the prodigal son had a father

And He said, “A man had two sons.“

It is all too easy to miss the fact that there are three main characters in the story about the prodigal son: a man had two sons. If we don’t get stuck on the younger son and all his shenanigans, we might notice the older son. But these sons also had a father. Three people. Three questions.

What did the younger son want?

Material wealth. He had no interest in the father, but thought that he could really live if he had the things that his father had. He wanted to really live, but didn’t know how, so he did the only thing he knew: he got hold of as much wealth as possible and literally ran with it. He found out, as we will all do, sooner or later, that things are absolutely devoid of real life.

What did the older son want?

The older son had spent years serving his father. Why? to position himself so that when the time came, he would receive his father’s blessing and inherit all that he had. His strategy was quite different from that of his younger brother, who made a simple demand of his father. The older son behaved in a much more socially acceptable way. He was the “good” son, the one who obeyed his father in all things. But, ultimately he wanted exactly the same thing that his younger sibling wanted: his father’s goods. “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me [fill in the blank].” It is easy to identify the error of the younger son. Many parents would die for a son like the older one in this story: compliant and obedient, rather than troublesome and rebellious. No doubt, many of us read about the older son and wonder if he’s really done anything wrong. Neither the younger son nor the older one realized that what the father wanted was what they really wanted, deep down inside their souls. Both sons needed to repent, and rethink their lives in light of what the father wanted.

What did the Father want?

The father wanted his sons to love him, not his wealth or position or what he could do for them. He wanted their respect. He wanted his sons to be faithful to him, to share life with him. He wanted their relationship to be special, intimate even. He wanted a relationship where they would each make sacrifices, gladly, one for the other. He wanted a relationship where each could be his true self, where each could be himself, knowing that when he screwed up, forgiveness would be readily available. He wanted a relationship that was “for better or worse,” one that was “for life.” He wanted his sons to be with him.

The father could force a relationship with each of his sons but not the kind of relationship that he wanted. Within the older son’s heart lived a belief that obedience was key: “Just tell me what you want me to do!” If pressed, the father could give a clear answer in the form of a list of commandments. Ten of them, actually. The younger son asked for the father’s wealth and the father gave it to him. But what the father really wanted was an intimate relationship, one that is based on more than “mooching” or obedience.

The two sons describe a broad segment of Christianity. There are those who are legalists. They know what is expected and they do their very best to perform. To them, Christian “law” is what makes us distinctive and adherence is the singular obligation of every Christian. Then, there are those who see God as poised and ready to meet all their needs and even many of their wants. This attempt at relationship is evident in prayers used almost exclusively to seek solutions for our problems, provision for our needs, and relief from our suffering.

We cannot make an argument that God is not interested in our obedience or our prayers. The problem is that we have made obedience and prayer into ends, not means. The Pharisees saw obedience as an end in itself. We see this in their intense interest in seeing that everyone in society understood the Law and kept it. Likewise, prayer can be an end in itself: prayer for prayer’s sake or even prayer for my sake. But obedience and prayer cannot be ends, for God wants me. Disobedience and lack of prayer will keep me from God, but obedience and prayer will not take me to Him, unless I use them as means to get there.

If I do everything my wife wants: take out the trash, mow the grass, maintain the car, pay the bills, take her on dates, but do not show her respect or do not share my life with her, then we are roommates, not husband and wife. I suspect that women “get” this quicker than men. In fact, in writing this post, I cheated. The first paragraph under “What did the Father want?” came directly out of my wife’s heart, not mine. My understanding of relationships is so bad that I had to ask my wife for insight into “What did the Father want?” And, incredulously, I claim to have a relationship with God?!

