I wasn’t always the moral piece of work that you see before you today. I had some shady beginnings. In third grade I got in a fight. After losing the fight you would have thought that I had learned my lesson, and changed my ways, as I sat in the principal’s office making hyperventilating post crying sounds as I explained the ridiculous circumstances that made me pick a fight with Dan Clark, the largest bully in the 3rd grade.
You would think that I would have moved from my shady past or my shady friends for sitting in the vice Principal’s office as a sophomore in High school. You would think the fear of getting suspended alone would be enough to break friendships. Friends like the ones I had. Friends that got me in the office to begin with. It might surprise you that I was nearly the arms supplier to what the vice principal saw as the Portland version of the trench coat mafia. My friend, you see, held up a classroom with an AK-47 because he wanted this girl to go out with him to a dance. The reason why I was in the office was it was my AK-47…my AK-47 Squirt gun. Yes I’ve had a shady past.
And then there was my brush with the law. As a senior in high school, only 8 short months after the Rodney king beatings I got my own whooping from a cop. There I was in old town. We had just been at Chinese food. And I found myself outside a very round window. I immediately peered inside to see an entire company staring back at me. It turns out there was a meeting, or a banquet going on, and it just so happens that the stage was right beside the circular window. My synapses fired and I quickly gathered my two other friends and came up with a plan. We all moved out of the windows site, and then slowly and fluidly began our best fish impressions and “swam” around our newly installed aquarium. We got the reactions we wanted as fish, some laughing, others giving long looks of disdain. To the point of creating a detour from whatever boring presentation was being droned on at the time.
I was ecstatic at the newest form of botherment. I quickly glanced around to find more round windows, to no avail. My friends were walking towards the car, but my fish impression days weren’t up yet. So I quickly ran across the street to the nearest Chinese food café, and began once more doing the fish impression that I was proud of. This time as I peered in, something not as inviting was starting back at me. Inside the café sat three cops. And they weren’t just sitting at a table where they could see me a little. They were sitting diner style at the long shelf table that was attached to the window.
Immediately my face went from fish to fear. I quickly dead-panned and began walking fast to catch up with my friends. When I reached them I looked behind me, and my fears were realized. One single cop had just left the door of the café, and it looked as if he was following us. A half a block later he was gaining on us, and sure enough when I was not 10 feet from my car, I felt a very strong hand seizing me from the neck. The voice behind me asked as he squeezed the back of my neck, “Are you OK?” There was obvious tension in his voice, and the actual question of his tone could have been something much different then ‘are you OK’.
Paralyzed I shook out a response: “yeah.” How I can say I was doing fine when this cop’s Vulcan death grip is digging into my vertebrae I have no clue. Nevertheless the contradictions continue as his next response was to turn me as if I was his hand puppet to face him and tell me “I thought you were calling for help.” Now to this new recruit’s defense the act of fish facing and the act of saying the words “help,” could be very similar. And If I had actually been yelling help the way he believed, I would have had to be a mute. Which completely justifies this guy using me as his chiropractic model. However I wasn’t calling for help and this cop definitely wanted to give me something to remember him by, so after releasing his hold of my neck, he quickly gave me two slaps to my face. Apparently, according to Portland Chinese Patrol, not being a mute deserves a hard spank to the face. I left with my face a little red, mainly from the slap.
How did I get there?
Have you ever asked that of yourself? How did I get here? And not just the night you drank too much and woke up nude in a strange room. How did I get here in my life?
Usually when you ask this assessment question, you aren’t particularly pleased with where you are. You find yourself in a dead end job, or no job, relationships aren’t what they panned out to be, you look at your life very much like a rolling stone. I can’t get no satisfaction is your cry. Unsatisfied! Some of us have had the scenario where it was the lowest point in our lives when we were forced to ask “how did I get here?”
Maybe its not the lowest time in your life, but having a new year turn its page makes you realize what has been relaxed. As I stare at myself in the mirror I look at my own non-chiseled physique and I ask myself “how did I get here?” And somehow I can remember when exercise became less of a priority and eating fast food became more “economical.”
Maybe you’re like some people who never ask the question. Afraid of the implied dissatisfaction of the question. Or maybe simply too proud to even ask. Or too blind to really ask it.
I want to share with you a story this morning that I’m nearly positive every one of you knows. But this time I’m going to tell you the story inside out. A huge fad these days with clever directors is to start with the ending and go backward, like that movie where the guy doesn’t have a long term memory, and so you spend the entire time, trying to figure out what happened in the past.
This particular story doesn’t begin where I’m going to start. But long about halfway through the story, we see Eddie with a bunch of pigs. Not ones like the Portland Chinese patrol of ’93, rather, these were farm pigs. And not the cute little pot belly pets that some rich women carry around, but large, gross, sows. These particular oikers dwelt somewhere in the middle east round about 1st century, there were probably Jews within neighboring towns, but this area was mostly a gentile population. Now most of us have heard the derogatory term, pig or pigsty, but few have a true distain for pigs the way Eddie had. He was a Jew, and hated pigs like any other Jew should. But Eddie was making due with what he had. You see Eddie was starving. And he had just landed this job feeding these pigs. I guess he was feeding them carob pods. I think these are the same things that they make fake chocolate out of. And as he threw these pods to these beastly animals. His stomach growled. His hand stopped throwing the pods to the pigs, and he looked at his handful. He wasn’t too proud at this point to consider eating what he was feeding the pigs. But the workers around him said he couldn’t. There he was, starving, alone, humiliated. And at this point he asked himself “how did I get here?”
