Ramona’s Pie 

This can only happen in a small town. 

 

I’m at a meeting.  I notice a text.  From my husband. It says, “What’s your mom’s number?  Ramona left her pie at Old Time. “

My mother has been eating with a group of friends every Thursday evening for years.  They try out many different places, but often make the return ten mile trip to a favorite, Old Time Pizza.  The staff knows them and us well.

So when Carla, the waitress, discovers the pie has been left, she goes directly to the phone and tries Ramona’s home.  She knows Ramona really wants that pie.  No answer. 

 

She calls us.

Bruce answers.

He texts me. 

 

I call Mom.

She tells Ramona.

Pie is saved; all is well.

 

In Place of Ambiguity

I’ve been wondering why something that I want to do - that I have the time to do, that I have everything I need to do it - has become so hard to do.

I’m wondering if I didn’t hear God call as I thought or if I have gotten ahead of him.  Was it really His call or mine?

Well, because I believe ambiguity is a call to wait, I’ll wait on my big plan and see if there is another open door On This Road Called Grace.

I think I’ll write about something easier – well, maybe not easier, but more entertaining.  We’ll just see where it goes.

Character Sketches: The Observers

Based on a current book, Why Sin Matters, and a classic, The Scarlet Letter, this ongoing prose will look at “The Lost Son” from Luke 15 in a new way.  We will examine the consequences of sin in each character and in ourselves and the personal impact of prodigal, reckless grace.

Luke 15:1-2, 11-32; Luke 18:9-14

We’ll call this discussion character “sketches” for several reasons.  First, we would never be able to exhaust all that can be said about the important people in either “The Return of the Prodigal” or The Scarlet Letter.  That’s part of what makes them “classics”.  They never wear out.  Also, in order to make the points we want, we’ll need to narrow our focus – otherwise we would end up retelling the stories – a task that is neither necessary nor prudent.

In order to keep our focus we will examine each character from three points of view:  physical, behavioral, and psychological.  Because most believers will already know the main players in the parable, we’ll start our discussion with the cast from The Scarlet Letter.  As we look at each one, you may begin to see the parallel of each to someone from our scriptures.  Hopefully, as this develops the comparisons will be natural.

The first of our character(s) we’ll look at is actually a group of people we are calling Observers.  SL opens in seventeenth-century Boston with a scene set in a public assembly where, we learn shortly, justice is about to be served.  (We could follow a bunny trail here by discussing the fact that we all should be served justice, but we won’t do that now.)  Chapter 2 introduces us to a “large number of the inhabitants of Boston,  … (with) very much the same solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators”.    In other words, they look serious (and scary and grouchy). These are the Puritans we respect for their courage to come to a new county to escape persecution. 

Here Hawthorne focuses on the women in the crowd.  Those he introduces us to are not so much described in detail, but are set in such stark contrast to the main character, Hester, that they pale in comparison.  Her haunting beauty and presence – punctuated by her garment and the famous A of the title of the book, leaves them in the dark shadows of the scene.  Physically, the Goodwives (as described by one to the others) are drably dressed and are seen as decay and gloom incarnate. Think in your own mind of the picture you have of Puritan Boston.  What do you see?  Light? Promise? Hope?  Probably not.  We all know of the hard life they faced, not just to practice religious freedom, but to survive. 

Behaviorally these are vicious women.  They speak with intolerance, judgment and unsympathetic righteousness.  These five ladies, believing that the government and church leaders have been too easy on Hester, are wishing they could pronounce the punishment that would justly serve the crime.  One suggests that Hester ought to die for the shame she has brought upon all women, while another believes a brand of hot iron on her forehead would cause her “to little care about what they have put on the bodice of her gown”.  Yikes!   Even a man in the crowd nearby, says to them, “Mercy on us, goodwife. Is there no virtue in woman…. Hush, now, gossips!”

Psychologically, these women are frighteningly smug and pious.  Without saying so, they have pronounced Hester’s sin to be worse than any they have or will commit.  Sadly, their judgment is for the outward appearance, not the condition of Hester’s heart, or their own.

