did. Wine women and song. He was living in prodigal excess. He got wasted. Literally.

   The movie “Anora” won the Oscar for “Best Picture” this year. It’s about what the director euphemistically called “a sex worker” but who most of the world would call a “prostitute”, which is a person who “prostitutes” themselves, or makes of themselves a commodity, and sells themselves for money.

   Jesus was often criticized for hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors, and what today’s text calls simply “sinners”. Jesus said in Luke 5:32,

³² I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

   Who else would he hang out with?

   The young man hung out with prostitutes also, but not, apparently, to seek their wellbeing.

   And then the party ended. He hadn’t made good in a distant country. He was played-out. We see the consequences, starting in verse 14,

 ¹⁴ When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶ He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 

   Didn’t he have any friends? You mean all the people he partied with were nowhere to be found once his money ran out? I’m shocked! Shocked!

   So, he gets a job with someone who owes him nothing, with whom he has no kinship ties, and he becomes a caregiver to pigs, about the lowest job a child of Israel could imagine. And the pigs eat better than he does! What kind of job doesn’t pay enough to buy pig food to eat? Sounds like he’s back in slavery in Egypt. He was living in prodigious humiliation.

   But…then, he sees the solution in verses 17-20a,

¹⁷ But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ ²⁰ So he set off and went to his father. 

   How many of our children, or the children of people we know, have found themselves in that same far country. Have cut all ties for a life of drugs, alcohol, unfettered sex, sex for money, even crime, and what the parable describes as dissolute living, life without morals or restraint, who think they have found “friends” who care for them? And then they didn’t?

   How many people have finally hit the bottom and remembered that there is a way back? That they still have someone who really loves them.

   Parents long for that. So does God. And we, the Church, see not only individual sons and daughters going down the wrong path, but whole cultures.

   Could we not describe our culture as one that has squandered its inheritance in order to seek temporary personal pleasure, be consumed with toys and tied to materialism, power, and outward appearances? One that has lost its way in the distant country of absence from God?

   Do we not work and long for its return to God, the One who loves them?

   There is a line in the Robert Frost poem, “Death of A Hired Man” that goes, “Home is the place that, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.” 😊

   That’s the place that the prodigal son came to. That’s all he believed he could expect.

   His father’s hired hands were treated well. He could repent. Maybe his father would give him a job, and he could at least live, not as a son but as an employee.

   “He came to himself.” Isn’t that a beautiful and poetic way to put it? He remembered who he was. He remembered who he had been created to be. There was a core there that his poor choices hadn’t worn away. He came to remember who loved him. He came to himself.

   The son was prodigal in his excessive and destructive living, but he was still a son. He would now throw himself on the defining mercy of his father.

   If you were the father, what would you do?

   Would you have good news or bad news for the son

   There is always a way back to God. That is the Good News. So far, we’ve learned how. Now, we are going to find out why.

   The parable continues with Luke 15:20b,

²⁰ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 

   Here’s the second sign of the father’s prodigal generosity. Grown up men don’t run in most cultures, unless they’re playing soccer or something. It’s undignified.

   I studied in Rome, briefly, on the way back from a semester in Israel when I was in college. Jogging, or running, outside of a track was just starting to be popular in the United States. Some of the guys in our student group and I would run outdoors when we had some free time, and people would look with astonishment that someone who was not a child was running outside and wearing running shorts in public. Little kids would point and laugh as we ran by. We looked ridiculous to them.

   The father forgot all of that. He laid aside his dignity and composure to run to his son when he saw him return. He was not filled with disappointment or bitterness; he was filled with compassion. He put his arms around him. And he kissed him, a common form of greeting among close friends and relatives.

   The son tries to get out the speech he had prepared, but he doesn’t get very far, starting with verse 21,

²¹ Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²² But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; ²⁴ for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

   I played drums in jazz bands in college and seminary, mostly. One of the tunes we played was a standard, “The Return of The Prodigal Son” by tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. I guess you could say that it’s a medium tempo mix of blues and joy, the sorrow of the son and the joy of the father. But it sounds like a strut. That always bothered me because that’s not how the prodigal son returned. He returned with his life in tatters and his head hanging low.

   But he couldn’t finish his repentance speech before his father was organizing the “welcome home” party, making the son the honored guest, presenting him with the symbols of his status as a son. And they began to celebrate!

