Safehaven Worship Service

16 November 2003

Our Scandalous God - Luke 15:11-32

By Clarence Singam

To what extent would your family love you? At what point will they say to you, "We can't love you anymore. It is just too difficult. It is just too painful?" At what point will your parents say to you, "You are no longer my daughter," or "you are no longer my son?"

Then at what point do you think God will say to you, "I can't love you anymore. It is just too difficult. You just can't be part of my kingdom anymore." At what point will he say, "It is just too darn painful to love you anymore?"

Quite a few of you will jump up and repeat what the Psalmist has said. That though "my mother and my father forsake me the Lord will not forsake me." But yet deep inside many of you there is this nagging feeling. You attend service. You go for your cell groups. But deep inside there is this nagging feeling that you just aren't good enough. That maybe you need to improve your life in a certain way so that you can be more acceptable to God. That maybe the "wrongs" you have done have somehow disqualified you from ever being able to enjoy full fellowship with the father. Then added to this is the negative voices you hear from your family, your friends and your society that people like you are unacceptable. You just don't make the grade and God can't love you. Or to put it in a more sophisticated way: Yes God loves you but he can't accept you. He can't accept you unless you make some changes to your life.

Well today I want to tell you otherwise. I want to share with you about this incredible love of God that leaves us speechless, stupefied – unable to say anything back or do anything back in response. Let's read from Luke 15:11-32.

Look in the Unexpected Places, the Scandalous Places

At the public Easter service in 2002, I was preaching from John 21. During the message I asked a question, "What if Jesus was gay?" I did not say he was gay. I only asked the question. A number of gay people present at the service got very upset with me. Not realizing their own internalized homophobia, they accused me of preaching heresy and soon after that left Safehaven.

Some months later at another meeting, I said, "If I went to heaven and Jesus suddenly appeared to me and he turned out to be a transsexual, it would not affect my faith in him one bit." Again I did not say that Jesus was a transsexual but again some gay people in the meeting getting even more upset with me than the Easter incident some suggesting I was blaspheming. 

I have had over a year to reflect on this. In time I have toned down. I try to use less shocking language though I still shock from time to time. Yet upon reflection I do not believe what I said was in any way wrong except in the way I said it, which was rude and unchristian-like. I could have been more refined and kind to my detractors. Instead I was quite unkind and that was inexcusable. But the fact is if it turned out that Jesus was a homosexual or even a transsexual it truly would not affect my faith one bit. I would have no problem if Jesus were a homosexual or a transsexual. In fact I would go further and say that if Jesus were here today, he would identify with the marginalized including gays and transsexuals. Matthew 25 tells us that ours is a God who appears as the unaccepted, the marginalized and the rejected and that we imperil ourselves when we fail to recognize the face of Jesus in them.

You and I sometimes fail to appreciate how scandalous Jesus' behavior was in the eyes of his society. We think that Jesus ate with "sinners" and we think it was a really cool thing to do. But the fact was his behavior was quite scandalous. It just was not about eating with tax collectors, prostitutes and others of ill repute.

I know billionaire who spends much money helping the poor. Each year he would purchase thousands of blankets and pass them free to the poor tribes living in the northern part of his nation. And they are incredibly grateful to him. But the fact is at no point does this man with a big heart host any of these poor people individually in his home for a meal. It just is not done. They are of different status.

In the Middle East of Jesus' time to host someone for a meal is a serious thing to do. That is why in Luke when Simon the Pharisee hosted Jesus for a meal but did not wash his feet, it was a major and deliberate insult to Jesus.

The Bible in Luke 15:1-2 says Jesus welcomed "sinners". The word "welcome" here can mean, "hosted". In fact in Matthew 2:15, he hosted all sorts of "disreputable" people in the home of one of the disciples. In Middle Eastern culture to host someone is to honor him or her, to treat him or her as brethren, to make peace with them, to tell them you trust them. There is a ritual of the guest paying compliments to the host upon arriving and the host in return complimenting the guests. Can you imagine, this sex worker gets invited to one of these dinners and she recites a compliment and Jesus in turn recites a compliment back? His behavior was scandalous! And in that culture when the Pharisees became upset they were rightly so.

But the fact is that God is pleased to show his love in scandalous ways. He is pleased to demonstrate his love in unexpected ways. He chooses to display his love to and through vessels of dishonor.

