What This Is All About
At Assembly, we don’t just believe in statements — we believe in stories.
Because stories shape us in ways bullet points can't.
When Jesus wanted to show us what God is like, he didn’t give a list of beliefs. He told stories.
A story doesn’t just tell you what to think — it invites you to see the world differently, to see yourself differently.
That’s why we start with a story. Because that’s how Jesus did it. Belief, when told as story, doesn’t just inform you — it forms you.
This is the story that shapes Assembly.
“Yet Jesus’ story surprises us: the father grants the request without a slap or scolding.”
A father has two sons. The younger son shocks everyone by demanding his share of the inheritance while the father is still alive.
Essentially, he’s saying: “Dad, I wish you were already dead so I could have your money.”
This request was an unthinkable insult in ancient Jewish culture.
Normally a father’s estate was only divided at death; to ask early was to sever the relationship.
By all rights, the father should have blown up in anger and driven the boy out (as Middle Eastern patriarchs would do ).
Yet Jesus’ story surprises us: the father grants the request without a slap or scolding.
He divides his property between the two sons – giving the younger the freedom he asks for, at great personal cost and heartbreak to himself. (The original listeners would have been dumbfounded – no father would tolerate such disgrace!)
The younger son quickly liquidates his portion of land for cash, then leaves home for a “far country.” There, he squanders everything in wild, wasteful living and soon finds himself destitute.
Before long a famine strikes, and the younger son ends up hired to feed pigs, starving and humiliated.
In Jesus’ Jewish context, tending pigs (unclean animals) signifies how low he has fallen.
Desperate, the son hatches a plan: he’ll return home and beg to work for his father as a hired servant. He even rehearses a speech: “Father, I have sinned… I am not worthy to be your son. Make me like one of your hired men.”
In Middle Eastern tradition, “coming to himself” was not repentance. The son is starving, and his rehearsed confession closely echoes Pharaoh’s manipulative words to Moses in Exodus 10:16 (Pharaoh said almost the exact phrase during the plague of locusts, with no real heart change).
“In Jesus’ culture, dignified men never ran in public – it was considered shameful to hitch up one’s robes and expose bare legs.”
In other words, the younger son is still scheming: he hopes to negotiate his way back into survival. By asking to be a hired consultant, he wouldn’t have to live under his father’s roof as a dependent worker; he could work off his debt independently and save face.
It’s as if he wants to save himself – to earn restoration without truly surrendering.
With this plan in mind, the younger son begins the journey home. Here Jesus delivers one of the most poignant scenes in all of Scripture:
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him…” (Luke 15:20).
The father has apparently been watching the road daily, yearning for his son’s return. As soon as he recognizes that familiar silhouette on the horizon, the father runs toward his son.
In Jesus’ culture, dignified men never ran in public – it was considered shameful to hitch up one’s robes and expose bare legs.
Yet this father abandons propriety and sprints down the road.
Why?
According to Middle Eastern scholars, the father runs not only out of affection, but to protect his boy. Villages in that time practiced the kezazah ceremony: if a Jewish son lost his inheritance to Gentiles (outsiders) and dared to return, the community would break a clay pot in front of him and shout “You are cut off!” – a permanent banishment from the village.
“This incredible inversion of expectation shows what Assembly believes about God: our Father’s grace comes first.”
Yet this father abandons propriety and sprints down the road.
Why?
According to Middle Eastern scholars, the father runs not only out of affection, but to protect his boy. Villages in that time practiced the kezazah ceremony: if a Jewish son lost his inheritance to Gentiles (outsiders) and dared to return, the community would break a clay pot in front of him and shout “You are cut off!” – a permanent banishment from the village.
The father knows this shame and rejection await his son. So he runs to reach him before the village can. In doing so, the father publicly humiliates himself – all eyes turn to the running old man, not to the sinful son.
When he reaches his boy, the father throws his arms around him and kisses him fervently, before the son can even finish his rehearsed speech. The father absorbs the shame that should have fallen on the son – making it clear to everyone watching that there will be no kezazah, no punishment here.
The lost son is welcome home.
In that embrace, the carefully prepared speech evaporates. The son manages to stammer out, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I’m not worthy to be called your son…” – but significantly, he omits the last line about getting back on the payroll.
He drops his self-rescue plan on the spot.
Why?
Because grace has overwhelmed him.
The father’s initiative – running, embracing, and kissing – came before any apology or restitution.
This incredible inversion of expectation shows what Assembly believes about God: our Father’s grace comes first.
Repentance is not a negotiation or a prerequisite for love – it is our response to having been loved undeservedly.