   But not everyone was happy. The parable continues with verse 25,

²⁵ “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. ²⁷ He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’

   The older brother was angry. His father was throwing a huge party to celebrate the prodigal son’s return. The older son wouldn’t have it. He’d been the rock steady one. He’d done everything that was asked of him, and he never got even a little shindig, much less a big celebration. He doesn’t even refer to the prodigal son as his brother. He only refers to him as “this son of yours”, who had devoured the father’s property with prostitutes.

   The fatted calf was reserved for major events, like an honored guest, a wedding, or the birth of a child. The fatted calf was the best of the best the father had to offer. It was an extremely generous gift. It was an expression of excessive love from the prodigal father.

   The older brother refused to join the celebration.

   His father didn’t begin to ask him to come in. He began to plead with him to come in. More prodigal generosity from the father.

   Cultural behaviors change all the time, and it’s likely that there will be another great awakening and a return to the Christian faith in our country at some point. I wonder where people like me will be when that happens. Will we rejoice with God that the prodigals have come home, or will we be resentful of God’s celebration like the older brother?

   The father in the parable loved the older brother, too, and wanted him to know that the relationship with the family that the father had given him was still valued. And notice that the younger brother’s actions are not without consequences. We see it in the conclusion of this parable, starting with verse 31,

³¹ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

   The father tells the older son that all that is the father’s is the older son’s. It’s not going to be divided again with the little brother.

   But something precious has been restored. A relationship. The older brother refers to the prodigal son as, “this son of yours”. The father refers to him as “this brother of yours” and the father gives the reason for the rejoicing: “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

   The relationship with the father has never changed for either son; he loved them. The prodigal son could live like it didn’t matter, but the reality of it was still his, because it wasn’t his to deny.

   We are created for a living relationship with the one true living God. We may reject that relationship and go to the far country of self-indulgence, personal pleasure, indifference, and the acceptance of the world. But God never gives up on us. There is a way back. God has made a way in Jesus Christ at the cross.

   What far country are you in today? What far country is someone you know and love in today? What far country is our culture in today?

   Many liturgical churches have sung a Gospel Acclamation during this season of Lent that is different than the one that is sung during the rest of the year. It comes from the middle part of Joel 2:13, and it goes,

Return to the Lord, your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
   Who do you identify with in this parable. I think that Jesus wants us to identify with the prodigal son, to know that we need a savior, and that God, in Christ, gave His life on the cross to be our Savior.

   God, the prodigal father, continues to love us excessively and has shown us God’s grace by paying the ultimate price on the cross. He welcomes repentant sinners, our debt is marked paid in full! We live our lives in response to that love, freely given.

   The story of the prodigal son is our story. The story of the prodigal father is God’s story.

   Open the door to your heart and receive the excessive love of the prodigal God, given for you and for all people, and share the good news! 

351 The Problem of Good

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Problem of Good”, originally shared on March 21st, 2025. It was the 351^st  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We have been asking some big questions lately. In Lent, we ask some even bigger ones. Today, we’ll find out what they are and how God answers them.

   The church I served when I retired had a fantastic pre-school and I led chapel services for the children once a week. I told them that I was about to retire to help them understand and adapt to it, and I asked if any of them knew what it meant to retire.

   One of the little boys raised his hand right away and said, “When you’re driving your car and you get a flat tire, then you have to re-tire”.

   So, let’s say that’s true (and it’s pretty close 😊). What does it mean to repent? Does it mean to re-pent? That’s a big question, especially during Lent.

   The world has been asking lots of big questions lately.

   Where is our economy going? Are we heading toward an unprecedented period of universal prosperity and world peace, or toward a recession and the ancient story of a few rich people bullying the many poor people who make them rich?

   Will our technology make work unnecessary, or will it lead to environmental catastrophe?

   Will our science cure our diseases or invent them?

   Will our fellow human beings get along or unleash weapons of mass destruction?

   During Lent, the 40-day Christian season between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday (excluding Sundays, which are like little Easters), we are asking all of those questions, but we are also asking the even bigger ones.

   Why did Jesus have to die? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why to good things happen to bad people?

