The Exorcism of Emily Rose (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2005)

The German theologian Rudolf Bultmann famously intoned, "It's impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.” Bultmann was at the forefront of the modernist attempt to demythologize the New Testament, an attempt that was all too successful among the mainline Protestant churches and seminaries of the West. Defenders of the orthodox faith, chief among them J. Gresham Machen in America and Karl Barth in Europe, responded that a Christianity stripped of its supernatural aspects was another religion entirely. Go ahead and disbelieve in a literal resurrection; and the literal existence of angels and demons, but please don't call that Christianity.

Even those of us who reject the liberalism of Bultmann and his followers vis-a-vis the divinity of Christ and the historicity of the resurrection may find it hard to completely embrace the New Testament's abundant teaching about the spiritual realm, particularly it's forthright depiction of Satan and his demons. Nobody could credibly have accused the Apostle Paul of being a gullible superstitious rube, yet he had much to say about spiritual warfare and the demonic realm. And, of course, the gospel writers uniformly present an account of Jesus' public ministry in which confrontations with demons were commonplace. Though the average believer in the pews doesn't give much thought to the existence of demons, missionaries who've come back from places like Haiti or certain parts of Africa and Eastern Europe have no doubt that demonic oppression is still a clear and present reality. Perhaps those of us in technologically advanced societies have been so lulled to sleep that the devils don't have to show themselves openly?

These thoughts and more were provoked by watching Scott Derrickson's hair-raising film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, starring Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Campbell Scott & Jennifer Carpenter. The movie is very loosely based on the actual case of Anneliese Michel, a German girl who was allegedly possessed by demons, and later died of malnutrition after undergoing repeated exorcisms. The priests in the case were brought up on charges of negligent homicide. Derrickson and his writing partner Paul Harris Boardman were intrigued enough by the case to spend several years researching the subject of possession. The result was this script. Anneliese Michel became Emily Rose, and the Bavarian setting was changed to somewhere in rural America.

At least since William Friedkin's 1973 cult classic The Exorcist the "exorcism film" has been a subgenre of horror. Emily Rose plays on some of the tropes of the genre, but does so in a way that presents an utterly realistic depiction of supernatural evil. No rotating heads or projectile vomiting here. No winks in our direction as if to say, "this is good fodder for a scary movie but we don't actually believe this could happen in real life." Derrickson mostly avoids going for the cheap gestures that make an audience jump in their seats, opting instead for a creeping sense of dread punctuated by moments of genuine terror. The scene where Emily's demonization begins is an effective example of using the basic tools of cinema (sound, light and cutting) to create pyschological terror. Scenes like this owe more to Hitchcock than Wes Craven. When special EFX are utilized they're seamlessly integrated with the astounding physicality of Jennifer Carpenter's performance as the afflicted young woman. Yes, there's plenty here to satisfy fans of horror, but this film has higher aims than merely scaring you.

Those aims become apparent in the setting of a court of law, for Emily Rose is more than a horror film, it's also a fine example of another venerable genre: the courtroom drama. In fact, Emily has already died when the film begins. It's through the trial of Father Richard Moore (Wilkinson) that her story emerges; and it's in the back and forth of direct and cross-examination that thorny questions of faith vs. reason and religion vs. science are framed. Father Moore is represented by ambitious defense lawyer Erin Bruner, played by a "dolled-up" Laura Linney. Representing the people is prosecutor Ethan Thomas -- a moustachiod Campbell Scott (film buffs may recall Scott's daddy George C. playing a prosecutor in a classic courtroom drama of the 50s). In a nice dramatic twist Thomas is a self-described "man of faith" who sings in his church choir, while Bruner is a "woman of doubt" who one guesses wouldn't darken the door of a church unless it helped her land a coveted partnership at her firm.

Ironically, it's the agnostic who becomes an advocate for considering the possibility of a supernatural explanation for Emily's fate and Father Moore's actions. Meanwhile Prosecutor Thomas relentlessly (and some times mockingly) hammers away at the defense's faith-based explanation of events with the rationalistic claims of science and modern medicine. Derrickson and Boardman's script leaves open the possibility of a medical explanation for Emily's condition, but it also subtly challenges the modern assumption that science deals in the public realm of facts, while faith deals only in the private realm of beliefs. Thoughtful viewers might find themselves questioning the high wall that's been erected between faith and reason, religion and science.

