LENT • 4
What Is God Like?
reading for: 23 March
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
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This classic parable of the prodigal son, gives us an opportunity to explore our distorted perception of God and what God is truly like.
Chapter 15 begins with a complaint made by the Pharisees and scribes about Jesus’ willingness to welcome and eat with sinners. It ends with a father’s welcome to his wayward younger son and a plea to the elder son to join his neighbours and his younger brother for a banquet, marking the restoration of proper relations among the members of the family and the wider community. The parable ends with an implicit question: will the Pharisees and scribes join Jesus in welcoming and eating with sinners?
The parable begins by relating the shameful actions of the younger son toward his father. Not only does the younger son reject the value of staying in the family, but he also demands his inheritance before his father’s death, which is a gross insult to the father. Surprisingly, the father does not exercise his rightful authority by demanding that his younger son give up his plans. The older son is silent. It seems that he does not object to his brother’s shameful demands and his father’s giving-in to them.
The inheritance that the younger son demanded would have been a portion of the family’s land holdings. After selling the land, he leaves home and uses the money from the sale to support a disgraceful lifestyle. Jesus’ audience would have been greatly shocked since Jews considered their ancestral land holdings to be God’s gift to their families.
The turning point of the story is the crisis of a famine that strikes the foreign land where the younger son is living. Because he has squandered his wealth, he has no resources available to help him survive the famine. To survive, the younger son humiliates himself by working for Gentiles as a swineherd. Worse than that, he must eat the same food he gave to unclean animals. The son believes that the only way he could survive was to return to his father’s house as a hired hand. He knows that he cannot not reclaim his status as a son.
When he returns home, and the actions of his father are most unexpected. Usually, a father who has been so shamed by the actions of his son would have disowned that son. Instead, we read that the father was waiting for his son’s return. As soon as he catches sight of his son, he runs out to meet him—something a Palestinian Jewish patriarch would never have done.
The father’s response to his son’s return—the kissing, the gift of a robe and ring, the banquet—is most out of character for someone who has been publicly shamed by his son. The feast that the father arranges for the younger son is necessary to repair the damage caused by the son to his neighbours. They would have regarded his behaviour as undermining traditional values and setting a terrible example. The banquet serves to ease the younger son back into the good graces of the neighbours.
While the banquet is going on, the elder son reappears in the story. He is consumed by jealously and resentment. And just as the father reached out to his younger son who was lost, he reaches out to the elder son, who was in danger of becoming just as lost as his brother. The father abandons his guests, which is a breach of etiquette, in order to persuade his older son to rejoice at his brother’s return. At this point, the parable ends. We do not know if the elder son comes to accept his father’s response to his younger brother’s return. It is as if Jesus is asking the Pharisees and the scribes if they are going to join him in reaching out to their wayward brothers and sisters, if they are going to rejoice with him over God’s most gracious mercy, or if they, like the elder brother, will refuse to enter the banquet room, preferring to be on the outside, thinking of nothing but their resentment over the reconciliation between God and sinners that Jesus came to bring about.
The reconciliation between the father and the younger son does not occur because of what the son did, but because of what the father does. The younger son’s breaking of convention to serve his selfish purposes. The father’s behaviour—his dealing with the shame of having been treated so disrespectfully by his son—made it possible for reconciliation to occur. The father and younger son were reconciled as were the neighbours and the younger son. The only person who stood outside the circle of reconciliation was the elder son. The elder son’s behavior was another humiliation for the father. The father chose to absorb the shame heaped on him by the elder brother, just as he did for the younger brother. He willingly adopted the stance of pleading with his elder son—a great humiliation for a father from Jewish perspective.
REFLECT
We often view God the Father through our painful or broken experiences with our own parents and other authority figures in our lives. In what ways does the parable challenge or affirm your own view of what the God of the Bible is like?
reading for: 24 March
Joshua 5:9-12
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Joshua 5:9–12 is a part of chapters 1–5, which describe the preparations of the people for invasion of the land. These chapters include the crossing of the river, sending spies into Jericho and into the house of Rahab the harlot, and preparation for the beginning of the holy war to come. The passage for today includes the recognition of Gilgal as a worship centre and the ceremony of Passover, the reminder that God is the One who has saved His people out of slavery and has brought the people to this place.
In verses 2–8, we find the account of the circumcision of the people. This makes up the first part of the people’s preparation for taking the land; the second part is the keeping of the Passover in verses 10–12. Verse 9 is the centerpiece of the narrative, giving the name Gilgal as the end of the account of the circumcision of the people.
Gilgal is mentioned again in verse 10 at the very first celebration of Passover, now that they have just entered the land. The site was mentioned previously in 4:19–20 as the place where Joshua set up the twelve stones brought out of the Jordan in Israel’s crossing. It is an important place in the Bible where narrative actions in the stories of Saul and David (1 Sam. 10:1–8; 11:14–15; 13:8–14; 15:10–33).
In this first celebration of the Passover and the day after, we see both God delivering them from oppression in Egypt and His providing for them from the fruit of the promised land. Here they celebrate both God’s power to deliver and also His power to provide in uncertain and unpredictable circumstances. It reminds them who they belong to, where they have come from and where they are and Who has brought them there. It is a reminder to the people of God, what He is truly like.
