Readings (Expanded to include Rev 5:1-10)

What a combination of readings! Let’s start with the psalm.

Psalm 30 is a typical song of thanksgiving, recounting the crisis, the psalmist’s prayer, and the Lord’s deliverance. Together with many other texts, it celebrates the Lord’s goodness and faithfulness, celebrates the Lord taking pleasure not in our sickness and distress, but in our health and shalom. So, like the psalmist, in synch with the whole Bible, we pray for the sick and those in distress. May their story—may our story—end as the psalmist’s does: “Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing; / O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever.”

But what to do with v.10 (“What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the Pit? / will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness?”)? For the psalmist that’s a rhetorical question. But after Holy Week, after Jesus’ resurrection, it becomes more complicated—gloriously more complicated.

The thing is, the Lord assuming human flesh shifts everything. That’s dramatically captured in John’s vision in our second reading. As the vision begins, the issue is a scroll, and who’s worthy to open it. John’s vision is full of open-ended symbols, and that scroll is one of them. We might gloss it—in pencil, not in pen—as “How the whole story ends” or “What the whole story means.” And just when it looks like no one is worthy to open it, to answer that question—and how many loud voices we hear today pretending to answer that question—”See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” That’s what John hears. But when he looks: “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.” Well, which is it, Lion or Lamb? And John’s answer—throughout the book—is “yes.” That makes Revelation one of the more challenging books to read, because yes, the Lord assuming human flesh shifts everything.

And then John gives us the text of the song he hears: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.” The focus is on the Lion/Lamb. The focus is equally on what the Lion/Lamb has won: “saints from every tribe and language and people and nation…you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God.” Every language—even English. Every people—even the Badgers. So if we pull out the binoculars, we’re in John’s vision.

We can use John’s vision as a door into our other readings.

Saul, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” If it’s only the Lion in play we might expect an impressive thunderbolt. Well, there is a bright light—accompanied by a question “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” The Lion/Lamb is forming that “kingdom and priests serving our God,” and Saul has just been drafted. And his form of service mirrors—largely—the Lamb’s as we learn from the Lord’s words to Ananias later in the text (“I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”).

“How much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Paul does suffer at the hands of the Synagogue and the Empire, but this sort of suffering is contingent, dependent on local circumstances. More fundamentally, Paul suffers because—as Luke Timothy Johnson puts it—“Obedient faith is itself, in its very nature, a form of suffering. This is because faithful obedience always demands letting go of an absolute hold on one’s own desire/place/privilege/interest in order to respond to the needs of others. And such letting go hurts in small matters as well as large” (Interpreting Paul p.285). And Paul practices such obedience.

John’s Gospel started with a poetic prologue (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”) and ends with a sort of epilogue that ties up some of the Gospel’s loose ends, like the respective roles of Peter and the “Beloved Disciple.” We may recognize the fishing story; Luke puts it toward the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. You “have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God,” and here we watch Jesus doing that by serving them, making them breakfast. Jesus is, after all, the model for the faithful obedience Johnson described. But it’s not simply a matter of obedience. Hard as it might be to imagine, Jesus enjoys spending time with these folk—with us.

The miraculous catch: as in Luke, it looks like a foreshadowing of what they’ll be about, serving God by fishing for people.

Then, for Peter, the thrice repeated question and commission. Peter had denied Jesus publicly; Jesus gives him the opportunity to confess him publicly. There’s no way reliving this wasn’t painful for Jesus, but it’s what Peter needs, so on Jesus goes. It’s Peter’s rehabilitation, Peter’s re-inclusion into this “kingdom and priests serving our God.” And the expression of Peter’s love? “Feed my sheep.”

Parenthetically, this scene with Peter makes me wonder about Judas. How much difference was there between Peter and Judas? As the Gospels tell the story, I wonder if the most important difference wasn’t that Judas’ suicide closed off other possible endings. Too easy to forget that we aren’t the ones worthy to open the scroll—even of our own lives. We may strive to make faithful decisions, but there’s no encouragement in Scripture to assume we know how things will or should play out.

Having said that, in Peter’s case there is a preview in the final verses: “’Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.)”

