abk4u: Reckless Grace

    A series examining Christian authors who have shaped lives; trying to find ‘a book for you’

 

“GODS RECKLESS GRACE IS OUR GREATEST HOPE”

    prod-i-gal –adjective
1. recklessly extravagant
2. having spent everything

 

   Thus starts Timothy Keller’s book “The Prodigal God”.

   Its an upside down, topsey turvey, title if there ever was one! Obviously referring to Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son, Keller, right from the word go, is doing a total U-turn on the conventional understanding of the story.

   The parable of the prodigal son is a story in which a wayward young brother takes his inheritance and wastes it all on foolishness and excitement. Eventually, penniless and sorrowful, he returns to his father’s house, where his father runs to meet him, showering him with gifts and love. It is from here that we have the saying “kill the fatted calf.”  The older brother, who had stayed and served his father all those years, is upset to see to how his brother is treated upon his return.

   Traditionally the focus is placed on the younger wayward brother and his return to his father. Jesus attracted followers who were ‘younger brother types’- tax collectors and sinners. Surely, Keller asks, this story would bring the crowd to tears as they realise that they too can be forgiven by God? But then he answers his own question.

“No, the original listeners were not melted into tears by this story but rather they were thunderstruck, offended, and infuriated. Jesus’ purpose is not to warm our hearts but to shatter our categories… His story reveals the destructive self-centeredness of the younger brother, but it also condemns the elder brother’s moralistic life in the strongest terms. Jesus is saying that both the irreligious and the religious are spiritually lost.”

    The book highlights the 2 pathways which, perhaps, the human race falls into: that of the older brother, and that of the younger brother.

   Interestingly it is to the religious “older brothers” that Jesus directs this parable. The Pharisees and scribes are the ones who need this parable most of all. Having studied scripture all their lives and having kept thousands of self-imposed laws and regulations they regarded themselves as superior “holy” people. They were the bees-knees (or so they thought).

  In the parable, the Father goes out to both of the brothers. He runs out to welcome back the younger brother. And during the celebrations, he goes out to find his older son and invite him in too. Whether we have lived as rebels from God, or if we have strived to be perfect without God’s help, either way we need God’s grace to bring us back home. The basic thesis of Keller’s book is that God is a prodigal God. Prodigal means to be recklessly extravagant, to give until you have nothing left.  Essentially, he argues, God is a prodigal God. He gives us his grace and mercy and forgiveness in a manner which could be termed reckless and extravagant, but equally termed wonderful and glorious!

    One point made in The Prodigal God, was one that surprised me. It had never really crossed my mind before.

    The parable was the third of three to be told. In the first 2 someone loses something (a sheep, and a coin) and then, throwing all other cares aside, goes out searching for it. They refuse to give up until it has been found. We are soon surprised though,

“By the time we get to the third story, and we hear the plight of the lost son, we are fully prepared to expect that someone will set out to search for him. No one does. It is startling, and Jesus meant it to be so.”

   Who, we are asked, should have gone out searching for the younger brother?

   Any true elder brother would have given everything to find his lost, wayward sibling.

   Imagine how this accusation would have hit the Pharisees listening. They were being accused of failing their brothers. They had not fulfilled their duty towards God. Jesus’ parable, which had looked all set to condemn the tax-collectors and sinners, had in fact turned 180 degrees and was now pointing both barrels at themselves.

   Thankfully, this failure on the part of the older brother, points us to the brother who has completed his task. The Lord Jesus Christ came to ‘seek and to save that which is lost.’ As Keller says,

“Our true elder brother paid our debt, on the cross, in our place.”

   The Prodigal God goes on to talk much more about the sins of both the younger and elder brothers, the reckless grace of the father and the feast of celebration. Of course, the book must end with the startling end of the parable. Jesus used a really shocking cliff hanger:

    The father finds his eldest son skulking outside the great hall, in the dark, he invites him to come back inside and to join in the celebrations.

    And that’s it.

    The story ends.

    We get no answer, either positive or negative.

    Jesus leaves the Pharisees with the question for themselves: Are you going to stay in the dark? Or will you share in the reckless extravagant grace of God?

    We need to ask ourselves the same.

 

 

• The Prodigal God, Timothy Keller, Hodder & Stoughton