I recall when I was fifteen years old; I came down with a fever so severe I was delirious for a number of days. My poor mother who found the doctors unable to help listened to her friends who insisted that the only way to cure her son was to bathe him in warm water filled with chrysanthemum petals and black chicken feathers. Yes black chicken feathers. I still remember also them rubbing raw eggs over my body but so warm was I that the egg became semi cooked. And then of course to get rid of the smell I had to have another bath of chrysanthemum petals and black chicken feathers. I am certain my mother thinks she saved my life. But I think it was something else.

There was an old woman who used to visit us regularly then. She was quite a tall Chinese lady in her eighties and she walked with a very bad hobble. During the Second World War, a bomb had exploded and a shrapnel had sliced off a part of her heel – a part of her foot had been carved off. Not many people gave her the time of the day but for some reason she took a liking to my family and would visit my mother and us would sit and chat with her.

It turned out that she was a Christian. When she found out about my illness, she came to visit me daily, dutifully rubbed the raw eggs onto my skin while telling me how much God loved me and how special I was to him and she prayed for me. My mother – bless her good soul - thinks the chicken feathers saved me but I think it was the love of God revealed in an unexpected place that saved me.

In this passage in Luke, Jesus is almost insulting the Pharisees. This series of three parables is one of the most masterful of Jesus' sayings. His skill as a consummate storyteller is illustrated here more than in any other passage. His first two parables are an affront to the Pharisees.

You see shepherds while a revered figure in the Old Testament e.g. in Psalm 23, had become treated as unclean people by the time of Jesus. For the Pharisees, a "sinner" was either an immoral person who did not keep the law or a person engaged in one of the unacceptable trades, which included keeping sheep. And here Jesus, as if to rub it in their faces says, "Suppose one of you was a shepherd…" It is like saying to a group of bishops today, "Suppose one of you was a homosexual…"

But more than that, Jesus used the unacceptable and unclean shepherd as a symbol for God. Once again a scandalous thing. Once again the love of God is revealed in an unexpected place.

As if that were not enough. Jesus then goes and uses a woman as a symbol for God. In the days of Jesus and until very recently, a woman was a non-entity. She was unreliable and her testimony was of no use in a court of law. Yet God chooses the symbol of a woman to reveal his love. His love is revealed in scandalous and unexpected places.

When we come to the story of the prodigal son, Jesus demonstrates his consummate skills. Let me ask you. What would happen if you went to your grandparents, or perhaps even parents and told them, "You should write a will"? I remember talking to my best friend. He was telling me how he was concerned about the time when his parents would pass on. Because they had quite a number of properties he could just see his siblings fighting over the properties. As the eldest son he was quite troubled. I thought the solution was simple so I just told him glibly, "Why don't you ask your parents to write a will?" David gave me the most incredulous look and then shrieked, "Seow ah! They will say I wish they were dead!"

Today we fail to appreciate the significance of what the younger son was doing. Kenneth Bailey, who spent many years as a missionary in the Middle East said:

For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to 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. The conversation almost always runs as follows:

"Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?"

"Never!"

"Could anyone make such a request?"

"Impossible!"

"If anyone did, what would happen?"

"His father would beat him of course!"

"Why?"

"This request means – he wants his father to die!"

Bailey noted that there were only two situations when people could remember a son asking the father for his inheritance while the father was still living. In the first, an Oriental Jewish Christian man who had been in good health died soon after the son made the request. The man's wife said to his pastor, "My husband died the day my son asked for his inheritance." The man had gone into such anguish that his health finally failed. In the second instance, a Syrian farmer's older son asked for his inheritance while his father was still living. The father was so enraged; he drove his son out of the house.

Jesus in this story was recounting something that from a Jewish perspective was scandalous. Jesus' audience would have expected the father to beat the son or to go into deep anguish. But instead the father chooses to demonstrate his love in the scandal. He gives his children the property.

In fact in Jewish rules, a father may give his property to his children while he is alive but they are generally not allowed to spend it. In this case both the younger son and the older son got their share of the father's property. And the younger son went further, he sold it all off. This situation was scandalous. But the father's love was poured out even more amidst the scandal. The father demonstrates his love in an unexpected place.

I am convinced that today that God chooses gays and transsexuals as some of the unexpected places in which he reveals his love. Do you realise that? Do you realise that God wants to choose you – you the scandalous, you the unexpected – to be the vessels upon which he wants to reveal his love. As you go about in your life can you perceive God's love for you in the unexpected places? Can you perceive God's love for you in the scandalous places?

Do you know how I got to know Reverend and Mrs. Yap? Many years ago when I was still a raving fundamentalist, who somehow got interested in contexualisation of theology, I came across a book by a man called Yap Kim Hao who turned out to be the first bishop of the Methodist church here. The book was called Doing Theology in a Pluralistic World. I read parts of the book and have to admit was somewhat shocked at some parts of it. I was scandalized.

