Deconstructing Repentance (Parts One & Two), by Andrew Boakye, PhD

Chapter Sixteen: Deconstructing Repentance (Part Two)

The Parable of the Rejoicers and the Grumblers.

Andrew Boakye, PhD. Dec 21

Jesus routinely taught in parables – these functioned as commentaries on the Kingdom of God; as Hertzog states, they are ‘subversive speech’ [William Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 9]. They are not just moral lessons, but are:

…to instruct people concerning the kingdom of God—what it is, what the King is like, and how his people should live as subjects of the King in his kingdom. Hence, they are not merely stories to enjoy with a moral truth or truths, but they need a kingdom interpretation to explain their full significance [Mark J. Keown, Discovering the New Testament: An Introduction to Its Background, Theology, and Themes: The Gospels & Acts: Vol. I (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018), 528].

Appeal to any number of parables could illustrate the above; the one employed in this reflection is particularly pertinent for the following reasons:

1. It is a sublime piece of storytelling!

2. Like a number of the parables in Luke it manages to actually tell two stories at once, which are intertwined and mutually informing.

3. It draws upon a number of significant cultural markers which help illustrate key aspects of the world in which Jesus taught and preached.

4. Its narrative is well known.

5. It contains important contextual markers which help us to make sense of the exegesis.

6. It is one of those parables which speaks of the Kingdom without mentioning the Kingdom explicitly.

7. It simultaneously teaches something essential about God Himself and about how He is working in the world.

You may well have guessed it already - the parable in question is the so-called Parable of the Lost Son. Once we have interacted with some of the key elements of this story, we will be well placed to consider what it might look like to deconstruct repentance with our eyes very much fixed on Jesus, but sensitive to the experiences of those confronting serious challenges to their religious and spiritual understanding of the world. Let us begin with the story itself:

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ² And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” ³ So he told them this parable… *teaches the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin*.

¹¹ Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So, he divided his assets between them. ¹³ A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. ¹⁴ When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶ He would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. ¹⁷ But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ ²⁰ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. ²¹ Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²² But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, ²⁴ for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. ²⁵ “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. ²⁷ He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ ³¹ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found’” (Luke 15:1–3, 11–32).

If you are able, watch the clip below, which is the rendition of the Lost Son parable in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 classic Jesus of Nazareth -

The producers of the film had taken some forgivable poetic licence and framed the story as one that Jesus told to facilitate Peter accepting Matthew the tax collector as one of their inner circle. It is beautifully done and despite the contextual imprecision I think creates a helpful way of framing the narrative. Let us proceed to the exegetical and theological details.

The contextual notes in Luke 15:1–3 are absolutely pivotal for the story of the lost son. The characters in the story would be easily identifiable to the readers given this framing. However, to those who were present with Jesus at the time and hearing the parable, another narrative would almost certainly have been in mind, and the characters in the story would have represented something else of which the grumbling Pharisees and scribes would have been an expression.

The story of the lost son is in fact the third of three interconnected stories about lost things - a sheep, a coin and a man’s son. The lost thing is found, and this retrieval of what was lost leads to rejoicing. Each story, in its own way, depicts the extraordinary lengths God goes to in order to recover something/someone who has lost their way. When He finds them, there is great rejoicing and anyone who is not rejoicing with God is out of sync with Him. Indeed, I have often wished that the story was commonly referred to as The Parable of the Rejoicers and Grumblers, as I have labelled it in this reflection, which I think would actually capture the essence of the story more powerfully.

Nonetheless, the contextual framing in vv. 1–3 clarifies that the lost things Luke refers to are the tax collectors and sinners - those Jews on the margins, some of whom were morally corrupt, flouted the Torah and even collaborated with the pagans - like the tax collectors who collected taxes from the Jews to give to the Romans and routinely overcharged to pocket the proceeds (cf. Luke 3:12–13). The Pharisees at the beginning of Luke 15 were fuming that Jesus was eating with these lowlifes and lawbreakers for, in the ancient world, those with whom you kept company at a meal table denoted who you accepted as equal. The great theologian T. W Manson once called Luke 15, “the Gospel of the Outcast” because of how it reveals a deliberate attempt to show God’s concern for those society despises. The scene is more shocking because “sinner” does not denote simply a moral category. It was a designation for those outside Israel who did not have the Law (cf. Gal. 2:15a).

Tax collectors and prostitutes in particular were considered to have capitulated to Greek and Roman ways of life perceived to jeopardise Israelite identity. The saying in Matthew and Luke where Jesus is labelled a “glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7: 34 = Matt. 11:19) is most likely an invocation of Deut. 21:20-21, implying that Jesus should be stoned to death for the company he keeps. Moreover, tax collectors were notoriously dishonest and practiced extortion. John the Baptizer’s warning to them in Luke 3:12–13 presupposes this scurrilous tendency (n.b. Zacchaeus’ reaction in Luke 19:8–9). The use of one governing article - “the tax collectors and sinners,” rather than “the tax collectors and the sinners”, implies that Luke lumped them together as one group. We will return to why the Pharisees and Scribes would have had such concerns with Jesus’ association with tax collectors and sinners momentarily.

