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Good morning. It's my privilege to introduce to you for our second Western felt lecture the reverend dr craig Barnes who will be speaking on the subject of poetry for the elder brother. I can't tell you the

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number of times I've gone to keynote at an event and when I arrive, all I can hear about is the person who was there before me. And uh and that person being craig Barnes, craig Barnes

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was just here most recently. This happened to me when I went to Montreat, he and I were speaking at the same conference, but it was one of those long conferences and our planes must have passed

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each other because he was the opening speaker and I was kind of the one they brought in sort of , you know later on after the big person had been there and for three days, for three days

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I heard all about craig sermon which really shaped the interaction that we had on Black Mountain for that period of time. The man can preach and as we have seen, he can also lecture. I appreciate

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your sharing with us craig exactly who you are to the bone. A preacher who is a scholar and a scholar who is a preacher. When we listen to your poetic and thoughtful insights craig, we aren't

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hearing what the church has to say to the academy or what the academy has to say to the church . We're hearing what we together as the people of God, as people of faith seeking understanding should be

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thinking about thank you for moving so deeply and powerfully into our shared existential questions. There's only one matter related to yesterday's lecture that I have to get on your case about, uh, I really want to

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push you on this. Did I hear you saying right that minor poets shouldn't try to rhyme? You know? See, I think it's possible and I humbly suggest this craig that you simply haven't been exposed

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to enough well crafted rhyming poetry and so you know , I know it's, it's a lot. I worked for hours on this, but I have a I have a small token to offer a small gift

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and understand its something that you've inspired. So I shouldn't get all the credit for it. Um I hope you'll enjoy it. And I just have to kind of get in the moment. I once heard

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a speaker named Craig who taught with his heart and his head. He named our despair with jokes and a prayer lifting us a full octave instead. Thank you. Please welcome with me again the reverend dr

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craig Barnes. Mhm Well that was major poetry. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. They bring Cindy out at a conference after I've been there so that someone can clean up the mess, explain what

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the gospel really means. Just usually her title. This is what Craig was trying to say. Mhm I think it's helpful at events like this for speakers to occasionally go out on a limb and to give

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you some of our thoughts which are still being formed and shaped in our minds um to try it out in other words before we write it down and are stuck with it. I can tell you, I

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mean time someone has brought to me something I published and had a question about it and I had to say, I don't know what I was thinking, that's not right. So it's helpful um I think

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just to get it out um I'm not actually all that extroverted, but even I need to get things out to know if I like them and uh conferences like this, it's helpful to for you to hear

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what some of your speakers are thinking about, what isn't fully cooked yet but is underway. And I , I am about to launch into a writing project on the gospel for the elder brother. And it's

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come out of a recognition that most of my ministry has actually been spent not with Protic als, but with elder brothers and many of you are pastors or elders in mainline churches and you have your hands filled

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with elder brothers, they're the kind of people that for some reason we tend to attract last year over lent. I Planned a six week, a series of sermons on the prodigal son and but as his

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every pastor's nature, you, you have the congregation in your heart as you're writing these sermons and I just kept sliding back into how the elder brother was seeing all of this because I knew that this was

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my congregations approach to this parable Lillian and tom have spoken eloquently about testimony and the need for testimony and church. I am trying to figure out the elder brother's testimony. I'm not an elder brother, uh

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, neither biologically. Nor is that my spiritual story , but I've fallen in love with them and I'm trying to figure out what the gospel really looks like for them. T S Eliot has said that the

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end of all of our yearning will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time. But how do you, how do we preach to those who have never really left home

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, Who have always stayed near the father's house? And again, if these thoughts seem unformed, um and ragged, it's because they are. But thank you for letting me think about this with you.

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At the beginning of the 15th chapter of Luke, we're told that the scribes and Pharisees were again complaining about jesus, nothing new there. The charge, as usual was that this fellow welcomes sinners and eats

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with them. Jesus responds by telling three familiar parables . 1st 1 is a shepherd Who leaves his 99 sheep to find the one that was lost. Nothing is said about leaving these 99 sheep in the care

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of another Shepherd. He takes off and wanders the wilderness for this one. Lost sheep. On finding it, he says, rejoice with me, for I have found the loss. Immediately Jesus goes into

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the second parable. Poor woman loses one of her 10 silver coins, she still has nine. She's concerned about the one that is lost. She tears the house apart in search of it. On finding

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it. She also says the same thing. Rejoice with me, for I have found the loss. Then we get to the well known parable of the prodigal son, the elder brother remained at home was

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not lost. In other words, the father is so excited about the return of the Prodigal that he runs down the road, opens up both arms and embraces him and he throws a party and again he

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says, rejoice with me, He was lost. But now, as found all three of these parables clearly depict the joy of God and Finding the Lost . This message is deeply ingrained into our understanding of

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gospel. We have this down, it's deeply ingrained into the preacher's understanding of her or his mission were proclaiming that the savior is out in search of the Lost. But the question that has to not in

