Holy discontent and divine faithfulness: O, for the increase of the tribe of Elizabeth!

Some time ago I listened to a series of lectures that N. T. Wright gave on the gospel according to St Luke in a series called “The Big Read.” In his introductory lecture on St Luke’s gospel, he said that each of the four evangelists writes, in his own way, the climax of Israel’s story; accordingly, they all start their work to connect it with what had gone before.

So the first characters to appear in Luke’s gospel are Zechariah and Elizabeth; Bishop Wright says of them that “they walk right out of the pages of the Old Testament.” Which is true. They are Abraham and Sarah, Elkanah and Hannah, all over again. They are a couple counted righteous — “walking blamelessly” is how Luke describes their life. They keep and are kept by their covenants with one another and with their faithful God. They are in every way good and admirable. But “they had no child . . . and both were advanced in years.”

Luke proceeds to tell the story of the appearance of the angel to Zechariah in the Temple, of the angel’s good news — “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John” — of Zechariah’s disbelief and his being stricken dumb until John’s birth. Significant as that story is, I’ll pass over it to get to Elizabeth’s response to the fulfillment of the angel’s word:

After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”

The gritty wisdom of Elizabeth’s response stirs me to consider — among other things — the habits of mind, and the theology, that would produce the kind of character from which such a response would issue: no denial of long suffering and reproach, no “it’s about time” bitterness; no pride, and no showboating before neighbors who’d undoubtedly been wagging their tongues about “poor, barren Elizabeth” for years.

From just this brief bit of her story, you can safely deduce a few things about Elizabeth.

First, she took her community seriously, though doing so required that she endure its ugly side (is there any other way to take your community seriously?). Well she knew “her reproach among people.” And she did not chalk it up to their sheer foolishness. Had she long been saying to herself, “Whatever; Zechariah and I have more wisdom in our baby fingers than all our tongue-wagging friends have,” she would never have responded to her vindication as she did. Even though she knew many things her people did not — long suffering is an effective teacher — she respected her people enough to care about their collective judgment.

Second, she took the real world seriously, though doing so required that she endure its pains (is there any other way to take the real world seriously?). Psychological comfort, isolated from the real world of time and dust and water and wind and bread and wine and other people, wasn’t going to cut it for Elizabeth. Last year on Facebook there was a sad outbreak of the following status: “God sees you’ve been struggling with something. God says that’s over.” A glib saying, and about a thousand miles short of a real Christian response to suffering. Zechariah and Elizabeth struggled with barrenness for years; they prayed long and fervently, with hearts clean as you’ll find anywhere, and yet they still struggled. Had someone told them in the midst of their long suffering, “God says that’s over,” I imagine their response would have been an uncomprehending stare. And they would have been right. If we are pleased with introspective psychological comfort, which we can magically pull out of a hat, we are too easily pleased. If we are pleased with private psychological comfort, and do not cry out for public vindication — vindication of the name of God, vindication of our neighbors and, yes, vindication for ourselves — we reveal that our spirituality is more Buddhist than Christian, that we have cultivated an unhealthy detachment from the good world that God made, the redemptive history He has written and is writing. Elizabeth cared about the real world, even when reality bit and repeatedly aggravated the sore spot in her life. She did not lap up psychological bromides, but held on to her holy discontent until the day good news arrived and its fulfillment was made manifest in her womb.

Finally — and in tension with her holy discontent — Elizabeth took the faithfulness of her God seriously. The chief thing we spot in this text to distinguish Elizabeth and Zechariah from Abraham and Sarah, and from Elkanah*, is that Elizabeth and Zechariah never relied upon their own devices to produce children. They did not hedge their bets. They didn’t try jury-rigging anything in the created order. In the best sense, they were simple. They walked faithfully and humbly before God, and pleaded for a child. If that plea went forever rejected — and at the point St Luke picks up the story, it looked virtually certain it would go forever rejected — they would go on walking humbly before God as they always had, trusting that even his perpetual “no” was a faithful and just decree.

These things are not easy to hold together: on the one hand, rest in the faithfulness and justice of God; on the other, righteous unrest in the hard realities of the real world, realities which, for a time, that same faithful God has decreed. Elizabeth — may her tribe ever increase — held them together. And so when the long-in-coming vindication did come in the form of her son John, she understood its meaning: the vindication came not from the world, but it was publicly manifest in the world, to be a blessing and sign of the glory of God for the world.

* Elkanah had two wives. From three facts — his evident affection for Hannah, Hannah’s barrenness, and the fruitfulness of his other wife — I propose the following as probably sound deductions: (1) Hannah was Elkanah’s first wife, and (2) Elkanah took his second wife chiefly, perhaps solely, to produce children and heirs.

** All quotations from Luke 1-2 are from the English Standard Version.

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The General Confession (IV): Most merciful Father, whose property is always to have mercy

Almighty and most merciful Father . . .

The General Confession, The Book of Common Prayer.

In the last post on the General Confession I noted that the power of God is a comfort to sinners. Yet, without mercy, the might of God is an unmitigated threat to us and leaves us no hope through confession. So if we ask God for mercy, it helps to begin by reminding ourselves of the extent of the mercy available to us.