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My first post on the prodigal son focused, predictably, on the two sons. After continuing to pray over this story, though, I came to understand that the story is really about the Father. Jesus put the sons in the story to make sure that I understood that the Father’s love was targeted at me. Even if I have difficulty figuring out what a relationship with God looks like, there is no question that He seeks to have a relationship with me. We are not looking for each other like two people who do not realize they are destined to be married. He has already chosen me and nothing will stop Him from moving in my direction. God loves me deeply and has done so ever since before the foundations of the world. It is because of God’s love that I know Christ and believe in Him and in His salvation. Throughout my life, God has been drawing me inexorably to Himself. For 58 years, He has been creating and molding and shaping and redeeming me into one of His sons, a beloved child with whom He will be united for all eternity. Until recently, I have not been aware of His activity in my life, the countless big and small, easy and hard, pleasurable and painful God-originated events that have made me who I am today. He is working and waiting, ever so patiently. I am the one who must move toward Him; but when I do so, I can be assured that He will be there, just as the prodigal’s father was waiting for his own sons.

what does it mean to be a Christian?

Christianity ain’t what it used to be.

This is a conclusion to which I’ve come after reading several historical accounts about primitive Christians and the church as it existed until about 180 A.D. That there might be differences between us and them should not be surprising, since life in the West 2000 years later is dramatically different from life in the first century. Examples abound, no doubt.

Primitive Christians did not have church buildings or a New Testament. Christianity was not organized except by the power of the Spirit. Christians met daily, not just on Sundays, for teaching and worship. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper did not have any of the modern day ecclesiastical trappings. Baptism was more like a bath than a ritual, preceded by what amounted to agreement to a soldier’s oath, making a commitment to full participation in the sacrifices and activities of the common community. The Lord’s Supper was an ordinary meal, although the elements (bread and wine) were separated from the rest of the food. Gifts, including food, offered at the so-called Lovemeal, were immediately used to feed the poor, and itinerant prophets and apostles. While pagans and Jews burned their sacrifices, Christians used them to feed the poor.

Until 180 A.D., Christians owned everything in common. If a rich person wanted to join the community, they were instructed to sell their property first, or else they could forget about becoming a Christian. Minucius Felix wrote, “That we for the most part must be considered poor is no disgrace to us but an honor. A life of luxury weakens the spirit. Frugality makes it strong.” The Shepard, a book dating from the first century that almost made it into the New Testament canon, had this to say about the wealthy: “Once their wealth which entices their souls is cut off from them on all sides, they will be useful to God.” People engaged in certain professions presumed to be associated with idolatry or immorality would be rejected by the Christian community unless they forsook their occupations.

The primitive Christians put all their stock in the resurrection. They took literally Christ’s injunction, “take up your cross and follow Me.” By dying Christ’s death with him, literally, they would attain to the resurrection and the Kingdom. They maintained similarly literal views of Paul’s statements about the fellowship of the cross, and Christians being crucified with Christ and raised with him. Polycarp was executed by the Romans in the mid-second century. The Roman proconsul begged Polycarp to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. “Polycarp answered him, ‘You threaten me with a fire that burns but for an hour and goes out after a short time, for you do not know the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment for the godless. Why do you wait? Bring on whatever you will.’” (The Martyrdom of the Holy Polycarp, recorded February 22, A.D. 156) In a frenzy, the crowd in the stadium left to collect wood from shops and homes to fuel a fire for Polycarp. When it came time to nail Polycarp to the stake, he refused, saying, “’Let me be. He who gives me the strength to endure the fire will also give me the strength to remain at the stake unflinching, without the security of your nails.’ …When he had spoken the Amen and finished his prayer, the executioners lit the fire.” (The Martyrdom of the Holy Polycarp)

Most striking about the primitive Christians was their belief in and commitment to the coming Kingdom. They viewed discipleship as a pathway toward a whole new moral and social order that would be brought to bear in its fullness by the return of Christ. They stood firmly against the existing order which was viewed as being superintended by the forces of darkness. They did not live in fear of the prince of the power of the air, though, for Jesus’ crucifixion had already crushed that power. Theirs was not a political movement, however. They knew that unless God intervened, the present order could not be changed. Empowered by the Spirit, Christians served their communities with vigor. They fed the poor, took care of the sick, provided employment for the destitute. In blatant protest against a common practice of their day, they frequently bought and freed slaves, counting such as their brothers. Civil disobedience was passive, enduring everything, even death. The early Christians were revolutionaries, heralding a new world order and a coming Kingdom that would replace the powers of the State. Their certainty about this future was demonstrated by their willingness to suffer as martyrs, a glorious offering of a corruptible body in exchange for resurrected body in the coming Kingdom.

