The parable of the prodigal son is one of my favourite stories. It has strong, recognizable characters. It has conflict, drama, layers of meaning, and an ending that insists on reaction.

It’s one of those sublime stories that seem not to wear out. It keeps drawing writers and artists (including our own Tim Geddert and Tamara Paetkau in this issue), and ordinary readers like you and me, to explore and uncover its truths.

It’s also an Easter story. When I look at Paetkau’s painting (cover), I am struck by its contrasting images of death and life. The older brother reminds me of the Grim Reaper, the personification of death. The younger brother reminds me of death too, in his somewhat ghostly appearance and his rags hanging like the tendrils of graveclothes. But there is a resurrection radiance about him that matches the living flesh tones of his parents, and we know he will soon be covered in the robe of honour marking his return to the bosom of the family.

This holy season, we celebrate the fact that Jesus became the “prodigal” for us. He sat down with us in our tatters, in our human destitution and need. He did not sin, but He was certainly tempted to. He bore our estrangement from God in His death, and then He got up from that death and returned to the Father. He went back as the servant He had become, to be exalted as the Son He was.

When Jesus told the parable, He was, of course, expressing God’s joy at sinners who repent. He was also giving those who criticized Him for partying with “sinners” a rather pointed critique of His own about their sour misunderstanding of the Kingdom. The sinners were “drawing near” to hear Jesus (Luke 15:1, RSV). Those who (technically) had never left God were standing apart from Jesus. They needed to get moving too – from jealousy to joy, from religious duty to delight.

“I have set before you life and death,” God says. “Now choose life . . .” (Deuteronomy 30:19). This is the choice the parable and Easter set before us.

(By the way, I like to imagine that the prodigal’s older brother – whom I most often resemble – lifted his feet to his father’s plea and also headed home.)

Mixing aid and evangelism

It wasn’t long after relief efforts began in tsuanami-ravaged areas that controversy erupted over the connection between aid and proselytizing. On the one hand came charges that Christian groups are exploiting the situation, and that mixing aid and evangelism is reprehensible. On the other hand came the vigorous defence that the situation both demands and permits zealous evangelistic tactics and that, furthermore, non-Christian religions are equally aggressive in promoting their views.

This tension involves much larger questions: how Christians should relate to other faiths in a pluralistic world, and whether vulnerability (because of age, illness, crisis or other reasons) is a doorway we should enter or one we should protect. It also involves how we understand mission.

If, to use Lesslie Newbigin’s words, “the question of the salvation or perdition of the individual” is at the centre of our understanding of mission, any means will seem to be justified. If, however, we believe (as our Confession affirms) that the mission is not ours, but God’s sovereign work in the world, in which it is our joyous privilege to share, we can be free of anxiety about what we accomplish, hearing only – and obeying – the call to faithfulness.

Recently, at a lunch meeting in Winnipeg in which the work of Mennonite Brethren Mission and Service International was presented to a group of pastors, I had a chance to talk with director Randy Friesen about that space in which both vulnerability and opportunity reside, especially in relation to the tsunami disaster.

We had heard at the meeting how the MBMSI team in Thailand has been assisting with disaster relief, bringing in out-of-country help as well, in a project called Operation Rebuilding Lives. Through these circumstances, and because a Thai pastor named Preecha (a good friend of MBMSI missionaries) has for some time been sensing a call to the Phuket area, this site of devastation may well become MBMSI’s newest church planting location in Thailand.

Clearly, aid and evangelism are being combined. We are there at the invitation of the Thai church, said Friesen. We come with practical help, with an understanding of having been refugees too. “We cry with the widow who has lost her family,” he said. “We mourn. We ask, what would Jesus do? Would He rebuild her house?”

“But,” he said, “we are not ashamed of the gospel.” The gospel brings transformation, restores relationship to God, offers release from spiritual burdens people carry. It’s a question, he said, of “how can we work with Jesus?”

This approach puts us in the middle of the aid versus evangelism debate. We have to do both: in a mix that’s appropriate for the situation (“wise as serpents and harmless as doves” as Jesus said, Matthew 10:16), yes, and also allowing specialization (or in biblical terminology, different gifts). In His name we help – and we witness.