Sunday sermon - always welcome, no matter what

Even delicate subjects could be introduced and discussed in this home. No heated discussions. An environment was cultivated in the home that assured openness and honesty.

The father waits for God to do what he cannot do. Dad was the magnet.

You're always welcome at home.

No matter what your condition.

No matter what others think of you.

The father became a model of authentic Christianity.
...

I came across these lines from a sermon preached by Mark Bolender at Brown City camp many many years ago - about the welcoming father in Luke 15.

What a contrast to some of the stories I've heard recently of Christian parents who make unrealistic demands on their kids and refuse to welcome them.

These modern day stories remind me more of the older brother - about whom Mark Bolender said this: The older brother lives by the clipboard. He was keeping a record. Older brothers are always around, keeping track of you. They are harder to please than the father, because they don't understand grace.
Ouch! I have been that older brother. Clipboard living is my natural tendency and it breaks my heart to recognize it in myself.

But I also know how it feels to be judged by the older brother. To try to please those who live by the clipboard. Those who keep records. Those who express their displeasure at attitudes, actions, beliefs or routines different from their own. Those who resent the father's love for the wanderer.
...

These lines are the few I chose to save from pages and pages of sermon notes in that one particular notebook. And there are yet more and more boxes of notebooks filled with sermon notes and all kinds of stuff from my years as a religious insider. Those piles of boxes seem somehow symbolic of all the things I was taught during those decades - and the things I taught to others. They were the foundation of my weltanschauung - my worldview.

Since being catapulted from that world of organized religion, and since beginning to understand what it feels like to be an outsider, I have a new perspective. A very different viewpoint.

It is important to note that as I have been processing all that I was taught to believe, I have tried to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. That is an interesting process, by the way, because it requires first figuring out which is the baby - that which is precious, that which really matters and should be cherished. Identifying which is the really important makes it easier to let go of the rest - because it is simply dirty water.

So yes, it is interesting to be sorting through the bins and boxes from a lifetime lived in the same house while simultaneously sorting through the layers and layers of truths and Truth that I have willingly consumed over a lifetime of being a good kid. A rule-keeper. A pleaser who feared God and tried to please everybody. A fixer. An older brother - or an older sister anyway - who wanted to set a good example for others, but who also tended to impose my expectations on them. Someone who often struggled to sort through all the good trying to discern what is best.
...

This story in Luke 15 has always amazed me. I am attracted by the love shown by the father. I am saddened by the attitude of the older brother - whether seen in myself or in others around me.

Living by the clipboard is NOT the model of authentic Christianity. I don't want to live like that anymore. And you know what? I don't have to. We don't have to. We can choose to be critical clipboard-carrying older brothers. Or we can choose to be welcoming and loving. And that is one of the things that really matter.

God help us make the right choice. People's lives depend on it.