As I said earlier, the Lord assuming human flesh shifts everything. The psalmist assumed no profit in my blood, if I go down to the Pit. After Holy Week, with the Lion/Lamb opening the scroll, even our deaths can serve God, can glorify God. So at Burial the liturgical color is white and we confess “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

But, returning to the Gospel, the last word in this scene isn’t the preview, but the simple command “Follow me.” The Lion of the tribe of Judah, a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered: that’s the One Peter follows, the one we follow. The bad news, if you like, is that suffering, “letting go of an absolute hold on one’s own desire/place/privilege/interest in order to respond to the needs of others” is integral to that following. The good news is that with the Lord assuming human flesh, the joy and glory celebrated in the psalm aren’t for later, but for now. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Readings

Today’s Gospel reading narrates three different scenes; let’s take them one by one.

In the first, Easter evening (vv.19-23), Jesus appears to the disciples. (In this Gospel he had previously appeared only to Mary Magdalene.) It’s this Gospel’s version of both Matthew’s Great Commission and Luke’s Day of Pentecost, with a replay of the Garden of Eden! As in Genesis 2, “he breathed on them;” Creation 2.0 starts here. He sends them out—as he himself was sent—with the authority to forgive sins. It rather looks like Jesus has completed the hand-off and has no reason to show up again.

The second scene covers the following week (vv.24-25): an entire week in which almost all the disciples are rejoicing and Thomas, who wasn’t present when Jesus appeared, is demanding some evidence. Thomas, channeling Eeyore, and the others channeling Tigger. Those would have been some interesting conversations (arguments?).

The third scene, the following Sunday (vv.26-31). Two extraordinary elements to notice: Jesus shows up again, and Thomas is present. Let’s take the second one first. After a full week of “Jesus is risen!” vs. “Where’s the evidence?” Thomas is still present. We Christians divide over so many issues, and whether Jesus is alive or dead sounds like it’s on the serious end of the scale. Looks like Jesus’ “Receive the Holy Spirit” had some effect! And notice how much might have been lost had they divided: would Thomas have encountered the risen Christ? Would the other disciples have heard Thomas’ decisive confession that gave them—and us—these crucial words: “My Lord and my God!”? But there they are, together.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall to have overheard that week’s conversations. Judging by Paul’s letters I’d guess something like the following was going on. The ten disciples were in a position of strength: they were the clear majority, and they’d seen Jesus. Thomas was in the obviously weak position. But the ten use their strength for Thomas. As Luke Timothy Johnson puts it re 2 Corinthians “’Life for others’ demands not overt displays of power (“OK, Thomas, shape up or ship out!”) but the willingness to be exposed and vulnerable, ‘foolish’ and ‘sinful’ and ‘weak’ in the eyes of others” (Interpreting Paul p.155). Or, as Jesus had put it “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Matt. 23:11).

Jesus—yes, that other extraordinary element—Jesus shows up, apparently specifically for Thomas. I wonder about that. “I will not believe” Thomas had said, and ‘believe’ is a word—an action—that’s really important particularly in this Gospel. So it’s lights out for Thomas? Is it Jesus’ love that’s at work here (“does [the shepherd] not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?”)? Is it the disciples’ tenacity, enacting—in a loose sense— “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them”? A combination of both? In any case, Jesus shows up.

At the end of the conversation with Thomas: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Well, how does one come to believe? The text offers, I think, two complementary answers. The first is in the following verses: “But these are written [in this book] so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.” There’s a reason our Gospel book is encased in gold and receives special honor: God uses it to awaken and nourish our faith.

Let me digress briefly here. While God has many ways of speaking to us (that would be another sermon!), in the cumulative experience of the people of God Scripture is central. And it’s never been more accessible: various apps for our smartphones let us read the Daily Office without having to flip any pages (like the Daily Office from Mission St. Clare) or listen to texts (like WordProject). We take in information from sources of such varied reliability during the day; what space do we allocate to Scripture in that mix? But, you say, these days the Scripture might as well be in Cantonese. Well, that’s not a new problem; corner a priest to explore ways to work around it.

The second answer to how we come to believe is in the whole story we’ve heard: guided by the Holy Spirit, the community has used this authority to forgive sins in a way that’s live-giving, so that Thomas is still around when Jesus shows up. This authority: we know that it can be used destructively, used in ways that has anyone with half a brain looking for the nearest exit. Here the text has shown us how it’s used well. Our choices make it easier or harder for those around us to believe. God wants us, I think, to pay attention to that.