Beyond the thematic elements The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a well-crafted picture. The visual look of the film was inspired by the horror films of Italian director Dario Argento. What this means is that scenes of terror are often counterintuitively bathed in bright primary colors. Oranges, purples and greens are prominent in the possession and exorcism scenes, but in the courtroom the palette is dialed back. On the DVD commentary Derrickson says he was inspired by Sidney Lumet (The Verdict) to keep camera movement in the trial scenes to a minimum and let his great trio of actors carry the action. It's also worth noting that the film was shot by DP Tom Stern, making this one of the few times he's worked with any director other than Clint Eastwood.

Back to Bultmann -- is it possible to believe in the "New Testament world of spirits and miracles" in the 21st century? I believe it is. Not because of conjecture, but because of the credible eyewitness testimony presented by the apostolic writers. I've checked out the evidence and found it compelling beyond a reasonable doubt. I have faith, but it's not blind. My faith isn't (solely) based on reason, but it's not unreasonable. Ultimately though these are questions that can't be decided in a court of law -- and this film doesn't pretend that they can -- but the faith of Emily Rose and Father Moore confronts us with the possibility that there are publicly accessible answers to the truth claims of religion. "Angels and demons/God and the devil/These things either exist or they don't," says Erin Bruner in her closing argument to the jury. Truth is at stake in those questions just as it is in the question of whether 2 + 2 = 4. Lesslie Newbigin put it this way:

In the school textbook these agreed-upon conclusions [furnished by science] will be simply stated as facts without the use of the prefix 'I believe' or "We believe.' Thus every student will be expected to know that the development of the human person is governed by the program encoded in the DNA molecules. This is a fact. But that every human person is made to glorify God and enjoy him forever is not a fact — it is a belief, one among many possible beliefs. It is not part of the school curricula. And yet, clearly the question of truth is at stake as much in the second matter as in the first. It either is or is not true that every human being must finally appear before the judgment seat of Christ. If it is true, it is universally true, just as the statement about the DNA molecule is true; if it is true at all, it is true for everyone. It belongs to the public sector as much as to the private.*

Father Moore would agree. As he declares to Erin in a key line from the film: "Demons exist whether you believe in them or not."


*Newbigin quote from The Cultural Captivity of Western Christianity as a Challenge to a Missionary Church (1994)

The final authority (Newbigin)

It's been too long since I posted anything from Lesslie Newbigin. The following quote is from a 1993 article "Religious Pluralism: a Missiological Approach".

The final authority for the Christian faith is the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. If I am pressed to give reasons for being a Christian, I can only reply by speaking of the calling of Jesus Christ which has come to me through his Church and is authenticated by the working of the Holy Spirit as mediated to me through the word and sacraments of the gospel and the life of the believing community. If I have accepted that calling, I cannot accept the widely prevalent custom of putting the cross in a whole list of symbols of the world's religions. The cross is not a mere symbol like the OM often used to denote Hinduism, or the crescent denoting Islam. The crucifixion of Jesus was an event in history, the mighty act of God by which at infinite cost he reconciled the fallen world to himself and rescued it from perdition. To suggest that there is a reality more inclusive than this is to deny it.

Newbigin wasn't one to shy away from dialogue with people of other faiths; going so far as to say that Christians should look eagerly for "evidence of the work of God's grace" in the life of devout adherents of other religions. If Jesus is "the eternal word of God active in all creation and in all human life" then this shouldn't be surprising. But for Newbigin "dialogue" didn't mean (as it often does these days) giving in to religious pluralism in which all truth claims are equally valid -- the kind of sentiment I suspect is behind the popular bumper sticker above. One of Newbigin's unique contributions as a theologian is to provide a model for how to coexist in a pluralistic world without compromising the uniqueness or universality of the Christian gospel.

Quote from Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: a Reader (p. 179)

Regaining the high ground (Newbigin)

I read this a while ago, but it continues to guide my thinking about the local church and its mission.

How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. I am, of course, not denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel — evangelistic campaigns, distribution of Bibles and Christian literature, conferences, and even books such as this one. But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community.