In the story of the lost son, there are, of course, two sons, both lost in their own ways. The older son represents the Pharisees/scribes; the younger son, the tax collectors and sinners. Luke’s original audience would have been scandalized by the younger son’s request for his share of the inheritance, because a high value was placed on respecting and honouring their elders. We have evidence of Jewish fathers giving inheritances to children as a gift during their lifetime, but the tendency for young children to sell property for money and leave their future’s insecure, made the practice taboo. Indeed, in the non-canonical book the Wisdom of Ben Sirach, the practice is discouraged:

20 To son or wife, to brother or friend, do not give power over yourself, as long as you live; and do not give your property to another, in case you change your mind and must ask for it. 21 While you are still alive and have breath in you, do not let anyone take your place. 22 For it is better that your children should ask from you than that you should look to the hand of your children. 23 Excel in all that you do; bring no stain upon your honour. 24 At the time when you end the days of your life, in the hour of death, distribute your inheritance (Sirach 33:20–24).

For the children to sell property for cash was considered so shameful, that in many circles, to ask for one’s inheritance whilst your father still lived was equivalent to saying, “I wish you were dead”, as implied by the Sirach citation above. Kenneth Bailey has actually researched the phenomenon and writes:

For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has almost always been emphatically the same. As I have noted elsewhere, the conversation runs as follows:

“Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?”

“Never!”

“Could anyone ever make such a request?”

“Impossible!”

“If anyone ever did, what would happen?”

“His father would beat him, of course!”

“Why?”

“This request means—he wants his father to die!”

[Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke (Grand Rapids, M: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983), 161–162].

As mentioned above, however, there are two narratives at play here. A first century Jew hearing a story about a profligate son, abandoning his father and becoming the servants of gentiles (feeding pigs – and no work would prove more degrading to a Jew - Lev. 11:7; 14:8; Isa. 65:4; 66:17) before returning with his tail between his legs, and very much to the annoyance of his “righteous” older brother, would almost certainly hear the story of Israel’s chequered history of exile and restoration. The rebellious son, in absconding and becoming the slave of gentiles strongly mirrors the experience of the people of Judah as captives in Babylon. Here, the shame was even greater than the shame of enslavement in Egypt. The constant flouting of God’s law and the constant idolatry resulted in the horrors of exile. If you ever wanted an emotional picture of what the exile felt like, read Psalm 137. The depth of frustration was so great, that Ps. 137 records some of the most damning beatitudes in the entire biblical canon: ⁸ O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Blessed shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! ⁹ Blessed shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

One of the key reasons I think this story would have been heard as a retelling of Judah’s deportation to Babylon and later return is the father’s response to the lost son’s return:

…²⁴ for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found… ³² But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found (Luke 15:24, 32).

Luke, here, uses the same language and imagery that Ezekiel used in his great freedom from captivity narrative in Ezekiel 37:1–14. The prophet uses a ‘resurrection’ image to depict the liberation of Judah, whose captivity is represented by scattered bones in the desert which, under the auspices of the Spirit of God, are re-embodied and raised as a mighty army. God showed mercy to His people, and they turned from their idolatry, relocated to the Holy Lands and under the tutelage of Ezra and Nehemiah, rebuilt both the city and the Temple. Here, the Pauline dictum that divine kindness instigates repentance could not ring truer (Rom. 2:4).

Ezekiel 36–37 is his rendition of Jeremiah’s New Covenant prophecy in Jeremiah 31 and, as such, we may see Ezekiel’s internalisation of the Spirit (Ezek. 36:26–27; 37:14) as equivalent to Jeremiah’s internalisation of the Law (Jer. 31:33). The three prominent promises of the New Covenant prophecy are: (i) that God would remember sins no more (Jer. 31:34b); (ii) all people would have the capacity to know God without receiving instructions from human intermediaries (Jer. 31:34b); and (iii) God’s people would engage with his law in a revolutionary way (Jer. 31:33). All three of these things are evident in the story of the Lost Son.

The story reflects how the father utterly forgave his youngest son’s moral crimes. The youngest son entered into a new phase in his relationship with his father, having embraced and understood his incredible grace and the boy’s newfound willingness to submit to his father is captured in his request just to be hired as one of the father’s servants upon his return.

Even with the response of the oldest son we can see the two levels of the narrative operating. For the readers or the hearers of the Lost Son story, the Pharisees’ antagonism towards “tax collectors and sinners” is thusly explained.

