Kruse Kronicle

Reflections on the Parable of the Compassionate Father

[Previous]

My presentation of Kenneth E. Bailey’s work on Luke 15:11-32 is woefully lacking. Still, I hope these recent posts have been helpful in seeing how rich the story is when viewed through Middle Eastern eyes. Having closely examined this parable, we now ask what to do with the parable. The temptation is to "gut" the story by identifying "the point" that Jesus was trying to make. That would be a tragic error.

The modernist era has taught us to distill reality down to its foundational elements. In this mode of thinking, the assumption is that Jesus was telling this parable to illustrate a point. He had “a” point he wanted to make and he built a story up from that point. When we can identify that point and articulate it, we think we have understood the story. If we are indeed approaching the story in this way, then we are doing violence to Jesus' teaching.

The Parable of the Compassionate Father, just like other parables, is not an illustration to make a point. It is the presentation of an alternate reality. Bailey writes,

“A biblical story is not simply a “delivery system” for an idea. Rather the story first creates a world and then invites the listener to live in that world, to take it on as part of who he or she is. Biblical stories invite the reader to accept them as his or her story.” (Jacob and the Prodigal, 51)

We are all living under illusions about who we are and who God is. Stories like The Parable of the Compassionate Father disillusion us so we can see ourselves for who we are and we can see God for who God is. They invite us into an alternate reality. They invite us to be characters within that new reality. I would argue that not only is that the purpose of this parable but it is the purpose of scripture. God is at work disillusioning us with His story so we may enter into communion with God and with others he has called into community.

All this is not to say that there isn’t a place for identifying key elements of parables and finding themes. These enrich our understanding of God’s character and can help make the stories more accessible. The danger comes in assuming that because we have abstracted what we believe to be key elements, we now “get it.”

Personally, this parable has touched me in so many ways I can’t recount them all. It just keeps getting richer through the years. There have been times in my life where I have felt completely alone and abandoned. I craved closeness to God but could see no way to come home. Then there was this image of God running through the village to greet me! I find that part of the story hard to swallow at times.

There have been other times in my life when I have been outraged at the honor paid to those who I knew were “less spiritual” than I am. There have been opponents who I secretly, if not openly, longed to see humiliated and brought down. When they weren’t, I wondered why I was being obedient to God. Would God just let them get away with everything? Then I would see the image of God standing before me in a courtyard, and as I venomously cried out against him, he kept asking me to come inside the house for the celebration.

Henri Nouwen wrote a book called the Return of the Prodigal. The book is about his mediations as he viewed the painting by Rembrandt about this story. He tells how he came to identify with the prodigal son. He shared with a friend about his reflections and the friend questioned whether Nouwen was not actually more like the older brother. As Nouwen reflected more on this story he began to realize that he was indeed all too much like the older son in the story. He began to question which he more identified with, the prodigal or the older son. He eventually concluded he identified with both.

At the end of Nouwen’s book he articulates a discovery that I too came to realize. He had been asking which son he was most like. In doing so, he was missing an essential piece to the story. The story is not about the sons. The story is about the father! Furthermore, there is an implicit invitation in the parable. That invitation is to take on the character of the father! We easily identify with the sons, but the call is to be the father.

Not many years after Jesus’ resurrection, the apostle Paul wrote (emphasis added):

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death --
even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

(Philippians  2:5-11, NRSV)

As we come to Christmas let us realize that the baby born in Bethlehem was merely the first step of a father leaving his mansion to go into the courtyard, and out into the streets, to invite his children to come home. God is inviting us even now to take on the charater of the father in the parable and invite our brothers and sisters, younger and older, to enter the celebration.

[Continued]

N. T. Wright "Shipwreck and Kingdom"

The Berkley Blog today was about a great sermon given by N. T. Wright to the Anglican Consultative Council, 28 June 2005. It is a long read but I highly recommend it.

Shipwreck and Kingdom: Acts and the Anglican Communion

Here is one excerpt I particularly wanted to note in light of my ongoing posts on the illusions of human culture and the call to disillusionment.

