S.H.I.T. happens!

The title of the sermon was S.H.I.T. happens. The preacher said that the acronym stands for spiritual health in trouble. We reflected on the parable of the lost son (Luke 15: 11 to 32) and were asked to give the story a title. The preacher called it the story of two prodigals.

He explained the audience and the context and said that we should always remember that context is king; text without context is pretext, that is, you come to it with your prejudices. In Luke 15: 1-3, we find self-righteous Pharisees indignant about the fact that Jesus, a well-known and popular rabbi was associating with sinners or filthy people. They wondered why such people were coming to Him and how could the teacher of law allow such defilement? The three parables in this chapter were addressed to the Pharisees. Jesus shared the parable with the context of the elder brother.

In Bible history, God constantly spoke through prophets asking people to return to God after and during the exile (old testament). After 300 years of silence, Jesus was addressing a post-exilic, Roman oppressed, Jewish nation with a lot of divisions such as Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and scribes who considered themselves holy. They represented the elder brother in the story who, though close to the Father, did not understand His character and did not learn from Him.

All of us backslide in our faith but when we confess and return like the younger son, God the father accepts us no matter how ugly the mess and restores everything like in the parable. But at times, we and other people around us who seem to be close to God/following Him, are actually like the elder son who complains; we are judgemental, self-righteous, angry, and legalistic. Let us examine yourselves and see which of the two sons we represent.