So just who is this one the General Confession calls “most merciful Father”? How ready is He to hear and respond with pity to a true confession?

You probably know a story* that begins this way:

There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

The parable of the prodigal son is commonly oversimplified to the following, which is true as far as it goes: the younger son takes his share of his father’s property, goes off, squanders everything sowing his wild oats, then comes back, and is mercifully received by his father. But there is more to it, much more. The parable, which Jesus primarily addresses to experts in law, reads like a law school exam question: packed into almost every phrase is some monstrous injustice, or some unthinkable mercy, that raises some issue which must be dealt with. Both sons grievously offend their father, heaping insult upon insult. And the father meets every last insult with extravagant grace.

Estates don’t descend to heirs until someone dies. So the younger son’s request, “give me my share of the estate,” means, in effect, “I wish you were dead. I have no affection for you, no filial respect for you. I don’t want to be part of your family. I just want your stuff — my stuff — right now.” The younger son’s circumstances may get worse. But his behavior hits rock bottom right out of the gate.

But his father, again right out of the gate, meets this monstrous injustice with mercy. Far from taking the expected action — throwing his ungrateful son out bodily — he endures, ungrudgingly, the anguish of dividing his life with his son.

Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

The younger son, being a proud, stiff-necked, pity-spurning fool, doesn’t come away from his rebellion unscathed. To the original Jewish hearers of this story, feeding pigs and longing to be fed with pods the pigs ate was hitting rock bottom and starting to drill. It took circumstances that desperate to wake the son up. Only when his alternatives dried up did he think of home:

When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

It’s noteworthy that the son resolves to pay his father the compliment of calling him “Father,” but will not presume to ask to be treated as a son again. And that his planned confession lists the offended parties in the right order — “I sinned against heaven and against you.” But he has not yet totally surrendered: the son wants to be a hired servant; to do his father the justice of making restitution. Now restitution is a good thing as far as it goes, but the son’s plan overlooks that he cannot put a price tag on his father’s agony. To that extent he still doesn’t see the full gravity of his offense; he knows he has wronged his father, but he still thinks himself competent to judge his wrong and his father’s loss, and to sentence himself to repayment of squandered property. In short, he’s still attached to some idea of right, and the desire to captain his own ship. With these things in mind he goes home.

Plainly the father hasn’t been seething in the meantime, reciting to himself the things his son ought to say it he dares show his face around town again. And here as everywhere else, the father casts aside anything like dignity and convention. He runs — as women and children, but not fathers, did back then. The father dramatically “falls on his son’s neck” and kisses him. Stunning as that is, he’s just getting warmed up.

And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

In response to his father’s astonishingly affectionate greeting, the younger son begins his prepared remarks, but, significantly, stops before getting to the restitution part. He only acknowledges the sad truth about himself, and leaves it at that. He finally relinquishes any pretense that he is able of his own strength to make things right. How could anyone who has callously wounded such a generous father speak of repayment? He makes his confession, and leaves judgment to his father.

But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

For the son’s bare feet, a sign of his poverty, the father gives sandals; and the best robe and ring (a family signet ring, probably) signify the father’s full acceptance of his son back into the family as an honored member. Killing the fatted calf means that this is to be the party of parties, with the whole village to be invited. The villagers would have wondered at this, since the father was basically taking upon himself the dishonor the son brought upon the family. But the father does not stand on ceremony: how can things be otherwise, since my son has come back from the dead?

Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.

Having welcomed his prodigal son home, the father now takes an unkinder cut from his firstborn, which is worse than the younger son’s because it’s given in public. The family would have been expected to greet the guests from the village; for the firstborn to refuse is for him to publicly disown the family.

The father is nothing if not consistent. Instead of having the elder son bound and brought in to face judgment, he again goes out to meet a rebellious son. And not to command his son, but to plead with him.

But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

Just as his initial cut was unkinder than his younger brother’s, so is the firstborn’s response to his father’s grace, which is the unkindest cut of all to this point. He acknowledges neither his father nor his brother (contemptuously called “this son of yours”), and prefaces his complaint with the word “look.” He has not come to his senses; he does not see himself or his father or his situation clearly. He is blinded by his own bitterness at having worked with apparent diligence and faithfulness but not received the advances — one third of the father’s estate, and now the fatted calf — that his brother had received. He cannot see his father’s generosity to him, or what his speech makes plain: that he, just as his younger brother once did, loves his father’s property but not his father.

Again, this speech was not a back room deal; many of the guests would have followed the father out of the house and would have heard the son’s words. So the father, again publicly lowering himself, overlooks his son’s insult and labors patiently to bring his outwardly obedient but utterly wayward firstborn to his senses.

‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

Don’t miss the opening words: “My son.” There are a couple of Greek words for son: one is “huios,” the more formal, legal term, the other “teknon,” a term of tender affection. Luke uses “teknon” to capture our Lord’s meaning. The father does not accept his firstborn’s rash disowning of the family; he loves his son starting from his address. Then he speaks of the grace of communion: “You are always with me.” And he labors on: “my property, my living, my very life, is yours for the sharing, and — isn’t this great! — that includes your found brother.” The father scorns all shame and will not be thwarted from seeking above all the restoration and peace of his family.

