Chip Off the Old Block

Many of you know I grew up in Southern California. My father died in March, 1993, but I still get out to CA for two or three days several times a year to visit my dear elderly mother. And I can almost guarantee two things will happen within the first hour or so of my arrival in San Diego: 1) I will eat an In-N-Out Burger Double Double, and; 2) she will hold my face in her hands and through tears tell me, “You’re so much like dad.”

And she’s right. Physical size notwithstanding (my father was 5’7” and before I started shrinking, I was 6’3”), I’m an awful lot like him. Same givenness to crying, same dry cough, same eye-roll-inducing sense of humor, same pathological tendency to peacemaking, same fungussy toenails (I know, gross)… I could go on because the list is long (and actually includes one or two admirable things, too).

The thing is, none of those characteristics remotely make me Bill Wishart’s son, but they do show to the world that I’m a chip off the old block.

Humor aside, that’s a bit of the backdrop for this week’s Gospel reading from Jesus’s “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke 6. Characteristics of living that don’t make us God’s daughters and sons, but do show to the world that we’re chips off the old block.

See you Sunday.

Steve+