Jesus: God With Us

Tradition, or better rumor, has it that the great comedian Charlie Chaplin entered a look-alike contest in San Francisco and lost, having come in third place, even further perhaps. If true, there is, no doubt, something ironic that the very person being imitated was present himself and yet remained unnoticed, even by the very people attempting to look like him. And, if true, it is great to imagine that he would be willing, even humble enough, to come among those holding a contest in his honor, especially that he preferred to remain anonymous. Here’s the article that made the claim.

You see, presence, un-recognition, and ensuing realization within this comical tradition are the basic contours of the Gospel of John. God himself, in the Person of the Son, comes personally to his creation, then his people and the world fail to see just Who it is healing and teaching and dying, and finally only after the resurrection realizing that it had been God himself—Emmanuel—among them the whole time. But our analogy yields one more point: just as the contestants intending to look like Chaplin ironically failed to see the real one among them, so too, humans (and particularly Israel) made to reflect God’s image failed to recognize what real humanity indeed looks like. And here is the great paradox that lay at the heart of John’s Gospel, indeed Christianity itself: that in Jesus’ person and work we see simultaneously who God really is precisely as the truly human being, Jesus. In short, God looks like Jesus, or as T.F. Torrance liked to say, “There is no God behind the back of Jesus.” So, then, to John’s Gospel we go:

Read John 1:1-18

Now the Greek word for “Word” here is Logos, a rich and varied word with a complex history of meaning. But I want to point to its primary resonance: that the One who spoke the creation into being has come Himself in and as the astonishing person of the Son, One who we can only describe as God’s own second-Self (as N.T. Wright might say). N.T. Wright adds:

 ‘In the beginning’—no Bible reader could see that phrase and not think at once of the start of Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ Whatever else John is going to tell us, he wants us to see his book as the story of God and the world, not just the story of one character in one place and time. This book is about the creator God acting in a new way within his much-loved creation. It is about the way in which the long story which began in Genesis reached the climax the creator had always intended.

In other words, John is calling us back to the beginning of Scripture and asking us to connect the dots. The selection of Abraham, the covenants, the Temple, the Torah, the land, and not least the selection of David and his heirs were all pointing to this one moment: when God himself would become a human being in order to redeem and reconcile his creation. In short, Jesus is the climax of world history, and more particularly Israel’s history. Now remember, no one in Israel expected this, much less the wider Gentile world, but Israel’s God had laid down plenty of pointers along the way that would help humanity grasp what had just occurred. It is my estimation that the Temple itself is chief symbol and sign. John signals this by a brief statement, but one that gets the reader prepared for the long drawn out battle between Jesus and Temple that culminates in his crucifixion by its appointed authorities. It reads:

And the Word, entering a new mode of existence, became flesh, and lived in a tent [His physical body] among us. And we gazed with attentive and careful regard and spiritual perception at His glory, a glory such as that of a uniquely-begotten Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14, Wuest NT)

“Tent” here evokes the “Tent” or “Tabernacle” of the OT, particularly in the Exodus and wilderness journey. The Tabernacle (Slide: 5) was the mobile sanctuary that housed YHWH’s personal presence. This, as many know, then became the Temple in Jerusalem, the sanctuary and location of the personal presence of God among Israel. One commentator adds:

This may be the most important verse in the Bible on the doctrine of the incarnation. John went back to verse 1 to pick up one of his favorite themes, the Word. God became human; God showed us his glory; God offered us grace and truth; God literally “tabernacled” among us. Remember the tabernacle in the center of the camp? It represented the place of the law, the abode of God, the source of revelation, the site of sacrifice, and the focus of worship. Now in the new covenant, Jesus provides all these.

But there is a down side to this story. You see, just as Charlie Chaplin is unrecognized and ultimately loses, so too the Word-In-Flesh goes unnoticed for who he truly is and tragically goes on to be rejected and crucified by the very ones he came to save; this is made explicit at the end of the Gospel by the words of the crowd to Pilate, “We have no king but Cesar!” This rejection, like the Temple conflict, is alluded to in John’s prologue, “He came to His own and his own received Him not.”

There God was among his very own creatures and yet, like the Charlie Chaplin look-alike contestants, we missed him completely. On the one hand, Israel wanted a God of power, strict justice, and violence; while on the other, the Gentiles wanted a God detached, removed, and unconcerned about the ills of the world (or one with the world which makes him detached in another sense). But in Jesus, the Temple in Person, we receive a personal and present God, One who forgives and heals, eat and drinks, serves and ultimately dies. This God is the God no one wanted or expected, but it is the very God we need, the personal God of tears and sorrows, of dirt and blood.

But the story doesn’t end a tragedy, because as our prologue alludes, “The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.” In other words, the crucifixion isn’t the last word for the Word who is life and light in himself. In crucifying Jesus, darkness (our darkness), death and evil over reached itself and in turn was itself consumed. The creator God in Jesus absorbs the ills of the world in his own person dragging it down into death (a death that killed death) only to rise triumphantly on the other side.

Finally, it is only after all these events unfold that those closest to Him realize that God in fact was among them the whole time. We can imagine them kicking themselves, much like those Charlie Chaplin look a likes, as it finally dawned on them that the Man crucified just days earlier was the one true God among them the whole time! This is why, at the end of John, in the presence of the nailed scared hands and pierced side Thomas finally gets it and exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”

All that is left is that we too realize that it was in fact God among us. No we weren’t there, but recall those who were missed it anyways—remember Charlie Chaplin! In fact, it is better to believe that God was there at work in Jesus in hindsight and not to have been there at all than to have been there and missed it anyways. After all, was it not Jesus who said, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The question to us then is simple and it is this: won’t you believe?

Seeing the World Aright: “Out With the Old Mindset In With the New”

There have been many great (and many not so great ones, but impactful nevertheless) human minds throughout history. And no doubt, they all viewed the world they occupied very differently. In fact, when you study one of them long enough, you can, in a sense, imagine how they might view a current situation or problem; and perhaps, with much probability imagine how they might attempt to solve it. We often see this, for example, in modern political discourse when our constitutional founders are evoked in order to hypothetically engage current issues. We hear things like, ‘James Madison,’ or ‘George Washington would think this of this situation and he might say this about it and give this answer’ (I’m being intentionally vague here).

Another example is musicologist Barry Cooper, a scholar of all things Beethoven. As everyone knows, the great German composer Ludwig van Beethoven is most famous for his 9 symphonies, but as rumor has it, and as some desperate fragments may suggest, Beethoven had set in motion a 10^th prior to his death. However, Cooper who has lived and breathed Beethoven, took the existing fragments and was able, as if ‘putting on the mind’ of Beethoven, to assemble a complete symphonic movement (what was playing when you came in), now known as the controversial Symphony No. 10. Cooper states, “The prospect of hearing a Beethoven work that has been absent for over 200 years should be of much interest to anyone who loves his music, even if my reconstruction may differ slightly from what the composer wrote.”