Though I never read the book again, unlike some other books I never threw this one away. And every once in a while I would remember the book. But I thought that the author was no longer in Singapore. And neither did I have any intention or inclination to contact him.

Then suddenly out of the blue after PM Goh's statement, I see a letter by a man of this name saying that the church should accept gay people. I knew there and then that I had to locate him. Locating him was not an easy task I had to go through a few people but we finally made contact. And today he and his wife have become a part of our lives.

Just think for a minute. What is the Lord saying? Here is a man who has had a distinguished career in ministry. He has done things some of us only dream of ever doing. Right now in his life, he should be enjoying his retirement, playing golf, spending time with his family and friends. Instead what does he do? He chooses to run around with a bunch of faggots and other misfits. You want scandal. Well right here before your very eyes is a scandalous thing going on. You spend years wanting to be accepted. To know God loves you. To know God accepts you fully. And how can he demonstrate it to you? Just the way he always does – through a scandal.

He chooses a bishop. He chooses a man who is looked up to by many. He chooses a man whose generation of Christians – we thought – would never be able to accept us misfits. He mixes all that together and today we stand in the presence of a love unfolding itself in the midst of a scandal. Many of you see Kimhao and just accept him like any other human being. Some of you don't even give allowance for his age. But the fact is we have one in our midst who is in many ways a giant in the history of South East Asian Christianity. A man who should at this stage in his life be working towards preserving his legacy so that future generations of Christians will remember him kindly. But instead he throws himself into a scandal.

Just pause for a moment. Do you see how God is using Kimhao and his wife as a "sacrament" to demonstrate his love for you? Do you see how God is trying to tell you that the radical love his showed in the gospel of Luke, he is now unfolding to you for you in your very presence? Do you see?

Look in the Humiliating Places

When I was a teenager, after my father had left us, my mother was working in a printing press where she was paid four hundred ringgit a month. It was a paltry sum of money. Many a parent – and some of my friends had such parents – would have asked their children to stop school and go to work. But my mum did not. My mum is a proud woman. In her younger days she looked incredibly beautiful. I used to love seeing her in a cheongsam or in a sari. Men used to find her quite attractive.

This lady decided that the only way she could make more money was to clean tables. So on weekends she would go to the coffee shop near our home to clean tables. She used to tell me that she was visiting a friend but I found out one day that she spent Sundays cleaning tables from scraps of food at the coffee shop nearby.

I remember too there were times when the money even from this second job was not enough for us and then she would resort to pawning some of her jewelry. I recall once I was out with her and she needed to pawn some jewelry in a shop at Pudu. She told me to wait nearby so that no one would have to see her son enter a pawnshop. She went in pawned some jewelry then came out again.

Perhaps as a teenager who was more worried about the acne on his face, it did not hit me. But as I grew up I realized how much my mother truly loved me. I would not be here today if not for what she sacrificed. For the fact that her love was a love that was willing to go through severe humiliation so that I could be who I am today.

As people whose Christianity has been greatly influenced by the West, we do not understand the story of the prodigal son. You see the son had gone off and squandered his property in extravagant living. The Greek does not actually say "immoral living" and this is an important point that I would come to later.

The younger son had squandered his wealth. Not only squandered his wealth but squandered it in the land of the Gentiles. From the perspective of the village this is completely unacceptable. It was not just a sin against the father it was a sin against the community. Bailey shares that the Middle Eastern had a procedure called the qesasa. It was enacted each time some one was to be cut off from the community. The elder males of the village or community would gather around the person to be cut off and they would bring clay pots with them. The clay pots would be smashed in the presence of the person to be cut off while they chanted, "So-and-so is cut off from his inheritance." This was a ceremony that was enacted if someone lost his wealth to gentiles.

Now the younger son had lost all his wealth. He had been reduced to being with pigs. For many of you this does not seem too difficult a thing but try telling this story to a conservative Muslim for instance. Imagine how he might cringe at the thought of having to take care of pigs and longing for their food. It is the ultimate in being down and out.

As the young man was starving he began to think. His father's servants were eating better than him. So he devises a plan. Why not go back to father? But there is a problem. Firstly there is his pride. If he goes back and becomes part of the family he will have to live off his brother. Already from the story we know that the relationship with the brother is probably tense. Secondly he will have to forever accept that he has squandered his father's wealth and squandered it on gentiles at that.

