See part 1 - Introduction
See part 2 - Monday

Tuesday - Called to be Loved

MSG
31-39So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Romans 8:31-39

When I started thinking about this day's theme, I immediately thought of a service that I had put together back when I was helping lead The Door service. It was inspired by a camp program that I saw growing up where we took the story of the Prodigal Son and set it to music and did sing-alongs that told the story. I'm pretty sure that it was a program put together by Reggie Holder.

My take on it was influenced by a sermon I read on the Emergent Kiwi blog, but for our program, I put a bit of a twist on it that wasn't originally included in my Door service.

I originally put together a video for the younger son, the father, and the older son using some images I found on Google, some of the stock photo sites. I set them to music and used the Ken Burns effect for drama. But this time around, I was going to redo them and make them more edgy, but then I discovered Animoto, which pretty much did all that for me. And originally, I basically read straight off the sermon that I referenced on the blog originally, but I never liked how that flowed.

So for camp, I rewrote the sermon as a series of monologues, the first of which was played beautifully by one of our long-time campers, Leah:

The Younger Son’s Story
I was such an idiot. Where do I even start?
I went to my father—my father, who is still living—and asked for my inheritance. I didn’t know how good I had it. I didn’t appreciate what I had. I was selfish and foolish.
Not only did I want my inheritance, I wanted to spend it. That’s like asking your father for his retirement funds while he’s still around. I might as well have told him, “I wish you were dead.” When I told him, his face turned white as all the blood drained from it. I was so convinced that I was missing out on living the high life, that I didn’t care how much I hurt my father, I just wanted out. I was sick of my family, sick of my life.
And what was that inheritance? It was our family’s lands, our livestock. What we had to live off of. It was our lifeblood. It usually takes years to negotiate the sale of that much land and livestock, but I was so selfish and greedy that I sold it off in a couple of weeks, just to get the money quickly and start my new life, on my own. The people in the town called me names and shot disapproving glances when I walked through town. Childish, despicable they called me.
In our culture, in order to do something like this, you had to publicly say that you were cutting yourself off from your family and your city. So, I choose to be cut off forever. The only way I could undo that is to buy back all of the stuff that I sold. I was now, for all practical purposes, dead to my family, to my city, to friends I went to school with, played with, grew up with. I wanted nothing to do with them anymore.
So I left. I went off to live life for ME. But you know, there are some things out there that want to own you. And I willingly let them.
→ Younger Son Song Clip Plays Here →
At first, I thought I had found what I was looking for, but I soon realized that in my quest for the ultimate freedom to do whatever I wanted, I ended up in bondage. A slave. Flush with all of that cash, I had everything money could buy. I soon had all kinds of new friends, and we lived it up. I was throwing cash around like it was going out of style. But then, the economy tanked. A drought hit, one of those once in a hundred years kinds of events. In your time, when some kind of catastrophe hits, you have WorldVision, and all these charities that come to help. There was no Doctors Without Borders, no NBC or CNN, broadcasting live to mobilize the world to come to help. I was completely on my own. My so-called friends abandoned me once the money dried up. I was far from home, I had no real friends, no family to bail me out. I abandoned my family. I went through the ceremony that cut me off from my hometown. I was on my own, just like I wanted, but I was hungry. Even if I tried to go home, the people in the town would hunt me down and kill me before I even got home. In our tradition, once you leave, you’re an enemy, an outsider. What could I do? I was hungry, broke, and homeless. I ran across an ad in the local paper. There weren’t many jobs available, but there was at least one… a pig farmer. Wait, I forget… you don’t understand about my people and pigs. I am a Jew. Pigs are considered unclean in our culture. You don’t eat barbecue, you don’t even touch pigs. The Rabbis say, “cursed are those who feed pigs.” There I was. A Jew, in a pigsty. And this job doesn’t even pay a living wage. I couldn’t even afford 2 meals a day, let alone 3. As I looked at the pigs eating the slop, I realized that even they were better off than me. How much lower could I get? I started thinking… my father’s servants are even better off than me. I could go home, and beg to become one of his servants. But then there’s my having been cut off from the town. I’d have to get past the townspeople if I was going to make it to my father alive. I would be a hired hand. Not part of the family, just an employee. At that time, I wasn’t even really sorry for what I had done, I was just hungry, broke, and scared. I didn’t know if my father would even welome me back as a son. I had squandered it all. I didn’t even deserve to be called his son. I wrote this whole long speech down, ready to beg for mercy from my father, and headed towards home.