But what if Beethoven could posthumously extend his mind to others? What if from beyond the grave he could allow us to participate in his unparalleled musical genius so that we too could make beautiful symphonies, sonatas, and concertos? Well, I’m not sure, but a world filled to the brim with marvelous music would probably be a good place start. And though it is fun to imagine such tantalizing scenarios with various historical figures, there is One historic Person, in fact, whose mind is truly available, Christ’s.

In fact, we are summoned to put on the mind of Christ.

Read Philippians 2:1-11

If I were to borrow from the previous analogy vss. 1-4 would be symphony No. 10 (the reconstruction in the present for Paul) and vss. 5-11 would the previous 9 symphonies (the in-hand symphonies of Beethoven that serve as the pattern for the reconstruction). Paul, as could the congregation at Philippi, could ‘put on the mind of Christ,’ because they had the blueprint that informed them in the historical condescension, incarnation, selfless obedience, and substitutionary sacrifice of the Messiah on the cross as the original symphonic pattern. Max Anders adds:

Paul proceeds to give examples for the Philippians to emulate. The first is Christ. He is the supreme example of humility, love, and selflessness. Christ’s model brings to life Paul’s words. As believers are united with Christ, we are to have the same attitude as Christ, one of humility. Paul expresses the same thought in Ephesians 4:2: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” All believers should share this humble, selfless mind-set of Christ.

Yes, but I believe, St. Paul is also saying much more. In fact, if we look closer, Paul’s request is to “to let this mind be in you” (passive); now, if we give this the full force that it deserves, Paul is saying that, Christ’s actual mindset (presumably through union in the Spirit) is trying its best to have its way with us according to the pattern that Christ himself has already laid down. It’s as if Beethoven could so unite himself to your own way of thinking that you could view the world as Beethoven indeed did.

Now for his symphonic pattern Paul reaches for the dense poem in vss. 5-11 for the humble and loving mindset of Christ. Jesus, who, in some profound sense, existed before his human birth as “equal with God,” but didn’t [as God] see this divine reality as a thing to exploit for his own benefit, but understood his own divine self-reality as necessitating the incarnation and humbling crucifixion (now, this is a super huge point!) to the benefit of others. In other words, when Jesus was the pre-incarnate Son of God he didn’t understand his being God in terms of a self-benefiting reality, but one that required a humble incarnation and crucifixion! N.T. Wright adds:

Let’s clear one misunderstanding out of the way in case it still confuses anybody. In verse 7 Paul says that Jesus ‘emptied himself’. People have sometimes thought that this means that Jesus, having been divine up to that point, somehow stopped being divine when he became human, and then went back to being divine again. This is, in fact, completely untrue to what Paul has in mind. The point of verse 6 is that Jesus was indeed already equal with God; somehow Paul is saying that Jesus already existed even before he became a human being (verse 7). But the decision to become human, and to go all the way along the road of obedience, obedience to the divine plan of salvation, yes, all the way to the cross—this decision was not a decision to stop being divine. It was a decision about what it really meant to be divine.

You see, through the Spirit, the humble and other-sacrifice of Jesus will so assimilate itself in the mind of the believer that she/he would begin to see God, the world, and others as he did. Being human, indeed as it is to be God himself, would not entail serving self, minding to one’s own affairs only, gaining power over others, or lavishing things upon one’s self, but instead, “Do[ing] nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count[ing] others more significant than yourselves. [And] letting each of you look not only to his or her own interests, but also to the interests of others” (vss. 3-4, ESV).

Thus, it will no longer do to view the world and our place and purpose within it with an old mindset that is bent back upon itself. This, because, we are now summoned to so immerse ourselves in the previous symphony of Christ’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection that we begin to see the world and our intentions within it as he did. And so, through our own personal Christ-pattern symphonies the world can indeed hear and see the wonderful and kenotic music of Christ once again. To quote the great scholar Andrew Lampe:

To understand this term kenosis is fundamentally critical to understanding God’s nature. Understanding this nature of God is crucial in understanding our relationship with God. For example, kenosis utterly rejects the traditions and churches that are militaristic, tyrannical, hyper-nationalistic, or display a form of demagoguery that is attributed to the senior pastor… Kenosis at the very heart of it accepts churches that are loving, freedom-based, and display a strong element of self-sacrifice. From the senior “leadership” on down to us communion giving peons. We should be imitating God’s example displayed through His love for creation and namely that of humanity by always working to improve the welfare of others even at the cost of our own welfare. This is one of the ultimate ways to be that light on the hill for the rest of the secular world. We’re judged as hypocrites, tormentors, liars, and firebrands, etc… And if we were to imitate God’s kenotic nature, can you imagine the incredible things we would be able to accomplish? We would truly be an extension of God.

Therefore, let this mind be in you.

Mission Letter For Ashleyanna Byrd

I will be working with two other teachers—one teaching English, the other, bible/theology. My main purpose is to be a supplemental resource for these two teachers. I am graduating this April with a degree in Secondary Education. Therefore, I am able to incorporate and teach a lot of educational resources and teaching strategies. I will also be participating in community outreach by serving the ministry wherever it is needed.

This mission’s main objective is to equip all schools within this organization in the areas of theology and English, in order to empower the students in their future endeavors. We hope to expand this objective throughout the years to come, but we must first lay the foundation.

In order to participate in this mission, I am seeking to raise $2,000. If you would like to help support me and this mission, you can send your donation to Academia Church @788 West Juniper Lane, Litchfield Park, 85340; or you can give me a check and/or cash and the church can write you a receipt.

Please make your check payable to:

Academia Church

Thank you for your time and consideration. I appreciate your prayers and support~

Blessings,

Ashleyanna Byrd

Blessed Are the Peacemakers: “The Task of Reconciliation”

It was late into the night. Everyone in the house and those in the slave quarters was surely in a deep sleep by now. If he was going to do it, now was the moment; otherwise, he might as well just shut up about his conditions (surely, it was appointed by the cruel and malevolent gods) and quietly live out the rest of his days as all other slaves do (At least the average life span was thirty so he’d not have to endure such insufferable conditions for too long). But he’d already made up his mind weeks ago after a falling out of favor with his master, Philemon. The plan was simple really: escape in the midnight hour snatching some of his mater’s valuables on the way out the door and making sure to pack enough food to make it to Ephesus, perhaps Rome. You see, Rome was ideal for two reasons: 1. there was a lot of ways a runaway slave could survive in such a big city and 2. it would be far enough away from the wrath of his master who was now in his every legal right to make an example of him. This sometimes meant crucifixion. And so he, Onesimus, would seize the moment and make a run for it, hours before anyone would suspect he’d gone missing. Besides, he would need to the extra time and the distance before his master discovered that not only Onesimus had gone, but some of his valuables as well. And so, he went for it.