   If God is good and God is all-powerful, then why is there suffering and injustice in the world? That one is a question that’s so deep and has been around for so long that it has its own name: theodicy, and there have been many ways to understand it over the years.

   But all of those questions, and more, point to just one question, “Why is the world the way it is? If good is good, why don’t people just do good?

   Part of the problem with that question is that, as one of my philosophy professors once observed, most of the world’s evil and probably all of its worst evil, is done by people who sincerely believe in their heart of hearts that they are doing good. I’ve never heard one person  ask, “Why is someone bad like me always having good things happening to them?”

   This isn’t just the problem of why there is evil. This is the problem of why there is good.

   There are two Biblical answers. The first is that the world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. The second is that God is God and you’re not.

   Jesus offers them both by beginning with two examples from what many scholars believe were real events in the first part of the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, Luke 13:1-9.

   We hear them in Luke 13:1-5,

13 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. ² He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? ³ No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. ⁴ Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵ No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

   Jesus begins with an outrage.

   Some Galileans, people from Jesus’ home region up north, had come to Jerusalem to do the right thing, to offer their animal sacrifices at the Temple, and Pilate’s forces, possibly thinking them to be freedom fighters, or terrorists, had them slaughtered right there in the Temple, mingling their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. It was an outrage, a sacrilege.

   How could such a thing happen? To good people? In the Temple?!

   And, how about the construction workers on the tower of Siloam, near the pool where Jesus did healing? There was an accident, and eighteen people had been killed.

   How could such a thing happen to them? They were just some guys doing honest work.

   It didn’t seem right and, to make things worse, people back then believed that if you were good, you would be blessed in this life, and that if bad things happened to you, it was because you were being punished for your sins, or maybe for the sins of your ancestors.

   Some people still believe that today. Even some Christians!

   We see reasons for outrage every day, and how do we respond? I served on the local community liaison committee with the police department when I served a church in Compton. One day, after a meeting, a senior officer proposed, I think half seriously, that the police give marksmanship lessons to gang members. Why? Because, who gets hurt when gang members shoot at each other? Innocent bystanders. It’s unjust, and it’s an outrage. But, if you teach gang members to shoot straight, you take care of two problems at the same time.

   It’s a cynical solution, but it flows from outrage. And some people would blame the victims! Is that how we should respond? How did Jesus respond?

   Jesus took this on directly by asking the big question.

   Were those worshipers or those construction workers, worse sinners and offenders than other people, Jesus asked?

   No, Jesus said. But he was even more direct with his analysis of the deeper question.

   Jesus’ response is that we must repent, or we will die like those in the Temple and at the construction site did. Unprepared.

   Repentance not just saying we’re sorry.

   Repentance means life transformation. It is a gift from God. The word in the Bible’s original language, Greek, is “metanoia.” It means to change one’s way of thinking. It means to turn around. It means receiving the gift of new birth, of becoming a new Creation, of turning toward the new life that God gives through faith in Jesus Christ. It means becoming a new self.

   Have you ever made popcorn?

   My mom used to make it by pouring the hard popcorn kernels into a pan, then covering the kernels with oil, then covering the pan and putting it on the stove. Now we pull out a package and put it into a microwave oven. Some microwaves come with a “Popcorn” preset. It’s that common!

   Popcorn turns inside out under heat. Heat causes the moisture in the hard kernel to expand and then explode, transforming the kernel into something that can bring nourishment.

   The Holy Spirit is the fire that transforms the hardened hearts of human beings, turning them inside-out, into becoming a new creation that gives life.

   That is what it means to repent.

   We are sinners. Our relationship with God is broken. Our rebellion against God is what brings evil into the world, as it has since the beginning. Sin is separation from God. Repentance is God’s gift that leads to the reconciliation made possible by Jesus’ death on the cross.

   Sin is like the guy who owns a factory that produces toxic waste. He has a problem. If he fixes the problem by building a facility that can neutralize toxic waste, or by sending it to one, his bottom line will be negatively affected. His compensation, his workers’ compensation, and his shareholders’ compensation will all be negatively affected.

   But, if he dumps it in the river behind his factory at night, and no one finds out, his bottom line will be positively affected. His compensation, his workers’ compensation, and his shareholders’ compensation will all be positively affected. Everyone is happy and he sleeps well at night.

