Third, it is our responsibility to be extremely careful about making negative, decisive, lasting judgments about people's eternal destinies. As Jesus says, he "did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (John 12). We can name Jesus, orient our lives around him, and celebrate him as the way, the truth, and the life, and at the same time respect the vast, expansive, generous mystery that he is.

Heaven is, after all, full of surprises.

This world is being redeemed, the tomb is empty, and a new creation is bursting forth right here in the midst of this one.

Jesus said in Matthew 13 that this new reality is like yeast, working its way slowly and quietly, and steadily, through the dough. In the story he tells in Matthew 25, the mystery hides in the naked and hungry and sick and lonely. And in another parable he tells, also in Matthew 13, the kingdom is like a mustard seed that grows and grows and grows until it's a ma.s.sive tree.

Not everybody sees it, not everybody recognizes it, but everybody is sustained by it.

He is the answer, but he is also the question, the hunt, the search, the exploration, the discovery.

He is the rock, and there is water there.

Chapter 7.

The Good News Is Better Than That On the Sundays when I give a sermon at our church, I usually sit on the edge of the stage and talk to people after the service. And every week the same woman walks up to me and hands me a piece of paper. We've been going through this ritual for several years now. She smiles, and we chat for a moment or two, and then she walks away. The piece of paper she hands me is always the same size, about four by five inches, folded, with writing inside in the upper left corner. I unfold it each week while she watches, and then I read what she's written on it.

A number, with a few comments next to the number.

Sometimes the number is big, like 174.

Sometimes it's smaller. I remember once when it was 2.

The number is how many days it's been since she last cut herself. She's struggled with a self-injury addiction for years, but lately a group of people have been helping her find peace and healing. But she still struggles, some weeks more than others.

She recently told me that every man she's ever been with hit her.

So when she hears about love, it's not a concept she's familiar with.

Which makes sense.

Beaten, hit, abused, neglected-and then she's told that G.o.d loves her unconditionally without reservation without her having to do anything to earn it?

That's a stretch. Hard to believe, given what she's seen of the world.

I tell you a bit of her story in order to tell another story, one Jesus tells in Luke 15. A man has two sons. The younger one demands his share of the father's inheritance early, and the father unexpectedly gives it to him. He takes the money, leaves home, spends it all, and returns home hoping to be hired as a worker in his dad's business. His father, again unexpectedly, welcomes him home, embraces him, and throws him a homecoming party, fattened calf and all.

Which his older brother refuses to join. It's unfair, he tells his father, because he's never even been given a goat, so that he and his friends could have a party. The father then says to him, "You are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

I retell this story of Jesus's, because of the number of stories being told in this one story.

The younger brother tells a story. It is his version of his story, and as he heads home in shame after squandering his father's money, he rehea.r.s.es the speech he'll give his father. He is convinced he's "no longer worthy" to be called his father's son. That's the story he's telling, that's the one he's believing. It's stunning, then, when he gets home and his father demands that the best robe be put on him and a ring placed on his finger and sandals on his feet. Robes and rings and sandals are signs of being a son. Although he's decided he can't be a son anymore, his father tells a different story. One about return and reconciliation and redemption. One about his being a son again.

The younger son has to decide whose version of his story he's going to trust: his or his father's. One in which he is no longer worthy to be called a son or one in which he's a robe-, ring-, and sandal-wearing son who was dead but is alive again, who was lost but has now been found.

There are two versions of his story.

His.

And his father's.

He has to choose which one he will live in.

Which one he will believe.

Which one he will trust.

Same, it turns out, for the older brother.

He too has his version of his story.

He tells his father, "All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours (he can't even say his brother's name) who has squandered your property with prost.i.tutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!"

So much in so few words. One senses he's been saving it up for years, and now out it comes, with venom.

First, in his version of events, he's been slaving for his father for years. That's how he describes life in his father's house: slaving. That directly contradicts the few details we've been given about the father, who appears to be anything but a slave driver.

Second, he says his father has never even given him a goat. A goat doesn't have much meat on it, so even in conjuring up an image of celebration, it's meager. Lean. Lame. The kind of party he envisions just isn't that impressive. What he reveals here is what he really thinks about his father: he thinks he's cheap.

Third, he claims that his father has dealt with his brother according to a totally different set of standards. He thinks his father is unfair. He thinks he's been wronged, shorted, shafted. And he's furious about it.

All with the party in full swing in the background.

The father isn't rattled or provoked. He simply responds, "My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours." And then he tells him that they have to celebrate.

"You are always with me, and everything I have is yours."

In one sentence the father manages to tell an entirely different story about the older brother.

First, the older son hasn't been a slave. He's had it all the whole time. There's been no need to work, obey orders, or slave away to earn what he's had the whole time.

Second, the father hasn't been cheap with him. He could have had whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. Everything the father owns has always been his, which includes, of course, fattened calves. All he had to do was receive.

Third, the father redefines fairness. It's not that his father hasn't been fair with him; it's that his father never set out to be fair in the first place. Grace and generosity aren't fair; that's their very essence. The father sees the younger brother's return as one more occasion to practice unfairness. unfairness. The younger son doesn't deserve a party-that's the point of the party. That's how things work in the father's world. Profound unfairness. The younger son doesn't deserve a party-that's the point of the party. That's how things work in the father's world. Profound unfairness.