This, as I see it, is a probable reconstruction for the historical context surrounding the letter of St. Paul to Philemon. N.T. Wright, whom we’ll be hearing from a lot today, adds:

But one of Philemon’s slaves had run away. That, in his world, was a capital offence, and many owners would take that severe vengeance. Worse, the slave had probably helped himself to some money as he did so. And he had gone, as a runaway would, to the nearest large city, in this case Ephesus. There, perhaps when the money ran out, he had met … Paul. And that’s where his story really took off.

Whatever, it was, Onesimus’s plans failed. He certainly made it to Ephesus, but things didn’t work out in his favor and his only option (no doubt, his final oe0 was to seek the favor of one of Philemon’s patrons to intervene on his behalf. In many ways, his situation in this foreign city resembles the plight of the younger son in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. In fact, I can envision the hungry Philemon arriving at the realization that he’d had it better as a slave at his master’s house; at least, in the prodigal’s words, he’d had enough “bread and to spare.” But in those days, you needed a patron, one on equal footing with the master, to intervene on your behalf; if not, severe punishment was surely the inevitable outcome. Enter Paul.

What is important to see here is that, according to the letter, Onisemus was converted under Paul after having sought him out for his patronage. This means, that Onesimus was not a “Christian” prior to all this, his seeking out of Paul was purely pragmatic and originally had nothing to do with Christ, but with simply arranging his return on the most lenient terms possible. But, if we know Paul at all, this was a great opportunity to reconcile someone, not to their master, but to God in Christ through the Spirit. Perhaps, Paul said something like this:

 Onesimus, ah, you’ve sought me out to arrange your return to Philemon under the best possible conditions. You’ve come here so that you can be restored to your former role as a slave in Philemon’s house, even if it means you receive the most menial position among the other slaves, because even that is better than starving on the hard street of Ephesus. But you need to be reconciled to Someone great than Philemon, to the God of all creation who sent his only begotten so that all of creation, including you, can be reconciled to Him. In fact, the Son Himself became a slave so that we, those under the power of sin and death, can be freed to love God, others, and ourselves! This means, that Philemon is not ultimately your master but your brother in Christ, one whom you need to be reconciled as a member of the long-promised family of Abraham! Won’t you believe???

One commentator, Knut Larson, sums this up well:

 However the two met, in time Onesimus responded to Paul’s friendship and teaching about the crucified and risen Christ; Onesimus became a Christian. From that moment, everything changed between them. Paul understood the creative act of God in salvation, the newness which infiltrates every act and relationship. He believed in the goodness of God’s grace where “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).In response, Paul lifted the slave into the intimacy of kinship, just as Christ lifts the sinner into the loving fellowship and inheritance of his family. Paul demonstrated true Christian faith and love. He did not pity the slave or patronize him through condescending kindness. He embraced the captive and identified with him, just as Christ did in his incarnation and saving death.

And so, Paul writes a Letter to Philemon…

Read Philemon 1:1-25

What is profound, something we see nowhere else in the ancient world, is Paul’s attempt to reconcile a slave and a master as equal members, indeed brothers!—and not as slave and master. You see, for Paul, something greater, more profound had occurred in the death and resurrection of Jesus—a new creation! A new world had effectively been birthed amid the old and through the preaching of the victory of Christ God was birthing new familial communities that were no longer arranged according to the old social structures. In Christ, Philemon and Onesimus were brothers, sealed as it were, by the very blood and Spirit of God’s own Son. Again, N.T. Wright adds:

 What we are watching here, of course, is a living example of the Christian practice of reconciliation. There are lots of heavy theological words ending in ‘-ation’, and it’s easy for us to hear them and not really take in what beautiful things they are. We are often like someone seeing the outside cover of a music tape or CD, being vaguely interested in it, but never listening to the music inside. If we listen, however, to the music of the word ‘reconciliation’, we will realize that it’s the music that will heal the world. This letter shows how costly it is, but also how explosive. Where in your world does reconciliation need to happen today? What social barriers stand in its way? How can people who believe in Jesus make it happen?

We can make this new and revolutionary cosmic reality happen in our own relationships! There is simply no excuse to continue to look at things the old way as if God hasn’t unleashed a new world where formerly or currently estranged persons can’t be beautifully reconciled as sons and daughters of the same Father in heaven. Perhaps, we need to play the role of Paul and encourage fellow estranged members of God’s family to be reconciled; or perhaps, we are Onesimus and we need to request forgiveness and go back to those we’ve hurt so that we can be reconciled; or, as is often the case, we are Philemon who needs to forgive and drop their rights and receive our offenders as God has freely received us. Either way, that ‘other’ person is a son or a daughter of God the Father in Christ; and we’ve been summoned to enact God’s reconciliation of the world in Christ in all of our horizontal relationships. Therefore, in the words of St. Paul, “be ye reconciled.”

The Prodigal Father: “Jesus the Ideal Older Brother”

The Satanology (that is, the understanding of Satan and his works and history, etc.) of the NT is quite developed compared to that of the OT. In the NT we gain significant understanding of the mysterious Satan figure; in the NT we learn from Jesus and the apostle Paul, for example, that at one point in primeval history he ‘fell’ from heaven following, what we presume, to be some angelic-like rebellion; it is also revealed to us that he seems to be the hierarchical (or bottom of the under-archy as C.S. Lewis might prefer to put it) head of a demonic organization which runs the world powers as a sort of shadow-government; and we are warned that he maneuvers to and fro upon the earth (funny, since we tend to think him as sort of omnipresent) in hunt of unsuspecting Christians, ready as it were, to take them as spiritual ‘prey.’ In contrast, however, the OT has very little to say about the Satan (The ‘the’ here will be important as we’ll soon learn); in fact, the OT, when Satan does pop up, only grants us a glimpse of this mysterious being and his seemingly sole function before the presence of YHWH: to ‘accuse’ God’s people of their transgressions and thus bind God to act in accord with his previous just decrees (like, “I will not excuse the guilty” in Exodus 34:7) rather than extend mercy. Eerdman’s Dictionary adds:

In the first two instances (Job 1-2; Zech. 3:1-2), Satan is depicted as a member of God’s court whose basic duty it was to ‘accuse’ human beings before God. He is clearly not at this point an enemy of God and the leader of the demonic forces of evil, as he becomes later. There is some question as to whether, in 1 Chron. 21:1, a specific personality is being described as in Job and Zechariah, or whether the ‘adversary’ is to be understood here as a general tendency toward evil. In the Hebrew text, there is no definite article with the noun ‘Satan,’ and the word is probably best translated simply as ‘an adversary.’ In either case, the figure in 1 Chronicles is not yet the embodiment of evil. It should be noted that ‘the serpent’ of Genesis 3 is never in the ot identified as Satan.