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the back of the mind of my main line congregation is, what do we have to say then to these elder brothers? What about the nine coins that were never lost? Or the 99 sheep that were

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smart enough not to Wander away? The good shepherd . The good shepherd Leaves 99 sheep vulnerable and goes off in search of the one that is lost. Really? Let's read this with fresh eyes. This

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is a good shepherd. What kind of shepherd would do that? Then he gets all excited about finding the lost one. He throws it on his shoulders . He comes back and says to the 99 sheep

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rejoice with me. Found the lost. Those sheep had to be rolling their eyes just as the elder brother did. He was faithfully working at the father's fields. He was obeying the rules. He was

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fulfilling expectations. But all of the fuss and all of the celebration is over the protocol. I think many of our churches are filled with people who have not squandered everything they were given. They've been careful

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, they know how to abide by the rules. They're good at abide by the rules. They don't understand all of the preoccupation with the loss. They don't understand. Um, even the ambiguities in which

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preachers love to wander around every time I preach a sermon that talks about the malaise of our lives caught between how it is and how it ought to be . The elder brothers take my hand at the following

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the worship service and they said, I was, I was a little confused today, pastor just trying to figure out what, what, what are you asking about that? Did you need us to teach

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sunday school? Is that it you get a comment like that you've got an elder brother on your hands . They just want to know what to do. Just tell me what to do. I am good

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at fulfilling expectations. What am I supposed to do ? So what is the gospel for these? Who just want to know what to do? Well, option A. I have two options because I tried

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them both, bob is to help the elder brother to see that actually he really is lost. After all, there is some biblical warrant for this. There is no qualitative difference and sin. Sin is

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anything that separates us from God. Some need to repent of flagrant acts of doing wrong. Others need to repent of self righteousness. The Biblical witness does make it clear that jesus is saying things like I

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have come to seek the lost. All our righteousness is as filthy rags. There is a deeply ingrained theme within particularly american spirituality of of a need for the loss to come home. A need to um

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to give your life to jesus. This comes to us from the frontier days of our religion and stayed with us as part of our heritage. It's part of the revivalist extreme. That's, that was particularly

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since the second great awakening has made its way into even mainline churches. My father was a baptist preacher , southern baptist and, and he went to Long island new york to start a church now to be

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a southern baptist and Long island new york, you've got to be hardy. Um, it's just, it's just not culturally sensitive to southern baptist affections, let us say. And my dad spent most of

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his life working with people who were blue collar at best if they had jobs at all. And like all good southern Baptists who were raised in the south as my father was um, once a year,

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you have to have a revival and all good revivals my dad believed had to be held intense. So from somewhere in new york, I have no idea where he got this big old circus tent and he

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found a lot and he put this tent up every year. I can still smell the wet canvas of this for some reason it always rained and so that tent smelled so revival has a scent in my memory

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. And um you had long string of naked light bulbs that just went all the way down the front and had these wooden squeaky chairs that we would sit in that he had rented from somebody that pincher,

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but if you didn't sit on them, just right and from somewhere he got sawdust, I have no idea where you found the sawdust, but you've got to have sawdust to go down the center of the

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ill for a good tent revival. And the choir was made up mostly of women with these floral print dresses. I have and see all of us and a few husbands that were dragged along. And um

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, there was always a music quartet called the Eastern Valley Boys. They sang every year and they had green blazers and way too many teeth and and the big guy sang tenor and the little guy sang bass

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and every song ended with a men like this. And I have, I have no idea where my father found these preachers or if they had any academic credentials at all to be preaching. Um, what

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I do remember vividly though is that every service like all good revivals culminated with my dad standing right there at the, at the front of the, of the tent and inviting people to come to jesus,

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That's what our revivals are focused on the invitation, the ultra call. Meanwhile, the ladies in the choir were singing the 10th verse of just as I am. Um, and the invitation was always the

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same now as the time to just step out and give your life to jesus. Now is the time to step out and give your life to, Jesus gets back to the theme that we've been looking at

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the last couple of days of surrender, the invitation to surrender whatever it is, that's keeping you back , your guilt, your fears, your anxieties, your pride, getting back to the elder brothers,

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your pride, give it up, it's time to give it up and surrender and come to jesus. These days. I've spent so much time uh pursuing academic degrees that I've lost my affection for the tent

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and some of that leaves me sad to tell you the truth. I have absolutely no interest now and singing what my brother and I used to call the blood and guts hems of the faith, there's a

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fountain filled with blood that flows from Emmanuel's veins. And sinners plunged beneath that tied lose all their guilty stains. This is probably where I got in trouble with rhyming things. Mhm. Yes. Mhm.