People get what they don't deserve.

Parties are thrown for younger brothers who squander their inheritance.

After all, "You are always with me, and everything I have is yours."

What the father does is retell the older brother's story. Just as he did with the younger brother. The question, then, is the same question that confronted the younger brother-will he trust his version of his story or his father's version of his story?

Who will he trust?

What will he believe?

The difference between the two stories is, after all, the difference between heaven . . . and h.e.l.l.

Now most images and understandings people have of heaven and h.e.l.l are conceived of in terms of separation.

Heaven is "up" there, h.e.l.l is "down" there.

Two different places, far apart from each other.

One over there, there, the other over there. there.

This makes what Jesus does in his story about the man with two sons particularly compelling. Jesus puts the older brother right there at the party, but refusing to trust the father's version of his story. Refusing to join in the celebration.

h.e.l.l is being at the party.

That's what makes it so h.e.l.lish.

It's not an image of separation, but one of integration.

In this story, heaven and h.e.l.l are within each other, intertwined, interwoven, b.u.mping up against each other.

If the older brother were off, alone in a distant field, sulking and whining about how he's been a slave all these years and never even had a goat to party with his friends with, he would be alone in his h.e.l.l.

But in the story Jesus tells, he's at the party, with the music in the background and the celebration going on right there in front of him.

There is much for us here, about heaven, h.e.l.l, and the news that is good.

___________________.

First, an observation about h.e.l.l.

h.e.l.l is our refusal to trust G.o.d's retelling of our story.

We all have our version of events. Who we are, who we aren't, what we've done, what that means for our future. Our worth, value, significance. The things we believe about ourselves that we cling to despite the pain and agony they're causing us.

Some people are haunted by the sins of the past. Abuse, betrayal, addiction, infidelity-secrets that have been buried for years. I can't tell you how many people I've met over the years who said they couldn't go to a church service, because the "roof would cave in" or "there would be a lightning bolt."

Flaws, failures, shame like a stain that won't wash out. A deep-seated, profound belief that they are, at some primal level of the soul, not good enough.

For others, it isn't their acute sense of their lack or inadequacy or sins; it's their pride. Their ego. They're convinced of their own greatness and autonomy-they don't need anybody. Often the belief is that G.o.d, Jesus, church, and all that is for the "weak ones," the ones who can't make it in the world, so they cling to religious superst.i.tions and myths like a drug, a crutch, a way to avoid taking responsibility for their pathetic lives.

We believe all sorts of things about ourselves.

What the gospel does is confront our version of our story with G.o.d's version of our story.

It is a brutally honest, exuberantly liberating story, and it is good news.

It begins with the sure and certain truth that we are loved.

That in spite of whatever has gone horribly wrong deep in our hearts and has spread to every corner of the world, in spite of our sins, failures, rebellion, and hard hearts, in spite of what's been done to us or what we've done, G.o.d has made peace with us.

Done. Complete.

As Jesus said, "It is finished."

We are now invited to live a whole new life without guilt or shame or blame or anxiety. We are going to be fine. Of all of the conceptions of the divine, of all of the language Jesus could put on the lips of the G.o.d character in this story he tells, that's what he has the father say.

"You are always with me, and everything I have is yours."

The older brother has been clinging to his version of events for so long, it's hard for him to conceive of any other way of seeing things.

And so the father's words, which are generous and loving, are also difficult and shocking.

Again, then, we create h.e.l.l whenever we fail to trust G.o.d's retelling of our story.

The older brother's failure to trust, we learn, is rooted in his distorted view of G.o.d. There is a problem with his "G.o.d."

This story, the one Jesus tells about the man with two sons, has everything to do with our story. Millions of people in our world were told that G.o.d so loved the world, that G.o.d sent his Son to save the world, and that if they accept and believe in Jesus, then they'll be able to have a relationship with G.o.d.

Beautiful.

But there's more. Millions have been taught that if they don't believe, if they don't accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the gospel does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, G.o.d would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in h.e.l.l. G.o.d would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that moment of death, a different being to them forever. forever. A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony. A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony.

If there was an earthly father who was like that, we would call the authorities.

If there was an actual human dad who was that volatile, we would contact child protection services immediately.

If G.o.d can switch gears like that, switch entire modes of being that quickly, that raises a thousand questions about whether a being like this could ever be trusted, let alone be good.

Loving one moment, vicious the next.

Kind and compa.s.sionate, only to become cruel and relentless in the blink of an eye.

Does G.o.d become somebody totally different the moment you die?

That kind of G.o.d is simply devastating.

Psychologically crushing.

We can't bear it.

No one can.

And that is the secret deep in the heart of many people, especially Christians: they don't love G.o.d. They can't, because the G.o.d they've been presented with and taught about can't be loved. That G.o.d is terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable.

And so there are conferences about how churches can be more "relevant" and "missional" and "welcoming," and there are vast resources, many, many books and films, for those who want to "reach out" and "connect" and "build relationships" with people who aren't part of the church. And that can be helpful. But at the heart of it, we have to ask: Just what kind of G.o.d is behind all this?