Groups like the Pharisees restlessly succumbed to life as the subjects of pagans; even though they were technically and politically free, spiritually and socially, the sense that as long as the pagans ruled and the prophetic promises of a glorious future lay unrealized, that freedom was not genuine. Pharisees, who were a kind of unofficial pressure group, were convinced that the mood would never change as long as the people continued to flout Torah like their forefathers had. Consequently, “tax collectors and sinners” who had a lax attitude towards the stipulations of Moses were, in no uncertain terms, delaying the intervention of God. These were not people to be celebrated, and they resented the fact that Jesus was sitting and eating with them – just like the older brother in the parable was irritated that the father threw a lavish party for the younger son upon his return.

Hopefully, you can see now why I think this parable should be called the Parable of the Rejoicers and Grumblers. The key question any Pharisee would ask hearing Jesus narrate this subversive tale is, “why are we celebrating this idiot’s return”? For the oldest son, as for the Pharisees, why was the return of this lawbreaker something to be celebrated? Anyone listening to Jesus’ story would have been ready for the father to punish the prodigal son for bringing disgrace upon the family, and probably to end with some kind of note about how obedient and faithful the older son had been - why couldn’t you be like your older brother? (Don’t you just love it when parents compare you to your more successful siblings, who according to some metric or other have achieved more or done better in life than you have)?

As was Jesus’ custom, the ending of the story was a subversive plot twist which no one could have seen coming. To be sure, there must be a part of all of us that sympathises with the older son in the story. There is a part of us all that tires of seeing people who make poor, unintuitive and self-destructive decisions, then do stupid things, get let off the hook and treated as if they are special, while those of us who do the right thing, do what we are told and follow the rules just get forgotten – or worse still taken for granted. Yet the older son’s reluctance to celebrate was evidence that he was desperately out of sync with what God is doing. It is exceptionally powerful that Jesus makes room in the story to have the father say to the older son, ‘you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours’ - even though the Pharisees were often painted as critics and opponents of Jesus and his followers, this note makes clear, that they are as important to the new world that God is creating as anyone else.

It is also exceptionally powerful – and odd – that the father is said to have run to meet his returning younger son. I have often heard it said that this story in Luke could just as easily be called the parable of the running father. Older men in the Middle East do not run except in an emergency. Hiking up flowing robes in order to run not only lacks dignity, but it also inappropriately exposes legs to public view and thus causes dishonor. Some have postulated that the father runs because the son is in immediate danger from hostile villagers, annoyed at the disgrace that he had brought upon them all. Running to get to his son may have been because the father pre-empted a hostile village reaction, signaling by his kiss and embrace that the errant son is under his protection. Here, Bailey is once more enlightening:

“First century Jewish custom dictated that if a Jewish boy lost the family inheritance among the Gentiles and dared to return home, the community would break a large pot in front of him and cry out “so-in-so is cut off from his people.” This ceremony was called the Kezazah (literally “the cutting off”). After it was performed, the community would have nothing to do with the wayward person” [Kenneth E. Bailey, The Cross and the Prodigal: Luke 15 through the Eyes of Middle Eastern Peasants (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2005) 52–53].

Even if there is truth to these speculations, the father was ready to embarrass himself and suffer the indignity of running out of pure joy - the party for the prodigal son would not make sense otherwise. Indeed, the Greek text of Luke 15:20 reads that when the father got to his son, he “fell on his neck” (similar phrase used in Hebrew of Genesis 46:29 when Jacob was reunited with Joseph, who he thought was dead). There is almost an abandon about the phrase – as if the father could not get to his son fast enough. This is the heart-exploding love that God has for lost sinners, returning exiles, those who have been in the wilderness spiritually or felt marginalised, ostracised or confused because of their own foolishness, error or bad decisions. It is a love that is running to receive you even before you have a full chance to repent - it cannot escape the reader’s notice that the father expressed his joy upon sight (15:20) and not in response to the young man’s repentant confession (15:21). This is a love that wraps its arms around prodigal returnees - even those who have been wallowing in the pigsty of sin – and it is not always a love that those around you will understand.

Repentance and the Lost Son

One of the objectives of part one of this reflection, with its contextualising contours, was to suggest that it is important we do not read modern religiosity into the ancient sources. Quite what repentance means today may not present the complete picture. If we consider how Luke’s story of the wayward son informs his broader picture of the Kingdom of God, we might meaningfully locate repentance within that narrative and ask what it has to say to our contemporary context.