The driving force for primitive Christianity lay in the belief that Christ would return at any minute to establish his Kingdom in righteousness and justice, displacing the current world order entirely. Christians gave everything to get ready for the day. They gave up their possessions and, indeed, their very lives. Neither had any value, except as they might be useful to prepare themselves and as many others as possible for the coming of the Kingdom. They were not afraid of death. The dead in Christ would be raised bodily just as Christ had been, to participate in that Kingdom. Death, therefore, held no sway over Christians, threatened daily with martyrdom, for it guaranteed the experience of the resurrection. They also had no concerns for the long term future. Giving sacrificially to the poor was easy because money and possessions would have no value in the Kingdom of Christ. Some Christians even sold themselves into slavery so that they could give the proceeds to the poor.

Slowly, though, as time passed and the establishment of the Kingdom was delayed, Christians began to settle in for the long haul. The church was growing large enough that physical organization (as opposed to organization orchestrated simply by the Spirit) became necessary. False teaching and heresy began to be a problem late in the second century. And so, a subtle shift began to take place. Dependence on the Spirit was gradually displaced by direction from powerful overseers (known, by then, as bishops.) The church began to incorporate Greek philosophical views (became Hellenized); apologetics as a systematic defense of Christian theological beliefs emerged. The  New Testament began to take its current form during the mid-second century, out of a need to consolidate an agreed-upon canon, as distinct from a large number of what are now viewed as extra-biblical sources. For all intents and purposes, the expectation of the future Kingdom of God became extinct. Albert Schweitzer, in uncharacteristic understatement, draws a line from the church of the primitive Christians to the church of our day: “The belief in the Kingdom of God which lies at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus, and gives its warmth and glow to the religious life of Primitive Christianity, seems destined in the Christianity of to-day to become, if possible, even weaker than it has been for centuries.” Belief in the coming Kingdom did not just give primitive Christians warmth and a glow. It motivated what can be considered nothing other than heroic living and the ability to stare death in the face with courage, as Polycarp so ably demonstrated. Regardless, Schweitzer’s observation is correct: the coming Kingdom does not drive Christians like it did in the first century. Modern Christianity certain holds to other-worldly beliefs in heaven and hell, but the self-gratifying nature of our belief system focuses on the here and now, rather than on a majestic Kingdom that, any second now, will replace everything we see. The greatest difficulty before us lies in distinguishing between “the coming Kingdom of God” as little more than traditional phraseology, and its incorporation in to our lives in a way that prioritizes and drives everything about us.

It is clear from a reading of the history of primitive Christianity that we cannot go back. The social and political milieu of those times were so different that a reversion is not possible. Further, we have a New Testament. They did not. Their numbers were small. Ours are not. Managing a small cohort required little organization. Managing millions requires something more. Beginning with Augustine, thousands of theologians have worked and reworked the original teachings of the apostles and prophets, creating a coherent body of theological teaching, rendering rather less useful the Spirit-informed and Spirit-driven prophets and teachers of old who tirelessly and spontaneously taught Christians without benefit of the Word of God that we now know as the New Testament. It goes without saying that these Spirit-appointed teachers built the foundation of Christianity with no seminary training!

