[Propertalk] Gospel tidbits - March 14 - Lent 4 - Part 4

[Joe Parrish]

In my Webster's Dictionary, the words "prodigal, prodigious, and prodigy" follow one after the other. They all begin the same way, with a "prod," a drive, a push, a poke. However, where one is stirred in an extraordinary, exceptional direction, another is driven away from what's good, toward wasting potential. A prodigal is someone who has squandered an inheritance, who has allowed wealth (be it money or talent) to just slip through the fingers. While the difference between a prodigy and a prodigal is like day and night, the distance between the two is minimal.

http://rockhay.tripod.com/sermons/2001/01-03-25.htm

Peter L Haynes, 2001
- - - - -

When we claim our reconciliation in God, aren't we responsible to live our lives in response to God's grace by seeking reconciliation in one another? To sit at the table in God's presence, having been invited by Christ to come and sort out our differences, to work on existing--even thriving--in one community?

http://day1.org/637-whos_that_in_the_distance

Francis Miller, 2001
- - - - -

Have you seen the sign that says, "Teenagers - Quick, Leave Home Today While You Still Know Everything!" 
<>
In Alcoholics Anonymous, there is an understanding that people never get on the road to recovery until they "hit bottom" -- that is, hit the wall. Some people are unfortunate enough to never hit bottom. They never recover or even begin to recover. Bottom for them is death. This is the father's risk. He might have wanted to beg, plead or even lock the boy up, but he had to let the son go in order to have even have the possibility of having him back. The older brother meanwhile is enjoying the peace and quiet.

http://www.lectionarysermons.com/zun4l.html

John Jewell, 1998
- - - - -

The flow of the narrative can cause us to misread "far country." Actually, it has little to do with physical distance. Its not by our feet but with our affections we leave or return to God. The "far country" can be just one step away, so close, its hard to realize you are there. It's never far to the far country and it's reached not by accident but by choice, willfully crossing spiritual boundaries and ignoring moral check points.

http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/reaves_4314.htm

Benjamin Reaves, 2000 
- - - - -

"How appropriate or effective is it to rely on the image of a Waiting Father to communicate the reality of God's grace? To many of my generation, such a metaphor calls up horrible images.... There are too many connotations of regression, of going back to a time when we had no responsibility and could make no decisions, even if we wanted to. Adults who long to return to the irresponsibility of childhood are adults with problems, and that's not what our presentation of Christian faith and life should cater to." 
THOMAS WOLFE told us long ago that we are incapable of going home again, but undaunted we keep trying.

http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1988/v45-3-article4.htm

Laura Smit, 1988
- - - - -

"By means of a whorish woman," warns Proverbs (6:26), "a man is brought to a piece of bread." In Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son, a young man is brought to less than that: his father's servants have "bread enough" while he's starving to death, in a far-off land where he has whored away the inheritance that he requested and received from his father, and where there now is a famine. He is reduced to a job feeding swine--unclean animals under Jewish law (Lev. 11:7, Deut. 14:8)--and is hungry enough to eat the pigs' slop himself.

http://www.ronaldecker.com/andp.htm#PRODIGAL

Ronald L. Ecker
- - - - -

Sensitive preachers will be careful not to romanticize the notion of home. This parable only hints at how messy a place home always is, perhaps never quite what we want it to be. Our own ideas of home usually simultaneously attract and repulse us. 

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/14/2010#

Matt Skinner, 2010
- - - - -
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20100313/0e8ad8c5/attachment.htm>