In the initial instance, the Parable of the Lost Son, portrays repentance as a journey. This in and of itself ought to be reason for us to pause; from misdeed to crisis, to acceptance, to honest self-appraisal, to moment of turnaround, to confession to rehabilitation/reintegration, the prodigal son had to be awakened to the ramifications of his own disastrous decisions before beginning to journey inwards and only then make the outward journey to return to his father. If repentance is understood as a journey of self-awakening, and not just a decision to change behaviours, it can be more meaningfully housed in the broader attempt to rethink one’s social world (think back to the story Josephus told which we expanded upon in part one). Boda rightly says:

Repentance in the New Testament, as in the Old Testament, is not merely external behaviour modification, since the New Testament not only speaks of the foundational relational dimension but also of an internal orientation [Mark J Boda, Return to Me: A Biblical Theology of Repentance (Downers Grove. IL: InterVarsity Press 2015), 183].

Repentance requires a particular mental and emotional positionality; the two most critical steps in attaining this are humility and courage. In the absence of humility, there is no acceptance or honest self-appraisal, without which the journey stalls. Without courage, there is no impetus to act upon one’s honest self-reflection.

Repentance for the rebellious son was not simply a question of moral repair, but an intentional and directional move towards the restoration of relationship. Healing involves forgiveness and restoration. Forgiveness is possible (albeit incredibly difficult – cf. Luke 17:3), without the repentance of the offending party - the restoration of relationship, however, does require repentance. The divine posture towards repentance is critical to acknowledge. The father’s exuberant rejoicing at his son’s return is quite precisely because there is rapturous joy in the heavens when someone repents (Luke 15:7, 10). God cannot contain His eagerness to welcome back His wayward prodigals.

The honesty of the returnee’s self-understanding is captured in his desire for the father to simply accept him back as a slave. Having fully internalised his responsibility for his reckless actions and their devastating ramifications for the family, the young boy reasoned that he would take any manner of reassimilation into the family and the community - to be on the inside was better than being on the outside. The precise, assertion in Luke 15:21 is, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son”. At any level which this was true - whether according to the unwritten rules of the community’s life, in the young boy’s deliberations or in the estimations of his father and older brother, the father’s response sent out a very clear and unambiguous message. You are not only worthy to be called my son, but I want the world to know that you are my son and to celebrate along with me. Just as those Judean exiles returning to the Holy Lands experienced following their restoration from Babylon, repentance did not only lead to geographical restoration, but to the restoration of their identity as God’s people, the restoration of belonging, the restoration of community and the restoration of dignity. When there is true repentance, no one should expect an ongoing legacy of punishment for whatever misdeed led to the breakdown of relationship in the first place. It is tempting, and not wholly without merit, to expect that repentance will at best bring us a kind of reluctant tolerance. The father’s reaction makes clear that nothing could be further from the truth. In human communities, we have parties to celebrate special occasions like birthdays, graduations or engagements. In heaven, party arrangements begin upon the special occasion of repentance.

There is something deeply stirring about how the father effectively interrupts his sons pre-rehearsed confessional speech in Luke 15: 22, almost as if to suggest that he was scarcely listening to his son’s self-deprecating declaration. The father interrupted to turn to his servant and say, “Go and bring the finest robe, and clothe him with it”. Whilst repentance is impossible without a humble disposition, repentance is neither bargaining, nor self-flagellation nor proving one’s worth through suffering. Such stances are indicative that one has not taken responsibility for their role in the breakdown of relationship. Rather, they represent attempts to settle the social account by assuming the role of victim. This kind of shortsighted narcissism is more an attempt to garner sympathy and extract forgiveness from someone on the basis of ham-fisted pity. If someone has to be guilt-tripped into forgiving you, then almost invariably, you have not acknowledged your role in the social collapse.

Although the young boy’s feeling that he no longer felt worthy to be reintegrated into the family was an admirable indication of the depth of his awakening, the father’s response proved that this was not true. Indeed, I like to think that the father’s disposition is what made it not true. If there is nothing else the story of the lost son tells us, it makes loud, clear and unambiguous that the process of repentance is largely and fundamentally energised by divine grace. The truly subversive moment in the entire story is the father’s reaction which, to anyone listening, would have sounded utterly inappropriate. Despite the younger son’s feeling of utter inadequacy, this feeling did not represent the truth. Repentance may not bring us back into a position of perfect theology or perfect understanding of our positionality before God. My own default setting is very much like the younger son - a self-flagellation when I come back to my senses before God! What matters is the direction of my movement towards God and not my complete understanding of the restoration and relationship. The father celebrates because the son’s repentance brought him home, not because it was flawless.

The sharp line between grumblers and rejoicers in this parable is the most important boundary marker for fully comprehending it. It is well within the human condition to want to punish people for their role in creating disquiet and disharmony in relationships. This usually begins with a reluctance to celebrate the restoration of the sinner. One of the most damaging aspects of religious community responses to repentance is a haughty intolerance. Just like the older brother in the narrative, it is tempting to see repentance as unfair, to object to the idea of grace being shown, to measure worthiness by performance and to grumble when the father is rejoicing. Jesus’ story in Luke 15 is a cautionary tale in how it can be those closest to “religion”, “creed” or “credentials” who may be farthest from God’s heart, which rejoices at grace. If communities shame the repentant rather than welcome them, they are completely out of sync with God’s restorative enterprise. Jesus is careful to include in his story the father’s desire to invite the older brother to come and celebrate. This is a standing challenge for the church - do we celebrate the return of the repentant or police who deserves mercy?

