Welcome To The Church Of The Prodigal

What’s in a name?

In some cultures, quite a bit. The Christians’ faith ancestors, the Jews, put great stock in the symbolic power of names.

Remember Jacob? That scoundrel’s name means “grabber,” which is exactly who he was with his brother Esau’s birthright.

Many years later, on the eve of Jacob’s fearful first meeting with the brother he had cheated, Jacob had a wrestling match with God’s messenger. At the end of their nightlong tussle, Jacob would not let the messenger go unless he gave Jacob a blessing. The blessing was a name-change, from Jacob to Israel, “the one who strives with God.”

Many cultures believe selfhood is expressed in the name given a person. I believe the same can be true when it comes to churches.

So what is the name of your church, or the churches you have attended? All of the United Methodist churches I have served as pastor, save one, had geographical or numerical names: East Vancouver, First, Lewiston, Orchards, etc. You get the idea.

Quite honestly, they aren’t names that ever inspired me to great dreams. So what names have your church homes had? Have they inspired you in any way? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to start a new church, one based on your own understanding of what church should be? I have, although my idea of church keeps changing as I get further along on my own spirit journey.

At this point, all I have for sure is the name of “my” church. My dream church needs a name that reflects not only who the congregation would be but also would become.

My name choice? The Church of the Prodigal.

This congregation would be for people who find Jesus’ story of the forgiving father and his two wasteful sons irresistible. I believe I might find Jesus there even more often than I’ve found him in other churches.

In the Church of the Prodigal, we would grow to gratefully, authentically see Jesus as the radical host of God. If we had a building, there would be a large reproduction of Rembrandt’s painting, “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” in the entry.

It is a moving expression of the father’s unconditional Welcome Home! of his wayward son. The bedraggled, contrite son is kneeling at his the feet of his father, who is stooped over his son with his hands lying on the young man’s back. It’s not a full-bodied embrace, yet very clearly an embrace.

To my way of thinking, that embrace is not merely a gesture by an incredibly compassionate and understanding human father. That embrace is a visible sign of God’s radical hospitality.

God is always ready to act in ways that seem radical to us: extreme if those ways will wake us up to how eager God is to welcome us home here and now, and rooted in God’s deep-down desire to see every human live a blessed and abundant life.

Did you realize the prodigal son virtually wished his father dead when he asked for his inheritance while the old man was still alive? It’s true.

Yet the father not only let the boy leave home, he could hardly wait for him to return.

His incredible sense of love welcomed the boy to leave. He also ached until he could welcome him back home.

But imagine carefully the father’s embrace. For it is not only an embrace of welcome, it is also an embrace of change. By embracing his son, he affirmed the boy’s “coming to himself” as valid.

Yet his embrace also sets the boy up for further change in his heart as he lived within the security of his father’s radical hospitality.

In short, the young man knew he was loved enough as he was to risk changing into who he could be. God’s radical hospitality provides us with a “safe place” where we know we are loved enough, as we are, to risk changing into the people God knows we can be.

The younger son was willing to be embraced, regardless of the cost.

But watch out! Another figure in Rembrandt’s painting is the elder brother. And he’s in no mood to welcome his younger brother home, let alone embrace him with a forgiving love. He thinks his father a soft old fool. So he’s furious not only at his newly found brother but at his father, too.

So what is the father’s response to his first-born?

“Everything I’ve had has always been yours.” What seems left unsaid is “… but you’ve never believed that, so you have wasted all this time. Yet it isn’t too late to join the party. It’s for you, too!”

Care to join the Church of the Prodigal where Jesus is the radical host of God? This Jesus brought terrific good news to the people of his day. It’s terrific Good News for us, too.

This no-barriers, unconditional-love kind of church sounds pretty good to me!

Now - if only we can grow into our church’s new name.

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Paul Graves The Spokesman-Review