Joshua 5:9-12

I didn't have much to say about Joshua chapter 3 and the Lectionary skips from here to chapter 24. So what's the significance of what they ate once they got to the land of Canaan? They had to settle back into agricultural life, producing their own food. They could no longer depend on food from heaven. Manna is all about God providing, but stopping it is something about God wanting his people to mature. God can just do no wrong.

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

This is a familiar parable, mostly from the common phrase "prodigal son", a phrase that gets used but not always with the meaning intended here. Not that I know exactly what the Luke author meant, but there are a few elements that relate to more than just a son leaving his home, learning that he doesn't have all the skills he thought he had, then coming back. The statements that Jesus is reacting to in the introduction are important. It is being pointed out that he dines with sinners. This is central to many Jesus stories. The Old Testament is about the chosen people and these stories are contrasting that and showing how that doesn't work and maybe it's not what God is all about.

So we get a dichotomy of two sons. One takes his inheritance, that is, everything that the society he was born into gave him, not just the money but the common sense and skills he has been taught, and he heads out determined that he can make it on his own. He quickly finds out this is not a formula for success. Things are fine when everything is prospering, but any one of us can go from prosperous to beggar quickly. So he "came to himself" and returns home, to his community. When his father sees him coming, he doesn't need to hear the confession, he already knows the son has learned his lesson.

Meanwhile, the other son has quietly remained in the fold, working for the good of the group. When the father celebrates the return of his brother, that son is not even invited. He has to ask one of the slaves what is going on. The father gets wind of this and tries to explain it, but that does not go so well. He says he is treated like a slave. He is actually working in the field with slaves so that's not just some hyperbolic metaphor for him like it would be for me in my comfortable office chair with a view of the lake and bathroom breaks anytime I want. I don't know if this is just an insight into the culture of the time, or a hidden message, but it seems pretty clear to me that this story says, "slavery is bad". Land owners shouldn't also own people. Families should not treat their children like they are capital assets. Everyone's contribution to the greater good should be rewarded and celebrated. When we celebrate, everyone should be invited.

Now, I don't have all the answers. I can't say how many pizza parties you should have to acknowledge your team. And, let's not forget the father works too. Maybe he's not out in the field, but he was when he was younger, and now he is taking care of other aspects of the business. Looking at how churches function today, I can see they don't have these answers either. When someone quits attending for a while, then realizes how they missed the community and comes back, they are very good at welcoming them. They revel in the story of the sinner who repented. They are not so good at nurturing someone through their doubts. Just like this story, the father doesn't even question the kid. He divides up the property in the first verse. Maybe that's a metaphor for how the tribes have scattered in the centuries leading up to these parables. Again, I don't know.

Lots to chew on here. This is a good example of a parable that has been boiled down to one simple metaphor; celebrate the lost sheep that are found. It seems obvious, especially since there two simple parables of celebrating the lost that are skipped over in this Lectionary entry. But this third one in the triplet is much more nuanced. There's more here if we allow ourselves the right to doubt the interpretations that are handed to us. If we open the text and try to relate to the characters and the message the authors are trying to send us, it doesn't make sense that we would end up drawing the same conclusions that have been preached about for 1,500 years.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

This kind of validates what I said about the Luke passage. Christ swept away the old and Christ God reconciled the world to himself. The "message" is now entrusted in us. The system of counting sins is done. It never quite lets go of a belief system though. We can do all these things, but we do them "in him".

The translation "human point of view" might lead you to believe Paul is saying that Jesus was a real human at one time and that's how we saw him. In other places in his writings, and in other translations, this would be "according to the flesh". That is, our lowly human futile efforts to understand Jesus and to live by our own power and to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. You won't find many preachers who are confused on that point. We clearly need Jesus to create the bridge from us to God and heaven. I've had trouble understanding people like Nadia Bolz-Weber or Greg Boyd who use the phrase "through the lens of the cross", but this passage might explain it. I don't agree with it, but I get where they are getting it from. To me, this is one of the reasons Christianity has stuck like it has. There are difficult things to figure out about good and evil and living with each other's faults in community. But just look to Jesus, it's an easy patch.