You see, Satan or better “the Accuser” was the angel/messenger that sort of got in the way of YHWH extending mercy to his people by reminding him that he had a legal obligation as Judge of the Universe to condemn them for their transgression of the covenant.  Put positively, for example, when a friend or relative of someone who’s about to get a divorce wants to change their mind they will often appeal to the public promises (“till death do us part” or “In the good times and in the bad,” etc.) made by the person at the ceremony; which, as we hope, will call the person back to their word of promise. Well, the Accuser does the same thing before YHWH, only it is for judgment upon the people in whom God desires to bestow mercy. A perfect example is in Zechariah 3:

Read Zechariah 3:1-5

We lack time to go into all the details surrounding this passage (Zech. 1:1-5), but we do have a few moments to make some brief points in passing. First, that Joshua had been one of the post-exilic exiles to be selected by God for service in rebuilding and officiating at the soon-to-be-rebuilt-Temple of Jerusalem. Second, that Joshua was the first priest called back into duty following the exile and hence fell terribly short of those priests (and the strict standards required of them!) who’d officiated in the ‘golden years’ before the destruction of Jerusalem. You see, Joshua coming from a pagan, and hence “defiled,” land was not worthy to officiate before the Lord; and this, especially, because he bore the sins/guilt of the now-cursed people of Israel. And, no doubt, the Satan was there to remind God of all this before the entire heavenly court. I say all this because the older brother in Jesus’ parable was a functional equivalent to ‘the Accuser’ of the OT.  The second half of the parable functions much like the first few verses of Zechariah: the defiled younger son on the one hand and the accusing older brother before the compassionate Father following the younger son’s time in exile on the other. The passage reads:

 “Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ (Luke 15:25-30, ESV)

If I were to summarize the older brother’s indictment it would be:

A feast?—for him?! How can you possibly reconcile yourself to him? Look at him, this, your son! Can’t you see his defilement and uncleanness? Do you know what he did with his part of the inheritance, let alone the fact that he shamed you twice before all of the community?! He burned the money with prostitutes and Gentile-like living! Did you forget what the Torah says about rebellious sons? It says, “his father and mother shall forcibly bring him before the leaders at the city gate and say to the city fathers, “This son of ours is a stubborn rebel; he won’t listen to a thing we say. He’s a glutton and a drunk.” Then all the men of the town are to throw rocks at him until he’s dead. You will have purged the evil pollution from among you. All Israel will hear what’s happened and be in awe.”

Interestingly, in both scenarios, God and the father go forward with their plans of restoration despite the valid accusations of the Accuser and the older brother. This, of course, leaves a major issue floating in the air unanswered: how does God and the Father figure in the parable get around what the covenant demands in the way punishment? How can they forgive when the Torah demands death? Of course, this is the moment when both passages look beyond themselves to the moment, when, God himself in the person of the Son would undergo the punishment on behalf of the rebel sons.

Read Romans 3:1-26

It was not good enough to be the “justifier,” God must also remain “just” in the process itself. The Accuser and the older brother were basically right that the Torah must be honored despite the desire of God and the father to forgive. What they didn’t expect, however, is that God himself would meet the requirements Himself of the Torah by suffering for his people (this is the imagery of Satan being cast out of heaven in the Book of Revelation having lost his ability to accuse following the victory of the slain Lamb) in their place and on their behalf.

That’s not all…

Because Jesus is the Only Begotten Son, and we are adopted sons and daughters, in a very profound sense He is our Older Brother. Only, He is unlike the accusatory older brother in the parable, rather, he lives, as the Book of Hebrews says, “to make intercession before the Father.” Yes!—Jesus pleads our case and points to His own work as the solid basis by which the Father’s desire to have compassion upon us former exiles reaches its grand fulfillment. And because Jesus has paid our debt, this even includes the debt of rejecting it (“Father forgive them they know what they do”) no accusation of our past sins can possibly stand without God rejecting His own Son, indeed rejecting His very Self. Something He cannot do. It is in this sense, Jesus is the ideal Older Brother. Timothy Keller adds:

 Think of the kind of brother we need. We need one who does not just go to the next country to find us but who will come all the way from heaven to earth. We need one who is willing to pay no just the finite amount of money, but, at the infinite cost of his own life to bring us into God’s family, for our debt is much greater… The point of the parable is that forgiveness always involves a price—someone has to pay. There was no way for the younger brother to return to the family unless the older brother bore the cost himself. Our true elder brother paid our debt, on the cross, in our place.

We need not be afraid, then, for the true and obvious guilt that we bear before God because of our many sins, for there is no one to accuse us before the divine tribunal. Satan has been ejected from heaven (again, this is the point about Satan being cast out of heaven in Revelation); and now, the only one before the Father is our gracious Older Brother who has taken those very sins and made them the very means of our reconciliation. Because of the cross of Christ, even our sins have been made to work for our justification! Let us, then, join the party, for the Father has received us all safe and sound and our Older Brother is serving the bread and wine!

I knew Nothing Among You: ‘On Keeping the Main Thing the Main Person’

Of course, before I begin, I’d like to start by extending my sincere congratulations and blessings to Jacqueline Griffin for her willingness to sacrifice her own life in order to answer the divine vocation of service to the church for ministry (remember, Ephesians states that God gives  his appointed leaders to the church ‘for their work of ministry”). I’m, as well as this congregation, also deeply honored to be able to participate, albeit only briefly, in this special and exciting moment in your life. Moreover, I view this single opportunity to speak into your life at this stage in your journey as somewhat like a person on the side of a road holding out a cold cup of water to a runner in marathon, whom, though they never have met, nevertheless exchange a brief bit of help which ultimately helps the runner on her long journey to the finish line; and, of course, St. Paul thought his ministry as something like a race to be completed.

But, in keeping with our analogy, and since I can hand you just one single cup of water on this leg of the long race ahead of you, what do I fill it with? No doubt, in this, my own 8^th year of ministry, I could hand you all sorts of insights in both what, and especially what not, to do. And though, I am essentially here for you to reach out to, should you ever want those important tidbits of ministerial wisdom, I think it more important to remind you to keep the main thing the main Person, that is, the preaching of Christ’s person and work. And so, I hope this cup, filled as it were with the exhortation to always preach Him, will refresh and help sustain you as continue on this long journey. And now to St. Paul…

You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s master stroke, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified. I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate—I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it—and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else. But the Message came through anyway. God’s Spirit and God’s power did it… (1 Corinthians 2:1-4, The Message)

To see just how culturally subversive, not to mention counter intuitive, this statement by St. Paul really is we must place it in contrast to what was expected of public speakers and those desiring to persuade people in one direction or another within the Greco-Roman culture. St. Paul’s statement is not an abstract challenge to philosophy in general, but to the particular way, namely persuasive public speeches, views were adopted in the ancient world, and how the church of Corinth wanted their messages delivered. One scholar, Ben Witherington III, sees the situation going down like this:

I view the scenario as follows: Paul was the first to evangelize Corinth, he had a good deal of success there, and then he stayed there long enough to get a viable Christian community established. Problems arose, however, after he left and had been gone for some time, in particular, when Apollos went to Corinth and used an Alexandrian rhetorical style of preaching and teaching that Paul had avoided. This led to a comparison of Paul’s rhetoric with that of Apollos, and with Sophistic rhetoric in general. The audience was expected to evaluate a rhetorical speech and compare it to others. Rhetors expected the audience to judge their oral performance. The Corinthians were not acting differently from others who had been raised in a culture that had certain expectations about rhetorical performances.