   But, downstream, people drink that water, or cook with it, or water their crops with it and it poisons their drinking water and it poisens the crops and people eat that food, and people get sick and some die. They don’t know why.

   Sin is like that.

   Paul says, in his letter to the church at Rome, in Romans 6:23,

³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

   Jesus gave his life to give us the free gift of eternal life.

   What is the answer to the big question? Repent and believe.

   Repentance means to stop dumping our toxic waste. It means having a change of heart, of going in the other direction, toward God instead of away from God. Toward serving others.

   That’s the message Jesus brought when he began his public ministry. Repent. Jesus sent his 12 disciples out with that same message. Repent. It was the theme of the first Christian sermon. Repent. It was the first word Paul used when describing the Good News. “Repent.”

   The last words of the 16^th century Church reformer, Martin Luther speaking of our standing before God, were, “We are all beggars. This is true.”

   We are all separated from God by our sin. Paul writes, in Romans 3:22b-25a,

For there is no distinction, ²³ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴ they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.

   Big Sin or little sin, Sin is the condition that separates us from God and we cannot change that. But God can. The good news, the Gospel, is that we have a Savior in Jesus Christ who has overcome that separation at the cross.

   The Christian life looks like something, though. The Christian life, is what we do in response to the grace of God. It’s a new life. It’s a do-over lived in Christ. The content of that life is what the Bible calls “bearing fruit”.

   What does that have to do with fig trees?

   I was looking at the fig tree in our back yard the other day. It’s not bearing fruit yet. It’s barely bearing leaves. But it has a problem.

   It bears fruit, and it’s been good fruit in most years. That is, if we can pick it before the squirrels and possums get it. But the fruit has been tasteless for the past several years and I’m not sure why. There’s hardly a point in keeping it if we can’t eat its fruit.

   This year, we started cutting the tree way back. I’ve used fig tree food from a local nursery. And I’ve dug around the tree to aerate the soil. So, I’m hopeful.

   Jesus describes a similar approach to fig tree health in the second part of this week’s Gospel reading in a parable, in Luke 13:6-9,

⁶ Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. ⁷ So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ ⁸ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹ If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

   The first definition of a “parable” that I ever heard was that it’s “an earthly story, with a single heavenly meaning”. So, what’s the heavenly meaning in this parable? It means that the message of the cross is good news for sinners like you and me and its message is two-fold:

   First, if we were a business, and if God were bottom-line oriented, he would just remove us and replace us with someone else. God instead provides us with everything we need to bear good fruit. And one hopes that another year without fruit would be greeted with the gift of another year of being given what we need to bear fruit, to be Christians and to proclaim the good news, to be the means by which God opens people’s hearts and leads them to life and salvation.

   Second, what is the purpose of a fig tree? It’s to bear fruit, but not primarily to provide food. That’s a secondary benefit. The primary purpose of a fig tree is to produce more fig trees.

   There is no question that the Church is in challenging times. It’s hard to be a Christian and it’s hard to make Christians, but bearing fruit is not an option. It is the natural outcome of who we have become by the grace of God.

   Paul describes the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23,

22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

   That is what the Christian life looks like. New life.

   It’s been said that the seven last words of a church are “We’ve never done it that way before.” Here’s another seven last words, “We tried that, but it didn’t work.”

   But God gives us a backbone, not a wishbone. How do we move forward in God’s power and not our own? Here are seven possibilities.

   First, share your story with friends and family members, whatever the cost. How did you become a Christian, or why do you remain one? Share your story. Often.

   Second, demonstrate a superior alternative to the world around us. What do we offer people who are looking for a better life?

   Third, what is the mechanism by which we expect that to happen in our churches and how do we provide for it?

   Fourth, Ross Douthat, a columnist for the NY Times, suggests that two things have brought the church out of periods of decline in its history: holy living and the Arts. Make us known for them.

   Fifth, be ready to go on defense, as Peter writes in 1 Peter 3:15b-16a,

Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; ¹⁶ yet do it with gentleness and reverence. 

   For example, what would you say to a person who finds out that you go to church and asks, “What is a Christian?” If you don’t have an answer, I’d like you to think about that this week and put together a short, meaningful and accurate reply.

   Or, if someone says that they don’t believe in God, say “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.” Chances are that they have some weird and inaccurate ideas about who God is.

