PARTY THROWER TIP LINE: Seeing Barney Training through The Lens of Bailey's Brilliant Work in Luke 15

As Bailey hammered home again and again the unrestrained, perhaps scandalous grace and generosity of the father and the inability of the sons (particularly the elder son) to grasp the father’s manner of love the following passage from our training material came to mind:

SACRIFICE For, I think, God has exhibited us apostles last of all, as men condemned to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.”

I CORINTHIANS 4:9

 You cannot live above those you serve. If you want to touch the sky, you must learn to kneel. You want to be a great leader? Commit yourself to being slaughtered on behalf of those around you so that they might live. Heart of sacrifice = strong leadership. Effective leaders take a genuine interest in others. They listen to the needs of others and they serve those needs. They’ve transitioned from a place of using people to love things to a place of using things to love people. 

Luke 15 begins with religious folks grumbling about Jesus’ fellowship with tax collectors and sinners (w/ sinners being a fairly obvious reference to prostitutes.) Tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes turn people into property. I think the sons (particularly the eldest son) can't see the radical nature of grace which seeks to liberate people from bondage to property.  The boys (particularly the elder son) can't escape the life-sucking trap of seeing people as property to be used to love things.  In Luke 14, Jesus ramps up to these parable by  exhorting us to throw parties for those who can’t repay.  Jesus exhorts us to escape the "people are property"  bondage.  He encourages us to see life as a never ending party of using property/things to love people.

 Bailey’s insanely thorough, complex, and craaazy synthesis inspires me to see this weekend as a unique moment in 2018 for me to focus wholeheartedly on USING THINGS TO LOVE PEOPLE. His unpacking of the parable helps me see this weekend as an opportunity to love strangers we’ve invited in with the scandalous grace of God and to throw a 48 hour party for them with no expectation of repayment!

Steve

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