One can hardly fault the early ecclesiastical church for adapting in the way that it did. But, if we fast-forward to our day, a study of primitive Christianity brings into stark contrast some troubling features of modern life. Idols in the days of the first century were made of wood, stone, and flesh. The Romans accused the early Christians of being atheists because it was not apparent that they worshiped a god, at all. The Romans could point to their god; the Christians could not. It is a frustrating development that the idols of our day are as invisible as the Christian God, tempting everyone to place all gods on the same plane, or on no plane, at all. Anyone with religious hunger, seeking to worship a god, can choose from many invisible gods, including that of the Christians. In a curious twist, like the Romans who interpreted an invisible God as a non-existent God, many of us Christians treat the idols around us as non-existent gods because they are invisible.

Early Christians saw a direct link between many aspects of their society and the activity of demons. We moderns not only cannot see the idols in our society, we do not associate demons with them. Therefore, we are unpracticed at the skill of driving out demons so that the Lord of Hosts can come in to redeem that sector of our lives. Worse than being unskilled, we may not even believe that demons have anything to do with the idols of our day.

Unlike the early Christians, seen as misfits worthy of being fed to wild beasts, the modern church is at home in the world. Certainly, the church takes issue with specific features of society, but the church does not have the same sense about the world that the early Christians did, who saw the coming Kingdom of God as poised to powerfully destroy and utterly replace all of the current power structures. Life in the West these days is good enough for most of the population that we are inclined to subscribe to the opposite view, that the coming Kingdom will introduce an improvement incremental enough that we are not willing to give our lives for it. Indeed, rather than standing against the world order, the church of our day has assimilated much of the world order. The contrary interpretation is also tenable: that the church has been successful in bringing the world order under the dominion of Christ, at least partly, vastly improving life for millions. Regardless of how one interprets history, life in the church is hardly distinguishable from life outside the church. The most pessimistic conclusion is that the Kingdom of God is passé for a large segment of the population in the West, Christian or otherwise.

Yet another problem arose as the church developed after the era of the primitive Christians. For the early Christians, identifying who was and who was not a Christian was easy. “Show me your faith by your works! Free your slaves. Sell your property. Give to the poor. Commune with your brothers and sisters. Gladly give your life.” Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, Paul told Timothy. With the establishment of the institutional church, Christianity became more acceptable to Roman society. (Henceforth, more people would be martyred by the church than by the state.) As a result, a new problem emerged: it was possible to associate (a.k.a., join) with a church, but not be Christian. Kierkegaard, writing in the 1800s, wrote extensively about this problem, showing its persistence for over a thousand years. He explains: “That one can know what Christianity is without being a Christian is one thing. But whether one can know what it is to be a Christian without being one is something else entirely. And this is the problem of faith. One can find no greater dubiousness than when, by the help of ‘Christianity,’ it is possible to find Christians who have not yet become Christians.”

Catholics are famous for having established hospitals to care for the sick. The early Christians also cared for the sick, but in those days, they preferred not to use herbs and drugs, but prayer and the laying on of hands. Some would even let an illness progress to a critical stage, making the healing power of Christ all the more dramatic. Today, we entrust our health care to physicians and surgeons and drugs. There are no demons. There is no healing power of Christ. Instead, we pray for “wisdom for the doctors.” Christ gets no credit; it is the doctors who receive glory and honor.

In this post, I have barely scraped the surface of an expansive subject: the history of ecclesiology. But, even a superficial survey highlights contrasts that cannot be avoided. Today, anyone who “prays the prayer” or believes that “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” can be Christian. What it took to be a Christian in the first century was hardly trivial: a commitment to the fact of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God to which access could be had through the saving blood of Christ who guarantees resurrection in the flesh, motivating a life of total sacrifice and martyrdom. Kierkegaard noted the problem: “It would be utterly impossible for the first Christians to recognize Christianity in its current distortion. Yes, they would hear Christianity preached and hear that what was said was entirely true, but to their great horror they would see that the actual conditions for being a Christian are exactly opposite of what they were in their day. To be a Christian now is no more like being a Christian in their day than walking on one’s legs is like walking on one’s head.”

If we cannot go back to those days, then those of us who are serious about our religion and wish, with all sincerity, to distinguish ourselves from those-who-are-Christians-in-name-only, are left with a simple question: What does it mean to be a Christian, today?

