LUKE-ACTS #1: an anthology of repentance (turning toward & within the house)

i recall, almost as if it were yesterday, my first holiness conference at wesley biblical seminary. on the first morning of that event, pres. Ron Smith was giving the devotional from Luke 15 on the prodigal son. there's no telling how many times i've re-listened to that message since 2001. it's hard to get over something that so reorients one's attention. a mutual friend of ours once said - and i think correctly - "pres." has the ability to make those listening raise their heads: first, you never want to miss what he's saying, but simultaneously, when you hear him preach heads raise with the hope of the Gospel. that was the way of his "devotional" that morning. it continues to linger, to press in ...even nine years later now.

he led us through what he called an "anthology of grace" that he saw intertwined within those verses. they, of course, highlight a Father in grief over the loss of a son, but the beauty of that same Father who takes the posture of one on the lookout for that son's return, and in the end only wants his children to know that everything in his house is available to them ("all that is mine is yours").

i should have known it was going to be a heavy morning when what he said before he even began preaching hit me. he started by saying something to the effect that there are passages so sacred within God's story and so widely shared that it's hard for a mortal tongue to broach such immortal subjects - there was a genuine humility about it all. that's where i'm at as i write. this semester - because my greek was deemed to not to intermediate - i'm taking a course on the Luke-Acts corpus. it's been good and so i've decided to share a few things with you here and there. hopefully they will probe a bit.

now, you should know two things. first, for the first installment of what may be the only one, i am going to enter into Luke 15 with a view toward the wider context. but second, even more of a concern than tinkering in such profound stories, i'm all the more uneasy because when i brought up the following thoughts in class, my prof. liked it but quickly said "i'd be careful there though, you might be allegorizing"...which in seminary-speak is a nice way to say, "good thoughts, but i think you're making it up." nobody wants to be an allegorist!

so, on that note, let's commence.

first off let's set the context up a bit - which is important to stymie the thoughts that i'm inappropriately "tinkering" or allegorizing just to be provocative. the chapter begins with Jesus eating with the tax collectors and sinners. the pharisees, as they all too often do, have issue with such ill-religious behavior. now keep in mind, back in the day, they probably weren't eating at the local applebees, if you know what i'm saying. eating was an important event in Jesus' time and generally happened in a home. admittedly, the text doesn't say it specifically but it wouldn't be out of line to presume Jesus and all the bad people (that was kind of a joke about the sinners and tax collectors) are eating in somebody's house.

...and the pharisees are grumbling.

so Jesus responds to this grumbling with three stories: one about sheep in the wilderness; one about coins in a home; and the other about two sons, a homecoming, some more grumbling, and the father.

you may be wondering why i have highlighted "grumbling" and "wilderness" above. do you think it is a coincidence that these aren't the first folks we find in Scripture grumbling in a wilderness land? we know how that turned out...the israelites who grumbled in the wilderness, died there. could it be that Luke is using some loaded imagery in these verses?

this is important to keep in mind because most english translations will talk of the pharisees "grumbling" but when they talk about the 99 sheep they leave them in an "open pasture" or in the "open country"...not in the desert. now, before you go accusing me of some "you should go learn greek" mantra, that's not what i'm getting at. in fact, the new living translation does use the term "wilderness." so while this isn't a plea for anybody to go learn greek (apparently, after a number of years learning it, i don't know it), it is a subtle encouragement to read different translations as you study.

anyway, back to the story. so we have the pharisees grumbling, Jesus responding, and 99 sheep roaming. once you get the grumbling-wilderness imagery in mind, some things start coming together...at least they did for me. for instance, maybe i'm slow, but it never dawned on me that the 99 might have been left in the wilderness. let that sink in a little bit. we are never told that the shepherd goes back to the 99. the one that he pursued and found, he carried home...

once the shepherd and the one get to the house, we bump into a recurring scene in these stories: "in the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!" i wonder if those "righteous" aren't like the "healthy" who didn't need a doctor (i.e. Luke 5:32)...or thought they didn't. my underlying point is simply this, we are never told that the 1 and 99 were rejoined. could the 99 be out in the wilderness?

building on the story of the 99/1 sheep, Jesus moves to another seemingly similar story, but one that takes place exclusively in a woman's home.

"Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents."

she loses one of her ten coins, turns on the lights, and sweeps the "entire" house "carefully" searching for that which was lost. as i said above, the story begins and ends in the home, something gets lost, and the woman in the story has turned on the spot light. again, the story concludes with Jesus talking about the priority of one person repenting - as though everything in all of creation hangs on this moment of repentance.

finally, we come to what is most likely the most familiar of the three stories. the young son asks for what he feels he is entitled to, heads out to the far country, and makes a mess of things. the rest you know. coming to his senses, he is certain - even if he has to live among the servants, in the servant quarters maybe? - life at his father's house will be better than his current state of affairs. so he sets out for home and is welcome there, in the most full sense of "welcome" one could ever conceive.

if you're anything like me, you've read this story enough to make it say what you want it to say and when you realize it doesn't say what you thought it said you're a little taken aback...almost as if what you thought was there in the text should be there. i could have sworn that the line about more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents occurred one more time. ...but it never comes in this third story. not that its absence is all that important - Jesus has already setup that point - we know that these stories are all about repentance.

but for the first time in reading these stories together, i noticed the role of home life as it relates to repentance, almost as if it's a theme undergirding the whole thing and how this might nuance our understanding. look at all the ways repentance (or lack of) play out in these verses: some get left out in the wilderness. less are carried home on Another's shoulders. some go missing within the house. while Another searches diligently. one leaves, but is welcomed home to a celebration in his honor given by Another. the one that remained in the house didn't get it, but Another was patient.

far too often we think of repentance - maybe in these stories particularly - as a one time event...the moment we come home.

i'm sure many of here us have felt like the prodigal. i know i have. i also know that moment of being pursued in the wilderness of my tragedy, the grace that allowed me to turn toward home, and being welcomed there. this is repentance par excellence.

...but it sure isn't the only kind of repentance. which we sort of know, but just talk about a little differently once we've arrived home.

i'm sure that most of us have also felt a little something like the lost coin in the corner of the house or the older brother who just doesn't get it. what i wonder is if we think of these moments as times for repentance. we may in fact be in a place which necessitates a turning within the house, but miss out on the celebration of being found because we're: 1. too busy grumbling, 2. don't recognize the depth of our lostness, and 3. hey, we're already in the house, so do we really need an encounter with the one who can find us (see the folks left out in the wilderness, in Luke 5 for sure and quite possibly in this chapter too)?!

within the house, it may be an entirely different sort of lostness but there is still something about it that reeks of lostness when it happens - even if it just is a loss of awareness. now it's important to recognize a dastardly subtle gray area between lostness of leaving the house, which necessitates a turn toward home, and a lostness in the house that also necessitates a turning, but one within the house. but that conversation is for another time.

here, if reading these stories together in the way i have is legitimate, it really doesn't matter where you find yourself. we know all too well that if we have wandered away and made a disaster of things, the Father is on the watch and has established a search party for you.

but maybe more pertinent to the few here, if you're in the house and feeling lost or don't even realize that everything in that house is available to you and your ticked off about it, maybe we need to stop acting like these are moments of spiritual self-management. in these times the church is good at thinking the remedy is a better or more consistent devotional life. more prayer. just doing something spiritual...better. but maybe why we haven't experienced the moment of break through we've been longing for is simply because we've missed the reality that this is a time to repent...to recognize that the Father is pursuing us and wanting to reorient us - our minds, our hearts, our souls - within the house.

if i'm reading these stories correctly and we as Christians heed this call to repent, the celebration will be as lively as the moment we first came home!

at home...and probably needing an awareness of that persistent celebration,
-scott|e.