I don’t have a lot of time for an update, but am sitting at the same internet “cafe” as I did last year while in the Eastern Province. It is powered by satellite and I am currently hoping this e-mail (being typed ofline) will make it online, this will happen if my Rwandan friend can find me an extra ethernet cable. This could end up being a nice note to myself.

Under the usumption that this will infact get posted. Here is a quick update!

We arrived in Rwanda on Saturday. Sunday was spent in the capital of Kigali. We stayed at a catholic guest house and spent the morning at a local church. It was a beautiful service and I’m always appreciative of the ability of other cultures to let loose and just worship God. We got a good bite to eat for lunch and had a fairly relaxed evening preparing for our departure to the east the following morning. We arrived in the eastern district of Nyagatare Monday afternoon.  Our time has been packed since!

We have been following up on the multiple initiatives of the project including health care, education, business and pastoral training (see video in my previous post for more).

I haven’t had the time to reflect on much of what has happened yet, but plan to do so and post more details. But here are three things that are worthy of mention thus far:

1. There have been a lot of people I have seen from last time. Very encouraging. Also, some which are not here for various reasons. It has been encouraging seeing progress and growth in our absence.

2. I am working on a video for Phoenix Seminary and the various churches involved in this project. It will be used to communicate the project here in Rwanda. It’s my first time doing film on my Canon 7d so it’s been a bit hit and miss. That said I’m pretty happy with the results and eager to give you all a look at what I see here.

3. When John and I were leading a couple hour sesion with secondary school students we opened it up for the boys to ask us any questions they wanted covering litterally any topic. We got a lot of the normal goofy questions, and lots of questions about american culture. Then one of the boys asked us to comment on the 1994 genocide. It was an abrupt dose of weight to the otherwise light hearted conversation. We initially didn’t fully answer the question but about 20 minutes later God had put it on my heart to talk to the 50 or so men about the topic. My fear was that our lack of acknowledgement of the quesiton would feed into the hurt for many Rwandans which feel there has been a lack of acknowledgement of the Genocide by the rest of the world. I spoke to them first asking a simple quesiton. What do you do when someone wrongs you? The conversation lead to the topic of forgiveness at which point I was able to highlight the fact that forgiveness never comes without a cost. I talked about the true reality of what it means to be a man and that the temptation is always to meet wrong doing with wrong doing. God lead me to close the time by bringing it back to the cross. Teaching that the sin driven genocide in Rwanda was evil and horrible, it was genocide and it was not okay. And yet sin also presents itself in the smaller examples we had discussed when talking about forgivness. I told them that there was a price to pay for all of this, and that was the price Christ paid on the cross.

It went longer than I expected but it was the most intimate time I have felt with God or with anyone here. It was a blessing to be used by God to speak into such a sensitive topic. I would ask that each of you would take a moment to pray for these young men an the watering of seeds such as this. That God may build in them strength as a generation desperately trying to move past such a tragic history.

Time is up here! Hope to post more soon. Thanks for all the prayers, its been a huge blessing! Praise God!

Synopsis:

“The Prodigal God,” by Timothy Keller, is an analysis and reflection upon the parable Jesus presents in chapter 15 in the gospel of Luke.

Length:

139 pages

Summary:

This is the second Keller book that I’ve read, the first being “The Reason for God.” In many ways he reminds me of a modern day C.S. Lewis. His writings are very well grounded in a spirit of humility while still speaking boldly and without reservation. He seems to be theologically sound but not so intellectual that he loses the tangible application of the passage. “The Prodigal God” is an in depth look at the parable that Jesus tells when speaking to the Pharisees (religious leaders) and tax collectors (outright sinners as represented in the story) in the fifteenth chapter of the gospel of Luke (Luke 15:1-3, Luke 15:11-32). Many people who have spent time in church or reading through scripture are familiar with this parable about a young man who takes his inheritance from his father, leaves home in favor of a life of rebellion and fruitless pursuits, and then returns to his father who greets him with open arms. The story has long been told as a description of God’s heart of forgiveness for us, a people who leave for a life to sin, but when we return, find God waiting with arms wide open. While this is an applicable and powerful truth in the parable, it is pointed out by Keller that to not see beyond this is to not fully grasp the entirety of the parable.

Keller teaches that this isn’t just the story of the younger brother but of both brothers, and how they interact with God (the father in the story). One thing I enjoyed about this book was Keller’s ability to ground the story in relevant cultural context of the time. Starting with who the audience of this parable was. Jesus was speaking to both the Pharisees (older brother) and the tax collectors (younger brother). Keller goes so far as to say that “…the real audience for this story is the Pharisees, the elder brothers. Jesus is pleading with his enemies to respond to his message.” (pg. 28) It is important to understand the tension that was in Jesus’ presenting this story. It’s worth noting that the younger son in the story repents after his aimless wandering, returning to the father and an ensuing celebration, but the older brother refuses to enter the celebration, standing on his sense of entitlement before the father. Jesus was challenging the way the Pharisees were living, perceiving their motives and asking them to check their hearts.

Keller describes why both brothers are spiritually lost, “Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.” (p.43). He goes on to explain that both brothers are in the wrong and apart from God. The younger brother chooses outright rebellion, seeking happiness through a path of self-discovery, while the older brother sought to put God in his debt through a meticulous and legalistic religious regiment seeking the same happiness through moral conformity. And it is perhaps in the latter path that we as Christians face the most danger. Just as the Pharisees did, the older brother loses the message of the gospel. For him faith becomes less of a heart issue and more of a matter of meeting cultural religious expectations. This outlook can foster an underlying pride that becomes dangerous and destructive. As Jesus says in Luke 18:14 as paraphrased by Keller, “the humble are in and the proud are out.” And thus is the danger of the older brother. This mentality can trap us in a place of thinking our good works have entitled us into a place of deserving God’s grace. A direct contradiction to the gospel which teaches that we are saved by faith through grace alone. It is here that Keller also points out that unfortunately, many people who have turned away from the church have done so not necessarily turning away from Christ, but how he is represented through this ‘older brother’ persona in many of the people within the church. An unfortunate yet seemingly true observation.