In short, Corinth got their focus onto the rhetorical polish and delivery of the speaker rather than the content of the message. They wanted their teaching/sermons to be like the great Roman rhetors before the large crowds in the local coliseums. Interestingly, St. Paul doesn’t attempt to improve, much less defend his weak delivery, because as he sees it, if the Corinthians believed his message on the account of his rhetorical polish then the power lies in man and not from God. But if they found themselves believing the counter intuitive message of a crucified and resurrected Messiah by someone basically shaking in their boots, while tongue tied, then the content of the message itself was where the true power really was.  On another level, the apostles own weakness of speech and bodily presence had a correspondence with the crucified Christ himself; you see, God’s unlimited power was demonstrated through human weakness both at the death of the Messiah and in Paul’s own ministry. I quote N.T. Wright at length here:

 [Paul] doesn’t mean that he only spoke of Jesus’ cross and never mentioned his resurrection. Hundreds of people, after all, were crucified in Paul’s day; what made Jesus different was that God raised him from the dead. But, by placing proper emphasis on the crucifixion, Paul ensured that nobody could mistake this message for a kind of crowd-pleasing rhetorical stunt, convincing at the time but making no lasting impression. Crucifixion was regarded in the ancient world as so horrible, so revolting, so degrading that you didn’t mention it in polite society. Imagine somebody at a fashionable dinner-party going on in a loud voice about how he’d seen rats eating the body of a dead dog in the street; that’s the kind of impression you’d make by standing up in public and talking about someone being crucified. No self-respecting sophist or rhetorician would dream of doing it. But Paul believed, and the newfound faith and life of the Corinthian Christians bore this out, that this was the clue to the mystery of life.

You see, in many ways, us modern preachers have similar pressure to be ‘practical’ and ‘entertaining’ and ‘relevant’ which, again, in many ways, echoes the pressure of Corinth upon Paul to be more rhetorically persuasive and entertaining. But, remember, to capitulate to this social pressure, is to empty the cross of its transformative power (not really, it’s just a way of saying that our attempts at relevancy and polish have no true power).  To be ‘successful,’ then, in service of the Word is to preach the word of the crucified King Jesus. God promises, and pledges Himself by way of the Spirit, to use our pathetic preaching as His very own word of new creation. It matters not, then, whether you are eloquent, rhetorically persuasive, female, uneducated, young or old, only that we preach: “first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified.” I close with words from my favorite theologian:

Hidden deep down… there is a failure to take the NT teaching about the power of the Cross of Christ and his substitutionary role seriously, a reluctance to allow it to apply to the whole of their being and to all their human activity before God, even to their believing and praying and worshipping. We need to learn again and again that salvation is by grace alone that we are really free to believe: ‘Not I but Christ’ yet ‘Christ in me.’ Because he came as man to take our place, in and through his humanity our humanity is radically transformed, and we become truly human and really free to believe, love and serve him. That is the wonderful message of the Cross and Resurrection.

Let us all, then, never forget that the main thing is, in fact the, Main Person, Jesus Christ the power of God unto Salvation.

The Prodigal Father Part 5: “Dealing With Our Own Older Brotherness”

You see, Judaism(s) in Jesus’, as in Christianity today, was divided into various sects and ways of method and approach. The Pharisees, or as their name literally translates ‘The Separatists,” were about one of four main groups during the Second Temple period, the others were the Sadducees and Scribes (these were the Temple elite), the Essenes (these were the extreme separatists as they left Jerusalem for the desert of Judea), and the various ‘zealot’ groups (which took a more militaristic stance vis-à-vis the Temple and the Romans). The Pharisees’ were only loosely connected to the Temple in that though they did not share in Levitical lineage like that of the Sadducees (you had to be of Levitical descent to serve in the Temple), they nevertheless taught and observed that all Israelites should practice ritual cleanliness like the priests of the Temple; this, and that they followed an extra body of interpretative rules called The Tradition of the Elders. Eerdman’s Bible Dictionary adds:

(Slide: 2) Pharisees (Gk. Pharisaíoi). One of the parties or movements within Judaism of the late Second Temple period (ca. 150 B.C.-A.D. 70). The Pharisees were noted most for their exact observance of the Jewish religion, their accurate exposition of the law, their handing down of extrabiblical customs and traditions, their moderate position with regard to the interplay of fate and free will, and their belief in the coming resurrection and in angels… The ancient sources variously describe the Pharisees as a political party, a philosophical school and scholarly class, or a sect or voluntary association (Heb. ḥaḇ^erôṯ) devoted to ritual purity.

The Pharisees were exacting and unflinching in their devotion to Torah and the Traditions of the Elders. We can assume that because of their faithfulness, or “slavery” in the words of the older brother, that they confidently expected to be included and thus get to participate whenever God finally acted to set the world to rights. This included not being judged negatively during the great assize and subsequent participation in the great Messianic banquet at the end of the age; the dark side to all this was that those who didn’t follow their ways would be excluded from the kingdom of God (God’s rule on earth) and thus be condemned to eternal separation from God’s new world of peace and righteousness. What they didn’t expect, however, is for God to come and act in the person and work of Jesus, and for the Messianic banquet to look like a bunch of tax-collectors and sinners eating and drinking with a prophet-start-up from Nazareth. N.T. Wright adds:

 That sums up the older brother in the story. And it’s the older brother who provides the real punch-line of the parable. This is Jesus’ response to his critics. They were so focused on the wickedness of the tax-collectors and sinners, and of Jesus himself for daring to eat with them despite claiming to be a prophet of God’s kingdom, that they couldn’t see the sunlight sparkling through the fresh spring leaves of God’s love. Here were all these people being changed, being healed, having their lives transformed physically, emotionally, morally and spiritually; and the grumblers could only see litter, the human garbage that they normally despised and avoided.

The primary problem, then, was not so much their attempt to be obedient to the Father through rigid obedience to Torah (though this has its problems too), but that their devotion became a cause to reject God’s own reconciling work among them in the person of Jesus. Remember, what the slaves said to the older brother while still out in the field?

