Greetings bloggers!
Look, one thing I despise more than anything in the world is when the casual hockey fan, the kind of soul that watches maybe one game a year and thinks they know everything, decides that all of the collective blame for a team’s failure can be pinned on the goaltender. This casual hockey creature seems to only be able to identify that as a unique position, and so if something’s wrong it must be their fault. In reality, hockey is a complicated sport, and a whole host of factors can go in to a team not doing well, not advancing in the playoffs, of falling apart.
However.
I just want to go on record and say that everything that befell the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Year of Our Lord 2021 was the fault of Tristan Jarry. Can’t blame the coach. Really can’t blame the core. Can’t blame COVID, much as I might want to. That was a solid playoff team that was as strong down the middle as I’ve seen in many years, and they just gave up way too many soft goals. But the good news for you who are reading this rebooted blog is that I won’t be complaining about the Penguins for a little while. We’ll watch this ship sink, and get ready to build the next one.
Yesterday, before the mayhem of a hockey game, I was at work and decided to take a few moments to read the daily lectionary outside on the bench outside my office. It was cool and clear, so a bit of time spent outdoors really hit the spot. I’ve been just reading the Psalms and the Gospel lections, and trying to do my best to imagine myself being a part of the story. Yesterday was an easy enough story to place myself in, as I read the story of the Prodigal Son. What really hit me hard though was at the end:
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” (Luke 15:25-32 CEB)
Jesus is obviously telling a story, and in this one it’s pretty easy to sort out who the father figure is:
There is untold nuance and intricacy to this story which I’m not going to get in to here, because I have to preach every single week and I have to save some of the good stuff for when this story comes up in the lectionary. But what hit me right between the eyes yesterday all over again was something that Rob Bell once pointed out. Of all the things Jesus could have God say to us, of all the things the Father could say to a disappointed and frustrated older brother, too caught up in his own righteousness to be able to celebrate his brother’s return, too focused on what others are doing wrong to be able to celebrate their success (ok, I’m laying it on thick here, but I’m looking at you American Church), of all the things the Father could say to such a person, He says
You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
To anyone who would tell you that God is punitive, to anyone who would tell you that God is against you, to anyone who’s vision of God is more judgmental than even they are, read that line again. You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
How can you read that and come away with anything less than love?
For me though, that was the challenge. As a pastor I’m always reading the Bible exactly the way I tell others not to read it. Don’t read it for information. Don’t read it like a text book. Don’t read it looking for another new angle on your sermon, Pastor J. Read it in the way that allows the Bible to read you. And that’s what happened on that bench yesterday. Those words somehow found their way passed the dam in my head and to the river of my heart. Everything God has is mine, not at all because I deserve it, but because God is generous on a level that doesn’t make sense. God is generous toward the sons that run away. God is generous toward the older sons who don’t want to celebrate. God is generous toward pastors who spend too much time getting in their own way. And God is generous toward everyone who’s eyes are on this page.
He may, may, even be generous with certain goaltenders.
My friends, how has God been generous with you this day? Where have you seen God at work in your life?