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At him just soured me. I think these days if I don't get a good curia and worship, I feel robbed. I actually question the long term value of ultra calls. But but but the paradigm

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of I once was lost, but now am found is deeply woven into american spirituality and it has biblical warrant. And it's part of our biblical historical theological tradition essentially. This is at the end of Augustine's

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confessions. He's worked through all of his intellectual objections to the faith. He's gotten to the bottom of his emotional concerns and the end of the confessions. It's just about surrender. He just has to surrender

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and give over to God that which he cannot do for himself. So there is biblical warrant to this approach of saying to the elder brother, you actually are lost, you just don't know it. But

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there are problems to this approach that I have found after having tried it for many years. One of the problems is to try to convince the elder brother that he is a sinner is tough because not because

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the elder brother won't acknowledge that he has sins, but to tell you the truth, the sins of the elder brother or boring, the elder brother isn't really very good at Sydney. Um and every time

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I bring this up, they get upset with me because they think that I'm telling them that their Underachievers as sinners and nothing is more offensive to an elder brother than being underachiever at anything including sinning. But

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they are, and when I have counseling sessions, when it started out with the elder brother in some state of confession, uh they get done, I said, that's it, that's what you've got.

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That's the best you can do. Change seats with me. I can do much better than that. But they come in and they say things like pastor , I'm coming to apologize, I'm so sorry,

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I'm so sorry. As you know, uh we , our kids are getting ready to go to college and I'm having to work extra hours. And so I don't have as much time as I used to

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. And but I am sharing our churches, inner city mission to tutoring uh, in the schools and that's really taken off. But we, we've launched now into three other schools And I'm having to supervise

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all of that. And as a result of my mother's illness, I'm having to move her into our back bedroom. Uh so what I'm here to say is would it be okay if I just served as

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the vice chair of the stewardship committee instead of the chair? Really, this is this is watching that you were up last night worried about, Yeah, I think we can handle that. I mean,

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this is their notion of failure in the parable. The elder brother has a different role than the Prodigal son and we we miss something in the parable, if we try to collapse them and to be in

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the same person, you can't make the elder brother prodigal. The whole point is that the elder brother really is good. So, again, what is the gospel for good people? Will option B is

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not to try to convince the good person that he's actually a bad person. The option B is to take a sacramental approach. And the third chapter, john we have that famous conversation between jesus and the

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pharisee Nicodemus who had had to have been an elder brother and then there's that spectacular word an Ethan jesus uses and talking to Nicodemus as it can be translated either as born again or born from above. It's

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significant that the new international version version of the bible preferred by evangelicals uses born again. The N. R. S. V. Preferred by many and mainline protestantism chooses born from above. Born again.

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As the connotation of conversion of the loss born from above tends to put the emphasis on the grace of God from above doing the birthing God's grace previn's than any of our faith. And Jesus goes on to

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talk about being born of water and spirit. Perhaps a reference then to baptism. In the early church , we had the liturgies of their baptisms from the 2nd 3rd centuries. It's interesting that most of these

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liturgies are essentially funeral services, actually, as the baptismal candidate was going down into the water, the priest would talk about putting off the old atom, putting off the old habits, putting off the old

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vices, putting off the old life, and even as the priest is doing that, the candidate would put off his or her clothes and never to put them back on again and then there would be and

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they'd be in the water. The priest have put the person under the water, buried with him in baptism, stand up, risen to walk in your life. And then as the priest is walking,

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excuse me as a candidate, now a member of the church, is walking out of the water, the priest would talk about putting on jesus christ, putting on his virtue, putting on his life and

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then they would put on new clothes they had never worn before as a symbol of all of this new life that they had put on. The reason for all of the focus on burial and funeral images is

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that of course the early church was persecuted and the only way that they could motivate the members of the Early Church to continue to be bold in the witness for their faith was that they would be unafraid.

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The only way they could make them unafraid of anything that CAesar could do to them was to go ahead and get the dying over with. Uh and it's something CAesar never really understood about the early church,

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why they were fearless, because they had already died . To anything that caesar could take away. You can't scare dead people that's just all behind them. Now. They've put on this new life is eternal

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life that they can never, ever lose. That's part of our heritage of what baptism is. Even when we're baptizing infants, there's such a fuss about the baptism of infants, All about the beauty of

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the baby or the gown of my gosh gowns. Um, and I've always been to, have not yet had the courage to try. This may be my last day. I will, I'm saying we

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killed this baby today. This baby's life as we've known it, as you expect it is over, uh, were baptizing this child as a member of the cabinets of this child will grow up into this

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new life that we don't want a single day to be wasted so that all of this child's life will be spent as a response of faith to the grace that's bestowed through this sacrament. And the new life

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has begun already. Part of what we're trying to do that I think with elder brothers is help them see um that they've already had their conversion experience when they were baptized even as infants, It's already happened

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to them. It was, it was always the grace that did the converting for them. And so the question for the elder brother is, does he realize what he has always had a grace that was

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given to him before he was even able to pay attention because he was being held in someone's arms. The end of all of our yearning will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for

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the first time. Yes, that's it. Do you realize what you have? Or does anxiety blind the elder brother to the reality of being at home ? And my experience anxiety is the elder brothers besetting

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sin. It's the thing, he worries that bothers him the most anxiety. This tax is anxious about the protocol. He's anxious about the injustice of the father's attention to him. It isn't right. The

00:25:32.590 - 00:25:42.110

congregation, I, sir, we have elder brothers who are anxious about their Children. Well, why are they anxious about their Children? They're anxious about their jobs. They're anxious about their self constructed lives

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. I'll talk about that more in a second. Um they're anxious about the inevitable losses as they approach them. They worry, they fret. Elder brothers are big freighters striking that jesus has so little toleration

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for this, for Freddie, I've often instruct that jesus is so easy with people's doubts, but we look at this already, I think thomas, speaking about the, I believe, help my unbelief.

