Episode Notes

Today we will have an open discussion about bad Supreme Court decisions and COVID in, “Not Necessarily the Good News.”

Then, we learn about the prodigal son in, “The More You Know.

NOT NECESSARILY THE GOOD NEWS:

When we spoke last about the Supreme Court, it was in reference to the latest addition - at that time only a nominee - now a full fledged justice who is already on the wrong side of history and humanity with a couple of the court’s latest rulings. A phrase that is likely to make my heart sink numerous times over the coming years is “in a 5 to 4 decision” and it is with that phrase that we enter the deeply wrong rulings coming out from the court in favor of churches that have protested strict COVID measures. The arguments, first in a case from New York state brought by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America and then in a case from California brought by Pasadena-based Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry, which has churches across the state, were that the restrictions on gathering for worship were harsher than those on gathering to distribute food or provide shelter, two things that were often happening in the same buildings as where they seek to worship.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/politics/supreme-court-religious-restrictions-ruling-covid/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-california-coronavirus-church/2020/12/03/fcf4fcf8-357d-11eb-a997-1f4c53d2a747_story.html

THE MORE YOU KNOW:

Jesus was a story-teller. He taught very complicated ideas through simple, memorable parables. Sometimes, as we learned with, “The Good Samaritan,” the intention of his story gets lost in the re-telling, and, after so many years, acquires unintended new meanings.

Most people think of the story of the Prodigal Son as the story of a lost son finding his way home. That’s just one part of the parable, and it has plot twists. The story is the last of three stories on a similar subject included in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. The parable of the lost lamb, of the lost coin, and the prodigal son, were used to address criticism from the Pharisees. The Pharisees, if you remember, were an influential religious party that mostly agreed with Jesus on matters of theology ( they believed in an afterlife, for instance ) but did not like his liberal interpretations of scriptures, or his disregard for their devotion to cultural tradition.

We are told that Jesus had gathered an undesirable element in his public following. Since he would often bring crowds from the street into the temple, there may also have been the concern that these undesirables might come into the temple.

The story starts this way, with a father and two sons, like the stories of Abraham and Issac/Ishmael, or Issac and Essau/Jacob.

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