So he develops his plan. He will go back to his father and say to his father, "I have sinned against heaven and against you. Make me one of your hired servants." You see in the Jewish culture there were two types of servants – the slave and the hired hand. The family owned the slave, he had very little rights. But he was often treated as part of the family and lived with the family. The hired hand however was a freeman. He was paid a salary and he was not part of the family and did not live with the family.

This strategy would take care of the problem with his brother and perhaps he could repay his father a little bit. He would still retain his independence and need not be part of the family that he did not want to be part of in the first place. As for the qesasa; well he would just have to live with the consequences of being an outcast – surely that was better than feeding pigs. It was a masterful plan; the best he could think of. So he sets out to go home.

But the young man's plan is thwarted. His father seeing him coming from afar decides to run towards him. You and I, influenced as we are by Western eyes, gush at the old man's gesture and wonder at the mushiness of his gesture. But the audience of Jesus would have seen it differently.

Bailey says, "An oriental man in flowing robes never runs anywhere." He quotes Ben Sirach an old scholar who said, "A man's manner of walking tells you what he is." Weatherhead writes, "It is so very undignified in Eastern eyes for an elderly man to run." Aristotle says, "Great men never run in public." Bailey in fact recalls that a pastor friend of his in the Middle East was not accepted as a pastor of a Middle Eastern church because he walked too fast. For an old man to run was to make himself undignified. It was to humiliate himself.

The father knew that as the villagers saw the younger son come home, they would be preparing the qesasa. They would gather around the son as he entered the village to enact the ceremony to cut him off from the community and to treat him as an outcast. If he was to rescue his son, he needed something to distract the villagers. The only thing he could think of was to humiliate himself by running towards the son. And so he ran.

He ran and he ran and he ran and as he reached the son he threw himself onto the son and kissed him profusely. Any villager seeing the old man run would have been shocked. Here was a wealthy man behaving in a most undignified manner, making a spectacle of himself becoming a disgrace to his stature and class. They would have been shocked at this demonstration of love in humiliation.

And not only them. The son was shocked. He had intended to say, "I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be your son. Make me one of your hired men." Instead, his strategy to work out a way of retaining his own dignity and independence was foiled. He could only utter, "I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be your son." Having seen the extent of his father's love of protecting him from the qesasa he could not bring himself to ask his father to make him a hired servant. He could just stand there and receive the love – the love in humiliation.

Do you understand? God chooses to actively humiliate himself so as to demonstrate to you the extent of his love.

I have been quite concerned about Kimhao. One person told me that he is getting a lot of flak from being associated with us. Another told me that he is becoming the butt of jokes amongst some Christian leaders. Yesterday he told me that some were trying to haul him up for his association with us to the point of implying perhaps that he is not fit to be a minister.

His wife came to me yesterday and told me about how some are trying to challenge him on his ministry credentials because of his association with us. She told me, "What is the worse they can do? Perhaps they will ex-communicate us. And if they do we will join the gays." Then she giggled almost like a young girl, "But we have already joined you haven't we?"

When you sang, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" earlier, you were proclaiming the very act this father took part in. The act of loving in humiliation. The song says:

See from his head, his hands and his feet

Sorrow and love flow mingled down

Did e'er such love and sorrow meet

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

The cross was God's ultimate act of love in humiliation. But ours is not a God who acted over two thousand years ago and is now silent. He is still acting. He is still loving in humiliation.

Pause for a moment. Think. Why are this man and his wife going through this humiliating experience? Why are he and she willing that after a distinguished ministry to endure being questioned, ridiculed and humiliated in this manner? What is God trying to say to you? Once again perhaps in Kimhao and his wife we are seeing a "sacrament" of the God who loves in humiliation. Perhaps God is asking you, "How long more do you need me to demonstrate my complete love and acceptance of you? How long more will you hang on to your strategies of trying to win my favor and pay me back? Stop! Stop! Just stand there. Stand there and be amazed. Stand there and be speechless. Stand there and be stupefied. Stand there and receive my love. Stand there and receive my complete acceptance." Will you do that today? Will you stop working? Will you stop trying? Will you just receive this astounding astonishing grace of God, which expresses itself in humiliation? Will you?

Look for the Relationship

The younger son had come home looking to pay back the father. But the father was looking for the lost relationship. He was not interested in the squandered money. He was not interested in the wasted life. He was interested to restore his relationship with his son and he would do whatever it took to achieve it.

The bottom line is the Christian faith is about relationship. It is fundamentally and principally not about what you believe but about your relationship with Jesus.

