When I was an undergraduate, back in the 1980s, I took a course called Physics for Poets. You can laugh all you want, but this course was both fascinating and met my science lab credit requirements to graduate. The class looked at a myriad of principles common in Physics as beautiful creations which were as informative about why the world worked as it did as they were about how it worked. I can’t remember a great deal about this course, or the 80s in general, for that matter, but I do remember that there was one consistent principle from Newton’s understanding of gravity to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. In all things, there is a constant, something which will not and cannot change.
You have probably seen Einstein’s theory on posters somewhere, E=MC2. I don’t know what most of this means. As a matter of fact, I had to look up how to make that 2 little, but I do remember that the C refers to the speed of light which is both really, really fast and never, ever changes. The takeaway from this is that for our universe to work, there must be a constant, something that is always there regardless of the situations going on around it. In addition to the speed of light (really, really fast) there is a second thing which is immutable, the love of God (sometimes really, really slow, but always relentless.)
To understand this, I’d like to share a story about a man who experienced significant highs and lows in a short period. Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, our lost boy. (Luke 15:11-32) And, because the other thing I remember about Einsteinian Physics is that it makes time travel theoretically possible, I will be telling his story from end to beginning.
We Are All Invited to the Party
I am going to assume that you have all heard the story of the Prodigal Son, if not, read Luke 15. However, we will start at the end. As a matter of fact, we are going beyond the end of Jesus’ story. As the telling comes to its conclusion, the father is planning a party for his son who “was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (32), and what a party that must have been. Fatted calf roasting on a spit, the younger son has been able to get cleaned up and find fresh clothes more befitting of the son of an estate owner. I would also assume that the older brother, having learned the error of his ways, was there and celebrating the younger’s return. This is an easy scene to witness how much God loves us. When we are in the place he sets for us, we are rewarded with not only our physical needs but also the gift of a relationship with the people God has placed in our path: our family, our community. This is exactly where God wants us to be and where we should always remain. But it isn’t always like this. Because just prior…
The Outsider Looking In
When the younger brother first returned home, most of the villagers were not particularly happy to see him. Jesus’ version of the story ends with the older son feeling rather out of sorts. He is jealous of how his dimwitted brother was allowed to waste his father’s time, money, and affection, but still gets rewarded for just showing up. And this was the smallest of rejections that the Prodigal would have faced. It is more than likely that upon returning home, the community would have subjected the young man to what was called A Kezazah Ceremony. The villagers would break pottery at the feet of the individual, symbolizing that they were no longer in community with the returning person. It was a way of making the returning person feel shameful and empty. His own people, whom he was willing to serve as a slave, had shunned him as someone not worthy to be associated with. But the father…the father would have been dressed in several layers of heavily beaded garments, tunics, scarves, and headdresses. He was dressed to be served, not to move, but when he saw his son coming home from a distance, he dropped the weird hat, hiked up his tunic, kicked off his ridiculous shoes, and ran, not to chastise but to welcome home.
This is the love of God we, most likely, really needed at one point in our lives. We are surrounded by people, but we are all alone. This is who Jesus came to Earth to save. Not the fatted calf eaters, but the ones who are ready to come home, where they are not only always welcome but are celebrated. But the young man had been in even worse conditions. Because just prior…
Time of Decision
This young man found himself “hired out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ( 15)” So even in the best of times, after running away, he had decided to spend his time with an animal that his culture would have seen as ‘unclean.’ But these were not the best of times. He was not only tending the pigs; he appears to be living with them and hungry enough to desire what was being fed to them, and if you were not lucky enough to grow up in a farming community, there is a good reason why it is called ‘slopping the pigs.’ Suddenly, then, he comes to his senses (17). Now, I don’t think I am taking too large a leap here to suggest that this young man’s senses don’t seem all that strong, so when he decides to make a change, he is probably weighing them by which one would be the easiest. And, in all likelihood, that would be running further away, not only from pig farming, but from his father as well.
I can imagine what was going through his mind at the time, about how all of his choices had been wrong, so he should just follow his usual pattern and run, but I can also imagine the image of God standing on the other side, waving His hands and yelling for him to run home. Sometimes, God expresses his love through a whisper or a rustling wind, but sometimes God can get loud and in your face. He sends a burning bush, a giant whale, or sometimes he allows you to actually feel the guilt and shame that you had been denying. This is not to make you feel worse, but to cause you to repent, literally, to turn around and go the other way, and the son does. He does this because he has a lot to feel guilty about. Because just prior…
God’s Love When You Are In Active Rebellion
Though we don’t see this specifically (after all, it is the Bible), the older brother, who I am going to assume knows the kid pretty well, is confident that he blew all of his money on prostitutes. So, after he ran off with his inheritance, he was actively rebelling against everything his father and his God had taught him. Without getting too far into this scene, this young man was seeking sexual gratification while denying all of the value that God placed on sex. He knew better, didn’t care, and didn’t care what effect it would have on anyone else. But you know what? God still loved him. (brief note: God loved the prostitute, too) And how did God demonstrate this love? By letting it happen. Now, let me be clear: our sin grieves the holy spirit (Eph 4:30), but we are always given a choice of whether to follow God or our own natures, and all of us will sin “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23), but we are allowed to choose it, so that when “sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Rom 5:20B). Because if this young man had not chosen to sink lower and lower, he would have missed the opportunity and the desire to repent and remained the person he was at the beginning of our story. Because just prior…
Parable of the Selfish Jerk
As our story begins, the younger son asks his father for half of the estate that will someday be his. The son has done nothing to earn this money, and Kenneth Bailey, a New Testament Scholar who has asked all sorts of people in the Middle East what it meant for the son to request his inheritance, always received the same response. The son wanted his father dead.
He had no consideration for anyone but himself and his own pleasure. He was…a lot like us. Now, maybe we have not slipped this far down the slope, but let’s test it.
Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange was happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ. 1 Peter 4:12-13
Yeah suffering! If this verse does not fill you with dread, you are a much better Christian than I am. I can believe that this is true, but I’m not sure ‘rejoicing’ is my first reaction. So, to demonstrate how much He loves us, he lets us remain in our selfish pride until we are ready to break free.
The father in our story showed the strongest form of love to his son by giving him exactly what he asked for. The father does this not because he thought his son would succeed, but because he knew he would fail. The son had to leave of his own volition and suffer from his own sin in order to be ready to come home again.
My guess is that most of us have no concept of the existence of gravity, but if it were to suddenly disappear, nothing in our lives would be the same. The same thing goes for the love of God. The protection and comfort you are feeling right now are only there because there is a heavenly God who loves you in ways that you cannot comprehend. We may not be able to feel that love, but because it is always there and can never change, we may depend on it at times when we are far from home and in dire, dire need.