Nathaniel Hawthorne is known as one of America’s earliest writer of psychological issues:  loneliness, sin, guilt, and suffering.  In choosing early Boston for this setting he capitalized on the Puritan belief system.  It is known that they intended religious freedom.  However, it is often overlooked that their religious freedom was not for all people.  They left an old-world system of persecution of those who were “different” and promptly set up the same type of system in the new world.  If you were not “for” them, you were “against” them.  This is only one of the ironic paradoxes they demonstrated:  dealing harshly with religious dissenters.  Yet, they encouraged merchants and craftsmen to live among them without religion.  They also highly prized well-educated ministers, yet were superstitious in ways we would find humorous today.

Fundamentally, the Puritans believed in predestination:  all deserved damnation because of original sin, but some were elected to receive salvation.  One could not know his fate and could not influence it by good works, so they rigorously sought righteousness.  And, one could not assume being “elect” for that would be prideful.

One interesting point of consideration regarding the Puritans and ourselves is this:  “If the Puritans could not be sure of their own state of grace, they were confident they could recognize it in others” (site source here).  We will deal with this in earnest later as this is central to understanding the Older Brother in Luke 15.

The Parable and the Painting

Based on a current book, Why Sin Matters, and a classic, The Scarlet Letter, this continuing study will look at “The Lost Son” from Luke 15 in a new way.  We will examine the consequences of sin in each character and in ourselves and the personal impact of prodigal, reckless grace.

So we will begin by learning about the characters of our stories.  I hesitate to call Luke 15, “The Return of the Prodigal”, a story because that somehow cheapens it.  It is not a story; it’s the living, breathing, word of God, but I’m afraid I will slip into that misnomer from time to time.  

I can best think about the characters from Luke 15 by looking at Van Rijn Rembrandt’s painting called The Return of the Prodigal Son.  


The original was painted in 1668 after years of study and thought by Rembrandt.  He first did an etching in 1636 and a pen and brush drawing in 1642.  So like many of us, he must have been captivated by the famous story of the father with two sons.

If you are not looking at the painting, let me describe it to you.  Rembrandt was famous for his use of light, and this painting does not fail in that area.  Two characters are shown in the most light:  a person missing a shoe, clothed in shabby dress, kneeling and leaning into the body of an older man. The older man is standing, but leaning into and embracing the other.  We are to believe these two are the father and the returning younger son or “prodigal”.  The father is garbed in a deep red cape, leading us to think that he still has a position of wealth and comfort.

Standing nearby but not caught in the bright light of the first two is another man also clothed in garments of advantage.  He too wears a cape of red over a garment that appears to bear elaborate beading or detail work.  His face is of a neutral countenance, but his arms are crossed at his waist where he holds a cane with etched detail.  He most certainly represents the older brother, who we know is very unhappy at the scene unfolding before of him.

Much of the rest of the painting is very dark.  Two other people are clearly visible, and are seen to be observers of the scene.  Nearly completely obscured is one additional person in the very back.  Who are these people?  We’ll take a look at them later.

What Rembrandt was doing with the artistic portrayal of light and dark is best left to art scholars and critics.  What this painting provides for us as believers is an opportunity to look into the scene and the lives of the characters of one of Jesus’ most famous and perhaps most important parables.

So what is a parable and what is the purpose of this one?  A parable is considered a short story or comparison told to teach a truth or lesson.   Our English word comes from the Greek word “parabole” which means “to place alongside”.  Easton's Bible Dictionary defines it as being a comparison of earthly things with heavenly things. So we can see that an earthly situation we encounter can have a heavenly meaning. Many of the parables also have a twist – an unexpected character, action or outcome which would cause the original listeners and current day readers to pause and think.

In our case, we may initially wonder why a son would leave a good life or why the father would consent to give the son what he wanted.  We may also be at first surprised by the father’s joy at his return and the fact that the older brother does not share his father’s enthusiasm.  In any case, we find ourselves thinking about the situation and the family dynamics in play.  More on this later, too.

For our work here we ask ourselves why this parable is important.  It is so on several levels:

            It addresses complex personal and family dynamics.

            It deals with the same types of sin we see in The Scarlet Letter – repentant and unrepentant sin.

            It relates God’s grace to us in a way we cannot and dare not misunderstand.