The Father's Story (performed by his eminence, the honorable Franklin Slaton)

I was speechless, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Surely, I had heard him wrong. I could feel the blood draining from my face. I could feel the knots in my stomach. One of my 2 children, the youngest, my daughter came to me to ask me to let her take her share of our family’s wealth, our lifeblood. We make a living off our land and our livestock, and let her go ahead and have it.
I felt so rejected. Even though it would completely humiliate me in the eyes of my friends in town, I gave her the freedom to go, to live on her own, apart from me.
For years, I waited to hear word from her. You see, we had no email, no phones, not even a post office. I would describe my daughter to strangers who were passing through our village to see if anyone even knew if she was alive or dead.
In our culture. When you marry and have a family, we add onto the house, and keep building and building. Families live together all their lives. I know that you don’t typically live with your grandparents and aunts and uncles, and cousins. In our culture, you stay with your family. When my daughter left us, she had to go through the cutting off ceremony willingly. She had to say that she wanted nothing to do with me, her brother, the rest of our family, her friends. It broke my heart.
But one day, while I was out in the fields, I saw her, from a long way off. I don’t know how I even knew it was her. I just did. And then I remembered the cutting off, and what the people in the town might do to her. And I took off running.
Wait.. I forget, you don’t know about that part of our culture. Running is for the children. Middle Eastern men in my day don’t run. Usually I’m wearing this long robe that stretches to the ground. If I run, I have to pull it up. Exposing your legs is humiliating for my people. But I don’t even care. I run to her.
→ PLAY RECONCILIATION CLIP HERE ←

My daughter weeps in shame, telling me that she is no longer worthy to be called my daughter. She told me later that she had a speech she had written about begging to become a hired hand. She’s my daughter. I didn’t care about the cutting off ceremony, it’s time for a ring and a party. And not just a small party, I invited the whole town to see that my daughter, who was dead, is alive. We are cooking up the fattest cow we can find. That’ll feed about 200 people. We are going to have a massive party, and everyone in town will know that my daughter is forgiven.

And then we broke into groups to process it, because this is a heavy subject, and I've always believed that while our time with the campers is limited, there's freedom in being a part of a community of believers outside of your hometown. It gives campers the freedom to process some things that they might not normally process. And even if that's only done internally, that's ok. We had them spend some time in their groups and emulate the younger son in the story by writing a letter of their own to God, saying whatever they need to say. Here's the instructions I gave out:

In one way or another, we can all relate to the Prodigal Son (or daughter). Give campers about five minutes to write their own “speech” to God, like the prodigal daughter wrote for her father. It’s essentially a personal prayer of confession. Tell them that they don’t have to include their names, and that no one will read what they’ve written. Have them seal their speeches/prayers in envelopes. When the group time ends, they should carry the envelope into the Assembly Hall.
Use the remaining time (about 15 minutes) to reflect on the following questions as a group …
•    What makes us feel like the prodigal son or daughter?
•    What makes us feel unlovable?
•    What makes us feel unworthy of God’s love?
•    What does it mean to you to be a child of God?
•    Can you relate to the father’s love for the prodigal son/daughter? How does that feel, or how do you imagine it would feel?
•    What does it mean to you that God has such extravagant, no-holds-barred, no-matter-what love for you?

Then when they returned to the Assembly Hall, we did it in a very solemn manner. They came in and sat down on the floor and I got up and told them that in a few minutes they would have the opportunity to come up to the front and take their letter and shred it, because just like in the story, God doesn't care about what you did, He just wants you to come home.

