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Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32


Once upon a time, there lived a big fruit tree with many branches. The tree was visited by a little boy who would play on and around it every day. The boy would climb to the very top of the tree, scrambling up its branches then back down. He would eat the fruit when he got hungry and took a nap under the tree’s shadow when he got tired. He loved the tree and the tree loved him. Time moved on, as time does, and the little boy grew older. His visits to the tree happened less and less until they stopped completely, and this made the tree very sad.

One sunny day, as the tree danced in the gentle breezes and its leaves drank in the warmth of the sun, the boy came back to the tree with a sad look on his face. The tree noticed the look on the boy’s face and said to him in an attempt to make him happy, “Come and play with me.” Without thinking of why the tree offered companionship, the boy said, “I am no longer a young kid and I don’t play around trees anymore.” The boy continued, “I want things like a bike or a skateboard but I need money to buy them.”

The tree wanted to make the boy happy. “Sorry, I don’t have money, but you can pick all my fruit and sell them so you will have money.” The boy was excited and once again climbed through the branches of the tree to pick all of its fruit. He ran off without so much of a thank you, but the tree was happy to have had him play in his branches on more time.

Time moved on and the boy didn’t come back which made the tree sad.

Several winters passed when a man in his thirties braved the cold and wet weather to stand in front of the tree. The tree immediately recognized the man and as his branches spread out and his leaves began to shake off the wetness, he said to this man, “Come play with me.” The boy replied, “I don’t have time to play. I am very busy with work and trying to raise a family. You see our current apartment is too small and very cold. We need a house to keep us warm and safe this winter.”

“Sorry, I don’t have a house, but you can chop off my branches to build your house.” Once again the man climbed through the branches of the tree, cutting each one down so he would be able to build a safe and warm place for his family. After all of the tree’s branches were cut down, the man left without saying thank you, and the tree stood in the rain, without his branches and leaves to protect him.


After many years an older man came to the tree. The tree recognized him immediately as the young boy who used to play in his branches, the same branches he gave to this boy when he was a man. “Come play with me.”. said the tree.

The older man replied, “I have not had a good life. My family and I are separated, I’ve retired from my job and feel lonely all the time. What I would really like is a boat with which I could sail away to find a happier life somewhere. The tree felt nothing but compassion for this older man and said to him, “My son, you make take what is left of my trunk to build your boat and find your happiness.” The man chopped down the tree’s trunk and walked away.

Many years later a very old man came to the tree, and the tree recognized him immediately. “My son, I have nothing left to give you. My fruit hasn’t been able to grow for many decades. My branches have been removed and my trunk has been cut down so far that all I have left are the roots which grow wide on the ground and deep into the earth.”

The man was very old and very tired, his voice soft as he replied, “All I need now is a place to rest my body.” The tree smiled as he invited the man to sit within his roots. The man nestled into the tree, closed his eyes, and took his final breath. The tree smiled knowing that for as long as it’s been alive, he had loved that boy completely.

Unconditional love and acceptance is probably one of the more difficult kinds of love we are called as Christians to achieve. It involves the understanding that regardless of who someone is and where on life’s journey they find themselves, we accept them and invite them to be a part of us.

Today’s passage, known as the Prodigal Son is one of the greatest examples of this kind of love.

A young man wants to see the world. He tells his father to give him what he feels he is owed, and he goes into the world; only to squander every last penny of his inheritance. Things go from bad to worse. A food shortage hits the land and the only way for him to survive is to hire himself out as a pig-feeder. When most of us think about feeding pigs we imagine holding a bucket and leaning over a short fence to place the feed into a trough of some kind.

This is not what the son in today’s story does. He has to go into the fields and look for the pigs. It’s most likely the pigs have made a home for themselves in the mud and muck of the land and it’s in these conditions the son has to take the food and walk among the pigs in order to feed them.

It's here, among the pigs, the son has an epiphany. He is hungry, and I’m going to say exhausted. He thinks about how even the pigs are eating better than him and recalls how at home, his father’s house, even the servants have more than enough to eat. He makes a decision to return home and apologize to his father.