 “All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’ (Luke 15:25–27, The Message)

The older brother, as were the Pharisees, were focused on the prodigal’s shortcomings and supposed all-too-easy restoration in comparison with their unswerving obedience rather!—than the Father’s gracious and costly (bring the shame the sons deserve upon himself) acts of reconciliation and forgiveness. The party, then, was and is not for the son but precisely because, “The Father has him home safe and sound.” The seemingly unlawful parties that Jesus’ was throwing with all the wrong sorts of people were on behalf of the Father’s work in and among them in his own mediating person and work. God himself through the incarnation (as the early chapters of Luke point out) comes out to both wayward sons—sinners and religious elite—and is pleading them all to come join the party in recognition of God’s costly love for all people.  Kenneth Bailey sums it all up:

The Older brother’s self-righteousness becomes a pair of colored glasses through which he sees the world. All the brother can understand is that the prodigal lost the money and that he has been reconciled to their father without having paid back what he lost. In short, grace has been offered and accepted rather than the requirements of the law being demanded and met by the sinner. The older son’s interpretation represents the point the view of many, both then and now. But the father’s view of the banquet reflects the mind of Jesus. For many, grace is not only amazing—it is also unbelievable! How can it be true? After all, you get what you pay for—don’t you?

Are we, then, setting our obedience and supposed devotion over against God’s costly free grace in Christ by focusing too much on the undeservedness of the prodigals among us? Are we misinterpreting what goes on at the Table of our Lord by viewing in terms of whether people deserve it or not, rather, than, the astonishing reality that, in Christ, God has come out to our very place of estrangement and received us freely, but at great cost to himself?  If so, then, we should get our eyes off the prodigals and our own obedience to that of the Father’s act in Christ on Calvary where God has embraced us all. The celebration is for Him!—it’s in recognition of what he accomplished and the prodigal way in which he invites everyone, even us disgruntle older brothers. Won’t you, then, son and daughter of the Most High come in from the field and join the party?

The Prodigal Son Part 4: ‘Putting On the Sandals, the Robe, & the Ring’

If many of us are completely honest, at least with ourselves, much of our Christian journey is a continual swap between being a prodigal younger brother or a self-righteous older brother. At times, we are the extravagant younger son or daughter who turns their back (at least in action and deed) on the Father and who wants nothing more than to go blow our inheritance on riotous living in a far way land. Other times, however, when we get things “right” for a little while we tend to shift into our ‘older brother’ mode, looking down on those in their prodigal period with self-assured superiority and pride; at least, until, we downshift into another prodigal duration ourselves. The good news, of course, is that whether we play the prodigal or arrogant older brother we can always be assured that God in Christ will either race to meet us when we finally wander back home or come out in the field to plead with us to come join the party.

However, and though we are certainly going to play those parts in the near or distant future, there is a ‘third-way’, a way more satisfying and complete; that is, the role of being the ‘father’ figure. You see, when the younger son returns, he is not only restored to his previous status by virtue of the robe and sandals and ring, but elevated beyond it to that of taking on the role of his father. The ultimate goal, then, is for us prodigal and righteous sons and daughters to finally grow into our father’s likeness. The NT speaks of this reality using the word telos (goal or aim, sometimes translated “perfection”) or ‘maturity.’ And I quote St. Paul in length:

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.” (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

Remember, in order to look like the Father we must look like Christ who is the complete and perfect image of the Father. Maturity, then, in the Scriptural sense, means to grow into the stature of Christ—to move beyond our childish ways to look more and more like Jesus who is the very image of the Father. But what does this look like exactly? Well, I think St. Paul states this in the opening section of the fourth chapter: “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Now, I’m struck by this verse on maturity and its particular content, because, well, it sounds just like the Father in our prodigal story!

1.    “Humility and gentleness”:

 We noted that the request of the younger son was tantamount to telling the father “I wish you were dead.” The expectation of Jesus’ audience was that the Father would retaliate to defend his honor among his peers and fellow community before this blatant act of shame and disrespect. The first surprise, however, is that the father grants him his share and does not reciprocate in an act of cruelty. The second, moreover, is that when the younger son does finally return rather than wait for the younger son to come plead for mercy the father demonstrates untold humility by seeking the wrongdoer out himself and reconciling him! And in a way that was loving and gentle no less. Kenneth Bailey adds:

The shepherd goes forth to find his sheep. The woman searches for the coin, In like manner, the father must go out to find his son. The new factor is that his going out is a dramatic giving of himself in public humiliation—all to find and restore his son.

Humility, then, when viewed in terms of the father means when others trespass against us, we do not ‘sit around’ (boy, am I guilty of this) and wait for them to come to us and offer sufficient penance, but rather humble ourselves, despite our being in the right, and go and seek the offender to be reconciled. Growing into the ‘stature of Christ’ on this point means we learn to drop our so-called rights when we are wronged and instead be like the shepherd, the woman, and the running father.

2.   “With patience, bearing with one another in love”:

 When the people we love wrong us or make mistakes we so often fly off the handle; we get agitated that they don’t already know better or we get impatient with them because they aren’t where we are spiritually, intellectually, or behaviorally.  But unlike us, the father is incredibly patient with his two sons, he bears their immaturity with astonishing patience and magnanimity. We see him wait for the younger son to learn this much needed lesson of life without divorcing him or writing him off for good. We witness him patiently bearing the older son during the party when he has to get up in the middle of it to go out and plead with him to join the festivities. In fact, our impatience with one another’s faults demonstrates we have much maturity ahead of us, we need to imitate through the power of the Spirit the loving patience that the Father demonstrates with us as we likewise falter, stumble, and sometimes, out right rebel.

3.   “Making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”:

We see, in the father’s actions, his desire to make “every effort” bring reconciling peace among his family; we see him, at great cost to his honor and public standing, running to and fro between his wayward sons to do what is necessary to bring about shalom in his house. In fact, this points beyond itself to the incarnation, life, and death of Jesus, the elder Son. You see, in Christ God has left home and come to our very place of rebellion and wickedness to plead with us to enjoy our inheritance with the full family of God, and even dying, in the most dishonorable way, to defeat that which has for so long kept us apart; even, as St. Paul says, “while we were still enemies.” And here is the point, once we become fatherly figures in God’s house we are to imitate the attitude and actions of relentless effort to maintain the bonds of peace in God’s household. Well, what is the first step to becoming a fatherly son or daughter? Henri Nouwen says it no better:

Living out this spiritual fatherhood requires the radical discipline of being home. As a self-rejecting person always in search of affirmation and affection, I find it impossible to love consistently without asking for something in return. But the discipline is precisely to give up wanting to accomplish this myself as a heroic feat. To claim for myself spiritual fatherhood and the authority of compassion that belongs to it, I have to let the rebellious younger son and the resentful older brother step up on the platform to receive the unconditional love, forgiving love of that the father offers me, and to discover there the call to be home as my father is home.

So, today we begin our journey to becoming loving-fatherly sons and daughters by taking both sons within in us and letting them be enveloped by the love of God in Christ. For it is only when we truly grasp what terrible sons we were, and often are, in light of the patient and reconciling love of the Father that can we finally begin to extend that same love horizontally to others. Therefore, it is Christ who died, nay, it is Christ who was crucified and raised on our behalf and in our place; let us all, then, be reconciled, the first step to becoming like our father in heaven.