“Assembly embraces this counterintuitive truth: it’s not our clean-up efforts or formulas that initiate reconciliation, but the Father’s extravagant mercy poured out ahead of time.”
Assembly embraces this counterintuitive truth: it’s not our clean-up efforts or formulas that initiate reconciliation, but the Father’s extravagant mercy poured out ahead of time.
Having welcomed his son back to life, the father doesn’t stop at a mere hug.
He immediately turns to his servants and lavishly restores the younger son: “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Fetch the fattened calf and kill it. We must celebrate – for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
The best robe would likely be the father’s own robe – a mark of honor. The signet ring signifies authority as a true son in the household, not a mere servant. Shoes distinguish him as a free man (servants often went barefoot). In short, the father fully reinstates the son’s identity as his child, wiping away every shame.
He even throws a feast for him. This is grace upon grace – amazing, reckless grace, given freely at great cost. (That fattened calf would have been a rare, expensive delicacy reserved for big celebrations.)
We believe in a God who rejoices over each lost one who comes home, and who does “exceedingly abundantly” more than expected to reconcile us.
The father bore the loss and pain of rejected love from the beginning. Then he bore public shame to reclaim his child.
The prodigal son was dead and is alive again purely because his father was willing to pay the price of love. This is the heartbeat of the gospel and of our faith.
But… the story does not end with the happy reunion.
“The father, in his grace, comes out of his own party to plead with him… ”
Jesus adds a twist by focusing on the oldest son – the one who never left. As the household begins rejoicing, the older brother is out in the field working. When he comes near the house and hears music and dancing, he asks a servant what’s going on. On learning that his wayward younger brother has returned and that their father is celebrating, the elder brother explodes in anger.
He refuses to go in to the banquet. Here we meet the second lost son: the one who did “all the right things” yet harbored resentment. In that culture, refusing to attend your own father’s feast was a grave public insult – a slap in the face to his dignity. The older son is essentially shaming his father (just as the younger had done earlier), but in a more socially respectable way. The father, in his grace, comes out of his own party to plead with him (this is the father’s second costly act – leaving his guests and humbling himself to beg his son). But the elder son spurns his father’s kindness. He bitterly unloads years of frustration:
“Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders, yet you never even gave me a young goat to celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours (he won’t even say ‘my brother’) comes back after squandering your property with prostitutes, you kill the fattened calf for him!” (Luke 15:29–30).
In that outburst, the older brother’s true heart is revealed. He sees his relationship to his father as transactional – like a servant slaving for rations, not like a son living in his father’s love. He imagines he has “earned” a reward through obedience, and he resents the grace given to his sibling. We hear the language of entitlement and merit: I deserve better; I’ve worked hard; I’ve followed all the rules.
“Both sons wanted the father’s wealth without the father – one through open disobedience, the other through obedient performance. ”
The older brother represents those who are alienated from God by their very goodness – by pride and the illusion of self-sufficiency.
Unlike the younger son who knew he was lost, the older son was lost while convinced he was found . Keller notes that both sons were distant from the father’s heart, just in different ways – one by breaking the rules, the other by keeping them for the wrong reasons.
In fact, Jesus told this parable to a mixed audience: “tax collectors and sinners” (represented by the younger brother) and “Pharisees and scribes” (represented by the elder) – urging both groups to come into the joy of God’s grace (see Luke 15:1–2).
The hearts of the two brothers were essentially the same. Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake”.
This means you can rebel against God and be lost either by breaking His rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It’s a shocking message: even careful obedience can be a strategy of prideful rebellion.
The elder brother’s goodness was a means to control the father, not an expression of love.
Both sons wanted the father’s wealth without the father – one through open disobedience, the other through obedient performance.
Both needed reconciliation.
The father’s response to the furious elder son is tender yet truth-bearing. “My son,” he says (using a gentle word – teknon, meaning “my child”), “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” (Luke 15:31–32).
“We believe the gospel challenges the “righteous” to repent of their pride just as it invites the “unrighteous” to repent of their sins.”
He lovingly corrects the older brother: “this brother of yours” – reminding him of the familial bond and inviting him to acknowledge grace rather than stand apart. Notably, when the father says “everything I have is yours,” it’s literally true – the inheritance had already been divided, and the elder son now legally owned all the remaining assets.
So yes, the feast, the ring, the robe, the calf – in a sense, it did come out of the elder brother’s share. This explains his outrage: grace can offend our sense of fairness. Yet the father is gently showing him: You have always been with me – you could share my joy at any time. I am not impoverishing you by being generous to your brother. My love for him doesn’t mean less love for you. There is more than enough grace for both. The father refuses to play the game of merit; he invites the elder son to step out of his accounting mindset and join the celebration.