Back on Maundy Thursday: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” I doubt that the disciples could have guessed where that would need to kick in. A week of “Jesus is risen!” vs. “Where’s the evidence?” But after that week they were still together, and together encountered the risen Christ. May we go and do likewise.

Readings [Isaiah, Acts, Luke]

Alleluia. Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

How do we celebrate Easter? That’s the question that brought the preacher up short looking at today’s lessons. Let’s wonder together.

That we need new heavens and a new earth is painfully obvious, Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine being simply the latest reminder. “No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.… They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.” In my years working for World Vision I was constantly reminded how simple this vision is, and how difficult to attain for so many of the world’s people. Build houses, plant vineyards—and then some guy from the capital drives up with a piece of paper that says it’s all his, not yours. So simple, but attaining it, nothing less than “new heavens and a new earth.”

How do we get from here to there? That’s the question to which Easter is the answer.

The same stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.

How do we celebrate Easter? We acknowledge how badly we need new heavens and a new earth.

How do we get from here to there? Consider the second reading from Acts.

Here’s Peter the Jew in the home of Cornelius the Roman centurion, something like a Ukrainian in the home of a Russian Captain. It took a heavenly vision to get Peter there, but that’s for another sermon. What’s astonishing is what doesn’t happen: Peter doesn’t unload on Cornelius, Peter and his friends don’t try to slip various interesting toxins into Cornelius’ kitchen. He describes Jesus’ activity: “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.” When he gets to Good Friday, he passes on the opportunity to talk about Pilate, the Roman hospitality, the Roman cross and nails. “But God raised him on the third day… everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” From the context it’s clear that forgiveness of sins includes forgiving others’ sins. If the story is about the conversion of Cornelius, it’s first about the conversion of Peter. Breaking the cycles of violence, recrimination, payback: looks like that’s core to getting from here to there.

How do we celebrate Easter? After the Acts reading there’s some logic in standing next to Peter and renewing our commitment to our continual conversion.

What about our Gospel reading? The thing about Good Friday is that that’s the world we know. That’s what happens to good people: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., too many civilians in the Ukraine. Not easy to believe that that world can be cracked open. “Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” The apostles. Being slow on the uptake is apostolic. I find that encouraging.

How can we believe that God can crack this familiar world open? The text points us in two directions: “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Remember! We’re really good at forgetting, forgetting what Jesus said, what Jesus did. Remember: God’s cracking this familiar world open: that’s not been a short-term project, that’s why the Bible is a big book. Second, “Peter got up and ran to the tomb…” He gets up, doesn’t assume he already has all the information he needs. The older I get the easier it is to assume that I have all the information I need. I don’t.

How do we celebrate Easter? We might try listening to the women more often, and, with them, various other voices regularly ignored.

How do we celebrate Easter? Not—with all due respect to Madison Avenue—by cueing up “Happy days are here again.” There are still too many people driven from their homes and vineyards, still too many thriving oppressors, and at least some of us thinking some days of the week that payback still sounds like a really good idea. Jesus’ resurrection “an idle tale”? That would be so much simpler.

So, in the name of the Church, simpler is overrated. Christ is risen. Those cracks in our world: that’s how the light gets in. Let’s see together where that risen Christ would lead us.

Readings

One of things I treasure about our tradition is that on our High Holy Days our liturgies pretty much preach themselves. They carry us; we can relax into them.

With some exceptions, and today I’ll use the sermon slot to focus on one of them. Toward the end of the service there’s the Veneration of the Cross. What do we do with that?

There may be, I suppose, parishes in which everyone comes forward, and there the pastoral advice would be to resist group pressure. Don’t worry about what they’ll think of you if you don’t come forward. I’m told that’s not the problem here.

So what do we do with it? There are many possible answers. Here are a few; perhaps they’ll spark better ones.

Some of us are carrying burdens, some out of faithfulness, some because of the cards dealt. We might come to the cross for company. Jesus is no stranger to heavy burdens. As the Lord put it in Isaiah, “even to your old age I am he, / even when you turn gray I will carry you. / I have made, and I will bear; / I will carry and will save.”

Some of us: the language of 1928/Rite I comes too easily (“there is no health in us…miserable offenders;” “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy table”). We might come to the cross to hear—as clearly as Jesus can say it—you are worth it. Jesus: “If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?”