I invite you to post an answer to this question in Comments.

References

¹ Eberhard Arnold. The Early Christians, Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2007. (A translation of Die ersten Christen nach dem Tode der Apostel, Eberhard Arnold, 1926.)

² Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come, Hendrickson, Peabody, MA. 2003.

³ Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1998.

the landowner and the tenants

And He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the wine press and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey. At the harvest time he sent a servant to the vine-growers, in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine-growers. They took him, and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent them another servant, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and that one they killed; and so with many others, beating some and killing others. He had one more to send, a beloved son; he sent him last of all to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those vine-growers said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!’ They took him, and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers, and will give the vineyard to others. Have you not even read this Scripture:

‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner stone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes?”

And they were seeking to seize Him, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that He spoke the parable against them. And so they left Him and went away. (Mark 12:1-12)

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As with most of his parables, Jesus makes one simple point in this story: the vine-growers are the Pharisees, and they are about to destroy the Son, whom the Lord sent. The intent of the story is so clear that “[the Pharisees] understood that He spoke the parable against them.” Even though Jesus uses simple pen-and-ink to sketch this story, the picture that emerges depicts a view of us and our world that is rich with truth and meaning, and for this reason contemplation of this drawing is worth our time.

We would be wise, first of all, to put ourselves in the shoes of the vine-growers, the tenants, whether we consider ourselves Pharisees or not. Otherwise, when we read the gospel, we might just as well skip over this story. God is represented as the landowner, who created the entire vineyard, sparing nothing in the process. He planted the grape vines and constructed a fence around the vineyard. Then, he dug a pit, installed a wine press, and erected a tower. He provided everything the new tenants could possibly need. That the landowner then left  for a distant country is not meant to suggest that God is an absentee landlord over his creation. Indeed,  the Psalmist tells us that God is as near as our souls, even when we are far away (Ps 139:2). Rather, Jesus means to say that, since the landowner was apparently not present, the tenants believed they now had an opportunity.

The tenants got busy doing the work of vine-growers, and they were apparently quite good at their business, enough so that the landowner eventually felt justified to request a share of the profit. But, the tenants were unconcerned with the affairs or interests of the landowner. Over time, they came to act as if the vineyard belonged to them. They knew that this was not true, in fact. If they killed the Son, only then would the vineyard be theirs, or so they thought. Meanwhile, they went on pretending that the vines and the wine-press and the pit all belonged to them and that they had no need for the landowner. Indeed, the vineyard seemed to operate just fine without him. Maintaining the charade required the elimination of all communication from the landowner, which came most visibly in the form of his servants (the prophets). The landowner simply did not matter to the tenants; he was superfluous once the vineyard had been created.

There are only two ways of responding to Jesus’ story: rebel or repent. In this light, we must carefully consider how the Pharisees responded to Jesus’ story. One would hope that they would have seen themselves in the tenants, first feeling shame and then repenting, seeking from Jesus the help that they would need to amend their ways. Sadly, the Pharisees saw the story as an attack on their lifestyle, practice of religion, and values and they became very angry, even to the point of wishing harm on Christ. They could not identify with the tenants or feel any sorrow whatsoever for the disparity between life as it is and life as it should be. They rebelled.

But God, always gracious, is calling us, through this story, to repent. We need to see ourselves in the tenants, and we must experience the sorrow and shame that the Pharisees could not. We must beware that, in considering this story, we are highly vulnerable to an insidious form of rebellion: self-congratulation, a sense of self-satisfaction that gives rise to the exclamation, “God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like [these Pharisees].” Just as importantly, we cannot excuse ourselves with a red herring, saying, “Well, I have never treated God’s prophets or His Son the way the tenants did.” Treating His prophets well is not the point. The landowner is the point! It is absolutely imperative that we see ourselves as one of the tenants.

