Holy (from Friday 5/7)
“Baptism reminds us that there’s no ladder to holiness to climb, no self-improvement plan to follow. It’s just death and resurrection, over and over again, day after day, as God reaches down into our deepest graves and with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead wrests us from our pride, our apathy, our fear, our prejudice, our anger, our hurt, and our despair.”
― Rachel Held Evans
I love the parable that usually gets called “The Prodigal Son.” It’s a great example of a story that continues to deepen and unfold and blossom and bear as you read it–especially if you read it year after year like a preacher. For me lately, it’s the story of the waiting parent. Beyond the outrageous acts of the disrespectful sons (the wastrel younger and aggrieved elder), the father’s desire to see his family whole and at peace is the most shocking and destabilizing part of the narrative. It’s also deeply hopeful and wonderfully humane, and it illustrates the holiness that so deeply delighted Rachel Held Evans when she wrote about baptism.
In the story, the father runs to embrace the younger son, “While he was still far off.” It’s the bare-ankled running that gets me; rather than the accepted and (culturally) utterly appropriate walk of shame inflicted on the shamefaced refugee, the move is flipped. The father trails his robe in the dust and RUNS to touch his child. Honor and dishonor, advantage and its opposite, so present in the calculations of the returning son, are upended by the joy of the father, who gladly surrenders his dignity for the sake of reunion–a thing he names as resurrection.
This same joy is at work in the father as the elder son confronts him with his rage. As the firstborn, according to custom, this one should be welcoming the guests and presiding over the party. Instead, he refuses to enter–dishonoring his father and the family out of petulance and pride.
Even here, though, in the face of this other son’s opposition and anger, the father’s joy and hope and desire pour out. We witness the father gently and persistently wrangling and wooing the stuck and grumpy son out of his defensive crouch. He rolls up his sleeves and hikes up his robe not to fight or force but to dance, to beckon this hurting child forward into the place and the pleasure of the celebration.
This son of mine, who was lost, is now found! He was dead and is now alive.
God’s naked joy is holy. God's shedding and sharing of honor and power is holy. God’s bare and deep desire that we be whole and at home in this beautiful and God-blessed world is holy. God’s delight–when sheep and coins and daughters and sons are gathered into safety or set free to soar or seen clearly and cherished deeply–is holy.
The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.
-Isaiah 52.10