The Prodigal Son Part 3: “The Truly Gracious Homecoming”

Recently, while reading a work from one of my favorite theologians, T.F. Torrance, he made a profound point that much of our preaching of the Gospel is, what he called, “unevangelistic,” which basically states, “This is what Jesus Christ has done for you, but you will not be saved unless you make your personal decision for Christ as your Savior.” We are basically told that though Christ has accomplished all these wonderful things for, and on behalf of, us all this depends on the sincerity of our faith, our repentance, and our obedience, etc. Thus, as Torrance also notes, we are thrown back upon ourselves, much like Israel was prior to Christ, as grace becomes available after we make sufficient reparation. You see, in the OT, YHWH told Israel that when they found themselves in exile that if they would truly turn and seek him he would turn back to them and restore them.

 “On the other hand, if they confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, their treacherous betrayal, the defiance that set off my defiance that sent them off into enemy lands; if by some chance they soften their hard hearts and make amends for their sin, I’ll remember my covenant with Jacob, I’ll remember my covenant with Isaac, and, yes, I’ll remember my covenant with Abraham. And I’ll remember the land. “The land will be empty of them and enjoy its Sabbaths while they’re gone. They’ll pay for their sins because they refused my laws and treated my decrees with contempt. But in spite of their behavior, while they are among their enemies I won’t reject or abhor or destroy them completely. I won’t break my covenant with them: I am God, their God. (Leviticus 26:40–44, The Message)

But, and because Israel was known to be a ‘contender with God,” genuine repentance seemed allusive for the nation, and hence their reconciliation with YHWH. In fact, hundreds of years had passed and Israel still could not render sufficient repentance in order to bring about the renewal of the nation, and hence the world. And here is the main point, because there is something lodged deep inside the heart of man, something which he is unable to overcome on his own, we are unable to fulfill our creaturely role beneath and beside the Creator, instead, as St. Paul says:

 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (Romans 7:15–23, NRSV)

Israel could, in a sense, see what they needed to do, but due to the evil which lies at the very roots of man’s being it was unable to offer up the authentic repentance required of them in order to initiate their forgiveness and restoration. Why, then, is so much of our Gospel preaching ironically pre-Gospel, un-Gospel? Fact is, we can repent, but we know deep down we are hesitant and that we truly don’t want to. We know we believe, but that our belief is riddled with doubt, wavering, and reserve. Unfortunately, then, if our salvation, like Israel’s, is dependent on the authenticity of our true faithfulness and our unfeigned repentance then salvation is likely to remain allusive. N.T Wright adds:

The result of the analysis is that the ‘I’ finds itself a prisoner of war (verse 23). A battle has been going on. The mind of the faithful Israelite has been engaged on the side of wanting to keep God’s law, but sin has been fighting powerfully on the other side, through the Adamic humanity which Israel shares with everyone else. Israel, it seems, has been called to hold on to the enormous tension between being called to be the light of the world and discovering itself to be, like everyone else, soaked in sin.

What does this have to do with the parable of the Prodigal Son? Well, if we do not see the younger son’s so-called ‘repentance’ in light of Israel’s actual story we will make the mistake that many expositors have, that the younger son actually sums up genuine repentance while in a strange land. But, if we read closer, we’ll quickly discover that this son is not entirely sincere.

Read Luke 15:11-24

The first clue that leads us to conclude that the prodigal son is not genuinely repenting is the fact that Jesus avoids the word for repentance, metanoia. The second clue is the fact that his rehearsed speech is a direct quote from Pharaoh in Exodus 10:16, “I have sinned against heaven and earth”; and everyone knows that when Pharaoh repented before Moses that it was certainly anything but genuine. And third, the pig-feeding vagabond entertains the idea that he will become a “hired hand” which suggests that he intends to pay back his father, and guarantee he has bread to eat regularly. In short, it’s what Kenneth Bailey calls a “face saving plan.” He adds:

The clincher in this discussion is the prodigal’s soliloquy in the far country, where he confesses to the listener/reader when he is returning. Put simply, he wants to eat… Aside from the manipulative quote from Pharaoh, there is no hint of remorse. He does not say to himself ‘I made a big mistake’ or ‘I ashamed of what I have done or ‘I broke my father’s heart.’ He considers neither the agony of rejected love his father has endured nor the financial loss the entire family has sustained.

So, the basically unrepentant son is on his way home, ‘face-saving-plan’ in hand; his intentions are to get a job to pay back what he lost and to ensure he never again has to suffer the pains of an empty stomach. Sound like sincere repentance to you? It was the same with Israel and it’s the same with you and me. But here is the astounding reality which Jesus is trying to get across: that while the son is ‘still a long way off’ (still in exile) it’s the father who acts to reconcile the son before he can launch into his rehearsed speech! The father “races” (it was considered shameful for a patriarch to run and bear his legs) to reconcile the son to himself, and upon the rock of sheer grace restores him to sonship without him having to pay back one red cent! You see, according to Jesus forgiveness and reconciliation precede repentance; forgiveness is not dependent upon the sincerity of our or Israel’s faithfulness, obedience, or repentance, for God acted through Jesus to accomplish that on behalf of us and in our stead.

You see, to figure out how God accomplished this we have to look at the wider narrative of Luke; particularly, the third chapter where John the Baptist issues a call to repentance. It is only when Jesus is baptized that the “Holy Spirit descended in on him in bodily form, like a dove; [when] a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus, the Davidic King, offers up the repentance that Israel, that the world, so desperately needed; YHWH’s promised presence and the restoration of sonship occur in and upon Christ the person, that is within his ‘vicarious humanity.’ In Christ, God’s Son, God offers up the genuine repentance from within our rebel nature on behalf of Israel and thus on behalf of all of us non-repentant sinners; and this while we were still ‘a long way away’! God is basically saying:

Look, I know you were supposed to repent before I forgave you and restored you, but because there is deep-rooted rebellion in your nature you are unable to do so. So, rather than remain separated from you, because you are a prodigal who tends to think of yourself only, I have sent my Son to repent for you and on behalf of you. So now because he has done this for you, you are already accepted and forgiven and reconciled as if you had. You merely have to accept that I have already accepted and restored you in the person of my Son. You don’t have to be perfect, you no longer have to work to pay me back for your mistakes, for Jesus has done that on your behalf too. We need only celebrate now and revel in the fact that you were dead but now you are alive and that you were lost but now have been found!

That there, friends, is the gracious Gospel of reconciliation.