Some of us carry some anger at God’s choices that seem to bring on apparently unnecessary suffering for God or us. We might come to the cross to remind God that we’re still here, that the anger is still here, even if we have no idea how the conversation can productively go forward. From Isaiah again: “Come now, let us argue it out, / says the Lord.”

Some of us: there are no words to adequately express the gratitude we sometimes feel. We might come to the cross to say—with our body—thank you. We come up every week to receive Jesus’ Body and Blood; this time to say thank you. Jesus, the New Temple: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, / and his courts with praise.”

Some of us: well, as the years have gone by we’re more puzzled than we used to be, and not obviously in a good way. There’s something good here—that’s why we’re here—but bringing it into focus… We might come to the cross to say something like “Jesus, I’m not sure why you’re there, what it’s all about. But I’m here.” From Luke’s Passion narrative that we heard last Sunday: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

As I said, many possible answers. There’s no obligation, but perhaps the Veneration can be a means of expressing something important in your heart.

Readings (With the 1 Corinthians reading extended to this)

Getting Israel out of Egypt is half the battle; the other half is getting Egypt out of Israel. The Maundy Thursday readings, with their Passover setting, invite us to contemplate that.

Getting Israel out of Egypt: The first reading tells of the institution of the Passover, a feast the Jews have celebrated every year since that night in Egypt.

Each family was to select an unblemished lamb, the Passover lamb, and to kill it at twilight. Some of the blood went on the doorposts and the lintel of the house and the lamb was eaten, with the family prepared to leave at any moment. That very night God would pass through the land, and Pharaoh would finally let the people go.

Until Jesus’ arrival, no other night was of such importance in the world’s history, for it was one of the defining actions of the true God, announcing that God desires not the obedience of slaves, but rather of free sons and daughters. In our country, African American slaves heard in this story God’s passion for their own freedom.

And every year since the Exodus the Jews have continued to celebrate the Passover to remember their liberation and —often— to reaffirm their confidence in God’s power to free them again from new oppressors.

As the Gospels tell us, Jesus. the night before his death, celebrated the Passover with his disciples and reinterpreted its meaning. The meal had used bread and wine to celebrate the liberation from Egypt; Jesus reinterpreted the bread and wine in terms of his coming self-offering: this is my body; this is my blood.

Every Sunday when we celebrate the Eucharist, when we say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” we are remembering this definitive reinterpretation. And to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” reminds us of how deeply God desires our liberty, and what God was willing to pay to achieve it. God desires that we be free from both our exterior and interior oppressors, free—in the language of our Gospel reading—to love.

Getting Egypt, that is, getting the enslaving seeking and maintenance of status, out of Israel turns out to be at least as hard. It’s the focus of our New Testament readings. In Luke’s account of the Last Supper even that night the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest. So Jesus tries to get at it by washing the disciples’ feet. It horrifies Peter, not so much (I think) that Jesus is washing his feet, as that Peter has already figured out where Jesus is going to take this: “if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Our Prayer Book encourages—but does not demand—a reenactment of the foot washing. These days it’s problematic; we’re not doing it tonight; perhaps you’ll do it next year. But the reenactment is less important than its point: a love that is oriented not by my comfort level or preferences, but by the needs of my brother or sister. Love oriented by my comfort level or preferences: that lets Egypt in through the back door. Love oriented by the needs of my brother or sister: that’s the liberty for which Moses struggled and Jesus died.

This business of washing each other’s feet—metaphorically speaking—shows up in that paragraph from Paul’s letter from which our reading was taken. The Lectionary assigns vv.23-26, in which Paul recounts Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist. But why recount it? For that we need the surrounding context. In those days—also at Corinth—we often celebrated the Eucharist as part of a dinner. But what happened, what scandalized Paul, was that each family ate and drank from their own basket. The rich, baskets to go from one of the upscale restaurants; the poor, whatever they could find at a local food pantry. Egypt has not only entered through the back door; Egypt is running the place! So Paul recounts the institution to remind them that the Eucharist is about a New Covenant, a life given for others, so that celebrating the Eucharist selfishly and as though it’s “business as usual” badly misses the point.

Notice how Paul unpacks this. “For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” Notice: “the body” isn’t the Eucharistic bread; it’s the living Body of Christ composed of the brothers and sisters gathered around a common table but not —alas— around a common basket. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner…” “In an unworthy manner” is not about whether I’ve properly confessed before Mass, or whether I have the right sacramental theology, but about whether I’m showing love to my Christian brothers and sisters.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Washing each others’ feet, celebrating the Eucharist in a way that takes Jesus’ Body seriously: two first Century examples of where Jesus’ new commandment needs to kick in, given to us to get us wondering where that new commandment needs to kick in here and now.