My favorite programs are the ones that pull the rug out from under the campers. The unexpected twist. In 2007, we did this. So as I finished explaining what we were going to do, I yelled out the cue for the next phase of the evening: "Somebody get me a DJ!" We had bought a Disco ball, camp already had some strobes, and we already had the blacklights up, so all we needed was some dance music (and if you've never been to a camp at Sumatanga, you don't know that we love to dance). We brought in refreshments, started rolling the place with streamers. I had wondered how the campers would react after all that serious time with such a hard break from serious to silliness, but it went over really well. It was like exhaling and letting it all out. We let that run on for 20 minutes or so. And then we completed the story by having the older son show up outside in the dark. Paul, another of our veteran campers, did an amazing job getting across the pissed off and jealous older son. We had him look in the windows and just generally make a scene. He was mic'd up, so we could hear him and we asked Franklin to go out and take care of it. It was really hillarious because the campers treated it like a fight at school, they all crowded at the back windows to see what was going on.

The Older Son
Paul: Hey… what’s going on in there?
→ Franklin comes out to talk
Franklin: You’re not going to believe this! Your sister has come home!
Paul: What do you mean she’s come home? She cut herself off from us. She CHOOSE to leave. Nobody forced her. She humiliated me. She humiliated you. She humiliated our entire family, and you let her.
And what about the land she sold, she can’t come back unless she returns what she threw away.  That land was part of our family. It was my birthright too.
Don’t you realize that these people that have shown up for your party were all laughing at you just a couple of years ago? Don’t you listen to the rabbis? They say it’s better than someone be thrown into a furnace than to put someone to shame in public.
Franklin: Son… all is forgiven… come in.
Paul: All these years I’ve been working like a slave for you and I have NEVER disobeyed, yet you never even gave me a small party with my friends, but she goes off, blows half of YOUR lifesavings and you have the party to end all parties for her.
-- walks away --

Rug pulled. :-)

I concluded by basically taking the direct thoughts off of that sermon I referenced earlier:

And that’s the end of the story. There is no resolution, no reconciliation.
The musicians wait, the guests watch, the servants are poised with more food and wine.
People wonder: what happened to the older son? Did he let himself be persuaded by his father? Did he finally enter the house and participate in the celebration? Did he embrace his sister and join in the celebration? We simply don’t know. The story ends.
What happens next? What does the elder son say? What does he do?
The younger son or daughter was lost, but now she is found. The older son is lost, even though he never left. What’s his next move?
Maybe the next move is really ours? What will we say and do, because we too have seen love. Jesus left the house of his father to become the prodigal son for us, not as the rebellious son, but as an obedient son. Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for a friend. And Jesus has run toward each of us. Jesus has endured shame and humiliation for each of us. And he returned to his father’s house to save us from ourselves and from sin.
We have see the unexpected, undeserved love of God the father. We know that was in Christ putting the world square with himself, and giving us a fresh start.
Will we act like the older son and remain outside of God’s party? Refuse to accept the love of God for other people? Do we choose to trust or not trust God’s endless forgiveness?
Will we be like the younger son, setting boundaries in our relationship with God?
Serving God as servant or hired hand?

Or will we accept the gift of God, and join God’s party?
I think most people remember this story in terms of the younger son. It speaks to where they are.
However, now, years later, when I read this story, my fear is that we have become/will become like the heartless and self-absorbed older brother.
Our culture is the young son who has runaway from home. The biggest challenge in the parable is not to the young son, but to the elder son, to accept the outrageous grace of God. The shock is that the parable has no ending, the guests wait, the musicians pause and God asks each of us what we will do in response to grace.
Sin is broken relationships, our living selfishly, apart from God and our community.
God is the compassionate father who gives us freedom and who runs to us in humility and shame.
Repentance is accepting the fathers love. God’s love is offered to all, those who go and those who stay to those not yet Christian and those who have labored for many, many years.