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that's good enough for jesus, when he gets that from the father of this boy, has the demon heels based on this faith mixed with unbelief or the , the doubts and John Thanks, John four,

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where people are starting to leave jesus because he's seen some hard things that they don't want to hear anymore , and then Jesus looks at the disciples, he says, what about you guys are gonna leave to

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remember their response, where would we go? That's not exactly saying the apostles creed, that's just like , no, we got nothing else. So it's not as though their bastions of faith at this point

00:27:00.840 - 00:27:15.890

. Um and other times when jesus runs into doubt , he's not too bothered by it, uh even at the end of the gospel story, according to Mathew, there's this resurrection appearance and some of the

00:27:15.890 - 00:27:30.360

disciples are looking at the risen jesus and the texas and some doubt it now, I would think that if you were staring at the risen jesus, I'd pretty much take care of the doubt issue, but

00:27:30.360 - 00:27:42.460

some still doubted, and even then jesus isn't bothered by that because it says yet they worshipped so inspired , the doubts they worship, and Jesus is okay with it, but fear, that's another matter.

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Any time jesus runs across fear, he is pretty consistently scolding people who are afraid, uh people who are afraid to leave and follow, jesus, get scolded, remember the guy who was afraid of losing

00:27:56.900 - 00:28:10.780

his talent is one talent, so he buried it , that's one of those cast him into outer darkness , gnashing of teeth, kind of judgments for his fear of that, and when the disciples were a

00:28:10.790 - 00:28:21.300

storm on the boat and jesus is asleep and they're terrified that they're gonna drown, they wake jesus up first, he scolds them for being afraid right there on this, you kinda wanna say lighten up,

00:28:21.300 - 00:28:33.500

this is scary stuff, being at sea in a storm, I think it's because it isn't really till we get to the 1st epistle of John that we get the answer to this, we were told that

00:28:33.500 - 00:28:49.680

perfect love casts out fear, Jesus sees sphere as our level of fear, as the measure of how little love we have actually received. Always love that gets rid of fear. I've spent way too many

00:28:49.690 - 00:29:06.900

years of my time and pastoral ministry trying to talk people out of their fears. People cannot be talked out of their fears. There is no rationalizing away of fear because fear is an emotion, it's not

00:29:06.900 - 00:29:17.920

a rational feeling, it's an emotion only love gets rid of fear when you had little Children at home and they were screaming in the middle of night because he thought there was a monster under the bed.

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Did any of you open the door and say now , now we've talked about this. Monsters are completely irrational. It's an illogical thing that you're feeling, you should stop that this moment and be rational.

00:29:33.040 - 00:29:42.710

Of course not. Oh, you threw open the door, you ran in, you hug them and in the love, the fear went away, wow . It's always love that gets rid of fear,

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never rational arguments. And so the challenge then it's conveying the love the father to the elder brother, to get the elder brother into those arms of the father, because that's the only thing that's going to

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take care of the anxiety. Armenia's second century apologised , provided actually one of our earliest interpretations of the trinity, Says the two hands of the father are the Spirit and the Sun. And as the father

00:30:21.360 - 00:30:34.830

runs down the road to embrace the protocol, Using Spirit and Son to draw us into his own heart , Spirit and Son pulling us in. And this is his interpretation of the first chapter of Ephesians,

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where it says we've received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and given us the spirit and the son . The father has given us everything that God has to give us. God has given everything God has

00:30:45.820 - 00:30:59.170

to give and giving spirit and his son, he's held back nothing to handed giving, of course, the parable ends without us knowing whether or not the elder brother makes it into those arms or not.

00:30:59.540 - 00:31:10.010

But that's the invitation. The father pleads with the elder brother to come into the celebration, Spirit of Sun, find the love of the father. It's the only thing that's going to get rid of the

00:31:10.020 - 00:31:27.830

elder brothers anxiety. Well, here's some other thoughts . I have gone preaching to the elder brother. Our# one is that our identity is established by baptism, not by the self constructed life. I

00:31:27.830 - 00:31:41.650

think baptism in the years ahead is going to be increasingly important in terms of our understanding of the christian life, partly because we're living in a day and age in which there's so many debates about identity identity

00:31:41.650 - 00:31:55.010

debates. Uh, we debate religious identity, would debate ethnic identity, sexual identity. Uh, yesterday , a lot of us spend a lot of time trying to figure out the identity of the mainline church

