Tuesday LEctionary Leanings: Welcome Home Edition

My birthday is coming, the schools here have teacher's convention this week, and I am on a week's vacation, so it must be March!  And I am sitting watching Bones so it must be Monday night!  Which means of course that I had better get the Tuesday Lectionary Leanings prepared.

ANd shall we start with prayer? (prayer source)

Holy God, Word Shaper:
you are not our accountant,
     but our lover;
you are not angry at us,
     but you forgive us;
you are not our enemy,
     but the One who runs towards us
     with wide open arms,
throwing steaks on the grill
to celebrate our newness!
Jesus Christ, Shaper of our story:
you travel to that distant country called our sin
     to bring us home once again;
you share your inheritance with us
     so we might be blessed;
you know the famine of our spirits
     and fill it with your hope.
Holy Spirit, Life Shaper:
surrounded by your grace,
     we offer glad cries of salvation;
encircled by your constant love,
     we shout for joy;
enclosed in your comforting arms,
     nothing can overwhelm us.
God in Community, Holy in One,
from now on we will remember our life in you,
even as we pray as Jesus taught us, Our Father . . .

The RCL readings for Lent 4C can be found here. 

Makes sense to me

We have the people finally getting off their manna diet (after 40 years that must have felt like a relief) upon arriving "home".  Yes there is that minor problem that other people already call it home but Joshua will spend the rest of the book working on that one.

The Prodigal Returns

Or the Gospel reading gives us one of the best known parables.  The lost son (really I find that a better title since it is the father who loves prodigally and the other stories in the chapter are about lost things being sought and found) is not only well known but very complex.  Who is God in the story (if you want to approach parables as allegories)?  OR how is God present in the father, in the elder son, in the younger son [the fatted calf]?   Or the question I like to ask of parables.  Who are WE in this story?  How are we like the elder son, the younger son, the father?

Or are you following a different path through Lent?  A sermon/worship series perhaps as we take the road to the Upper Room and the Sanhedrin/Pilate's court and Calvary?  

Wherever your worship planning is taking you this fine Tuesday, let us know in the comments.