The scene which touches me most in this passage is that of the father who might be working in the field, or maybe sitting in front of his house. He sees his son walking down the road and even though he was far away the father recognizes him. The father was so moved with compassion that he immediately stopped what he was doing, ran as quickly as he could to his son, and without a second thought gave his son a tight hug and kisses.

Here now is what the focus of this story has been for me. “Then his son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! Fetch the fattened calf and slaughter it. We must celebrate with feasting because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life!

Then they celebrated.

I simply love this passage for what it says and what it doesn’t say. Yes, the son went into the world and squandered away his life’s earnings. Yes, he went home to his father and apologized. But none of that mattered to the father. All that mattered was his son was home.

The word "but" is known as a negation word; it negates everything which comes before it."I think that's a really nice shirt, but..." I really enjoyed the lasagna, but..." Sure, you can come home, but..." In our passage the word "but" negates the apology from the son.

He took his son back only because the son came back. There are no qualifiers. The father doesn’t ask, “Have you prayed to God and asked for forgiveness?” “The father never says, “Before I can let you back home I need to know if you have changed your ways to be more in line with our ways.” The father, neither by words or actions, does not place conditions on letting the son back into the family.

This, my friends, is how we are called as Christians to love. We are called to bring people into the family of Christ regardless of who they are, the lifestyle they have lived, or where on life’s journey they find themselves. This is the same kind of love Jesus has for us.

We are still on our Lenten travels. In Lent we want to take a serious look at our relationship with others, even the strangers among us. Our reflection for this week is “Can we honestly say that all people are invited to be a part of the family of Christ – all people.”

God is with us always.  Amen.

There’s Still Time

Luke 13:1-9

Hospitality, especially to strangers, is one of the major themes in the bible. Jesus tells the story of a man who is robbed and beaten and left to die at the side of the road. He is eventually shown hospitality by a stranger, who shows compassion by taking the man to a place to get healed. Leviticus, the great book of the Law, states in chapter 19 verses 33-34, “When immigrants live in your land with you, you must not cheat them. Any immigrant who lives with you must be treated as if they were one of your citizens. You must love them as yourself, because you were immigrants in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”

The stranger, the one who may not think or act or look like us, is to be treated as if they were one of our very own. They are to be clothed, fed, taken care of when sick, and even visited at the lowest moments on their journeys of life. In the words of Jesus’ great commandment, which echo the words from Leviticus, we are to love one another in the same way we love ourselves.

We have embarked on a journey this Lent. On Ash Wednesday we sought to find those relationships in our lives which we need to be reconciled. Those relationships included that with Jesus, others, and ourselves.

The first Sunday of Lent we looked at how we sometimes put conditions on those relationships. Sometimes we tell God we’ll love God more when we find more time to come to church or do our devotionals. Sometimes we put conditions on our relationships with others by expecting them to do something for us before we offer our love to them. We even took a look at how we put conditions on ourselves by requiring a change in how we look, or how much we have, or if we fit in to the expectations of society before we can love the person we are.

Love has no conditions.

Last week we took a look at our relationship with our self. We saw how we are all given a gift from God and we are called by God to develop that gift to our best abilities in order for us to use that gift to make the kingdom of God a better place for all. It didn’t matter what that gift was; cooking and baking, labor, administration, organization. The idea was that once we know we have something to offer, we begin to accept who we are: God’s child, whom God loves without hesitation.

Our passage today has us taking a look at how we are called to be a healing presence in the lives of others.

When asked why she took in Michael Oher, Leigh Ann Tuohy said, “"I just think Michael needed somebody, and it was so evident that there was nobody in his life. It just broke my heart."

In case you don’t recognize the names, these two are the people whose story is told in the movie “Blind Side.” Michael grew up with a mother who was a drug addict and a father who was never around. Because of the complete lack of support Michael received at home, he was often undisciplined and disruptive, especially in school. He repeated both 1st and 2nd grade, and found himself attending 9 different schools before the 8th grade.

When Michael was 7 years old he was placed into the Foster Care system, where until high school, he would find himself alternating between living in Foster homes and being homeless. During his freshmen year at a public high school he tried out for the football team at the urging of the Foster “father” he was living with at the time. This man recognized a raw talent, where if given the chance to be cultivated, could change this young man’s life.