00:31:55.010 - 00:32:07.200

anymore. Um, baptism is where we go to when we're confused about identity. It's very formative for our understanding this again, this new life that has already been given to us in christ, putting on

00:32:07.210 - 00:32:22.060

christ, being christ in. That's a great prophetic notion these days because we live in an era in which we think the identity is self constructed, everything is out there as Ala carte resource and it's up

00:32:22.070 - 00:32:35.500

for you to choose the identity that you want. Anyone who's done parenting lately knows that all of the advice about parenting is helping Children make good choices. When johnny throws a rock through the window, you're

00:32:35.500 - 00:32:44.360

not supposed to discipline him, you take him inside , you say now johnny, was that a good thing to do that? To throw that rock through the window? And johnny is smart and he's thinking

00:32:44.940 - 00:32:53.600

thinking the right answer is no here he's right. So john has now learned a good choice. Well , it just keeps going on and on that way . The college selection process is if you've been through

00:32:53.600 - 00:33:06.160

that with Children lately is incredibly anxious time of everybody's life in the family because we choose the right school , with the right school, choose you. And the thought is we're choosing a life here, we're

00:33:06.160 - 00:33:15.550

not just choosing college Then, as soon as they get into school, what's the first thing that we say to these 17 and 18 year olds choose a major, only, they don't think they're choosing a

00:33:15.550 - 00:33:27.470

major, they think they're choosing a life and they don't really know what their life is supposed to be like and how could they? So they're thinking, I don't know, let's see there's these great doctor

00:33:27.470 - 00:33:44.310

shows on tv I'll be premed and so they just get on the registrar's website and they go, doesn't even take 15 minutes and they are going to be doctors, Then they go to Biology 101. They

00:33:44.320 - 00:33:53.080

realize this isn't really going to work out for them . So they get back on the registrar's website. Once again again, it just takes 15 minutes and they think, let's see. Uh, well lawyers

00:33:53.080 - 00:34:05.170

drive cool cars and they make a lot of money . I'll be pre law now. They've got a whole new life. It was 15 minutes. They got a new life just by making another choice.

00:34:05.840 - 00:34:15.040

So I watch my daughter go through college. I discovered you can do this three or four times. Actually. Then when they get out of college, what do we say to them? Pick a job

00:34:15.050 - 00:34:27.190

, Pick any, choose a job. It's up to you to choose your, your future, You choose your job? Remember saying this myself when she graduated from school, pick a job, sweetheart.

00:34:27.200 - 00:34:42.750

Any job would be good then after they get this job, If it doesn't really work out for them , they're keeping the college mentality, they should just be able to get a different job and the same

00:34:42.750 - 00:34:52.000

thing that applies to relationships to churches to how they constructed their life. If you don't like it, you should be able to choose again and choose again and choose again and choose again as a pastor.

00:34:52.000 - 00:35:04.060

I have parishioners in my congregation who are using up their fleeting years, trying to construct and choose a life that they like the thought. I should be able to just choose again and choose again. Contrast

00:35:04.060 - 00:35:16.410

that to my grandfather who was the 6th generation tobacco farmers in North Carolina who had inherited that farm. It was an identity that was given to him. No one asked him if he wanted to be a

00:35:16.410 - 00:35:30.850

farmer. When I was trying to figure out my own vocational plans. I remember asking my grandmother if granddaddy was fulfilled as a farmer. She looked at me like a dog does when it gets confused and

00:35:30.850 - 00:35:40.580

kind of cocks his head a little bit. First , I had to explain what fulfillment means to my grandmother. She didn't even know the concept. And finally, she said, I, I don't know

00:35:40.580 - 00:35:54.750

, sweetie, he was a farmer the first time I heard that it occurred to me that it never , Never even dawned on my grandfather after all those years, a plowing the back 40 to ask himself

00:35:54.750 - 00:36:06.620

if he was fulfilled doing this. It was the identity that was given to him. I'm not exactly advocating going back to that, but how different that is from this notion today, that you get to

00:36:06.620 - 00:36:16.780

choose and you get to self construct your your life . And we do the same thing with spirituality. People who are part of my church because they like this aspect of the worship service at our church,

00:36:16.790 - 00:36:24.460

but they like the bible study at church down the road better. So they go to that one and they're going to a third church's mission trip to Guatemala and they go to that one. And so they're

00:36:24.460 - 00:36:37.730

putting spirituality together like going through a cafeteria of churches and I want one of these and two of these and one of those, a self constructed notion. When my daughter graduated from college, I couldn't believe

00:36:37.730 - 00:36:50.550

that the commencement speaker was still peddling the same dribble I heard when I graduated from college, which was , you are among the brightest and best we have ever seen. Set your goals high. Dream your

00:36:50.550 - 00:37:02.410

own dreams. You can be whatever you want to be. Well, that's not true. Yeah, you can't be whatever you want to be. These kids have all kinds of limitations. I know at

00:37:02.410 - 00:37:14.150

least one of them did. I mean, uh , of and maturity is coming to embrace that and know your limits. But there's still this notion of you can be whatever you want to be. I

00:37:14.150 - 00:37:27.570

mean, it would have been more honest if he would have just said to them, we have nothing for you. You're on your own. It's all out there. Just put something together and the elder

00:37:27.570 - 00:37:38.710

brother is in danger precisely because he's done a good job of constructing his life. He's seen all of these options. He's constructed carefully. He went to the right schools, he got the right job.