The Prodigal Father: The Home & the Greener Grass

Last week we noted that the Parable of the Prodigal Son encapsulated in itself the story of exile and restoration portrayed by the national story of Israel, and thus the world. In fact, we could even say the parable is about God’s people always thinking the “grass is greener on the other side” and God’s costly determination to keep, or better, get them back home. Remember, there is an interesting interplay between characters’ lives in the OT (particularly in the patriarchs) and Israel’s national drama of exile and restoration. Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and even his twelve sons all at one point in their lives go out of Canaan, the promise Land, and into Egypt (exile) and back again (restoration/reconciliation); the story of Israel, particularly of exile into Babylon and their hopes for final restoration, and thus the world is personified in each and every one of the patriarchs’ lives. On the one hand, when we read the stories of the patriarchs we should always listen closely to hear the resonances of Israel’s national drama; on the other hand, when we tune into Jesus’ parable we hear all of these stories at last reaching their telos or “climax” in the person and work of Christ.

We could even say the OT is long record of prodigality, the tragic tales of wayward sons and daughters, nations and even the world. In fact, I can think of one story in particular as a good entry to the story of the younger son, that is, the story of Abraham and Lot.

Read Genesis 13

Canaan was God’s gift to Abraham, his ‘inheritance,’ and not only for Abraham, but for all of his future descendants. Notice, Abram settles at “Bethel” which in the Hebrew means the “house of God.” This land, then, is where the inheritance is, the very place of the house of God, no doubt an allusion to the future Temple to be constructed there by Solomon. Nevertheless, and despite God’s blessings upon Lot, the land in the immediate vicinity became strained, unable to bear both of their families and livestock. Abraham’s answer is to give Lot a part of the inheritance within Canaan itself, but when Lot gets a view of the Edenic land beyond it, namely the Jordan, it proves too irresistible. Kenneth Mathews notes:

The Lot episodes come short of explicitly stating the inclusion or exclusion of Lot as potential heir, but they present a pattern of events that shows his illegitimacy. Abram advises their parting, so it is not the parting per se that forfeits the blessing but the circumstances of the parting by Lot, who exhibited poor judgment. Chapter 13 indicates his disregard for the promissory land. Lot ignored Canaan for the deceptively attractive “cities of the plain” (v. 12; 19:29); that the “cities of the plain” sat outside “Canaan” is clear from v. 12, a verse that draws a line between the two men. The geographical feature that is key to the underlying message of the story is highlighted by the recurring word yāšab (“stayed/lived)… This is apparent by the author’s attention to the moral character of the place the nephew selected (vv. 10, 13). Abram on the other hand “called on the name of the Lord” (v. 4) and resided in the land of Canaan (v. 18). Lot’s action is reminiscent of the folly of Esau, who treated lightly the promises (25:34) and eventually lost the inheritance due to deception (27:35).

Lot, as I’ve repeatedly said before, re-enacts or personifies Israel’s preference for the way of other nations and their eventual loss of the Land of Promise—their inheritance. And, like Israel, he is eventually captured and taken away by foreign rulers. The many blessings of God, the proximity of his family, the land, and God’s presence therein are simply not as attractive as that which lies beyond the place of inheritance. In sum, “the grass is always greener on the other side.” Of course, the story should sound familiar, because in essence it is the same story being told in the parable of Jesus. On to the parable we go:

Read: Luke 15:11-16

We can safely assume that the father in the story is a wealthy and honorable man within the community (he owns slaves, has a large estate, can throw large feasts, etc). The two sons would no doubt be heirs to the estate and family inheritance, but release of it would usually occur when the father sensed his imminent demise, and even then could not be portioned out until his actual decease. The request by the younger son, then, is tantamount to telling the father, “I wish you were dead.” N.T. Wright adds:

Let’s be sure we’ve understood how families like this worked. When the father divided the property between the two sons, and the younger son turned his share into cash, this must have meant that the land the father owned had been split into two, with the younger boy selling off his share to someone else. The shame that this would bring on the family would be added to the shame the son had already brought on the father by asking for his share before the father’s death; it was the equivalent of saying ‘I wish you were dead’. The father bears these two blows without recrimination.

In Lot-like manner, then, this shameful younger son despises all that he has in his father’s house (think Bethel, think Eden) and sees the land beyond as an Edenic paradise, a parabolic Sodom and Gomorrah. Moreover, as Lot breaks fellowship with Abraham the prodigal breaks fellowship with the Father. No doubt we hear the echoes of the story of Israel as the son-of-God who loses its inheritance in the strange land of Babylon, the land of exile. At a larger scale, however, we see the story the world, the creation that rejected its fatherly Creator and was thus cast out of Eden as the record of Adam and Eve is meant to portray. Again, Wright is poignant at this point:

Inside this story there is another dimension which we shouldn’t miss. One of the great stories of Israel’s past was of course the Exodus, when Israel was brought out of Egypt and came home to the promised land. Many years later, after long rebellion, Israel was sent into exile in Babylon; and, though many of the exiles returned, most of Jesus’ contemporaries reckoned that they were still living in virtual exile, in evil and dark days, with pagans ruling over them. They were still waiting for God to produce a new Exodus, a liberation which would bring them out of their spiritual and social exile and restore their fortunes once and for all. For Jesus to tell a story about a wicked son, lost in a foreign land, who was welcomed back with a lavish party—this was bound to be heard as a reference to the hope of Israel.

No doubt, we’ve barely scratched the surface. But before we examine the story of the prodigal son even closer there’s an important point I think needs to be made. In fact, it’s better formulated in a series of questions: Why is home never good enough? Why do we so often look beyond the good things and people we currently have around us to Edenic paradises of the fallen cosmos? Why do we so often scoff at our eternal inheritance in God and within God’s home and God’s people and mistakenly lose it all for those things that treat us like subhuman slaves? I quote Henri Nouwen at length because I cannot say it better:

 I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found. Why do I keep ignoring the place of true love and persist in looking for it elsewhere? Why do I keep leaving home where I am called a child of God, the beloved of my Father? I am constantly surprised at how I keep taking the gifts God has given me—my health, my intellectual;, and emotional gifts—and keep using them to impress people, receive affirmation, and praise, and compete for rewards, instead of developing them for the glory of God… Beneath all this is the great rebellion, the radical ‘No’ to the Father’s love, the unspoken curse: ‘I wish you were dead.’ The prodigal son’s ‘No’ reflects Adam’s original rebellion: his rejection of the God in whose love we are created and by whose love we are sustained.

In other words, this isn’t about ‘locality’ per se, it matters not whether you live in Goodyear, or Chandler, or Scottsdale, or our new California campus. This is about the realization that what we already have, we have freely in connection with God and his Son Jesus, and is everything we already need. That we are freely accepted here as we are and that we no longer need to meet the impossible standards or criteria which society (or religion) sets up—wealth, status, privilege, agelessness, perfection in body, and the endless accumulation of the latest and greatest gadgets. Here in and among God’s people you are already an inheritor of God’s new creation, charged with the stewardship of God’s house, you are a friend, a brother, a sister, and never a slave, and never have to earn acceptance here for you are already accepted  in Jesus the Beloved of God. Dear saint, look not then to the well watered plains of Jordan, but to the place of promise, your home and your place among the great family of Abraham, the father of us all.