"It is sometimes proposed today that in order to grasp the political meaning of the New Testament, you have to downgrade the theology; as though, for instance, a high Christology would lead you off in the direction of ‘religion’ rather than politics, or as though talk of the bodily resurrection would project you out into the world of ‘pie in the sky when you die’ rather than the hard, real world in which we are called to work for justice and peace. In fact, as Paul or Revelation would make just as clear as Luke, the opposite is the case. It is because Jesus is bodily risen from the dead, because Jesus is Israel’s Messiah, because he is the one and only Lord of the world, that the Sadducees are worried, Herod is worried, the Athenians are worried, the idol-makers of Ephesus are furious, and ultimately, if he knew his business, Caesar should be making his will. The point about Jesus going to heaven is not that we’ll go there to be with him one day, away from this wicked old world at last. The point is that from heaven he is ruling the world, ruling it through the faithful lives, the suffering and the witness of his Spirit-driven apostolic followers, calling it to account, demonstrating that there is a new way of living, a way which upstages all Caesar’s pretensions to have saved the world, or united it, or brought it genuine justice, freedom and peace. (All those claims, by the way, are the standard things that all empires have claimed, whether in the first century or the twenty-first.)"

THE HOLLOW MAN

THE HOLLOW MAN

(Words and Music by Terry Taylor, copyright 1983, Twitchen Vibes/Paragon Music Corp. ASCAP. Daniel Amos, "Doppelganger," Alarma Chronicles, Volume 2, Copyright 2000, Millenium Eight Records)

(Voice) (Echo)

We are the empty men

We are the masked men Resting, together

Cavity, stuffed with straw Figure, without shape

Shadow, without nuance Impotent power, the empty men Movement, without action All who have gone with true vision To death’s higher dwelling, may recall us here Not as ‘damned, destructive ghost But simply as the empty men Simply as the masked men This is the lost land This is the desert land Here the graven images are built Here is the place they will attain

Entreaty of a lost soul’s desire
Beneath the glimmer of a dying sun
Can it be so in death’s second domain?
No longer asleep

Lonely At the moment of our greatest compassion
Arms that would embrace
Raised in supplication to toppled altars
Where have the eyes gone?
One finds no eyes here
In this empire of dying suns
In this vacant kingdom
The scattered realm of fallen empires
In this final assembly
We stumble together and are silent
Collected on the shores
Of the river disturbance, the barren men

And for one moment the eyes reappear
As the eternal Son moving broken stone

In this land … this land of death’s shadow
The dying wish of a an empty man
The hollow man

**********

Ps 115:2-82 NRSV

Why should the nations say,"Where is their God?"
Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk;
they make no sound in their throats.
Those who make them are like them;
so are all who trust in them.

Will the Real Illusion Please Stand Up?

A while back, I gave my friend Dave a copy of one of my favorite books. It is called, “The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis,” by Hugh Ross. Last week we had lunch at our weekly hang out, Rumi’s, a Sufi themed Mid-Eastern cuisine Restaurant.

Dave told me how much he enjoyed the book. What struck him the most was the utter expansiveness of God in both time and space. He had not really reflected before on just how enormous God is and how seemingly insignificant we are. I grinned really big. That was precisely the impact it had on me years ago.

When you think about the billions of years matter has existed and about a universe that is ever expanding, human beings are a notch below “next to nothing” and only slightly higher than nothing. The rumor is that this God of the universe stepped in to our space and time continuum, become one of us, and allowed himself to be treated like scum, just to be in relationship with us. That is insane! But that is the gospel. If the rumor is true it means that we are far from insignificant. Because the God of all creation values us we are of inestimable worth. This would be the most amazing story ever told!

So I ask you, is it true that we are of immense value to a powerful and passionate God? If so, do we feel like we are among the most significant beings in the known universe? Do we see ourselves and others as being of inestimable value? I don’t think we do. Sure, as a race, we occasionally talk a good line about being masters of our destinies. We elevate ourselves to heights of glory. But ever present is our personal mortality and even our potential mortality as a species. The final words of the last song from Pink Floyd’s “Final Cut” album, a song about the last thoughts of man just as he is being annihilated by a nuclear explosion at the end of the world, are “Finally, I understand the feelings of the few. Ashes and diamonds. Foe and friend. We were all equal in the end.” Still, most of us, most of the time, cannot bring ourselves to live with the logical implications of what this means.

So which is the illusion? If a cold heartless universe is the truth, then why does every human culture ever known seem to hold out the hope of some enduring future or purpose? If the story of a passionate and powerful God is true, then why does so little of our existence seem to connect with such a reality? One is an illusion and one is authentic. We need to be disillusioned.

