The prodigal and the obedient sons

The shades of learning from the story of the prodigal son are probably never ending as each reader questions the meaning of this story (Luke 15:11-32), applies certain portions to his or her own life - or even to the lives of others, but one thing is certain: a son who, for all practical purposes, should have been second best in any version of the story, has returned home and has received more attention and outward love and welcome than he deserved. One would think that the rule-follower, the obedient child, the loyal child who stayed behind and did and became all that a parent could hope, would always be celebrated as the pride and joy of the family.

This morning I was reading N. T. Wright's The Challenge of Jesus, pages 41 and 42, and these were my thoughts:

There was Jesus, standing in the flesh, emitting the love of God all over the place. It was obvious to some that Jesus was Truth in a way that they had never seen or heard Truth. He drew people to himself, people who had fallen away from the old ways, people who had become outcasts in the special family who called themselves God's chosen people.

And here is this person, the prodigal, the wayward person, the person who had first outcast himself for some reason, and who had then become the outcast of his family, and he heard the Truth, and it touched his very soul. He is so drawn to the Truth that he couldn't help himself. He says, "Here I am. I will follow you no matter what. I hear your voice, I recognize it as the greatest home I could ever want, and I want to be near you always."

And the Truth says back to him: "Come to me. I welcome you back. I have missed you. Every richness I have is yours just for being here. Come and let me embrace you."

And the faithful other son, who thinks he had it figured out all the time because he knew the rules and followed them, says: "But what about me? I'm the one who was here all the time, who never left you, who did everything you said and followed all the rules you taught me."

And the Truth says something back to him, something like this: "Yes, but you didn't follow me. You blindly put your eyes on the rules and you quit looking at me. Don't you see? The rules are how I want you to live, but I never intended for you to substitute the rules for your devotion to me. I never intended to send you off and tell you to be on your own, taking my rule book with you as your God. This wasn't some test of your initiative. The rules give you guidance, that's true. But you don't know when and how to apply them. You need me to tell you how to use them, what they really mean. I love you. I want you to love me, and let me teach you, step by step, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, how to use the guidance I gave you, how to use it to love others and how to love me."

The rules are good. There's no question about that. But the Rule Giver? He's supreme. Only he knows the real truth, the truth about how to use those rules for the benefit of everyone, how to be the light, the salt, how to live. The rules will never go away and they're right, but I need the Truth to tell me how to use them, how to live them.

I want to be the prodigal. I want to know every day how much I need God. I want to long for Him, to respond to Him, to run to Him when I hear his voice and his Truth.

Let it be so, Lord. Let it be so.

The private sphere of faith...

A statement, and the pages leading up to and beyond it in Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright, challenged me this morning. The statement is "... many people still today assume that faith lives in a private sphere, shutting itself off from history lest history make unwelcome inroads." (page 69 in the hardcover edition)

Previous to this statement, Wright is making a point that the resurrection cannot be explained within our framework of conventional wisdom. Our right (rational) brains don't process this concept because it has never happened before, it isn't something anything we even remotely expect, and we can't repeat it in a laboratory. By examples and words, Wright makes the case that believing the resurrection, this totally unscientific event, changes our entire worldview.

That's the point that caught my attention and challenged me this morning. How can we keep our faith in a private sphere if our entire worldview has been changed?

Our faith changes us absolutely, even if we don't admit to others that we're believers. We are never the same again. We can't be.

Having faith (belief) that Jesus "died, was buried, ... rose from the dead, ... ascended into heaven" means we can no longer say, for example, that we are moral because that's the right thing to be. We are now (or attempt to be) moral because there's an important (permanent) witness to all we say, do, or think. We believe in "God, the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth...," and that God knows all and holds us accountable. (Some might say we're not accountable because we're "redeemed," but if you think about it, the fact that we need redemption means that we've been held accountable -- and guilty.)

During the last several elections, there has been much talk about faith and whether the candidates are "people of faith." I remember being outraged 4 years ago when participants on a 60-Minutes segment made what I believed was an unhealthy, un-Christian comparison between members of the two major political parties.

All that aside, though, the lesson for me this morning is simply this:

• The way I choose to live my life is fundamentally based on what I believe. I don't know if I'd want to be ethical or moral if I didn't believe in a supreme being who is named, who is all seeing, knowing, and powerful, and who holds me accountable.
• I believe Jesus and all he taught. I believe he was man and at the same time God, and all he said and did showed me how God wants me to live and to think.
• Even if I want to keep my faith in a private sphere, I don't know that it's possible. To think that my faith is private is just fooling myself.
• Therefore, I might as well admit it. Why do I ...? (Fill in the blank.) The answer is: Because I believe.

There is nothing truly private. Our very lives are telling. Others can read us much more than we think they can. For those of us who are believers, we can only pray that the message we're sending with our lives is the one we want to send, the one we believe God wants us to send.