Assembly resonates deeply with this part of the story because we aim to “challenge the committed.” It’s all too easy for long-time church people (the “older brothers”) to fall into joyless religiosity – serving God dutifully but forgetting the relationship.
The older son refused to join the celebration, which is a tragic image of a religious person isolating himself from grace. The story ends on a cliffhanger: Jesus doesn’t tell us if the older brother ever went in.
The invitation hangs in the air – aimed especially at the Pharisees in Jesus’ audience, and at us in the church today.
Will we who have labored long in God’s fields humble ourselves to join the party for the returning prodigals? Or will we nurse our grudges outside?
We believe the gospel challenges the “righteous” to repent of their pride just as it invites the “unrighteous” to repent of their sins.
To become a filler of Jesus we must not only repent of the bad things we’ve done, but also of the reasons we did the good things.
In the older brother’s case, he did good largely out of a desire to control and obligate his father. That motive kept him from experiencing the free grace the father offered. We don’t want to make that mistake. Assembly is a community where grace is the great leveling factor – both the notorious “sinner” and the upstanding “saint” need the same forgiveness and invitation.
“This is a challenge: lay down your pride, your control, your bookkeeping of deeds, and join the celebration of God’s unmerited grace.”
The father went out to both sons.
Each had to receive undeserved mercy or remain lost.
The older brother’s dilemma is just as urgent as the younger’s. He’s clinging to his own life of virtue as if it could save him, and misses the resurrection life. The cure, as with the younger son, is to allow himself to be found – to come in and enjoy the party of grace.
This is a challenge: lay down your pride, your control, your bookkeeping of deeds, and join the celebration of God’s unmerited grace.
At Assembly, we take that challenge seriously. We want to be a church that never stands outside the party of grace – whether in judgment or in jealousy. Instead, we choose to celebrate every story of redemption and keep our hearts humble, remembering that we too are recipients of outrageous mercy.
Living the Story
Because belief is not just something we think – it’s something we live and inhabit.
Stories invite us to enter and see ourselves in them.
In this parable, some of us identify with the younger son, finally coming to the end of ourselves and discovering a Father running toward us in grace.
Others identify with the older son, struggling with self-righteousness or envy, and needing the Father’s gentle plea to come inside and rejoice.
All of us are invited to see God as Jesus defines Him here: not as judge, but as a Father who goes above and beyond to reconcile His children.
The doctrine of grace, the meaning of repentance, the nature of God’s love – all are written in flesh and blood in this story.
It teaches us that God’s grace precedes and empowers our repentance, that God’s love covers our shame, and that no matter how far we run or how hard we harden our hearts, the Father’s invitation stands.
Telling beliefs through story keeps us curious and humble.
Bullet-points can sometimes make faith feel like a cage of propositions, but a story – especially one as surprising as this – invites ongoing reflection and questions.
We engage the curious by sharing a story that anyone can relate to: who hasn’t felt lost, or longed for home, or wrestled with jealousy? And we challenge the committed by showing that even insiders miss the point and need heart change.
Scripture isn’t mainly a theology textbook – it’s a grand narrative of God and humanity.
Jesus’ stories carry profound doctrine within them.
In this parable, Jesus essentially defines who God is (“Father”) by what God does in the story.
It’s one thing to say, “We believe in forgiveness, grace, repentance, and reconciliation.” It’s another to watch a ragged son collapse into his father’s embrace and feel those truths.
One might call it theology in motion.
This means our beliefs are not a static list but a story we participate in – welcoming prodigals, forgiving lavishly, throwing celebrations of restoration, and also examining our own hearts for all self-righteousness.
This is the Assembly story.
It captures the core of what we believe about God’s kingdom, grace, and even judgment in a way that surprises and transforms us.
It reminds us that God’s grace is undeserved – a love that runs toward us even when we’re a long way off – and that our relationship with God is not a contract but a covenant of love initiated by Him.
It teaches that true “repentance” is not a bargaining chip but a surrender to being found.
And it assures us that no matter if we are wildly wandering or coldly dutiful, the Father comes out to meet us where we are.
This story-as-belief inspires us to become, as a church, like the father in the parable: running toward the hurting, embracing the shamed, inviting the outsider in, and celebrating every resurrection.
It’s an expansive, imaginative vision of faith – one that we pray continues to engage the curious and challenge the committed.