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And, how much like the tenants am I. God seems distant from the everyday affairs of my life. Where is He when I brush my teeth, or read my email at work, or say “Hello” to a colleague or walk up the stairs or attend a meeting? Oh, yes!, I know He is everywhere, all the time, for He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist. Therefore, the observation that God is distant is not a commentary on His location, but on His relevance.

To feel my angst about this, answer the following questions: Where was God in your day today? Give specifics. Don’t spew theory at me. Was God at work in your day, in your activities? What was He doing? If you can think of anything, were you aware at the time of what He was doing? Was God keenly interested in what you did today? Or is your work so unremarkable from a Kingdom perspective, or of such a calling that you can hardly imagine that God would be interested, except for possible instances of prayer or witnessing? If your answer(s) affirm God’s involvement in your work today in specific ways, when was the last time that your heart rejoiced exceedingly, thanking and praising God in prayer for what He is accomplishing through your work?

If these questions make you squirm, then “Houston, we have a problem,” because you are acknowledging that your day-to-day relationship/interaction with God, as you live it out in its mundane details, is on the same level as that of the tenants and the landowner in Jesus’ story. Your theology might make one claim, that God is everywhere and in everything, but your behavior makes an entirely different claim, that you blissfully go about your daily business thinking that “all this belongs to me!” It is time to “rethink your life in light of the fact that the kingdom of the heavens is open to all.” If we neglect this supremely important task, then, the landowner, according to Jesus, will give the vineyard to others.

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For starters, I need to have a more realistic attitude toward everything in my world, all of which comes from God’s hands… everything: my toothbrush, my hair, my breakfast, the floor on which I walk, the ground, the air, the doorknob, my height, my skin color, my runny nose, the insurmountable problems at work. All of these, and more, should be viewed as God’s blessings in my life, blessings that He has specifically put in place for me, with forethought and love. The Psalmist wrote, “May He come down like rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the earth,” and so we often think of God’s blessings as a shower. Upon reflection, though, it is evident that God’s blessings do not come down upon me as a gentle rain, but as a tsunami, absolutely and totally inundating every nook and cranny of my life, penetrating everywhere and everything. It is little wonder that the apostle Paul told us to “pray without ceasing,” for how else are we to get through the list of blessings for which we must thank God?

Secondly, I must realize that things on this earth are for my use, not for my possession. God gave the vineyard to the tenants  for their use, and He naturally expected that they would share the fruits of the vineyard with him. Likewise, everything in my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly, comes from God; He has given me everything I need. Nothing is lacking. But, it’s not about the “stuff.” It wasn’t about the vineyard. It was about the landowner, for “the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created.” (St. Ignatius of Loyola)

Many Christians, particularly those not involved in “full-time Christian ministry” wonder about the significance of their work. They believe, in their heart of hearts, that they have a second-rate job, one hardly worthy of the Kingdom. Books are written on the subject of how to find meaning in our jobs. A few years ago, Nav Press published a book by Jerry and Mary White titled, “Your Job – survival or satisfaction?” Your local Christian bookstore can supplement this title with many others. Modern Christians simply do not know why they are doing what they are doing. This feeling about work arises because we do not see God in the vineyard, in our daily lives and work. We believe, intellectually, that He is there, but He is not there in a way that makes any real difference. The parable of the vine-growers is a crucial story and the Holy Spirit knew this when He insisted that it appear in our canon. The story has very practical implications, for it tells me that:

• It is not my vineyard, it it God’s.
• It is not my job, it is the work that God has given me to do.
• It is not my house, but the house that God has given me for my health and protection.
• It is not my car, but the means of transportation that God has given to me.

It’s not that our jobs, or our lives, have no meaning or make no sense. It’s that our jobs and our lives have no intrinsic meaning, apart from God. Not only must we “feel the love,” we must experience the tsunami of His blessings and see His presence everywhere and in everything. Then we can engage in our work with vigor, because it matters to God so much that He has commissioned a tsunami of blessings to enter like a storm into each of our lives.