Lenten lessons from prodigal sons

Younger brother

This surely is also what the Book of Revelation means when it speaks of the "first love." The charm of this first love is that it has not yet become habit and second nature, but comes into our life as an amazing surprise. That there should be someone like Jesus, that he should gain the Father's heart for us, that he should rescue us from the frustration of our personal lives and snatch us away from this horrible vegetating on the edge of the void -- all this is indeed a tremendous surprise. But one must have cried out from the depths, one must have been at the end of the tether, one must have realized the fragility of all human consolations to comprehend what it is when it comes.

For how many a soldier in a concentration camp, weak with hunger and smarting under the knot of the torturers; for how many a person huddling in the last extremity of ghastly dread in a bomb shelter; for how many on the endless gray road of a refugee trek was it not the great experience suddenly to know: I am not in the hands of men, despite everything to the contrary; another hand, a higher hand is governing in the midst of all man's madness and canceling all the logic of my calculations and all the images of my anxious sick imagination? I am being led to the undreamed-of shore, the harbor, the Father's house. And always when things grow dark, suddenly that marvelous helping hand is there. If there is anything that is really bombproof, then it is this, that God is there, on the spot, punctually and with the most amazing precision!

Elder brother

What a wretched thing it is to call oneself a Christian and yet be a stranger and a grumbling servant in the Father's house. And what a glorious thing it is to become aware every day anew of the miracle that there is Someone who hears us. Someone who is waiting for us. Someone who wonderfully sets everything to rights and finds a way out for us when all we can do is to wear ourselves out with worry. Someone who one day, when our last hour comes and we go back home from the far country and the hectic adventure of life, will be waiting for us on the steps of the eternal home of the Father and will lead us to the place where we may speak with Jesus forever and ever and where we shall be surrounded by that joy which here we have only begun to taste.

Selah.

Helmut Thielicke, "The Prodigal Son, Part 2," The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus, translated by John W. Doberstein (Harper & Row: 1957)

Silence: A rest in eternity to impact time

Excerpt: The Parable of the Seed Growing Silently

Because Jesus knows that he must serve his neighbor (literally, those nearest here and now) he can confidently leave to his Father the things farthest away, the great perspectives. By being obedient in his little corner of the highly provincial precincts of Nazareth and Bethlehem he allows himself to be fitted into a great mosaic whose master is God. And that's why he has time for persons; for all time is in the hands of his Father. And that too is why peace and not unrest goes out from him. For God's faithfulness already spans the world like a rainbow: he does not need to build it; he needs only to walk beneath it.

So, because Jesus knows which way the switches are set, because he knows what the outcome of growth and harvest will be, the words he speaks are not prepared, tactical propaganda speeches. The propaganda of men, even when it masquerades as a kind of evangelism and becomes an enterprise of the church, is always based on the accursed notion that success and failure, fruit and harvest are dependent upon our human activity, upon our imagination, energy, and intelligence. Therefore the church too must guard against becoming merely a busy enterprise and pastors must beware of becoming religious administrators devoid of power and dried up as far as spiritual substance is concerned.

Jesus is not a propagandist. And there is one fact which shows that he is not, and that is that for him speaking to his Father in prayer is more important than speaking to men, no matter how great the crowds that gather around him. Just when you think that now he must seize the opportunity, now surely he must strike while the masses are hot and mold them to his purpose, he "passes through the midst of them" and withdraws into the silence of communion with the Father.

Why was it that he spoke with authority, as the scribes and Pharisees did not? Because he was rhetorically gifted, because he was dynamic? No; he spoke with such power because he had first spoken with the Father, because always he came out of silence. He rested in eternity and therefore broke into time with such power. That's why he is so disturbing to time. He lived in communion with God; that's why his speech to men becomes an event of judgment and grace which none can escape.

Jesus' powerful speech derives from the power of his prayer life, and the very reason why he can afford to pray so diligently and give the best hours of the day to this communion with the Father is that he knows that while he rests in eternity it is not that nothing is happening but that in doing this he is rather giving place to God's Spirit, that then God is working and the seed is growing. Woe to the nervous activity of those of little faith! Woe to the anxiousness and busyness of those who do not pray!

Luther once said, "While I drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer the gospel runs its course." That is truly the finest and most comforting thing I have ever heard said about beer. The conversion of a man is not something that can be "produced." The new life comes into being only by letting God work. Therefore, Luther can cheerfully and trustfully step down from the pulpit; he doesn't need to go on incessantly crying, shouting, and roaring around the country. He can quietly drink his little glass of Wittenberg beer and trust in God. The Lord "gives to his beloved in sleep." In most cases today we do not sin by being undutiful and doing too little work. On the contrary, we ought to ask ourselves whether we are still capable of being idle in God's name. Take my word for it, you can really serve and worship God simply by lying flat on your back for once and getting away from this everlasting pushing and producing.

Selah.

Helmut Theilicke, "The Parable of the Seed Growing Silently," The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus, translated by John W. Doberstein (Harper & Row, ©1957)

A theology of rainbows

Thoughts on the future

God will always let us see His gracious and triumphant bow when life goes hard. Have we ever noticed how a rainbow arises? The sun suddenly breaks through the clouds with magical brilliance even though the elements are still raging and their wildness has not been allayed. And now notice a strange feature, namely, that light never celebrates such a riot of color as when it breaks up into its spectrum. And this festival of light takes place at the very moment when the rays of the sun, of the sun of divine grace, clash with the raging elements of our earth.

We understand what is implied in the image. It is precisely in grief and pain, in the depths and under the storms, that God will show himself and display before us the fullness of His grace. Do you understand this? Do you understand it precisely when you consider your own life? Like myself, you can probably attest it with thanksgiving only when it has all proved true, and will again prove true, in your own life. Have you ever detected His consoling presence so clearly as when you were delivered up to the most terrible distress where no shelter could save you from the attack, no doctor help you and no human speak to you a word of real comfort?

The bow always shines with greatest comfort in times of darkness, and it is in the depths that God’s hand is stretched out with greatest love. If only we see this we will believe God’s promise. Thus the bow of mercy overarches the coming year too. It will not be only a year of terror. It will be also a year of indescribable consolations because it will be a year of the Lord, who awaits us with His miracles. At exactly the right moment a helping word will come as His messenger. His love will encounter us… and we will find that He takes from us our cares like a father. Since we have a Father, we are not adventurers. We are those who live by the surprises and miracles of their God.

Thus we stand on this threshold of the year consoled and thankful and full of cheerful hope. God gives us a further span of time, and again all things may become new... The night of the past year with its guilt may really be past in the name of God; the rainbow shines and will give a new day. The morning will break, and His mercy has no end but is new every morning and His faithfulness is great.

Alleluia!

Selah.

Helmut Theilicke, The Silence of God, "Thoughts on the Future."