Repentance and Christ Centred Deconstruction

We will now attempt to work through the above thinking through Faith deconstruction centred around Jesus.

Years ago, a minister had to deal with a congregation, with whom he had a relationship, who were facing the challenges of divisions and potential splits. Having suggested a number of remedial steps, both theological and practical, he discovered later that his suggestions were not well received by some in the congregation. He went back to the church to find out why his correctives seemed to be received so poorly. The trip proved disastrous, as a cross section of the congregation, instigated by one member in particular, publicly attacked and shamed him for turning up unannounced. He left the congregation deflated and, upon his return home, burst into tears, overwhelmed with dismay at how a congregation he had worked so hard for could turn on him so vociferously. Half tempted to go back again, he sent a message explaining his decisions and advice more thoroughly, challenging the congregation sternly for their treatment of him, reminding them of the sacrifices he made on their behalf and reasserting his commitment to them. He later heard news that the congregation at large were deeply upset by his message but, by and large, even more disturbed when they realised the depth of pain they had caused him. They were so perturbed that they turned on the member of the congregation who had provoked a small number of them to attack the minister when he visited. When the minister heard about their reaction, he contacted them again, full of praise for their change in heart concerning him but insisting that they do not continue to pummel the ringleader of the small faction that had opposed him, calling rather for them to come together in a reinvigorated unity.

Well, if you haven’t already guessed it, that minister was the Apostle Paul and these were, it seems, the conditions leading to and emerging from his interactions with the Corinthian believers. Having established the community in Corinth and stayed there for approximately a year and a half (Acts 18:1–11), reports came to Paul via his colleague Chloe that there was a breakdown of unity based on personality cults in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:10–12). A previous written correspondence about not associating with sexually immoral believers had already gone out (1 Cor. 5:9), but 1 Corinthians was written to address the factionalism, which appears to have largely revolved around people’s commitment to Apollos (1 Cor. 4:6). It appears that 1 Corinthians was not tremendously well received, prompting Paul hastily to adjust the travel plans which he had laid out at the end of the letter to go and deal with the negative reception (his original travel plans are logged in 1 Cor. 16:5–11). This was the trip which ended up in such disaster. It was this visit Paul was talking about when he said that he had made-up his mind not to make yet another painful visit to Corinth (2 Cor. 2:1). Dealing with the fallout of 1 Corinthians was challenging enough, but having changed his plans and hastily gone to deal with the situation, Paul suddenly found himself accused of being fickle and untrustworthy - if he could not be sincere about something as simple as his travel plans, how could he be trusted with the gospel of Christ (2 Cor. 1:15–20)? This was further exacerbated by some other Apostolic figures turning up in Corinth and saying that the reason he was so untrustworthy was that he was not a true apostle. How could someone who had faced so many imprisonments and beatings really be a mouthpiece for God (2 Cor. 11:23–29)? How could someone with such poor public presence and rhetorical skill be an apostle (2 Cor. 10:10; 11:6)? Or someone with some kind of physical impediment (2 Cor. 12:7)? Yet against this mountain of criticism, Paul maintained that his Apostolic credentials were absolutely authentic and intact (2 Cor. 12:12). It appears that one particular member of the Corinthian assembly persuaded a small faction to publicly humiliate Paul (2 Cor. 2:5– 6), and the apostle did not hide his grief. He did indeed return and burst into tears and, as he cried, he wrote a letter to demand of the Corinthians how they could have so completely turned on him, to challenge them to come to their senses and to recommit himself to them in love (2 Cor. 2:3–4). The Corinthians turn around was so complete that they then turned on the ringleader to the point where Paul had to tell them that enough was enough and that they needed to restore him and show him grace (2 Cor. 2:6–8). As I intimated, the letter that Paul wrote hit the Corinthians hard, and for a brief moment, he lamented sending it, because it caused unforeseen pain to many which he did not intend. Yet he was encouraged that the pain did not go to waste but rather fuelled their change of thinking. This is what the apostle wrote about the response to that letter he wrote through tears:

⁸ For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it; though I did regret it—for I see that that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while—⁹ I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. ¹⁰ For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death. ¹¹ For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment of wrong! In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter. ¹² So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the offender nor for the sake of the one offended, but that your earnestness in our behalf might be made known to you in the sight of God. ¹³ Because of this, we have been comforted (2 Cor. 7:8–13).