As he took a long look he saw that the drought extinguished his friends money, the places where he stayed. He had to get a job. All his friends had to get jobs. He was sad to see his life go to couch surfing after having so many spend the night at his place drunk and passed out. He would throw the best parties. But one of the things that he started to realize is that parties cost money. So soon he went from playboy to mooch.
You may ask was there a stock market crash? Was his money tied up in wheat? No it was like every other out of control pseudo celebrity… He got his money through an inheritance.
Now, most people in this predicament are out of luck. The inheritance they had, they didn’t invest it properly and you end up with a similar result to vanilla Ice on VH1. A Staving B celebrity that makes good copy on “Where are they now?” But Eddie was a little bit different. You see, his father who gave him his inheritance was still alive.
There was a dramatic, crazy moment in which Eddie thought running a farm was BS and wanted to jump ship and party with his inheritance. So he demanded it from his dad, and his dad gave it to him.
So Eddie in pondering all of his past…In asking “how did I get here” … clearly saw how he got to be starving on a pig farm, not even getting to eat what the pigs had to eat.
But something changed for Eddie. It was one of the most blique moments of his life. However he did see something of hope. His pride was gone. His necessity was ripe. And he saw a way out. He said:
'How many of my father's hired hands have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger! 18 I'll get up, go to my father, and say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. 19 I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired hands." '
Eddie had huge pride issues that had been toppled. He used to be his father’s son but his actions seemed nullified it. And he saw that, and he acknowledged it. And Eddie took his first steps towards his father’s house in a long time.
Maybe you know the rest of the story, and maybe you don’t. Does his father make him a hired hand? I want to stop there because I want to address something that perhaps some of you feel is a bad word.
The word is repent.
It’s a scary word, it’s the word of the street preacher yelling at someone who he doesn’t know. It’s a word that many of us don’t understand but it’s a word that isn’t foreign to church and sermons. But nonetheless it is a word that when people utter it, all the rest of what leaves their mouth is forgotten. Partially for good reason because the moment someone says repent what follows is normally “because you’re a sinner” or something else extremely predictable.
But I want to expose Eddie for one moment. Sure Eddie partied. Sure Eddie “sinned against heaven and in his father’s sight”. Eddie was an asshole. But sometimes we identify too much with Eddie, and other times we can’t identify with him at all. But we tend to look at the characters of this story as ourselves. Whether we’re away from God, or close to him we say whether we are Eddie or not. But it blinds us to this one terrible beautiful moment in this story. The point in which Eddie Repents. And I know when I say that word millions of you all of the sudden know exactly what that means. But lets look at it fresh.
Eddie has hit this point where he asks himself “how did I get here?” and after truly assessing his life, he sees that where he is, is not what he wants for his life. And at that moment he puts his pride, and blood rights down. These being the two things that got him there in the first place. And after he has laid those down, he begins the first steps of a long journey home.
Do you need to begin thinking like Eddie? Or are you exactly where you want to be?
I don’t know about you but somehow the word has been stolen in my mind, by jerry fallwell and the Prostitute silliiquy. “I’m soooooo sorry” And I guess in that case it’s probably true. But I would like to bring the word from scary judgment ridden Christianity to the hope that Eddie felt.
Eddie was going to eat, Eddie was going to a better, less embarrassing job, and in the end… if you read it, Eddie has a restored relationship with his father and his sonship is returned. Repenting is moving from what you see as wrong, to something that you see is right.
God Loves you. The father always wants you back. Grace is there and always will be. However, its not up to God. This is your deal. It takes your part; your movement towards God; your effort in beginning the road back to the house that you will call home.
I’m here to tell you today that you can take that glimmer of what once was, or more likely the shimmer what could be; and fan that spark of hope into a flame of a first step. Taking a simple assessment of your own life; where are you? Are you at a place you don’t want to be? Change, and start moving the other direction.
Now maybe you say “Geoff, I have. I’ve tried stopping and moving the other direction, and I end up here all over again.” I say to you: “get help!” It could be that you may need to find another way other than cold turkey. There might be something in your life that you fight every day, and on the good days you don’t think about it, and on the bad days… well, there you are again. It could be that your step towards freedom is to talk about it with someone that might have solutions. A counselor type person, a friend that isn’t in your predicament. And be honest with what you’ve tried, and what has worked and what hasn’t.
You see, repenting doesn’t have to be this huge religious word. It can be a way of life. Assessing where you are, and taking steps to where you want to be. Instead of doing what Eddie did, with one huge V you can have a series of squiggles that get you to the same place.
But if you are on the V route! that road back may look long, too long. You may feel so far away from that place that at this point you’ve given up. And the only thing that is keeping you company is the bitterness that you feel about where you are, especially when you think about what it would be like to be where you would want to be. God is reminding you about the end of Eddie’s story. The part where the son can barely be seen in the distance. And when the father recognizes that it is his son, he runs to meet him. Your road may be long. It might be as long as being a hoodlum in the 3rd grade. But take heart, God sees you where you are, and sees those first steps, and is beeming to hold you in his arms again.