   Sixth, be ready to go on offense. If you’re not sure if someone you meet or know is a Christian, ask them, straight up, “Have you heard about Jesus?” If that person says, “No”, how would you reply? If you don’t know, think about that, too. Be ready.

   Finally, it’s been said that Jesus taught adults and played with children, and we do just the opposite. Even in churches without many young members, enrichment programs, tutoring, mentoring possibilities, service projects, service hours, and other opportunities are all possible. They can bring young people to the church and position the church in the community as a place that cares about children and young people.

   Every community of God’s people, every congregation, has everything it needs to accomplish everything that God is calling, equipping, and sending it to do in the world.

   The only question we need to answer this Lent is “What is our mission from God in the world?”. God has given us everything we need to answer it.

   The problem of good is that we can’t achieve it. It can only come from God.

   And it does, for all who repent and are saved by faith alone.

   That is the good news we have been given to share.

350 Empathy Dies

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Empathy Dies”, originally shared on March 14th, 2025. It was the 350^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   Jesus had things to do. Mainly, he came to die. Today, we’re going to see how that became a blessing, and a model of living for us.

   It’s been said that you can have a thousand problems until you have a health problem. Then you only have one problem.

   My focus for the past month or so has been on passing kidney stones and on having surgery to remove half of them. I’ll have the other half removed in six months or so.

   At my age, it’s just patch, patch, patch, and I accept that. But I can still be productive. I don’t focus on what I can’t do; I focus on what I can do.

   Jesus had things to do. He had a mission, and he focused on that, as Jesus said in Mark 10:45,

⁴⁵ For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

   Jesus was not going to let anything stop him. Not the devil, in last week’s Gospel reading, and not a petty government tyrant in the reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches throughout the world this coming Sunday, Luke 13:31-35.

   Herod Antipas, the same Herod that killed John the Baptist, and the son of Herod the Great, who tried to kill Jesus when Jesus was a baby, was a regional dictator for the Roman Empire. He wanted to kill Jesus, but Jesus didn’t let that stop him.

   Jesus looked at the bigger picture. Jesus knew where he was going. He was going to the cross to die for us so that we could live in a perfect relationship with God forever.

   And Jesus was killed, but who killed Jesus? Was it Herod? Was it powerful government leaders? Religious leaders? Sinful people? Everybody? Nobody? Today, we’ll get an answer from Jesus, using a hen as a metaphor for God, given in the context of conflict.

   Our reading starts with verses 31-33,

³¹ At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” ³² He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. ³³ Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’

   Perhaps Herod was afraid of Jesus’ popularity, and he wanted to kill him as a warning to others. That would certainly be consistent with his, and his family’s, character.

   Herod was a crafty predator, like his father, one who took the lives of his own family, as well as those of the people he ruled, to maintain his power. One commentator suggested the term “fox” might be thought of as the same as “rat” in our language and culture. Tyrants are tyrants from generation to generation. They don’t care about the people. They only care about themselves.

   Margaret Meade, the anthropologist, was once asked what she thought was the first sign of human civilization in a given society. She answered, “The first evidence of civilization is a healed femur.” (thighbone)

   A healed femur means that someone had to set the bone and provide security, hunt or gather food and carry water for the injured person while they healed, all at a personal cost to themselves. Prior to that, if you broke a femur, you died.

   Civilization begins when we put the needs of others ahead of our own, when we show empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, and then care for them. It is a very Christian concept, rooted in the death of Jesus, the central event of the Christian faith.

   Once, when Jesus was asked how to get to heaven, he said, in Luke 10:27,

²⁷ He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And when the questioner, wanting to justify himself, asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan to answer that question, ending in Luke 10:36-37,

³⁶ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷ He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

   Why do we show mercy? Because God first showed mercy to us on the cross. That is at the center of the Christian life, and it was to the cross that Jesus was going. Empathy enables us to put the needs of others ahead of our own. It comes from God.

   It was suggested recently by Elon Musk, an unelected official of our government, that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” He did say, in the same interview, “I think you should care about other people.” But his concern was for the ease in which people who don’t share our concern for others can use our empathy as a weapon against us.