What Paul writes helps me to reflect on the scene created by Jesus in his story of the wayward son. The boy’s conditions (destitute in gentile lands) made him sorrowful, but not sorrowful in a way that invoked vacuous self-pity; rather, it was sorrow that prompted repentance. Nobody wants to feel sorrow, but there is a sorrow that Paul describes as being consistent with God, and that is the kind of sorrow that leads to change. He contrasts this with the kind of sorrow that is according to the world. I dare say, readers will have an extensive mental map for what sorrow according to the world might look like: self-indulgent, entitled, narcissistic, defensive and blame shifting. Or as Langberg has it:

When true repentance occurs in any life, the focus of that life is the pursuit of Christlikeness and the death of anything not like him. The mind, the heart, and the mouth are being transformed in likeness to Jesus. When we hear justifications, excuses, blaming, selfishness, or a focus on the sins of another, we can be sure we do not have true repentance. [Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2015), 265].

What the apostle describes as “vindication of yourselves, indignation, fear, longing, zeal and punishment of wrong” (2 Cor. 7:11) denotes the urgency with which the Corinthians wanted to repair the damage caused between them and their founding apostle, to challenge the instigator and to restore community equilibrium. We may once more hear the enthusiastic and almost self-flagellating stance of the younger son when he came to his senses. We may see Paul’s insistence on grace being shown to the offending parties in Corinth. Indeed, we may see in both Jesus’ parable of the lost son and Paul’s dealings with his opponents encourage the triumph of grace over correctness. The Pharisees and scribes were correct; tax collectors and sinners were sitting loose to obeying the Torah of Moses. The older brother was correct - the younger son had brought shame upon the family, disrepute in the community, had made terrible decisions and squandered a good chunk of the family’s wealth. The Corinthians were correct - Paul had laid out some fairly specific travel plans and then completely gone back on them. Paul was correct; the Corinthians had behaved outrageously and fully deserved him to approach them angrily and in disappointment and judgment. The Corinthians were also correct – the ringleader of the opposition to Paul had been hastily judgmental in not giving a fair hearing to the Apostle and deserved whatever wrath was coming to him. Yet what did all this ‘correctness’ achieve? If these situations only prompted people to further decide who was worthy of grace, what would that yield? We may address these questions about the role played by repentance in the parable of the lost son by asking what it means for the Kingdom of God, what it means for the contemporary pursuit of discipleship to Christ and what word might it speak for those wrestling with challenges and doubts about discipleship.

If the social algorithm: from misdeed to crisis, from crisis to acceptance, from acceptance to honest self-appraisal, from honest self-appraisal to moment of turnaround, from moment of turnaround, to confession and from confession to rehabilitation/reintegration sounds at all familiar to you, then you will realise that often whilst repentance may begin with a decision, it is not a snap judgment that yields instantaneous results. It is often a process of discovery, reflection, questioning and wrestling. Repentance is ongoing; if someone who has overcome a chronically self-destructive bad habit for the sake of the Kingdom of God suffers a relapse, this should not be thought of as undoing the original repentance. Rather, it should point the person back to that point in the journey, back to accepting what they have done and remedying it. Repentance requires grace and should bring joy, salvation and life.

Humility and courage must be combined in order for someone to repent from their heart in a way that is truly liberating. Moreover, congregations should welcome, recognise and embrace the humility and courage of repentant returnees. If people are not humble, they will never accept responsibility and if they are not courageous, they will never be moved to put things right. It is imperative that those who lead in believing communities set the pace when it comes to humility and courage in repentance. So much of the disillusionment with leadership faced by congregations and the erosion of confidence in church administration results from the sense that power, influence and position somehow ringfence certain people from their responsibility to be humble and courageous. There are some in Christian leadership who feel like they always must be right. They consequently lack the requisite humility to own their errors and, rather than courageously confronting their errors, they make excuses and blame others. The father is not looking for correctness so He can offer good grades. He is looking for humble and courageous repentance so He can offer abundant and unearned grace.

Repentance is the seedbed of restored relationship. Forgiveness is for the sake of the offended party. Until we are able to forgive, we risk being re-traumatised by the people who originally offended us. Repentance, however, is for the sake of the offender. I reiterate that forgiveness can happen in the absence of repentance, but it will only heal the offended party. In order for healing to be universal and for relationship to be restored, there must be repentance. If I steal someone’s wallet, I can apologise and the person can forgive me for my offensive action. However, the relationship will not be restored until the wallet is returned. It is these musings in particular which sometimes haunt the corridors of religious communities where there has been abuse of some kind. People in the throes of committing abuse are the young son squandering the family fortune with riotous living. Those committing abuse must come to their senses. The abuser(s) must go to the abused person with their tail between their legs, confessing their crimes and not making excuses. Then, and only then, can there be healing and grace and rejoicing. In situations where people with positions of responsibility in believing communities have abused people, without repercussions and still maintained their office claiming to speak on behalf of God, it makes an absolute mockery of the Gospel - and God is not mocked (Gal. 6:7). Confidence in Christian institutions would be greatly enhanced if leaderships were less concerned about pristine reputations and more concerned about the welfare of abuse victims:

Spiritual repentance is demanded of the church when it is found opposing the mission of God for the sake of preserving its own institutional and traditional forms. The church repents when it brings out new wineskins of worship and weaves new patterns of communal life out of the “unshrunk” cloth of the next generation [Ray S. Anderson, The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 182].