Jesus, as I said earlier, did not write a book but formed a community. This community has at its heart the remembering and rehearsing of his words and deeds, and the sacraments given by him through which it is enabled both to engraft new members into its life and to renew this life again and again through sharing in his risen life through body broken and the lifeblood poured out. It exists in him and for him. He is the center of its life. Its character is given to it, when it is true to its nature, not by the characters of its members but by his character. In so far as it is true to its calling, it becomes the place where men and women and children find that the gospel gives them the framework of understanding, the 'lenses' through which they are able to understand and cope with the world.

That's it! Newbigin nails it, as he often does. Community is a popular buzzword in contemporary church circles, but usually it means nothing more than "hanging out" with people like ourselves, with a little Jesus tacked on. This type of community doesn't impress the world. Newbigin argues that it's only through Christ-centered communities gathered and formed around Word and sacrament that 21st-century Christians in the West can once again "occupy the 'high ground' which they vacated in the noontime of modernity."

It's important to note that Newbigin doesn't mean by this forming Christian political parties or returning to the "good old days" of Christendom. However, he avoids the quietist error of some of those who emphasize the "spirituality of the church" by boldly asserting that the church is called to claim every area of society for Christ -- "to unmask the illusions which have remained hidden and to expose all areas of public life to the illumination of the gospel." This is done not through parachurch organizations, though they have their place, but through the humble ministry and witness of local congregations. A congregation that believes the gospel with all its heart has more explanatory power than any number of brilliant arguments, or worldly success.

Newbigin goes on to give six characteristics of this type of community. He fleshes these out for several pages, but here they are to hopefully whet your appetite to read the whole thing.

1. It will be a community of praise.

2. It will be a community of truth.

3. It will be a community that does not live for itself but is deeply involved in the concerns of its neighborhood.

4. It will be a community where men and women are prepared for and sustained in the exercise of the priesthood in the world.

5. It will be a community of mutual responsibility.

6. It will be a community of hope.

Quotes from "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" (1989) as excerpted in Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: a Reader (pp. 152-7)

Election and the people of God

More from the late, great Lesslie Newbigin:

The fact of Jesus Christ must be interpreted in relation to the biblical doctrine of election.

Here we meet with an idea which is as offensive to our human reason as it is central to the Bible. The Bible is primarily the story of election, of the people whom God chose, and of the individuals whom he chose to play special parts in the story. According to the Bible, God chose one tribe out of all the tribes of men to be his people, his witnesses, his priests, the agents of his kingship. . . . We understand election, like creation, in the light of Christ's words and deeds. . . . He reconstituted the chosen people, choosing whom he would and appointing twelve to be the nucleus of a new Israel. These twelve he sent out to be his authorized representatives. Men were to be related to the Kingdom of God by being related to them. To receive them was to receive Christ and to receive Christ was to receive God. Christ is God's chosen and they are chosen in him. To them, and to all who believe, his word is: 'You did not choose me but I chose you.'

A Faith for this One World? (1961)

The whole core of biblical history is the story of the calling of a visible community to be God's own people, His royal priesthood on earth, the bearer of His light to the nations. Israel is, in one sense, simply one of the petty tribes of the Semitic world. But Israel — the same Israel — is also the people of God's own possession. In spite of all Israel's apostasy, Israel is His, for His gifts and calling are without repentance. This little tribe, and no other, is God's royal priesthood, His holy nation. And the same is true in the New Testament. There is an actual, visible, earthly company which is addressed as 'the people of God', the 'Body of Christ'. It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community.

The Household of God (1953)

What glorious truths to muse on as we worship tomorrow as God's elected people, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world!

Wide-angle view of the cross (part 2)

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. Colossians 2:15

In the cross Christ has disarmed the powers. . . . The death of Christ was the unmasking of the powers — Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate were not uniquely wicked men; they were acting out their roles as guardians of the political and moral and religious order. They acted as representatives of what the New Testament calls the world, this present age. When God raised the crucified Jesus, this present age and its structures was exposed, illuminated, unmasked — but not destroyed. Cross and resurrection seen together mean both judgment and grace, both wrath and endless patience. God still upholds the structures; without them the world would collapse and human life would be unthinkable. But the structures lose their pretended absoluteness. Nothing now is absolute except God as he is known in Jesus Christ; everything else is relativized. That is the bottom line for Christian thinking and the starting point for Christian action in the affairs of the world.

Quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989) as reprinted in Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: a Reader (p. 45)

Newbigin: the gospel and culture

Lesslie Newbigin gives as good a working definition of "culture" as I've ever come across. It is "the sum total of ways of living developed by a group of human beings and handed on from generation to generation." These ways of living include language, the arts, technology, laws, and social and political structures. And fundamental to any culture are the "set of beliefs, experiences, and practices that seek to grasp and express the ultimate nature of things" i.e., religion. There's no getting around it. Religion is part of culture. Drawing out the implications of this fact for Christian mission was a major part of Newbigin's work. Read him and you'll begin to see how easily we can confuse our cultural assumptions with the gospel.

Here's an excerpt from Foolishness to the Greeks (1986) . . .

The words Jesus Christ are the Greek rendering of a Hebrew name and title, Joshua the Messiah. They belong to and are part of the culture of one part of the world — the eastern Mediterranean — at one point in history when Greek was the most widespread international language in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Neither at the beginning, nor at any subsequent time, is there or can there be a gospel that is not embodied in a culturally conditioned form of words. The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion. It is, in fact, an abandonment of the gospel, for the gospel is about the word made flesh. Every statement of the gospel in words is conditioned by the culture of which those words are a part, and every style of life that claims to embody the truth of the gospel is a culturally conditioned style of life. There can never be a culture-free gospel. Yet the gospel, which is from the beginning to the end embodied in culturally conditioned forms, calls into question all cultures, including the one in which it was originally embodied.

Quotes from Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: A Reader, ed. Paul Weston (pp. 108-109)

The salvation of a people

Salvation comes to each of us not, so to say, straight down from heaven through the skylight, but through a door that is opened by our neighbour. . . . The salvation of God is a consistent whole. From beginning to end it relates us to God only through a relationship with our neighbour. One is related to God's saving acts not by any kind of direct, unmediated spiritual experience, however it may be formulated. One is related by becoming related to God's people and to the history of God's people, and the central and decisive acts in the history of God's people, which are the substance of the apostolic message.

Lesslie Newbigin, from A Faith for this One World? (1961)

Towards a trinitarian worldview

Picking up from this post here's some more from Lesslie Newbigin's 1978 book The Open Secret. By the time of its writing Newbigin had become convinced that his earlier focus on the church as the central agent of Christian mission was inadequate, and must be replaced by an approach to missionary efforts grounded in the triune nature of God. Instead of being merely an add-on to the gospel, the doctrine of the Trinity is "the necessary starting point of preaching" to a pagan or pantheistic society. This will be hard to do, however, if those that send the missionaries have themselves lost a grasp on its centrality. Newbigin saw this happening in the West/Christendom.

It has been said that the question of the Trinity is the one theological question that has been really settled. It would, I think, be nearer to the truth to say that the Nicene formula has been so devoutly hallowed that it is effectively put out of circulation. It has been treated like the talent which was buried for safekeeping rather than risked in the commerce of discussion. The church continues to repeat the trinitarian formula but—unless I am greatly mistaken—the ordinary Christian in the Western world who hears or reads the word 'God' does not immediately and inevitably think of the Triune Being—Father, Son, and Spirit. He thinks of a supreme monad.

I'll plead guilty here. It's easy to slip into ways of thinking and talking about God that don't do justice to his Triune nature. I've become more aware of this recently as it relates to prayer. It takes some intentionality to pray in a way that expresses something of the perfect unity in diversity of the Godhead, that takes account of the personal and relational nature of the Trinity. Is my worship explicitly trinitarian? If not, I risk worshiping something other than the Christian God revealed in scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery beyond full human comprehension, but according to Newbigin it offers a basis for practical, down-to-earth wisdom. In other words it's the key to knowing.

If as I have argued, we are forced to answer the question of authority by the words 'In the name of Jesus'; and if we then have to answer the question: 'Who is Jesus?', we shall only be able to answer that question in terms which embody the trinitarian faith. Like the earliest Christians we shall have to expand our first answer so that it runs, 'In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.' And this means that, like them, we shall be offering a model for understanding human life—a model which cannot be verified by reference to axioms of our culture but which is offered on the authority of revelation and with the claim that it does provide the possibility of a practical wisdom to grasp and deal with human life as it really is.