   For example, what do we do when people who reject our love of freedom use the freedom that we give them to take away our freedom? What do we do when people with other values achieve a majority of voters and vote to replace our laws and values with their own. What do we do when people take advantage of our kindness and show none in return? How can we be non-violent when our non-violence enables the violent wipe us out?

   What did Jesus do?

   Jesus went forward with his mission. He went forward to Jerusalem He went forward to die for those who would kill him.

   He didn’t do this to give us an impossibly difficult standard for Christian living. He did this to show us that we need a Savior. He died on the cross to show us that we have one. Jesus.

   That is our reality . Even in the hardness that this life can bring, nothing can separate us from the eternal love of God.

   Paul, asked in his letter to the church in Rome, in Romans 8:35-39,

³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;

we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

   Jesus knew the reality of what awaited him. He would die in Jerusalem. And yet, his reaction was to go toward the danger. His response was not to destroy the city, but to protect it.

   Jesus said, continuing with Luke 13: 34,

 ³⁴ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

   Jesus was filled with sadness and resolve. He uses a seldom seen feminine metaphor for God in the Bible, that of a hen, to illustrate God’s desire for the city: to be its protector. And yet it did not accept Him.

    Hens are givers. Hens produce meat and eggs that help humans live. Hens are not predators, they are prey. Sometimes, they are the prey of foxes.

   Yet Jesus models the work of God as like that of a hen. Jesus concludes this passage with verse 35, where Jesus promises to return as a blessing.

 ³⁵ See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

   Some say that this statement was fulfilled on “Palm Sunday”, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and the people responded, in Luke 19:38,

³⁸ saying,

“Blessed is the king
    who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
    and glory in the highest heaven!”

   But other scholars remind us that a few days after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the city was filled with cries of, “Crucify him!” and that his statement is better understood as referring to the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time.

   Still other scholars say it applies to both.

   In either case Jesus is in control.

   Jesus says, in Luke 13:32 (which we read a minute ago), that in three days he will complete his work and he will be on his way to Jerusalem to die.

   Who killed Jesus? No one. Jesus says, in John 10:17-18,

¹⁷ For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

   Jesus gave his life to give us eternal live and he took it back on the third day, in the Resurrection, to validate that he was who he said he was: God. And that his death could be the means by which we might be saved. Because he rose from the dead, we too will rise to everlasting life.

   How do we know this? Because we who believe and are baptized have been transformed by the eternal, selfless love and grace of God.

   A man once came to the composer Mozart and asked him how to write a symphony. Mozart replied, “You are too young to write a symphony.” The man said, “You were writing symphonies when you were 10 years of age, and I am 21.” Mozart said, “Yes, but I didn't run around asking people how to do it.”

   We don’t have to ask anybody how to be a Christian. The Holy Spirit is alive within us. Being a Christian is who we are, and we are who we are because we are Whose we are.

   When Sally and I started our YouTube Channel, “Streams of Living Water”, I wanted to use editing software called Adobe Premiere Pro. It’s very difficult, so I started asking experts in a group chat for the best way to learn.

   One said that I should take a class and learn the whole thing before I started and that it would take about 6 months. Another said I should buy a book and do all the lessons and that it would take about 6 months. Another disagreed and asked the two how they learned.

   It turned out that all three of them had just figured it out as they went along, and asked questions or watched videos online to improve their skills as needed. And that’s what I did.

   I found a video called “Learn Adobe Premiere Pro in 15 Minutes” and I watched it around 20 times. 😊

   That’s how I got my start. And that’s how we get our start as Christians.

   We don’t have to be perfect. We just have to be faithful. We live the Christian life because we want to please God because of all that he has done for us, not because God only does good things for those who please him.

   God is already pleased with us because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

   We are at the same time saints and sinners. We’re going to make mistakes, but we repent when we make mistakes, and God forgives us when we make mistakes, and we are more tolerant of the mistakes of others when we realize how much we have been forgiven by God.

   That’s where our empathy comes from. That’s how we live the Christian life.

   The empathy that comes from God enables us to understand and share the feelings of one another in the Church, the Body of Christ, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:26,

²⁶ If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

   You are a part of the people of God, a member of the Body of Christ. God lives within you. You are the work of the Holy Spirit.

   Empathy is the work of God for you.

   Everything that is of human origin, including empathy, dies. But everything that is rooted in God, including empathy, lives forever.