No even-handed reading of the Gospels could conclude that Jesus would protect the brand at the expense of the victims.

There can be considerable disconnect when religious gatekeepers make repentance feel like a circus act which involves jumping through hoops, swinging on trapezes and walking through fire. Believing communities should be grace havens; they should be places where those who honestly own their misdeeds and turn back to God in repentance are enthusiastically and joyfully welcomed back. Repentance is not penance. If repentant people feel like they need to tie themselves to the front of the train to be welcomed back, something is amiss! Sometimes, and even with hearts in the right place, those who lead in Christian community can make reintegration into the community the most arduous of ordeals. The repentant are looked upon with grave suspicion - they did something wrong before, how do we know they are sincere now? How do we know that their hearts are truly repentant? How do we know they will not reoffend? The simple answer to all the above questions is that no leadership can know for certain. I have lamented the myth of certainty in previous posts and there is no need to rehash that now. Hopefully it suffices to say that ultimately, God knows the hearts of people and only He can ultimately bring humanity into judgment. Whilst it is incumbent upon us all to be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves, we err if we grumble when God rejoices, and God rejoices when people return to Him in repentance. We cannot make returning to the church more difficult than returning to God. In an ideal theological world, those two things would be one act. However, if someone puts their misdeeds right but must then jump the man-made hurdles of over-suspicious church leadership administrations, we become the older son, and so doing does not bring about the purposes of God’s Kingdom.

If in our repentance journeys, we have truly and honestly taken responsibility for where we stand, a sense of not measuring up, guilt, shame and unworthiness is probably inevitable. This is where the subversive plot twists in Jesus’ Kingdom commentaries become gateways to oases of grace. “I am embarrassed by what I did”; but God is willing to embarrass Himself, running towards me to get me back. “I am ashamed of what I did”; but God will clothe us with Royal attire so that we feel honour and not shame. “I am unworthy to be God’s son or daughter”; but this has always been the incongruity of grace. Grace is only possible on account of the ludicrous miscarriage of justice which was the crucifixion of Jesus. Divine grace was never predicated upon the worthiness of the recipient. Indeed, it is grace precisely because of our collective unworthiness.

Religion is not an inherently negative concept; yet, in much popular discourse it is vaunted as the opposite of spirituality or the opposite of grace. I think such reasoning ought to be resisted and these terms deconstructed with far greater nuance. I do not think Jesus would ever have claimed to be non-religious (although what we mean by ‘religion’ today with its creedal garments is quite different from what Jesus would have understood as ‘religion’). I think what people often refer to when they use the terms ‘religion’ or ‘religious’ is an inflexible fixity on credal formulations and regulations which run roughshod over our humanity, thereby reducing a relationship with the Living Creator to a sanctimonious checklist of dos and do nots. It is precisely this kind of positionality which refuses to celebrate when the prodigals return. It is precisely this centralising of correctness which chokes the air out of grace. People love regulations for many of the same reasons they crave certainty, and when these have religious backing, it can create a sense of confidence. However, no genuine relationship was predicated upon regulations; the only aspect of life which is certain is that one day it will end; and when we consider that the slave trade, witch burning, colonialism and the denial of women’s rights were all social traumas which had religious and even “scriptural” backing, this should, of necessity, be cause for concern. Religious correctness is likely to make people feel good about their positionality. It is likely to create the impression that God himself endorses our opinions. However, we should never lose sight of the trajectory of grace. Grace abounds quite precisely because we admit we are not correct, not because of how confidently we can rationalise that we are.

Final Reflections.

The road to repentance will not look identical for any two people. In Hebrew thought, repentance is conceptualised as teshuvah, which implies a “turning round” or a “return”, a profoundly relational concept which encapsulates a return to covenant, belonging, identity and peace with God. It is not difficult to see how the Greek concept of metanoia is related to this. In part one, we surveyed a segment from the Jewish historian Josephus and his attempt to dissuade some Jewish hotheads from entering headlong into a conflict with Imperial forces. We considered how his language was near identical to the language of Jesus in Mark 1:15. “Repent and believe”, we suggested, meant at very least give up your agenda. In the reckoning of Jesus, a new agenda was afoot - the Kingdom of God. In view of the imminent dawning of the Kingdom, Jesus called Israel to repent. The parable of the lost son helps us to put this very much in a Kingdom framework, which I understand thusly.

