Bob, a gentleman who was probably in his 70s, had been quiet and attentive throughout the evening. I was teaching about the story of the prodigal son. When I finished speaking, Bob was the first one out of his chair. I could tell, as he made his way to the front of the classroom, that he was upset.

“What about the bath,” he demanded. “You didn’t say anything about the bath.”

I had no idea what he was talking about and told him that I did not understand his comment. He became more agitated the longer he talked.

“You know where he had been!”

“Yes,” I said, “in the pig pen.”

“And you know what he would have smelled like and what was on him.”

“Pig poop,” I said kiddingly.

He did not think that was funny. Then he went on to explain, “The son was dirty and smelly. The father would never hug him, kiss him, or put a robe on him until the son first had a bath. Why didn’t you talk about the bath?”

I explained that a bath was not part of the story, that we can never get clean enough to go home. Instead we go home to become clean. The father receives the son as he is. He hugs him, kisses him, robes him – all without a bath. The son is immersed in love.

Bob just could not believe that, so together we read the story again. When we got to the end of the story his eyes filled with tears and he said, “All my life I thought this story said the son had to take a bath before he could go home.”

I said to him, “And all your life you have been trying to get clean enough to go home.” He simply nodded in silence, tears running down his face.

Bob’s story is not all that unusual. Each of us can probably name parts of our life and being that we have judged unacceptable and unclean. They are the parts of ourselves that we dislike, condemn, and sometimes even hate. We allow them to declare that we are not good enough to be God’s child, never have been, and never will be. We cannot imagine how anyone, let alone God, would embrace or love us. So we exile those aspects of ourselves to the distant country. We then live as fragmented, broken persons trying to get clean enough to come home. Over and over the voice of the Prodigal Son echoes in our ears, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

For all the years he spent in the distant country, Bob never did get clean enough to go home. Instead “he came to himself.” He started gathering the fragments of his life – the clean and the unclean, the acceptable and the unacceptable, things done and things left undone – all that he was and all that he had. He recognized that the unclean parts of his life were real, but they were not his final reality. In the past those parts of his life kept him from going home and exiled him to the pig pens. Now those pieces of his life would become the way home. They would become places of healing, new life, wholeness, forgiveness, and grace.

I do not know what took Bob to that distant country or what he so desperately tried to wash away, but I know that his story is my story and your story. We have been to the distant country. We have lived with the pigs. We have washed but cannot get clean. In coming to himself, Bob would ultimately have to trust the Father’s love more than he trusted the pig stink. After all, if the Father does, how can we do any less?

by The Rev. Mike Marsh, rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Uvalde, TX 

From Reflections magazine, Spring/Summer 2010. Produced by The Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. All rights reserved.

Read the entire spring/summer issue at http://www.dwtx.org/index.php/prayer/Reflections_Online

What do I do next?

Where do I go now?

How do I – or even, will I ever – live, love, laugh again? 

I am also aware that these deaths are the more visible and public losses and sorrows. I suspect many, maybe most of you, could name your own deaths, losses, pains, and sadness. Some of them are recent experiences, and some you have carried for years. Some of them other people know about, and some are known to you alone. They may not be as public or visible as the ones I just mentioned, but they are just as real. 

Like Job our complaint is bitter, and the hand of God is heavy on us. With Job we wrestle with the question, “Where is God?” 

Like Job, we are tempted to go looking for God – to lay our case before him, fill our mouths with arguments, learn what he would answer us, and understand what he would say to us (Job 23:4-5). Yet no matter where Job goes, he does not find God. Listen to what Job says:

“If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him” (Job 23:8-9).

 To run away searching is in some way to run away from God who is always already there in the pain and sorrow of life. Job begins to realize he must abandon his searching. He must abandon his searching for answers, abandon searching for ways to fix it and make everything better, and even abandon his searching for God. Ultimately he cries out: “If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face” (Job 23:17).

 His cry is the cry of abandonment. It is not the cry of one who has been abandoned; but the cry of one who abandons and surrenders himself to God. Job does what the rich young ruler from the Gospel of Mark (Mark 10:17-31) is unable to do – he offers all that he is and all that he has to God, to Christ. That is our work.

 We who have known the losses and sorrows of life – whether they are of the last three-and-a-half months, three-and- a-half years, or three-and-a-half decades – have much to offer: tears, sadness, fears, loss, anger, questions, loneliness, emptiness, the deep longing that things would be different. These offerings are our prayers of surrender and abandonment, the path into that holy and sacred darkness, the luminous darkness that is God himself.

 My belief and hope is that in this moment of surrender we are freed and enabled to hear anew the deeper, quieter, and often forgotten part of Psalm 22: “Yet you are he who took me out of the womb and kept me safe upon my mother’s breast. I have been entrusted to you ever since I was born; you were my God when I was still in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 22:10-11).

 So we must abandon ourselves to the darkness of that sacred womb from which new life, new creation, new love, new possibilities are born. I cannot tell you how that happens or what that might mean or look like for me or you. I just do not know.

 Last week, a day or so before our son’s funeral, someone asked me, “So what’s the answer?” I said, “I have no answers.”

“But you’re the priest,” he said; “you’re supposed to have the answers.”

“I have no answers,” I said again.

 Today I still do not have the answers. But I believe with all my heart, and I am absolutely convinced, that “for God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27).

by the Rev. Mike Marsh.
Marsh is rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Uvalde, TX

 This article first appeard in the Fall 2009 edition of Reflections magazine. To read the entire magazine, click here http://www.dwtx.org/index.php/prayer/Reflections_Online_Fall_2009

 For more reflection: