Highlights from the HTB Leadership Conference

The Team at the HTB Leadership Conference

HTB Leadership Conference

Tory is at the Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) Leader Conference this week. To see what is happening at the conference, click here.

Parable of Lostness, part two

The Parable of Lostness – Luke 15 (part two)

Jesus tells “this” parable in response to disgruntled religious leaders who disapprove of Jesus’ habits of hospitality (Luke 15:1-2).  This is the third of four parables in the travelogue that deals with the subject.  In this particular parable, Jesus’ table fellowship with the lost is compared to a shepherd pursuing lost sheep,  to a woman seeking a lost coin and a Father waiting and looking for a lost son.  This third object of Lostness is the climax of the parable.  With each movement the object lost is both more precious and the risks are higher.  The shepherd loses one in a hundred sheep.  The woman loses one in ten coins.  The Father loses one in two sons.  With each movement of the parable we must remember that Jesus is indirectly defending his table fellowship.  In effect, he is saying “this is my justification for eating with tax collector’s and sinners.”

The first two movements are designed to get “buy in.”  A good shepherd and as wise woman are common motifs in scriptures and common features in Jewish society.  When Jesus tells the story of two brothers – a younger that rebels and an older that stays obedient at home – he is likewise drawing a deep biblical tradition.  The Bible – especially Genesis – is chock full of sibling rivalries between younger and older brothers.  And this is the story Jesus’ tells.  

In brief, the younger brother takes the inheritance, not entirely legally, and departs for the “far country.”  Haven basically disowned his family; he does not have the wherewithal to remain true to himself.  Jesus paints the most outrageous situation for a Jewish boy and then places this fictional creation in it.  He has descended to slopping hogs.  When the audience can’t imagine it getting worse, he ends with this description of his descent: “And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything” (15:16).  

At this point, Jesus tells us that the boy “comes to himself” and decides to return home to be a servant in his father’s house.   At this point, Jesus describes, with great detail, the reconciliation that ensues.  The father seeing the son at great distance and overcome with compassion “ran and embraced him and kissed him.”  These three verbs in sequence occur only one other time in scripture.  They appear in another story of reconciliation involving a younger and older brother and their father.   We know that Jesus is a master story teller.  What we are learning is that the story he tells is invariably Israel’s story.  Jesus’ retelling Israel her story is designed to show her how Jesus himself is fulfilling this story in his own mission.  This parable of the two sons and waiting father happens to be Israel’s founding story.  It is the story where Jacob’s name is changed to Israel (“he who struggles with God”).  The main difference in this founding story is that it is the older brother who runs to the prodigal who has taken his inheritance and “embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept” (Gen. 33:4).   See chart: 

Luke 15:20 – Role of Father/Jesus/Older Son    Genesis 33:4 – Role of Esau/Older Son

Ran	Ran to meet him
and embraced him	and embraced him
and kissed him	and fell on his neck and kissed him
	and they wept

In Jesus’ retelling of Israel’s founding story the altered details are very important.  The older brother is the agent of reconciliation in the original story not the Father.  The younger brother is not industrious like Jacob is in the original story and he is an altogether less endearing character.  Why does Jesus alter these details in the retelling?  He is retelling to the audience identified in 15:1-2 – a bunch of “older brothers” – who disapprove of Jesus’ embracing the younger brothers who have wasted the themselves in the “far country” (15:13).  In addition, Jesus is identifying himself with the Father in the parable.  First, because he is the one actually having table fellowship with “tax collectors and sinners” but also because it is his purpose to be about his “father’s business” (Luke 2:49).  When challenged by the religious leaders for welcoming tax collectors and sinners, Jesus answers indirectly through this founding story subtext:

this is what older sons’ should do.  They forgive and reconcile with estranged brothers.  And thank God Esau treated Jacob this way or none of us would be here today.  We are a nation of “younger brothers” who went out to the “far country” under a cloud but when we returned home we were forgiven by the older brother we sinned against. Israel is nation of “older brothers” who have forgotten their origins as “younger brothers.”  If you had not forgotten your origins you would be welcoming these sinners just as I am – for they are your estranged brothers.

Heresy and Church Unity

Here is the money quote from a review of Ephraim Radner's new book, Brutal Unity.

He doesn’t want to delete “heresy” from Christian discourse. As I understand him, he follows very strictly Jesus’ instructions concerning discipline. Sinners and false teachers who refuse to listen to the Church become “Gentiles and tax collectors.” But then Radner wants us to remember that Jesus lived among tax gatherers and sinners, and he calls his disciples to follow. Correct the false teacher, but then pursue him so that he can be restored to brotherhood. What the Church cannot do, if she is following Jesus, is set heretics out and then rest content with the unity that remains.

If this quote pique's your interest, you can find the rest of the review here:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/04/figuring-reunion

Through the Bible, Week 35 - Parable of Lostness (part one)

Parable of Lostness – Luke 15 (part one)

Jesus has just finished two parables that address the subject of hospitality – how to show it and receive it (14:7-24).  In chapter 15, Jesus is practicing what he preaches and it gets him into trouble with the religious leaders who grumble “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (15:2). 

In response to the hostility Jesus tells another “sideways” story.  It is important that this is one (not three parables).  Luke specifically says Jesus to them “this” parable.  It is one parable with at least three movements.  How can we be sure?  Each movement has a common theme (something is lost), common refrain (something (or someone) was lost and is now found, come rejoice with the finder of the lost) and a common development (the stakes keep getting higher).  The third movement is the climactic one, where the younger son is lost by the Father and ultimately found.  Each of the these movements paint a picture of God the Father who is the one who seeks the lost:  the shepherd, the woman and the Father.  How do the first two movements – a lost sheep and lost coins – function with this larger whole? 

Lost Sheep

Jesus tells a story of a shepherd who loses one in one hundred sheep.  He is a good shepherd so he leaves the ninety and nine to pursue the one lost one.  In a shepherding culture this would not be an unfamiliar sight or story.  Jesus is drawing on both common experience and a strong biblical motif, as the following chart illustrates (based on a chart by Ken Bailey): 

David (Psalm 23)          Jeremiah (Jer.23:1-8)        Ezekiel (Ezek. 34:1-31)    Jesus (Luke 15:4-7)

-----------------	Bad Shepherd	Bad Shepherd	Bad/Good Shepherd
Lost Sheep	Lost flock	Lost Flock	Lost Sheep
Problem: A sheep is lost	Problem: shepherds destroy & scatter sheep	Problem: shepherds scatter & eat sheep	Problem: shepherd loses a sheep
Good Shepherd: God	Good Shepherd: God + David	Good Shepherd: God + David	Good Shepherd:  Jesus
Incarnation implied	Incarnation promised	Incarnation promised	Incarnation implied
Price paid: bring back	Price paid: Gather, bring back	Price paid: Search for, save, deliver, bring back	Price paid: search for, find, carry back
Repentance: return to God	Restoration: Return to Land	Restoration: Return to Land	Repentance: Return to God
-----------------	-------------------	Bad Sheep	Bad Sheep?
Celebration	-------------------	-------------------	Celebration
Story ends in the house	Story ends in the land	Story ends in the land	Story ends in the house

A Semitic metaphor for God is set in a classical Jewish story reshaped by Jesus. Jesus is placing himself in the form of God in accordance with Biblical imagery and biblical themes. (BTW, this teaching is another reason, among many, I believe Jesus is the origins of the early Church’s high Christology).  Remember the audience (15: 2).  Jesus is talking to the shepherds of Israel and indirectly blaming them for losing the sheep he is now finding.  They may or may not have gotten that reference.  They are in complete denial about being “bad” shepherds.  They are convinced Jesus is.  So Jesus ups the ante with two more stories. 

Lost Coin

In the first movement something of value is lost: one sheep.  More precisely, one in a hundred sheep is lost.  The contrast between Jesus and Israel’s bad shepherds may or may not have been taken.  So Jesus now moves to something of more value and more rare (a drachma represent a day’s wage and there are only 10).  So we have a coin representing the value of more than one sheep and there are only 10.  The stakes have gone from 1/100 to 1/10.  And by moving from a shepherd as the “God figure” to a woman as the “God figure” Jesus is upping the ante in terms of his metaphorical theology. 

Throughout the Gospels (and especially in Luke), Jesus is elevating the status of women, even calling them to be part of his band of disciples (cf. Luke 8:1-3).  But now he goes farther and uses a woman to play the role of God in his parable of Lostness.  There is much that can be said about this, but in terms of Luke 15 it plays a preparatory role as we prepare to meet God in this third and most important metaphor of “the Father.”   Indeed, according to Jesus’ use of the language, “Father” is more than a metaphor.  And Jesus uses the metaphor of shepherd and woman to expand and re-shape our understanding of how he understands and relates to his (and eventually our) heavenly Father.  Since earthly fathers – even the best of them – are pale echoes of the heavenly father, Jesus must reshape our earthly categories so that we don’t project erroneous understandings upon that nature of God. 

Through the Bible, Week 34 - The Good Samaritan

The Macro-setting of this parable is the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, in and around Samaria (Luke 9-19).  The micro-setting is Jesus being questioned by a legal scholar about Torah (10:25-37).  It was the job of legal scholars - "lawyers" - to test the knowledge of itinerant rabbis to see if they were faithful to the Bible.  Jesus passes each of these tests and with each "pass" our trust in him deepens.  

This particular episode is of paramount importance because Jesus goes to the heart of the Torah as defined by “neighbor love” (Lev 19:18, 34 and Deut. 6:5) and then exegetes another story which illustrates a normative form of “neighbor love” which Jesus then uses to define “neighbor” in the most generous terms (2 Chronicles 28:5-15).  These interpretative moves happen in two sets of dialogues.  To see how the parable functions as an answer to the second series of questions and as an elucidation of the first series of questions in the larger dialogue, it is helpful to chart the dialogue between Jesus and his theological interlocutor.  

First Dialogue:  And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying,

“Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”	Lawyer: Question 1
He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”	Jesus: Question 2
And he answered “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”	Lawyer: Answer to 2
And he said to him, “you have answered right; do this, and you shall live.”	Jesus: Answer to 1

Second Dialogue: He, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus,

“And who is my neighbor?”	Lawyer: Question 3
Jesus replied, “A certain main went down from Jerusalem to Jericho…” Which of these three became a neighbor?”	Jesus: Question 4 (in the form of a parable - a metaphorical & theological "retelling" of 2 Chronicles 28:5-15)
Lawyer: “The one who showed him mercy.”	Lawyer: Answer to 4
Jesus said: “You go and do likewise.”	Jesus: Answer to 3

It is important to see this parable as part of a larger dialogue whereby the lawyer seeks to figure out what he must “do” in order to inherit eternal life.  The question of who is “one’s neighbor” is subsidiary to the prior question of eternal life, but an answer to the later informs the former.  Yet, because the lawyer is seeking to “justify himself” (for apparently not doing this command), Jesus answers the follow up question indirectly in the form of a parable.   The parable itself is an exposition of an OT story about neighborliness.  According to Leviticus 19, which the lawyer quotes, a neighbor is either an Israelite or resident alien.  But the story of 2 Chronicles 28 expands our understanding of neighbor by showing how the Jews’ ancient enemies (and half brothers) the Samaritans treated them with mercy…even providing intimate details of putting them on donkeys and transporting them to Jericho to be cared for.  Jesus takes a significant (but largely forgotten) episode in Israel’s history and brings it into immediate consciousness in the form of this parable.  This lawyer should be glad his definition of neighborliness was not what his ancestors received.  The ancestors to the Samaritans were not busy “defining” neighbor but rather acted as a neighbor - with mercy – to their estranged brother Israelite to the south of them.  

There are several reasons this parable works so well at answering the lawyer's questions beyond its arresting allusion to this foundational story of neighborliness.  One way people identified kinship in a highly stratified society was through dress and speech.  If you were a northerner, you often would dress different and talk with an accent.  But in this story, Jesus has rendered the man beaten, unconscious, and left naked.  The usual identification markers - accent and dress -  are eliminated.  The question “who is my neighbor” is no longer relevant in this instance.  One must find other criteria for neighborliness – and Jesus offers another through his subversive retelling of the original Good Samaritan story in 2 Chronicles 28.  By way of Jesus teaching, the new criterion is “showing mercy” to those in need and his concluding comment is for the lawyer to “do likewise.” 

This is an example of metaphorical theology.  Jesus is telling his interlocutor that the path way to eternal life is paved by mercy – God’s mercy to us first of all and then our reciprocation of mercy to those in need.  This is not only a theme in Luke’s gospel (cf. 1:50, 72) but also Paul’s (1 Cor 7:25 and Eph 2:4) and Peter’s (1 Peter 2:10).  Mercy is the wellspring of grace and the precondition to receiving grace. For the condemned grace is experienced as mercy.  God's grace is every where but the unmerciful don't see it and don't receive it. Mercy is the antidote to this delusion.  "Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy" (Matt 5:7). 

The parable of the Good Samaritan is the first parable told in Jesus’ Samaritan travelogue.  Because it addresses the wellspring of salvation (“what must I do to inherit eternal life”) as well as corrects a misunderstanding of ministry to outsiders and deviants (“who is my neighbor?”) this parable is programmatic of his Samaritan ministry, not merely ad hoc.  That is, as he makes his journey to Jerusalem we will see Jesus expanding the normal definition of "neighbor" and thus extending the parameters of "hospitality" as practiced by fellow Jews.   We will see him engaging, befriending and practicing hospitality with the most unlikely of characters - tax collectors, lepers, and the like.