Jesus is the divine archetype for humanity. He represents the ideal way of existing in the world so that human community will flourish irrespective of difference; whether that difference is ethnic, racial, social, class-related, economic, educational, religious, political, philosophical or ideological. Humans were made in the divine image. That image was tarnished and distorted when humans decided that they knew better than God how to exist in the world. Restoration of that divine image occurs when humans are in Christ. To be in Christ, is to have the divine image restored. It is to return to the harmony of Eden and have our original identity and relationship with the living Creator repaired. The Kingdom of God is that divine rulership which creates the arena in which the prodigal, once burdened with the ramifications of their own shortcomings, may return to the father despite their rebellion. The Kingdom of God is that government whose central constitution is grace. Once this is embraced, then the following may also be acknowledged.

Repentance is never energised by shame, guilt, fear, embarrassment, bullying or coercion. No one can be made to repent; they can only, with humility and courage, see the fog that has obscured their vision of the creator decisively cleared. If the charter of the Kingdom of God is grace, sin is not trivialised, excused, relativised or justified. It is named as a sad reality of human brokenness which affects us all without exception and demands a response which is sober, humble and realistic. However, for people to be honest and realistic about whatever has placed distance between them and God, Christ believing spaces must be environments where articulating sin and failure honestly is safe, and free from the fear of confession being weaponized. Those who are deconstructing need church communities to develop language that names sin without dehumanising sinners. This will inevitably involve us thinking through our biblical exegesis, learning to speak the truth lovingly and, even more importantly, learning when not to speak at all, and just listen. In a recent conversation I had with friends, we were wrestling with the various quandaries involved in speaking about sexual ethics in believing community in a way that is not dehumanising. I shared the difference between talking in generalities about sexual orientation and actually listening to the experiences of those with minoritized sexualities. When I have listened to my gay friends who believe in Jesus, including someone I know who had been subjected to violent and frenzied “gay conversion therapy” relate their stories, my heart has sunk. When the young man who endured “conversion therapy” (which included supposed exorcisms, shouting, slaps and aggressive attempts to ‘pray the gay away’) told me as a result he could no longer claim Jesus as Lord, whatever was left of my heart, broke.

It is incumbent upon churches to develop rhythms of reflection and examination of conscience; it is not just individuals who must engage in ongoing repentance, but the community collectively (Rev. 2:5, 16; 3:3, 19). This is how abuse is rooted out and we develop the muscle to be intolerant of injustice, hypocrisy and loveless religion. When communities subconsciously label people as “tax collectors and sinners”, it encourages the sense that the institution must be right. No Prodigal returnee, except when they have been in the grossest and most debased of circumstances, will be confident when religious gatekeepers are unable to say, “we got some things wrong and want to put them right”. It makes sense that the lost son in Jesus’ story felt some fear and apprehension as he approached the father. It does not make sense that he was fearful about the reaction of his older brother. Too often people attempting to return to religious communities are paralysed by performance anxiety. They do not fear God – rather they fear the reactions of Christians – the judgmental stares, the “testimony interrogation”, the non-scriptural re-acceptance criteria, the un-Christlike suspicion and the notion of being treated as projects rather than people.

In all of this, our discipleship must teach repentance as giving up one’s agenda and being restored to relationship. Rather than constantly trying to prove one’s remorse, when honest and open sharing is normalised, failure and shortcoming does not need to result in hasty excommunication. Needless to say, this will require leaders to be schooled in the importance of pastoral sensitivity and trauma-informed ministry.

I hope that this set of reflections demonstrates the centrality of repentance but also sheds a spotlight on its communal nature. I hope that exploring it through the lens of Jesus’ Kingdom commentaries allows repentance to be understood both as the heart of heavenly joy as well as the significant moment of pivot before someone enters the Kingdom of God. Furthermore, I hope it has demonstrated that rethinking repentance as part of a deconstruction journey can engender fresh and liberating perspectives on God’s desire to create loving family which revolves around Jesus, celebrating the forgiveness at the heart of the New Covenant and resisting any tendency of gatekeepers to devalue those whom God is willing to run towards when they come to their senses. I give a closing word to Colson and Vaughn:

Repentance is the process by which we see ourselves, day by day, as we really are; sinful, needy, dependent people. It is the process by which we see God as he is: awesome, majestic, and holy. It is the essential manifestation of regeneration that sets us straight in our relationship to God and so radically alters our perspective that we begin to see the world through God’s eyes, not our own. Repentance is the ultimate surrender of self [Charles Colson & Ellen Santilli Vaughn, “Living in the New Dark Ages: An Exclusive Look at Charles Colson’s Response to Our Collapsing Culture,” Christianity Today 33:15 (1989): 33].