Getting Israel out of Egypt: that’s God’s “yes” to our freedom, celebrated in the Passover and transposed—put on steroids—for all people in Jesus’ death as celebrated in the Holy Eucharist. Getting Egypt out of Israel, living freely: that turns out to be an ongoing project. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” May some of Jesus’ passion for our freedom rub off on us.

Habrá varias oportunidades de contemplar los eventos de Semana Santa en la semana entrante. Buena cosa, porque hay mucho de contemplar.

Hoy me llaman la atención dos elementos. Primero, los gritos del pueblo:

¡Que muera este hombre! Déjanos libre a Barrabás.

¡Crucifícalo, crucifícalo!

Como nos enseña la liturgia, es nuestro grito. Basta con la mentira “¡Es el grito de los judíos!” Es el grito del pueblo de Dios. Y esto es importante en nuestro contexto tan polarizado, donde es tan fácil suponer que la maldad habita entre ellos. Nosotros los justos, ellos…

Y—entre paréntesis—Jesús anticipa este error:

Señor, yo estoy dispuesto a ir contigo a la cárcel y a la muerte.

Te digo, Pedro, que hoy antes de que cante el gallo habrás negado tres veces que me conoces.

Por la gracia del Señor nuestras historias no terminan aquí. Sin embargo, creo que es bien importante recordar este “Crucifícalo,” reconocer nuestra solidaridad hasta con nuestros enemigos.

Segundo, este “Padre, perdónalos, porque no saben lo que hacen.” La consecuencia, la integridad de Jesús es francamente temible. Antes, en una situación más calma: “Perdónanos nuestros pecados, porque también nosotros perdonamos a todos los que nos han hecho mal.” Y aquí está. Pero, ¡ojo! No dice “Les perdono yo a Ustedes¨ sino “Padre, perdónalos. ¨ Quizá en este momento no es capaz de perdonar, pero hace lo que puede: ¨Padre, perdónalos. ¨

Tenemos enemigos. A veces nos no es posible perdonar. ¿Quizá podemos orar por ellos? Me ayuda mucho el rezo en nuestro LOC:

Oh Dios y Padre de todos, cuyo Hijo nos mandó amar a nuestros enemigos: Guíanos a nosotros y a ellos del prejuicio a la verdad; líbranos del odio, la crueldad y la venganza; y, a tu debido tiempo, capacítanos para llegar reconciliados a tu presencia; por Jesucristo nuestro Señor. Amén.

Cómo dije, hay tanto que contemplar esta semana. En el centro, Jesucristo, quien, en las palabras de la Gran Plegaria “Extendió sus brazos sobre la cruz y se ofreció en obediencia a tu voluntad, un sacrificio perfecto por todo el mundo.” Y precisamente este Jesús estando en el centro me impulsa ver parte de mi carácter (“Crucifícalo”), y parte de mi vocación como su seguidor (“Perdónanos nuestros pecados, porque también nosotros perdonamos a todos los que nos han hecho mal.”). Y cuando no puedo perdonar, por lo menos puedo—debo—orar.

Readings

What a table today’s readings set! Let’s notice, briefly, a couple of the entrees before moving to Jesus’ parable.

Toward the end of Revelation John hears this from the throne: “See, I am making all things new” (21:5). All things new: not a bad heading for our readings from Joshua and 2^nd Corinthians. Joshua: the transition from the wilderness to the promised land, with the celebration of Passover making a fitting bookend with the first Passover on the night of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. 2^nd Corinthians: “everything has become new!”

‘New’ has mostly positive connotations in our culture. Ironically, the opposite is true for ‘change’. “How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?” “CHANGE???” We like ‘new’, we dislike ‘change’, and that makes most areas of our life more complicated than necessary. Minimally, it might help to recognize that the change to which God invites us in Lent is in service of achieving the new.

Repentance. Our psalm highlights its importance. When we set the psalm next to Jesus’ parable two things become, I think, evident. First, first while repentance is necessary, the decisive element is God’s/the Father’s character. All the repentance we could muster wouldn’t do any good unless our Father were disposed to run to it. That repentance is necessary, consider what would have happened had the younger son gone to the distant country, made a killing, and swaggered back: “Dad, this place is really a dump; let me help you out.” That would have required a different response from the father.