00:37:38.720 - 00:37:50.630

He stayed with it when the going was hard. And so now he thinks that he should be affirmed for self constructing carefully. And we are making this prophetic message to him that that was never what your

00:37:50.630 - 00:38:04.400

life was about from the day you were baptized, your life has been an unfolding act of God's grace . And so we're trying then to hold up all of these glorious traditions that have shaped and molded the

00:38:04.410 - 00:38:19.790

elder brother. We have all six of those Tobacco Farmer families hanging up on our wall at home. In fact, we have 20 large black and white photographs of my wife and my ancestors. They go

00:38:19.790 - 00:38:30.450

all the way back to the civil war. They lined the entire wall of our stairwell. That's because we have two teenage boys at home and as they run up and down the stairs, you want them

00:38:30.450 - 00:38:43.100

surrounded by these people who went before them. We had room on the wall and we had the photos were also put up portraits of Abraham and moses and David and ruth and rehab and all of these great

00:38:43.100 - 00:38:57.950

leaders who are a part of our tradition, our story. These people have faced everything that those teenage boys are possibly going to face in life. And they faced it all with faith that's in their blood

00:38:57.960 - 00:39:08.660

, That's part of their spiritual heritage. We want our boys to know that because life we know better than they do is not gonna be easy on them . When the trials are great. We want them

00:39:08.660 - 00:39:19.450

to know that this is already shaped and molded their life. This is why in church we do the most countercultural thing. When we stand and say the creed, we're saying, somebody else wrote our belief

00:39:20.720 - 00:39:30.850

. Would you like bizarre idea that people outside the walls of the church, who would say, you can't say that? You believe that you didn't write that Exactly. Somebody else wrote our belief. My

00:39:30.850 - 00:39:45.540

belief is shaped by those who have gone before me . We don't outside of the church actually believe in creeds. What we believe in is personal mission statements . Imagine how delightful that would be a church.

00:39:46.120 - 00:39:57.050

Some over here could stand and say, I believe the next job is going to make me happy. Okay, good luck with that. I went back and say, I believe my husband should be nicer

00:39:57.050 - 00:40:06.250

to me. Okay? Yeah, we all agree to that one. Sit down only here could say , I believe that church is boring. Yes, we all agree to that one too. You can

00:40:06.250 - 00:40:15.740

sit down awful. No, we don't want that . We need we need great faith. Because when you go through trials, you need great, sturdy faith. I don't need my little faith that fits

00:40:15.740 - 00:40:30.790

in my heart. I need a great faith. I need to lean on something bigger than that. And so we're constantly trying to caution the elder brother against the successfully constructed life. That's the danger the

00:40:30.790 - 00:40:46.820

elder brothers in, it's easier to repent of failures than it is of a successfully constructed life. So the spiritual challenges are great to the elder brother. Um quickly we preach into the elder brothers anxiety directly

00:40:46.820 - 00:40:59.740

as I said before, this is his besetting sin . During one of the sermons I preached during lent , I talked about it being two o'clock in the morning and you're staring at the clock beside your bed

00:41:00.110 - 00:41:31.230

, which has become your grand inquisitor 201 202 203 Why did the boss look at me like that this morning? What was that? About 204 205 What if our daughter marries that? Slug 206 207?

00:41:32.010 - 00:41:46.240

What's that pain in my arm all about again? Nobody argues themselves out of these anxieties, but they are loved out of it. And you preach into the anxieties by saying that, you know that you

00:41:46.250 - 00:41:59.240

get that, you understand that everybody knows what's like to be up all night anxious. So they need to know that you get that. But you also know that you're never going to talk themselves out of

00:41:59.240 - 00:42:15.080

it. Elder brothers are confused by crisis. They believe that they have lived a careful life and therefore they should be rewarded. But crisis comes for the elder brother just as easily as to the protocol.