Quotes from Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: a Reader, edited by Paul Weston (p. 91)

From avatar to Lord

I've been slowly working my way through the outstanding introduction to the writings of Lesslie Newbigin compiled by Paul Weston. This is rich and eye-opening stuff! Here's a snippet from the chapter on the Trinitarian foundation of Christian mission, which was a major topic of Newbigin's later writings.

As a missionary in India I often shared in evangelistic preaching in villages where the name of 'Jesus' has no more meaning than any other strange name. I have heard speakers use many different Tamil words to explain who he is. He is Swamy ('Lord'). Or he is Satguru ('the true teacher'). He is Avatar ('incarnation of God'). Or he is Kadavul ('the transcendent God') who has become man. What all these words have in common is that they necessarily place Jesus within a world of ideas which is formed by the Hindu tradition and which is embodied in the language of the people. Swamy is usually translated 'Lord', but it does not have the meaning that the word Kurios has for a Greek-speaking Jew. It denotes not Yahweh, the Lord of the Old Testament, but one of the myriad gods who fill the pages of the Hindu epics. Avatar is usually translated 'incarnation', but there have been many avatars and there will be many more. To announce a new avatar is not to announce any radical change in the nature of things. Even to use the word kadavul will only provoke the question: 'If Jesus is kadavul, who is the one to whom he prays?'

Newbigin gives that personal example to illustrate the difficulty in preaching an accurate representation of Jesus—the Son eternally begotten from the Father—to cultures unfamiliar with the Athanasian and Nicene formulations of the Trinity. He argues that Christian mission must be first of all Trinitarian in nature, otherwise men and women will not be able to give an accurate answer to the question "Who is Jesus?" Christianity is a Trinitarian faith, and it's significant that the mission of the early church to the pagan Roman world was accompanied by a centuries-long struggle to articulate the relation of God the Son to God the Father. Most of the heresies of the early church revolved around this question. There's no explicit doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, so it had to be forged through controversy. I've only scratched the surface of Newbigin's thought here.

Difficult as it may be to translate concepts first articulated in a 4th-century Greco-Roman context to places where Christ has not yet been preached, Newbigin stresses the good news that the Spirit goes before the missionary, preparing hearts to receive the message, and then enabling men and women of every culture and language to make that supernatural confession of Peter and the apostles: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matt. 16:16-17, 1 Cor. 12:3). Newbigin again:

Jesus is now not just Lord, but unique Lord, not just avatar, but unique avatar. The word kadavul can no longer refer to a monad: it must refer to a reality, within which there is a relationship of hearing and answering. The event by which the old structure is broken is not a natural happening. . . . It is the work of the sovereign Spirit to enable men and women in new situations and in new cultural forms to find the ways in which the confession of Jesus as Lord may be made in the language of their own culture. The mission of the church is in fact the church's obedient participation in that action of the Spirit by which the confession of Jesus as Lord becomes the authentic confession of ever new peoples, each in its own tongue.

Quotes from "The Open Secret" (1978) as excerpted in Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: a Reader, edited by Paul Weston (pp. 85 & 86)

Newbigin: revelation is personal and communal

In a preliminary consideration of the subject we may fairly say that the central importance ascribed to revelation in Christianity depends upon two beliefs about the nature of the world and of man. Firstly the belief that the meaning of the world is personal. For if the final meaning of the world is less than personal, then it [is] best understood by those methods of scepticism and experiment which are the requisites of scientific enquiry, but which would be the complete destruction of any personal understanding. For we know a person only as he chooses to reveal himself, and only as our own spirit is sensitive and trustful to respond to his revelation, and if the meaning of the world is personal then revelation is the only path by which it can be made known to us.

Secondly the belief that the meaning of man's life is in fellowship: if it were otherwise, we should not only expect that every man would be able to achieve for himself, apart from co-operation with his fellows, the necessities of physical existence and culture, and that pain and pleasure would always be distributed in mathematical accordance with sin and merit; but also that every man would be able to receive by direct revelation from God - apart from human telling - the knowledge necessary for blessedness. But if it be true that man was made for fellowship then we can understand not only the meaning of the co-operation which economic facts make necessary, and the strange incidence of pain and pleasure, so monstrously unjust by the standards of the law courts; but we can also understand the immensely significant fact that the revelation which is the key to our highest blessedness does not descend to us straight from heaven, but has to reach us passed from hand to hand of our fellow men along the chain of a historic community. (pp. 18-19)

Quotes from Newbigin, "Revelation" (1936) from Lesslie Newbigin, Missionary Theologian: A Reader ed. Paul Weston

Wow! If true (as I believe it is) Newbigin's insight has far reaching implications for just about everything.

