353 Another Prodigal

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Another Prodigal”, originally shared on April 2, 2025. It was the 353^rd  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   We heard about two prodigals last week and today we’ll hear about another. The prodigal woman. Today, we’ll hear about what a weird story has to teach us about God.

   Some people give up things for Lent, things that they like, to help them focus on sacrifice discipleship, discipline, and living a life for others, the mood of Lent. They are sometimes extravagant in their self-denial.

   Others add things for Lent, things like additional giving, advocacy, transformation, and public evangelism, things that are also the mood of Lent. They are sometimes extravagant in their generosity.

   Sally and I added an every-Friday trip to McDonald’s for Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. 😊

   McDonald’s has been offering a discount on their only fish related menu option during Lent as a nod to those who are giving up meat for Lent, at least on Fridays, which some people do all year ‘round.

   OK, it’s not extravagant, but we want to support one of the few things in popular culture that is an accommodation to Christian behavior. And it was dinner.

   But let’s consider the actual prodigal, or “excessive” action in the Gospel text that will be read this coming Sunday, John 12:1-8. It happened at a dinner party. And it was a pretty weird party. For starters, Jesus was the main guest.

   What would you do if Jesus came to your house for dinner? Kind of crazy, right? What if one of the guests was your sister, between you and whom Jesus had recently settled a work-related issue? What if another of the guests was your brother, who Jesus had recently raised from the dead?

   Doesn’t that strike you as weird?

   Would it occur to you to wash Jesus’ feet with $39,600.00 worth of perfume, and then dry them with your hair?

   Well, that’s exactly what happened. We see it in John 12:1-3,

12 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ² There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. ³ Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

   If you were at that party, at this point you might be asking “What is going on?”

   Jesus has come to Bethany, a little town just about 2 miles over the Mt. of Olives from Jerusalem. He’s with some of his best friends, siblings Mary and Martha and Lazarus.

   All four Gospel writers tell this story in slightly different ways. We’re looking at the one in John today.

   Mary and Martha you might remember from Luke 10:38-42 where Jesus and the 12 hungry disciples come by their and Lazarus’ home. Martha gets to work to feed them all. She complains to Jesus that Mary isn’t helping her but instead is sitting at Jesus’ feet, i.e., listening to and learning from him. The story concludes with Luke 10:41-42,

⁴¹ But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴² there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

   Lazarus you might remember from John 11:1-44. Jesus has mysteriously lingered during Lazarus’ illness and Lazarus has died. He’s been dead for three days when Jesus arrives at Bethany and Mary tells him that if he had been there Lazarus would not have died. Jesus weeps. He orders the stone to be rolled away from Lazarus’ tomb. Then, we read in John 11:43-44,

⁴³ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

   Now, just a few days later, Jesus is with them in their home, at what appears to be Jesus’ favorite place on earth. These were his closest friends who were not among his close disciples. We have no record of him teaching publicly there. He just came there to relax and hang out with people who loved him and whom he loved.

   Mary and Martha and Lazarus appear to be having a celebratory meal with the 12 close disciples of Jesus, with what Leonard Sweet calls, “Food. Family. Friends. Fragrance.”

   Fragrance is associated with the sense of smell that can help us identify things, feel things, sharpen our concentration or dull it, heal us and produce desired outcomes. It can also be a time machine.

   When I smell raspberries, I’m back in my father’s parents’ garden. When I smell geraniums, I’m back in my mother’s parents’ back yard.

   Fragrance has also long been used in worship. We filled the church I served in San Dimas with incense on Wednesday nights. When it was first proposed and concerns were raised about people with allergies, a physician’s assistant in the congregation told us that incense was one of the treatments for certain kinds of allergies.

   Mary used a pound of a perfume that was extravagantly expensive and powerfully fragrant to anoint Jesus’ feet. Its fragrance didn’t just fill the room. It filled the house!

   Well, what would you have done in gratitude for the life of your brother? How grateful would you be?

   If your parents or some other loved ones have died, what would you give today in exchange for 15 more minutes with your parents, or a friend or a loved one?

   Seen in that context, it doesn’t seem so extravagant, does it?

   After she had used it to anoint Jesus’ feet, she dried them with her hair.

   Women didn’t let their hair down anywhere but in front of their husbands in those days. More extravagant, “prodigal”, behavior from Mary.

   Mary anoints the feet of Jesus as a sign of service and dries them with her hair as a sign of humility.

   She uses a perfume more properly called “spikenard”, which was native to North India and imported in sealed alabaster boxes. The perfume, we find out later, is worth 300 denarii.

   “Denarii” is the plural form of “denarius”. A denarius was the daily wage of an unskilled laborer. So, if we take today’s minimum hourly wage of $16.50 and multiply it by 8 hours for a day’s work, we get $132, or the near equivalent of one denarius. Multiply that by 300 and we get $39,600.00. That’s almost a year’s wages, as the 52 sabbath days would have been taken off!

   The thing is that we will all be united someday. And it didn’t cost $39,600.00 a pound to get that. It cost something way much more precious.

   It cost the blood of Jesus, poured out for the sake of the world on the cross!

   How do we show our gratitude, not only for our lives but for our eternal lives? Jesus says this about life lived in response to the love of God poured out for us on the cross, in Mark 8:34-37,

³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶ For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷ Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 

   Nothing. There is nothing we can give in return for our lives, nothing we can do to earn our salvation. It is purely a gift from God.