00:42:15.090 - 00:42:25.470

And so in times of crisis, the elder brother is in a state of enemy, uh, needing to spiritually be kind of reorganized once again. And , and it's an opportunity in crisis to get into

00:42:25.470 - 00:42:44.220

the elder brother's life in ways like never, never before because they're open. Uh, at this point , it's in times of crisis that the pastor has the opportunity to explain that God does not reward carefulness

00:42:44.700 - 00:43:04.910

by God. Being careful with us. Let me illustrate this. When I was in sunday school, our high tech teaching device was called flannel graph. Uh, flannel graph was um large board about this

00:43:04.910 - 00:43:16.610

big and had well flannel stretched on it. And as the teacher told a story, she had paper characters that she would put up on the flannel and there was something on the back of the paper characters

00:43:17.400 - 00:43:30.050

. We've been flannel also that the ship that would make them stick to the flannel board. And remember those of you who grew up with this same technique , there was always like a palm tree or camel

00:43:30.060 - 00:43:44.480

up there to start with before they got underway. And then she put the characters up there and then she would always do this. I can still see mrs Williams, long bony fingers get to smooth them

00:43:44.480 - 00:43:54.620

out to get him to the characters to stay up there as you would tell the story. Well, any time we got to the apostle paul and flannel graph, he would take a lot of extra smoothing

00:43:54.630 - 00:44:13.250

out because he had been overused in the story and his head actually had to be taped together because one time johnny burke and I got into an argument over who would hand him to mrs Williams and the little

00:44:13.250 - 00:44:22.740

head got ripped off. And so the tape made it harder for him to stay up there and some other kids, I think they were kids from vacation bible school spilled kool aid all over him, so

00:44:22.740 - 00:44:39.330

he was purple uh as well as taped together. But there he stood finally on the flannel graph And it was as if a Holy Mystery was being explained to us in the 3rd grade and that mystery is

00:44:39.330 - 00:44:54.660

God is not easy on the people. God uses the best of the characters in the bible at the end of their lives are discolored and taped together. The apostle had been thrown out of most of the

00:44:54.660 - 00:45:07.650

cities of the roman empire, typically with a shower of rocks behind him and he ends his life in jail and Rome. But when we get to his prison epistles all he wants to really talk about his

00:45:07.650 - 00:45:19.890

surpassing joy. You wouldn't have had it any other way because he got used in the story. So the point is not that if you follow the rules , God is careful with you. The point is

00:45:19.890 - 00:45:30.740

to be used in the drama that God is continuing to unfold and along the way, all kinds of things happen to us that depending on our response, can leave us with gravitas, a spiritual sense of

00:45:30.740 - 00:45:45.220

gravity about as gravity has weight to it. It's attractive. Um, you know, people who have gravitas, these are the people that you're spiritually attracted to you. Like gravity. They're drawn to you

00:45:45.890 - 00:46:06.740

, you're drawn to them. No one gets gravitas without having scars, scars are spiritually very attractive, gaping wounds, not so much, but scars are very, very attractive. They draw us 3rd aspect

00:46:06.750 - 00:46:22.250

of preaching to the elder brother is to remember that , um, to be grateful for the elder brother . Father's farm would have gone to seed had it not been for the elder brother staying there to care

00:46:22.250 - 00:46:37.970

for it. And the elder brother hears so much about our love and our celebration of the return of the protocol that were not so good at expressing our profound gratitude for what the elder brother does. Well

00:46:37.970 - 00:46:50.920

done, good and faithful servant. We need the elder brother. It's important for pastors to acknowledge that we need their influence, not only in terms of running the church, but we need their spiritual influence

00:46:50.930 - 00:47:02.600

of a love of doing what is right it is . You don't want to dissuade the love of doing what is right by trying to make the elder brothers self loathe his passion for being good. And we

00:47:02.600 - 00:47:14.720

slide into that by warning against self righteousness. While we do of course, have to maintain those warnings at the same time, it's okay to affirm the love of doing what is what is right if it's

00:47:14.720 - 00:47:30.380

done out of gratitude for the grace that we've received in this new life given to us in baptism. One last story, I spent my summer with my grandmother's growing up. Um, my dad would send

00:47:30.380 - 00:47:40.990

us from the, from the city in new york down back to north Carolina for the summers to get out of the city. I had two very different grandmothers. One was the city grandmother that was my

00:47:40.990 - 00:47:58.110

mother's mother and then the other was my country grandma . These women were both women who had come through the great Depression and we're certain that it was going to return any day. But they coped with their

00:47:58.110 - 00:48:15.650

fear of that in ways that were dramatically different. Neither of them had much money. Um, even the city grandmother, well, she didn't have much money. She insisted on elegance in all things.

00:48:15.650 - 00:48:31.840

She rose above her fear by insisting on style and carefulness and civility. The difference between my country grandma and my city grandmother became most obvious at the tables that they set every time we had a meal and

00:48:31.840 - 00:48:45.850

my city grandmother's house, we sat and a table that had a lace tablecloth on it and you made sure that you were cleaned up and ready for the meal on time and you would sit down and there

00:48:45.850 - 00:48:59.900

were so many forks at the table. The forks just went all the way up this way, they went up this way and my city grandmother made sure I knew which fork to use. At which time

00:49:00.270 - 00:49:10.410

napkin goes immediately in my lap. Should lady approached the table, you stand for her arrival. You are very, very careful with your voice, with your tones, you don't reach. You wait till

00:49:10.410 - 00:49:29.120

things are passed to you. And the last thing you ever ever want to do is spill your juice on that least tablecloth. So you are careful. It was a lot of work having dinner at my