Jacob & the Prodigal

One of missiologist Lesslie Newbigin's central insights was that our reading of the Bible is conditioned by the cultural lenses we view it through. Our particular langugage and history bring with them assumptions that can both help and hinder our understanding of scripture. It's when we read the Bible alongside Christians of other languages and cultures that those lenses become apparent to us, and vice versa. Absent that corrective, to get outside my cultural assumptions is like trying to push the bus that I'm riding in. Reading anything from Kenneth Bailey is to get off our particular bus and be taught by someone intimately familiar with the language and customs of the Middle East. Bailey has lived and taught in the Middle East for most of his life, and studying Luke 15 through Middle Eastern eyes has been a big part of his life's work. Jacob and the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story—published in 2003—is one of the results.

This is a fantastic book. Read it and I guarantee you'll never look at this trilogy of parables (lost sheep, lost coin & lost son) quite the same way again. Through his knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, and long-neglected Syriac and Arabic texts Bailey demonstrates how Jesus casts himself in the role of three personal metaphors for God found in the Psalter (i.e. shepherd, mother/woman and father) climaxing with his skillful retelling of the saga of Jacob found in Genesis chapters 27-35 which his scholarly listeners (scribes and Pharisees) would have been intimately familiar with. The story of Jacob was their story after all! But Jesus reshapes their story into another with himself at the center. Here Jesus transforms an account of an inept Oriental patriarch and his two scheming and fractious sons into an astonishing picture of sin, compassion, and costly grace, and in the process redefines what it means to be lost and what it means to be found. In this parable one sees the clearest picture of the motivation for Jesus' ministry: "to seek and to save the lost."

A text as familiar as this one acquires what Bailey terms "interpretive barnacles."

One of the realities of the history of interpretation of Scripture is that the more familiar a passage becomes, and the more central it is to the life and faith of the church, the more interpretive "barnacles" it acquires. . . . This process has perhaps proceeded further with the great parable of the prodigal son than with any other New Testament story. (p. 99)

Bailey sees at least "fifteen points in the story that need to be clarified in the light of the cultural world of Jesus." Here's one of them. I had the joy of teaching on this parable in our Sunday school class yesterday, and I introduced this point by saying we need to think of the setting as a crowded traditional Middle Eastern village not "Gone With the Wind". Bailey writes:

Too often this parable is seen as a story about three people and no more. The family home is imagined as a great house on the top of a hill standing in grand isolation. Such is not the case. Agricultural land is scarce in the Holy Land. In both Old and New Testament times the average village was about six acres. Farmers rarely lived on their farmland, residing instead in tightly compacted villages. This was and is because of the need to reserve every bit of land for farming, but people also gathered in small villages for reasons of security. The parables of Jesus are stories about people living in communities that are nearly always mentioned or assumed.

In each of the first two parables in this trilogy the community is called to gather for a celebration. In this particular story an inheritance is sold to the community. At the end of the tale, a father runs down the village street in full view of the community. After embracing his wayward younger son at the edge of the village, the father turns to address his servants (who have run after him). Like the shepherd and the woman, the father invites the community to a festive banquet. Anticipating a crowd, he orders the butchering of a calf rather than a sheep or a duck. Community-based professional musicians are hired for the occasion. The older son has a circle of friends who live nearby and could attend a party for him. In short, this is a parable about three people living in a community, a community that is just offstage throughout the parable. Each twist and turn of the story expects the reader/listener to be aware of that offstage presence. (p. 100)

As I said that's just one of fifteen clarifications that Bailey offers. These don't change the fundamental meaning of the story as its been understood by the church down through the centuries, but they scrape off the "barnacles" and allow us to see it like a newly restored painting. This book has done that for me.

Later in the week I'll share one or two more of Bailey's exegetical vignettes.