So how does the elder son respond to this last entreaty? We don’t know. The cliffhanger ending here is masterful, with Jesus in effect saying to the Pharisees and lawyers to whom he told the parable, and by extension to we who overhear today, “the doors of the kingdom of God are thrown open. Tax collectors and prostitutes and all manner of those who squandered the inheritance are coming to their senses, and going in to dine at the feast. Your God and Father is glad to welcome them. So are you going to stand outside and grouse about, indeed publicly decry, his generosity? Or will you go in to your Father’s party with your brothers and sisters and be happy?”

Jesus understood his Father to be “most merciful” — indeed, reading the parable through, we might say that it is “his property always to have mercy.”** This relentless mercy tends to produce one of two responses: wonder and gratitude on the one hand, a bad case of the sulks on the other. The General Confession begins by calling us to recognize the mercy of God as an inexhaustible wonder, in light of which we can admit plainly, without guile or rationalization, every bit of dirty dirt we carry, from our unshod feet to our tangled hair. ***

* Luke 15:11-32. All quotes from the parable are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
** From the Book of Common Prayer Order for Holy Communion.
*** The above look at the parable of the two sons and their father traces, almost to but hopefully not to or past the point of plagiarism, the works of Kenneth Bailey and Timothy Keller. I haven’t quoted either, and do not think I have borrowed any of their words, but their expositions have so impacted my thinking about this parable that my thoughts on it are closely intertwined with theirs. If anyone spots unattributed quotes, it’s because they were that well-lodged in my brain. I will gladly credit their words anywhere the credit may be due.

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“This son of yours, who has devoured your property with prostitutes”

One of the great delights of familiarity — with a person, animal, story, piece of music, whatever — is that there comes a point after which the familiar person or thing almost cannot fail to surprise us. The source of the surprise isn’t usually that the familiar object steps out of character. I suspect it’s more that our familiarity with the whole of the thing frees us to appreciate its details more fully — and these details will regularly surprise us. We may never have noticed the quirky intake of breath at the end of Jack’s laugh had we not heard it a thousand times. We might only catch a brilliantly significant quote buried in the middle of a mystery on the fifth reading. It may take ten listens to unstop our ears to the reappearance at the concerto’s end of a little countermelody that hadn’t shown up since the concerto’s beginning.

Something like this happens every time I read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It may be the most familiar story in the world, but it can surprise an attentive listener on every telling. What caught my attention for the first time on a recent reading was the elder son’s slander of his brother, and how perfectly it echoed the slander the scribes and Pharisees routinely threw at Jesus: “This son of yours, who has devoured your property with prostitutes . . . ”

One of the awful things about slander — perhaps the reason why God thought it a sufficiently grave offense to include it in the Ten Commandments — is its power to color what we think of a person, even when we do not find the slander credible. The elder son in the parable, the one who stayed home and by his own testimony never had disobeyed his father, now lets fly all of his latent disobedience: he falsely accuses his younger brother of devouring the father’s property with prostitutes. Now for all anyone knows that may have been true. But only incidentally — for Jesus in telling the parable tells us nothing of how the younger son spent his inheritance, or that the elder son investigated the matter before spouting off. The common pigeonholes to the which the two sons are assigned — the elder as chilly bean-counting prig, the younger as hot-blooded libertine — are based more upon the elder son’s slander than anything else, and obscure what Jesus is really doing by telling the parable.

The Pharisees leveled the same accusation against Jesus that the elder son leveled against the younger. Their slander, in fact, occasioned his telling the parable:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’*

Now since truth is an absolute defense to a charge of slander, and the Pharisees and scribes have technically uttered truth, how is this slander?  Because of a significant little word St Luke inserts here: “grumbled.”  It’s the same word used repeatedly of the Israelites in the wilderness, who were serial grumblers.  The obvious implication is that they’re accusing Jesus of doing something he ought not to have been doing.

And what was that?

Let me sum up. The remnant of Israel, kicked around and under the foot of occupying Rome, still knew by faith that God had entrusted them with treasures: the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of Torah, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs.** Faithful Israelites were faithful stewards of these treasures. Jesus, by the account of the scribes and Pharisees, was opening the storehouse of Israel to the wrong people, to faithless Israelites who had squandered their inheritance. By receiving and taking up for them, Jesus, no less than the younger son in the parable, was devouring the Father’s property with prostitutes. The parable was Jesus’s defense, not only of repentant sinners, but of himself; he was letting his slanderers know where he and they stood, respectively. He was not squandering but investing, and wisely — for the lost sheep were coming back into the fold, lost coins were being found, lost sons and daughters were coming to their senses. The Pharisees’ situation was dire but not hopeless: They were being tightwads, resolved to sit on their inheritance until it rotted, looking out at the rest of the world with a jaded, stingy eye. But, at that moment, their Father was still pleading with them.

* Luke 15.1-2

** Romans 9.4-5

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