00:49:29.120 - 00:49:49.050

city grandmothers table, but there it would always say her old china and that that always had candles with the candlestick holders that my grandfather bought for her and for their anniversary and one hand was always in the

00:49:49.050 - 00:50:05.680

lab, a lot of work for a little boy growing up. By contrast, when we would go to the farm, uh spend time with the country grandma we always ate in the kitchen um on a

00:50:05.680 - 00:50:22.120

table that had a red and white vinyl checked tablecloth that took a spill of milk just fine. Uh there was only one fork, and if it fell on the floor, you just picked it up and

00:50:22.120 - 00:50:37.700

used it again. But you had to be fast because there was always a dog nearby and we had no idea who would be at the table if a neighbor or someone who was a complete stranger. Us

00:50:37.700 - 00:50:47.420

anyway, was in the kitchen. When my grandma was making a meal, she would always make sure this person came and there was always a table or a stool or something that person could sit on and

00:50:47.430 - 00:51:00.700

sit and join us at the table, strangers were always welcomed there. I suppose my grandmother had invited guests to my city, grandmother had invited guests, but at the, at the country grandma's house,

00:51:00.700 - 00:51:12.400

it was just whoever was around was welcome to come and the foods were easy to eat. And because this was my north Carolina country grandma, uh, pork barbecue was always a side dish. It was

00:51:12.400 - 00:51:24.760

never an entree, it was a side dish that we had every meal. So the food was fun and, and laughter, there was always laughter. My country grandma loved to laugh. She was a

00:51:24.760 - 00:51:39.060

big woman, she enjoyed life large and big and um, when she would laugh at her own jokes usually, um she would laugh so hard, she'd have to slap the table three times, Always a

00:51:39.060 - 00:51:59.490

trinity terry in kind of a laughter so there was so much latin, you never slept. The city grandmother's table. I think about that sometimes when I'm serving communion, um those two tables because the decorum

00:52:00.250 - 00:52:15.880

and the liturgy of communion at the church I serve is something that would make my city grandmother proud. Um, we've got the lace tablecloth, we've got our best silver out there. Everybody is cleaned up

00:52:16.250 - 00:52:38.030

dressed to the nines and the last thing any pastor ever wants to do is spilled juice on that table cloth. But our theology of the Eucharist, it's really more at home with the country grandma where strangers

00:52:38.030 - 00:52:52.350

are welcome. You don't get there because you are well mannered and deserved to be there. You were all invited to the table by the grace of jesus christ, who is so happy to have us at

00:52:52.350 - 00:53:06.820

his table. I can just see him slapping at three times. Out of sheer delight. Look who's coming to dinner, this is wonderful. But having said that and this is actually my point. I'm

00:53:06.820 - 00:53:23.270

not about to be the one to suggest to the worship committee that we substitute a red and white checked vinyl tablecloth for the Lord's table. And this is why it took me years to figure this out.

00:53:23.280 - 00:53:39.880

But as grateful as I am for the times that I had at the country grandma's table in the kitchen , I'm also grateful for what my city grandmother gave me. She was trying to create elegant grandsons.

00:53:42.350 - 00:53:55.380

She was trying to make us careful with each other . She was trying to make us know what civility looks like. All good elder brother traits that she was trying to give us. And I'm telling you

00:53:55.390 - 00:54:13.060

, I like being careful. I think we could use a lot more civility in our debates with each other. Um, I think there's a a lack of elegance in the ways that the church talks about

00:54:13.060 - 00:54:24.670

its issues, all, all things that I think in fact we need. And so maybe a tad of formality that would make my city grandmother crowd is not all bad if it isn't done simply for the

00:54:24.670 - 00:54:42.940

sake of formality, but of teaching us carefulness and this wonderful elder brother trait of doing that, which is right and doing it by each other. So there is a place for gratitude and being thankful for

00:54:42.940 - 00:55:01.180

the treats the aspects of good elder brother carefulness. But in the end, in the end, the parable, I will insist that the elder brother is not yet in the father's arms, we don't know

00:55:01.180 - 00:55:13.980

how what ends up happening, jesus leaves this story ragged at the end. There's an invitation by the father for the elder brother to come into the celebration . We don't know if the elder brother does it

00:55:13.990 - 00:55:28.740

or not, that's part of the beauty of how this parable has been written. It's up to each elder brother to finish the parable and you can either be finished by tragedy abstain outside of the arms,

00:55:28.750 - 00:55:39.740

the loving arms of the father. We're all anxiety that the elder brother has will be cast out, or it can be finished by coming into the celebration and into the joy so that the elder brother can

00:55:39.740 - 00:55:51.900

finally hear all of the joy and pride that the father has in him, uh in the context of celebration. And so in the end, the preacher has to lead the story as open as it is

00:55:51.910 - 00:56:07.050

in the text and it ends with a preacher inviting the elder brother to come to the father's arms, as the gospel always does. Thank you. Yeah