First Century Judiasm, John the B, Prophesy

Reading N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, this morning. Some interesting ideas:

• Some thought that prophecy had come to an end in the first century. That's true in these times, too. (Part II, 2, (i) First-Century Judiasm, pgs 151, 152 ...)


• Even so, there were a variety of prophet-types, including some that were hired by the occupiers of the area (Romans, I suspect) who spread false information to confuse the people and some who were inspired to keep the people on the path toward God's salvation for Israel. This seems true to me in my times, too - truth and false "prophets" abound. You have to be careful who you believe. We are not unlike first century people. (pgs 153, 154)


• John the Baptist (recognized as a prophet type by Josephus) offered, through baptism, "what you would normally get through the Temple cult." The idea of an alternative to the norm, an alternative that produces a surer and truer Way, intrigues me. I have never thought of John's baptism as being an "alternative." Like many Biblical stories, I just took John's baptism as fact and never thought beyond that point.

The hymn "Open my eyes, that I may see...." comes to mind. For whatever these ideas mean, it's my prayer that a greater understanding helps keep my faith fresh and true.

A list of things we know about Jesus (from N. T. Wright)

In Jesus and the Victory of God, in Chapter 5, N. T. Wright gives a short list of things we know about Jesus. The bare-bones nature of the list speaks to me. Here's a condensation:

• ... most likely born in what we now call 4 BC
• ... grew up in Galilee, in the town of Nazareth
• ... spoke Aramaic, some Hebrew, and probably at least some Greek
• ... emerged as a public figure in around AD 28
• ... summoned people to repent
• ... announced the kingdom, or reign, of Israel's god
• ... journeyed around the villages of Galilee
• ... effect[ed] cures, including exorcisms
• ... shar[ed] table-fellowship with a socio-culturally wide group
• ... called a group of close disciples
• ... incurred the wrath of some elements in Judaism, notably ... of the high-priestly establishment
• ... was handed over to the Romans and executed in the manner regularly used for insurrectionists
• ... followers claimed ... that he had been raised from the dead
• ... [followers] carried on his work in a new way

In subsequent paragraphs, he adds these items:

• ... engaged in an itinerant ministry
• ... [ministry] took him into synagogues, into private houses, into the open countryside
• ... sometimes ... met with his followers in secret
• ... often to be found in prayer..., sometimes in lonely places
• ... ate and drank with all sorts and conditions of people
• ... kept company with people normally on or beyond the borders of respectable activity

In these opening paragraphs of Chapter 5, Wright describes Jesus as one might observe his actions. He purposely is attributing no god-like attributes to him. I find this useful as I think about the way I observe the times I live in. In some way, the list gives clarity to how I should live and tells me, at the same time, that I cannot, with certainty, understand the full measure of those around me. The list describes a man who is focused, who understands what he is about, whose eyes are on some goal that perhaps isn't always clear to those around him. Yet, we don't see the man apologizing for who he is; we don't see him backtracking and changing his ways to be more acceptable to society around him. This man seems convinced that he is on the right path. For me, it's a powerful list.

N. T. Wright on Heaven (Surprised by Hope)

Interesting and good article:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710844,00.html

N T Wright - Interesting reads

For some months, I have subscribed to an online e-mail group who discusses the writings of N. T. Wright. There's still more I DON'T know about him and his work than there is about things I DO know, but I find reading the daily digest or two from the group is something I enjoy each day. I don't participate. I'm a lurker.

Wright joined a conversation some years ago, begun by other scholars and theologians, about the times in which Jesus lived on earth and the culture in which Jesus lived. The idea is to get a better picture of the "real Jesus," something many believe we should do in every generation and culture because we are real Christians living in the now. Christianity is a living faith.

The Jesus Seminars were going on at the time, too, and one had to wonder where those were going to end up. In some of my reading back in those days, I remember thinking that some were so off the track that I was on that I just wasn't interested in reading them. I don't know if Wright comes from that tradition - or not - but I am convinced that this is a man who fully considers himself a Christian in the same vein that I consider myself a Christian. He is a believer and a worshiper. Wright is currently the Archbishop, I think, of Durham. I may have that wrong. I'm not an Anglican, so I very well could be misremembering what I've read.

Here's a site that has a huge collections of Wright's writings: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/

I think the site is worth reviewing, and his books look well worth reading. He has written so much, and he moves from the totally readable to extremely scholarly works. I am reading at the "totally readable" end of his spectrum.

Here's a quote, though, that I want to remember from time to time:

All writers about Jesus have to live with the old jibe that the historian is inclined to see his or own face at the bottom of a deep well and mistake it for the face of Jesus.

The quote is from his second book in the Christian Origins and the Question of God series - Jesus and the Victory of God. I found that I needed to have this book in order to understand another (easier-to-read) book he's written.

I think this statement applies not only to all "writers about Jesus," but about all students of Jesus, as well. We are always on the lookout for a "Christ like me" and "Christian friends like me" - and the thing to do is to remember to periodically check what Jesus is like and compare ourselves to Him instead of the other way around.