He then also looks at the role of God in the parable, the father. He makes the observation that the word prodigal, defined as recklessly extravegant; or having spent everything; not only is relevant in the description of the younger son but is perhaps more relevant in the description of God. In the story the younger son asks the father for his share of the inheritance while the father is still alive. A huge insult to his father as he is essentially saying he values that wealth more than the very life of his father. After the son squanders everything and finds himself living in the lowest of standards he decides to return to his father, who is culturally justified in shunning the son as an outcast from the family, and begging to work for him living essentially as a slave to his father. But upon the sons return he is shocked at the fathers response. At the very sight of his son the father comes running towards him, that in and of it self is a significant cultural response as the patriarch of a house wouldn’t normally be seen running. He doesn’t even allow the son to beg for forgiveness but immediately welcomes him back into the family. He orders a servant to quickly, “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.” With these actions he is essentially reinstating the son as part of the family, returning to him his rightful inheritance as a son of the father. It is here that Keller makes a key distinction:

“Over the years many readers have drawn the superficial conclusion that the restoration of the younger brother involved no atonement, no cost. They point out that the younger son wanted to make restitution but the father wouldn’t let him–his acceptance back into the family was simply free. This, they say, shows that forgiveness and love should always be free and unconditional.
That is an oversimplification. If someone breaks your lamp, you could demand that she pay for it. The alternative is that you could forgive her and pay for it yourself (or go about bumping into furniture in the dark). Imagine a more grave situation, namely that someone has seriously damaged your reputation. Again, you have two options. You could make him pay for this by going to others, criticizing and ruining his good name as a way to restore your own. Or you could forgive him, taking on the more difficult task of setting the record straight without vilifying him. The forgiveness is free and unconditional to the perpetrator, but it is costly to you.
Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness” (pg. 83)

The father sacrificed to restore the place of the son, just as God did through Jesus to provide a way for us to be reconciled to him. This is so important to understand and something that I think becomes a stumbling block to nonbelievers who wonder why Jesus had to die for us to be reconciled to God.

The parable ends without us knowing how the older son finally responds to the call of the father, seemingly a direct call to those listening as Jesus asks how they will choose to respond. The book ends with a look at the feast that the father throws for the son, and connects it to the celebration God has prepared for us. It leaves us (hopefully) looking internally and asking ourselves the same question. How are we responding to this call from the father, to his grace which has already been extended. Are our tendencies that of the younger brother who seeks fulfillment through an outright rebellion of the father, or do we personify the older brother through our attempts to religiously earn our way into God’s grace? The older brother who is offended by the grace given to the younger brother because he doesn’t recognize his own need for that same grace! The parable is both an intimate call of Jesus to his listeners, and a commentary on the story that we find ourselves in today and how we will respond to ultimate act of mercy and grace.

Relevance:

For me this book was a valuable read. It was both short, and easily digestible, while very relevant and challenging. It calls us to examine our faith and the roots or heart of our actions. I am literally an older brother and I find that my tendencies can so easily fall back to that of the older brother. I so often judge my life by the results of my actions completely missing the motivation of my heart. It is a good reminder that my actions are little more than a nice thought outside of an internal gospel driven change. As much as anything else this has challenged me to evaluate my interactions with God. In prayer do I come to him just when things are tough, or only when asking for something? Or do I come to him like a son who understands his disparity, who understands his poverty, and who understands his only hope lays in the continuous grace and mercy of the father. Pride is always there, the tendency to want to claim the good things in my life. I must recognize that this is a dangerous thing, that this pride can lead to the very refusal of God’s call to step into what he has prepared for me. I must learn that my claim is not in what I have done, but what I have been given because of what God has done for me. And that I need the same grace from God that he has extended to both the righteous and the sinners, works to not bring me any closer to achieving that to even the the nth degree.

Standout Quote:

“In fact, many elder brothers, for all their religiosity, do not have much of a private prayer life at all unless things are not going well in their lives. Then they may devote themselves to a great deal of it, until things get better again. This reveals that their main goal in prayer is to control their environment rather than to delve into an intimate relationship with a God who lives them.” (pg. 65)

Qoute of a Qoute:

“We are saved by faith alone, but not by faith that remains alone.” (Timothy Keller quoting Martin Luther, pg. 123)

I heard this quote today in a sermon, it stopped me in my tracks. I keep coming back to it and reading it over and over again. Such lofty implications on who we are and how we live our own lives!

“He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God.  He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming, yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable that the little ones loved to play with him and nestle in his arms.  His presence at the innocent gayety of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine.  No one was half so kind or compassionate to sinners, yet no one spoke such red-hot scorching words about sin.  A bruised reed he would not break, his own life was love, yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell.  He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions, yet for sheer stark realism he has all of our self-styled realists soundly beaten.  He was the servant of all, washing the disciples’ feet, yet masterfully he strode into the temple and the hucksters and money-changers fell over one another in their mad rush to get away from the fire they saw blazing in his eyes.  In the end he saved others, but at last himself he did not save.  There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts that confronts us in the Gospels.  The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality.” -James Stuart