In 1999, I went through a radical shift. Prior to that I was a fundamentalist. I was an elder in a fundamentalist church. I led mission teams to go save the unsaved. But in 1999, through a series of events, my theology shifted almost overnight. For a period of time I recall writing in my diary that I felt like I had been cast adrift in a vast ocean. I felt disoriented. I literally did not know whether I would be able to survive the disorientation. For the first time in my life, I felt that I had lost all spiritual certainties. My bearings were gone.

This period of disorientation was followed by a prolonged time of revaluation. I have seen almost every key foundation of my belief system challenged, torn down and rebuilt. I have spent much time thinking, rethinking, and reformulating. It has been a time of incredible excitement but also one of much uncertainty. I recall telling an old friend, my pastor from my University days, that to live my life now that way it is now will take greater faith than I have ever had to exercise in my life.

It is almost as if I have been on a long journey, an extended pilgrimage. Recently I was in Amsterdam for work. And is my usual practice I try to find a few days alone. Just to be in solitude and be able to reconnect with myself. I recall asking the Lord, "What next Lord? Where to from here?" I sensed that Lord seemed to be nudging me. The pilgrimage and the searching has come to a close. A new journey awaits. I sensed the Lord saying, it is now time to re-establish relationship with me.

Since coming back from Amsterdam, I have been reading again. Not so much theological books but more books on Christian spirituality. I have been reading Marcus Borg's "The Heart of Christianity" and Richard Holloway's "Doubts and Loves." I begin to realise that as liberal as these two authors are, they both have a deep spirituality. They both have a deep and compassionate relationship with God. A relationship in which God cannot be boxed in by neat theological formulations or simple "Four Spiritual Laws" or "Steps to Salvation." Since coming back I have been spending a bit more time doing what we would call "Quiet Time." It is time to reconnect to your relationship with God.

Many of you come here each Sunday. You sing. You read the Bible. You pray. You hear the sermon. You go to your cell groups and you discuss. But are you re-connected back to God? Are you pursuing a relationship with God? Are you nurturing your friendship with God?

In the end nothing matters. It is only your relationship with God that matters. And in all that the Lord is doing – in loving you in scandalous ways, in loving you in unexpected places, in loving you in humiliating ways – in all that he does, he does to call you back into relationship with him. Will you respond today?

God has done his part. You are left with two choices. The story does not end there. The party begins. And it is a big party. For a small party they would have cooked a lamb but here they cooked a calf. The whole village was celebrating.

The elder son hears the music. He knows what is happening. But he can't believe it. The Greek says, "He kept asking again and again, 'what is happening?'" It is not that he did not know. It is that like the Pharisees, like the fundamentalists who malign us, it is not that he did not know. It is that he could not believe his eyes or his ears. He could not believe that his father, that God, could love in so scandalous and in so humiliating a way. He too was stupefied. He was aghast.

As with those who cannot accept the radical love of Jesus poured onto others, he slanders his brother. He says his brother squandered his wealth with prostitutes while the text never implies that the younger son was immoral only wasteful. Today those who cannot understand and comprehend the radical love of Jesus for you too are slandering you.

Someone once said to me, "The radicals of today become the conservatives of tomorrow." Today you are the radicals. That we can even suggest that God could love and fully accept you is a scandal. But beware that one day you do not take the place of the conservatives who now malign you and you in turn one day malign others whom God chooses to pour out his love to. Do not follow the path of the older son.

And so the cycle begins again. A respectful son would have grit his teeth. Hosted the guests. After the guests had left, he then may have confronted his father. But the elder son is incensed. He confronts his father publicly. In fact he insults his father – he does not even address his father as "father" but says the accusative "you."

Again the father is expected to discipline the son. But no the father loves. He loves in humiliation once more. He goes to the son and pleads with him.

But this son is blind. He does not see the scandalous love of the father. He does not see the humiliating love of the father. He does not understand that the father's priority is relationship. He is blind.

I have shared with you about our God. I have shared with you how I think in these times he is demonstrating his love for you. How he is scandalizing the church in general. How he is humiliating himself to demonstrate his love for you. How he is asking you to build a relationship with him. Will you now respond as the younger son? Will you stand in awe as you see this God reveal his breathtaking his astounding love? Will you receive him and know that you can do nothing else to gain his favor for you?

I leave you with the thoughts of Paul Tillich, perhaps one of the two most important theologians of the 20 th century. Throughout much of his adult life Tillich struggled to understand and receive God's acceptance of him. He said:

To be struck by grace is to be at that moment when a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later; do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted! If that happens to us, we experience grace. We may not be better than before, and we many not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.

Yes. You accepted. You are accepted.