   How can we then live in response to that gift?

   First, by recognizing that we are in the world, but we are not of the world. We’re going to seem weird to the world.

   Second, by listening to the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, in whom no weird thing is weird.

   Third, by knowing that God, and only God, decides what is weird and what is not weird, that God is reality revealed to us by the Holy Spirit to experience life-transformation, and to live abundant lives by God’s direction, by God’s grace.

   Do you feel weird being a Christian? Do you feel that you stand out among your peers? God shows us how to respond in today’s Gospel reading.

   That is, when the going gets weird in life, the weird get going by God’s grace. And God shows his grace by receiving this extravagant gift from another prodigal, Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

   Then things got even weirder. Here’s the rest of the story in John 12:4-6.

 ⁴ But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵ “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” ⁶ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 

   Yup. You think that this story can’t get any weirder, and then we learn that Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ inner circle, one of the 12 disciples, was a thief. An embezzler.

   Oh, and John incidentally also mentions that he was “the one who was about to betray him”.

   Judas was upset that Mary had poured out so much expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, when it could have been sold for 300 denarii, $39,600.00 in today’s money, and the money given to the poor.

   Except Judas didn’t care about the poor. He wanted that money in the common purse so that he could steal some of it.

   Judas raises his objection on good grounds, as would many today. How many people could be helped with $39,600.00? That much money could be life-changing, not just for one or two, but for many people. Though he was a thief, some of it, presumably, would have gone to help people.

   He didn’t get that money, though. But he would soon sell Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver, in exchange for identifying Jesus at night when the authorities came to arrest him, try him in a kangaroo court, and kill him.

   Jesus’ death would be the pivotal event in world history. It was coming, and it wouldn’t be long in coming. It was time to prepare.

   Mary poured out the nard/perfume to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. She was showing gratitude and honoring Jesus by humbly anointing his feet.

   Maybe she saw that things were not working out so well for Jesus.

   Or maybe she wanted him to smell the flowers while he was still alive.

   But how does Jesus respond?    

   With what seems to be a callous remark. It seems dismissive of the genuine needs of the poor.   

   We see it in the conclusion to today’s reading, in John 12:7-8,

⁷ Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸ You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

   Jesus reflects on Deuteronomy 15:11,

¹¹ Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

   But I think of Jesus’s statement as being a response along the same lines as what some say about corporations or high-profile rich people who announce that they will provide matching funds for giving to some good cause. “XYZ has announced that they will match every dollar given to the ABC cause for the next 3 days!”

   Why doesn’t XYZ just donate the money? They’ve already budgeted it.

   It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. This money spent to honor Jesus doesn’t have to mean less money spent to support the poor.

   In a similar vein, I would ask, “How do our churches present themselves to the world”? What do we do with the resources that God has placed in our hands?

   I remember a two-panel cartoon I saw when I was in seminary of a guy who was praying in the first panel out on his front porch, “God there’s so much homelessness and need in the world. Why don’t you do something about it?”

   And in the second panel a cartoon balloon comes out of the sky with the words in it, “That’s funny. I was about to ask you the same thing.”

   In an increasingly secular world, what does the world know about us, or think that it knows about us? How would it hear the truth?

   And, what answers do we give to the world when the world isn’t even asking?

   Certainly, the negative impressions dominate in the popular media. But what positive things are we known for?

   Back to McDonald’s!

   I remember when I turned 55. I qualified for Senior discounts! We were on a family vacation and so I walked into a local MacDonald’s and asked for a “Senior” coffee and reached for my identification. You can get coffee at a discount if you’re a “Senior” at MacDonald’s. The young guy behind the counter sold it to me at the “Senior” rate without any question. He didn’t want to see my ID. He didn’t question the fact that I was a senior, and that kind of bothered me. Do I look like a “Senior”, I thought?

   What answers do we give to the world when the world isn’t even asking?

   It appears to me that the only things that we want the world to know about us these days is what side of the political divide we stand on, and what our positions on social issues are. What social services we provide, and that we are friendly without being weird. And we answer them the way people want us to answer them. We want to be liked and accepted.

   But the more secular our culture becomes, the weirder the expressions of our true character will be. This isn’t anything new. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 1:18,

⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

   We are weird in the eyes of a secular culture.

   However, standing true to who we are presents a positive, peculiar alternative to the world which sin has made. In some ways, people are looking for churches that are hard to join and easy to leave. They want their Christianity to mean something, to bring new life!

   If we do not make a clear proclamation of “why” we do what we do, we make the “what” we do no different than that of a secular organization using religious language.

   The life transformation that Jesus won for all who believe is what we proclaim during Lent especially.

   We heard about two prodigals last Sunday, two men, and this coming Sunday we’ll hear about another one. A woman.

   They all point to our prodigal, excessively generous God.

   Male or female, Jesus poured out his blood for our salvation, life for all who believe and are baptized. And it would not be long now before Jesus would be washing the feet of his disciples as a servant. And the feet that Mary washed would be driven through with nails. Let that expensive, extravagant gift be our message, the thing that we are known for.

   It may be weirder than the world’s message, but it’s true and it leads to new and eternal life.

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.