REFLECT
In Ephesians 1:18 the Apostle Paul encourages all believers to have ‘the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints’. When the eyes of our hearts are open, we often catch a glimpse of reality as God sees it. This gives us hope and faith in Him. It requires us to stop seeing ourselves, one another and our circumstances with our own natural eyes and put on Spirit-fill lenses (2 Cor 5:16).
Bring your own and one another’s circumstances, in prayer and fasting this Lent season to the Lord in prayer and ask for the Holy Spirit to circumcise and consecrate your eyes and ears to be able to see the reality of things as God sees them and ask to see God as He truly is - a Good Good Father.
reading for: 25 March
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Its time to Heed Jesus’s Instructions
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What God is like is embodied in person of Jesus. And as believers, we are in the Body of Christ. So as we follow Jesus in the way he lived, we are being transformed and begin to see and respond differently towards circumstances and others around too.
In verse 16, Paul teaches that those in Christ no longer regard or evaluate people on the basis of their resume, their accomplishments, their position, or their influence. If the love of Christ controls us, then we are free to be open and accepting of others on the basis of seeing them through the eyes of Christ, the One who gave himself for everyone.
Old standards of judgment such as race, social status, wealth, prestige, and title are obsolete, null and void (Gal. 3:28). As an example, Paul mentions that he himself had previously evaluated Jesus in terms of his worldly status. However, when he came to know Christ as Lord, it transformed the foundation of how he viewed himself and others. This new perspective even changed the way he understood who Jesus was. Paul came to know Jesus as the risen Lord, the One who gave himself for all.
In verse 17, we see the implications of this, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” This transformation that alters our standards of judgment is nothing other than a new creation, a new order of existence. Paul’s favorite way to express this new reality is simply to say that we are “in Christ.” This is a new creation that relegates to the past the old things like class and prejudices, stereotypes and misconceptions. Such old realities are not part of this new existence in Christ. The perfect tense is used to express the continuing and ongoing nature of this transformation: “the old things became and continue to be new.” The old is finished. The new creation has overthrown our human judgments filled with prejudice and bias. The gospel challenges the assumption that human nature cannot change by stating that God can indeed achieve such a transformation in Christ. This is the incredible glory of what Lent suggests is in fact possible. No longer are we held sway by the powers that would destroy us. In Christ we are fully free to experience this grace that created a new humanity, one responsive to the vision of God to bring creation home.
Verses 18–20 form the heart of this text: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” The basic meaning of the word “reconcile” is to make otherwise or to alter. Interestingly, the word is used in the New Testament only by Paul. He uses it to describe the relation between God and humans. The verb “to reconcile” is used only of God’s acts. We ourselves are the ones who become reconciled to God. God is the initiator and author of reconciliation, the remover of that which estranges us from God. Thus our very existence becomes altered in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Such graciousness works a decisive change.
We are no longer estranged, at odds, and hostile to God. When we accept it, God’s love makes us God’s children, God’s friends. The basis of such a renewal is that Jesus took upon himself all that estranges us from God. In doing so, he makes it possible for us to experience a new relationship with God based upon trust and love.
So transformative is this new relationship that we are now asked to become the visible expressions of this new reality to our world. This ministry of reconciliation awakens us to God’s love so that our lives proclaim it. While we are the recipients of this divine love, we also become the agents of God who passionately exhort others to know it for themselves.
REFLECT
It was reported that the great theologian, Karl Barth was once asked what he would say to Adolf Hitler if he ever had the chance to meet the monster who was destroying families and societies. Instead of pronouncing judgment and against Hitler, he would do nothing but quote Romans 5:8 “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Did Christ not also die for Putin, the monster who is currently committing the very same evil Hitler did? Let us carry every bit of diabolical injustice and destructive evil to the Lord and ask for His light to shine his Truth into Putin’s distorted reality and ask for the Father’s mercy on his soul.
Now let us take a few minutes forgive someone who has deeply hurt us by presenting them to God in prayer. Let’s ask for God’s mercy on them as we also ask God to “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matt 6:12)
reading for: 26 March
Psalm 32
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It is said that this was St Augustine’s a favorite psalm and it seemed he had it written on the wall opposite his bed, his eyes riveted on its words during his last sickness. Martin Luther’s considered this psalm among the best.
The first two verses of the psalm evoke the essence of human happiness or state of blessedness. “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (vv. 1–2). There is a tension here with respect to the source of such happiness. Does blessedness come from having one’s sins forgiven, or is blessedness reserved for those “in whose spirit there is no deceit”?
Sin is a painful reality in the human heart. Something is deeply wrong in the human condition and in the conditions that ground human existence. There is no point in a pretension of innocence or hoping that one’s natural desires will not eventuate in sinful acts or in a sinful posture away from God. The psalm goes on, however, to outline a marvelous sequence of steps that eventuates in the blessed life and a forgiven state of existence.
The Psalm is very straightforward.
Verses 1–2 describe the blessedness of the forgiven sinner. This is followed by verses 3–4, the burden of unconfessed sin. In verse 5, the Psalmist explains confession and pardon. This is followed by verses 6–7 with an exuberant affirmation of confession’s benefits. Verses 8–9 presents God’s promise of instruction and caring watch over the forgiven person. verse 10 gives the comparison between the wicked and the upright and finally in v. 11 we are given the corporate command to rejoice.
REFLECT
Don’t go to bed wrong. Take time to pray along with each verse and make it yours as you review the day and confess your sins.