Rolling to My Death in Kansas… Or Not

Yesterday I asked if Bill Shakespeare was right. Is life “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?” How do you know?

Not long ago, I came to a stop at a red light at 31st Street and Southwest Trafficway in Kansas City, MO, just three blocks from my house. Going east like I was, the intersection is at the crest of a half mile long hill called Signal Hill. (I already know what many are thinking. Yes, Kansas City has hills. The city itself was built on what was originally a 100 ft. bluff overlooking the Missouri River. You see, several million years ago there were certain geological events… but I digress.)

While waiting at the light and tapping fingers to some innocuous CD, I immediately sensed something was wrong. My car was slowly rolling backwards. My foot went down harder on the brake but there was no response. My foot was now practically pushing the brake pedal through the floor board. I began to have visions of steering an ever accelerating car backwards down a hill into Kansas. (The state line is at the bottom of the hill.) My eyes shifted to my right as I reached to grab the emergency brake. As my eye caught the scene out the side window I became really confused.

The sign post out the right side of my car was either perfectly still or sliding down the hill with me. I was inclined to reject that second possibility as it has been my experience that sign posts are usually quite stationary. My head whipped back to the left when suddenly all became clear. I wasn’t moving at all! The SUV beside me was inching slowly forward into the intersection. My eyes deceived me. They told me the SUV was standing still and I was rolling backwards. Good thing the double-take exposed the illusion. I would have looked pretty silly bailing out of a stationary car at one of Kansas City’s busiest intersections.

But back to Bill’s question. Are we living the purposeless driven life and brother Warren is just an illusion? There is an old philosophy question that asks, “If I have a dream about being a butterfly, how do I know that at this moment I am not a butterfly dreaming I am a man?” Or maybe Rick Warren is really a butterfly dreaming he is a pastor? If so, how did he manage to type the book with little butterfly feet? (Now my head hurts.) All I know is, I don’t want to roll backward down a hill to certain death in Kansas. Nor do I want to live a life that is an illusion.

Speaking of illusions, try clicking on this thing below:

Soon Forgotten

Weekend canoe trips were a part of my childhood growing up in Kansas City. Whether with family, friends or youth groups, I frequently made the trek to the Ozark region of southwest Missouri which is filled with ideal canoeing rivers. Establishments renting canoes, gear, and offering portage services dot the area.

One place I remember patronizing for canoeing supplies was a little general store along Highway 181 in Dora, Missouri. Dora’s total population was at most a few dozen souls. It was near the White River, a tame but scenic river, which made it a great place for amateurs like me. I have fond memories of canoe trips there but I never really thought much about Dora itself. A few years ago, that changed.

About ten years ago, I became intrigued with family origins. My father’s side of the family was known to me but my mother’s roots were more mysterious. My maternal grandmother died more than a decade before I was born and my grandfather died just shy of my fifth birthday. My mother didn’t know much about her parent’s lives so I begin to do a little digging at the library. Using census records I was able to establish my grandfather’s whereabouts in 1910 at the age of three. He lived at Dora, Ozark County, Missouri!

Further research established that my great-great-grandfather had moved the family to the area of Dora in the early 1880s. My great-grandfather was a child when they moved to Dora and he lived there until moving on in search of work about 1915. My grandfather was born and spent the first eight years of his life there. A variety of records show numerous cousins, second cousins, and other relatives living all around the town of Dora. Less than two miles west of the general store where we rented the canoes are the gravestones of two great-great-grandfathers, a great-great-grandmother and other relatives. All the time we had been going canoeing at this out-of-the-way location, I had been walking in the footsteps of my ancestors and I didn’t know it.

Stories like these stir a mixture of emotions. For me, there was an increased sense of being rooted in the past. It is intriguing to imagine what my ancestors lives might have been like as I walk where they walked. But stories like these also suggest something quite disturbing. They remind me of something most of us would rather not reflect on.

One day we will die and, before long, even our blood relations will have no memory of us. Yes, there will be photos, recordings, and various other remnants from our lives. But the substance of our personhood, which can only be appreciated by authentic human relationships, will be no more. Someday some descendant may walk where we walked and speculate about our existence but it will be just speculation. Within very few generations it is entirely possible no one will remember our existence. It is possible that our entire culture will have died out and us along with it. Looking at the longer view of millennia, it is conceivable that the whole human race could disappear.

Shakespeare wrote:

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." William Shakespeare--From Macbeth (V, v, 19)

Was he right?