An application for a Christian school was turned in, but because of Michael’s academic past he wasn’t accepted. Instead, he was asked to take an at-home course to bring his grades up. According to the story, the headmaster of the school had a change of heart after a few months and admitted Michael Oher into the school. Michael found himself learning and understanding the game of football to the point where he began winning awards and accolades.

For almost 2 years after getting into Briarcrest High School, Michael was still hopping from one home to another. That is until the Tuohy family became involved. Their daughter, Collins, began talking about the “quiet, new guy” in school. Her stories intrigued her father, Sean, enough so that Sean found a way to build a relationship with Michael.

Not too much after that relationship was built, Leigh Ann came across a chance meeting on the side of the road on Thanksgiving Day. Leigh Ann made Michael get into the car and drove him to her family’s home to share in the family’s meal.

Leigh Ann took an immediate liking to Michael. So much so that she applied to take Michael in as their Foster son and brother. It took 4 months, but eventually he was an official part of a family, a true family who treated him as one of their own. Michael is quoted as saying, “When I moved in with Leigh Anne and Sean, I felt loved, like part of a family. In the other houses I didn't feel like part of the family. I didn't feel like they wanted me there.”

Fortunately, Michael had found the love he was desperately seeking for the 1st 16 years of his life.
That’s really what today’s passage is saying: before people are given up on, let’s try one more time to bring them back to into a life of knowing they are loved unconditionally.

We start today’s passage with 2 stories that do not have any other mention in the bible or other historical writings of the time. This is not say these things did not happen, only that the stories only appear here in Luke’s Gospel.

We are told 2 stories about horrible ways of dying. One involves the killing of Galileans as they were performing their duty of offering sacrifices at the temple. The other is of 18 people who were killed building a tower in the city of Siloam, presumably for the Roman Empire.

For some reason the implication made is that these deaths happen because of the fault of those who were killed. I’m going to be extremely honest here: There is very little that makes me mad, but blaming God for senseless death will get me very close. Hurricanes do not destroy homes and lives because those people were sinners. Buildings do not have airplanes fly into them because the sinners deserved it. People do not die from disease because they angered God in some way.

Things happen, bad things happen, very bad things happen, and God is never the one who makes it happen. It is my opinion that God is incapable of such hatred.

Jesus then tells a parable. “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertilizer. Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’”

This parable got me thinking, “How often do we give up on people before they’ve had an honest chance at being cultivated?” More to the point, “When was the last time we cultivated someone else’s life to give them a better chance at living the full and fruitful life God intended for them?”

We are called by God to be the gardeners of God’s Kingdom. We are asked to seek out those who have been pushed to the fringes of society and do what we can to soften and replace the soil in which they find themselves, to give them nutrients which will help them grow, and in time watch as they begin to bear fruit.


Mother Teresa heard this same calling. For 15 years she was a teacher in an all-girl’s school in Calcutta. One day she heard the call to go into the streets of that city to work among the poor and destitute. Mother Teresa found a special place in her heart for what were described as the “dying poor”, people who had absolutely nothing and were on the verge of dying because of starvation or exposure to the elements.

When someone who was dying made the journey to see Mother Teresa she was met with unconditional love. When someone who was clinging to the edge of life, Mother Teresa took him in as though he was part of the family. Regardless of their disease – leprosy, hepatitis AIDS – people were met and treated as those who were healthy. Those who came to Sister Theresa or her Sisters were washed, given clean clothes and medicine, and—most important—someone who could hold their hand, listen to their stories, stroke their foreheads, and comfort them with love in their last days.

My all-time favorite quote is from this woman of God. She says, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Have we forgotten we belong to each other?

Notice she doesn’t say with each other; she says to each other. I belong to you as much as you belong to her as much as you belong to him as much as you belong to me. We are inseparable as a people. None of us live outside the body of the One. If one of us hurts, we all hurt. If one of us experiences joy, we all experience joy. If one of us tries to break the bond with which God has forged us together, we all feel the separation.

We can’t all be Mother Teresa, nor can we be Leigh Ann Tuohy. However, we all possess what is necessary to reconcile others into the bond of love, that bond which God created us all to live within. In this time of Lent, search for that which God has placed in your grasp and use that gift to cultivate and grow the fruitful lives of those around us.

God is with us always.  Amen.