Second, our prejudices can make it really hard for us to recognize who needs to repent. That, ironically, is baked into the traditional title for the parable, “The Prodigal Son,” for even a cursory reading reveals that it’s the older son who needs to repent. But no: put them in a line-up and we predictably point to the younger son as the one needing repentance. And this despite Luke’s stage-setting: “all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling.” Anyhow, if we’re looking for an opportunity midst the solemnity of Lent to take ourselves less seriously, here’s an opportunity.

Jesus’ parable. This morning I’m hearing the parable in the company of Ken Bailey and George Caird. Ken Bailey’s Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes helps me hear the parable more clearly. “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” In that culture, hard to think of more insulting words, for property is divided after the owner’s death, so that the son’s request says, essentially, you’re of more value to me dead than alive. And later in the parable: “his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran…” Middle Eastern fathers don’t run. In a pinch one might walk sedately, but, more appropriately, remain unmoved as the lower-status party approaches. How this father humbles himself, and doesn’t seem to mind a bit!

The father in the parable is one of Jesus’ clearest pictures of our heavenly Father. And it’s worth noticing that Jesus here is simply echoing his Scripture’s (our Old Testament’s) pictures. Some of us have been reading Isaiah in these weeks; here are two quick excerpts from the divine speeches:

You have not bought me sweet cane with money,
or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices.
But you have burdened me with your sins;
you have wearied me with your iniquities. (Isa. 43:24)

Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from your birth,
carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
even when you turn gray I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save. (Isa. 46:3-4)

As today’s psalm ends:

Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord;
shout for joy, all who are true of heart.

And what is it to be “righteous” or “true of heart” if not to be increasingly recognizing and reflecting God’s character? I’ve snuck a couple ideas into that question: here they are; see what you think of them. First, “increasingly recognizing and reflecting:” “righteous” and “true of heart” don’t do well standing still. They involve growth, newness, even the c-word (‘change’). Second, “righteous” and “true of heart” are relational, depending on our relationship with the Lord. Without that relationship, strange things can happen. Which brings us to the older brother.

We naturally feel some sympathy for the older brother. After the division of the property in a sense it’s his fattened calf that’s being served. And yet, oddly enough, the figure the older brother most closely resembles is the accuser, the satan. That demands, I think, a bit of a digression.

We first meet the Adversary (‘satan’ is simply a transcription of that Hebrew word) at the beginning of Job. It’s a good guess that he’s patterned after the agent provocateur in the Persian court whose role was to sniff out disloyalty before it became dangerous. He plays a similar role in one of Zechariah’s visions: “Then he showed me the high priest Joshua [dressed, we learn, in filthy cloths] standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him” (3:1). He’s all about justice. Here’s George Caird in his New Testament Theology:

Yet even at this early stage of his history we can see where his one-sided emphasis on justice is to lead him. In both stories he is found arguing against God, whose holiness he is so anxious to defend. It cannot be said of him that he does not will the death of sinners, or that he is hoping that they would turn from their wickedness and live. He is a rigorous legalist, a prosecuting attorney, who must have a conviction, and who is satisfied only with a capital sentence. If the evidence does not give him a good case, he is prepared to manufacture new evidence by provoking Job into mortal sin.

And like the Adversary the older brother wants justice, and this single-minded focus turns him against the father.

What if Caird’s description governed our use of words like ‘diabolical’ or ‘satanic’—the single-minded pursuit of justice without compassion?

We imagine the Adversary encouraging people to do bad things, and that’s true enough. The Bible’s portrayals might encourage us to imagine him spending as much time saying things like “If you did that you can’t be worth much!” or “That person/that group doesn’t deserve compassion,” that is, channeling the older brother.

I wonder if the Bible doesn’t talk about the Adversary also to help us bring God’s character into focus. Justice is important to God, but not at the expense of compassion. The psalmist is counting on that! Gustavo Gutiérrez gets it right: “The world of retribution—and not of temporal retribution only—is not where God dwells; at most God visits it.” And one important reason that the Bible repeatedly says “Fear not” and “Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord” is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not this Adversary.

We Christians use the word ‘God’ a lot. But what images accompany that word? Today’s parable invites us to let Jesus’ image of God sink deep into our imaginations.