During my girls’ elementary and middle school years, we made
more than a few trips to the school’s lost and found. Unfortunately, more
things remained lost than were found. However, there was great relief and
sometimes joy when something of perceived value was actually recovered. I’ve
heard friends tell me some great stories of finding something of great value
they thought they had lost—a family heirloom, a pet, and even a wedding ring. However,
absolutely nothing compares to the stories of personal redemption that people
have shared with me. People lost in their substance abuse, lost in their sex
addictions, lost in their abusive relationships and lost as they turned their
back on God. Stories of how God never stopped waiting for them and looking for
them and when they were at their lowest point and they cried out to God for
help, how God came running to take them back and love them back to wholeness.
This is the essence of Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son. Do you know why I love
this story? Because it’s my story! It’s probably everyone’s story to a certain
degree—it applies to those who don’t know God yet eventually call out to Him when
all else has failed them and it applies to those who have known and loved God
yet have been entice by sin to turn away from Him. This week, as we look at the
story of the Prodigal Son, maybe you’ll see yourself in the story like I see
myself in the story.
Subject
Text
Luke 15:11-32
11Jesus
continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my
share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. 13“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he
had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild
living. 14After he
had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he
began to be in need. 15So
he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his
fields to feed pigs. 16He
longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one
gave him anything. 17“When
he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have
food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18I will set out and go back to my father and say to him:
Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19I am no longer worthy to be
called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20So he got up and went to his
father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was
filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him
and kissed him. 21“The
son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no
longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the
best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23Bring the fattened calf and
kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was
lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. 25“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came
near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26So he called one of the servants and asked him what was
going on. 27‘Your
brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf
because he has him back safe and sound.’ 28“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So
his father went out and pleaded with him. 29But he answered his father, ‘Look! 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. 30But when this son of yours who
has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened
calf for him!’ 31“‘My
son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
32But we had to
celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive
again; he was lost and is found.’”
Context
It’s hard to keep track of what’s going on in these
chapters of Luke’s gospel because Jesus begins to tell story after story after
story. So let me remind you of the setting within which Jesus is giving us this
teaching. Chapter 14 tells us that it is the Sabbath and Jesus has been invited
to eat at the house of a prominent Pharisee. Well wherever there’s one
Pharisee, there’s bound to be more as well as some teachers of the law, and
this occasion was no different. But try and picture this, large crowds were
traveling with Jesus and among them were tax collectors and “sinners” who
gathered around Jesus to hear Him speak and they all found their way to the
Pharisee’s house. The fact that there were uninvited guests in the house was
not necessarily unexpected. As I said in last week’s lesson, it was customary
at high profile gatherings such as this to leave the door open so that the
public could enter or stand outside the door if there was no room so the discussions
inside the house could be heard. Unfortunately for the Pharisees, those who
usually followed Jesus lived unpopular, ordinary and usually very messy lives—I
guess some things don’t change regardless of how much time passes. But it’s the
perfect setting for the story of the Prodigal Son so let’s take a look at
Jesus’ teaching.
Text
Analysis
11Jesus
continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my
share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
Jesus begins his story in vv. 11-12 by introducing us to a man with two sons. The younger son
insists that his father give him his share of his father’s estate. The younger
son would customarily receive half as much as the older son. Nevertheless, the
father had the right to do whatever he wanted with his wealth. It was generally
understood that inheritance would have been distributed upon the father’s
death. However, an exception to this practice could also be determined by the
father. Judaism frowned on the practice of inheritance distribution prior to
death stating: “‘To son or wife, to brother or friend, give no power over
yourself while you live; and give not your goods to another so as to have to
ask for them again.’”[1] But
don’t miss something very crucial in this exchange. The son is not just saying
that he wants his inheritance, he’s in essence telling his father that he
wishes his father was dead! “The son clearly looks to sever his relationship to
his father and go away.”[2]
Think about the pain and insult the father must have felt. Nevertheless, the
father honors his request and lets him go.
13“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set
off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14After he had spent everything,
there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15So he went and hired himself
out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16He longed to fill his stomach
with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
We have the unfolding story of the son’s new-found
freedom apart from his father in vv.
13-16. Come on! This isn’t too hard to imagine is it? Most experts believe
that the young son is just a teenager. So now we have a teenager with a wad of
money in his pocket and without the constraint of rules from his father’s
house…what could possibly go wrong? Well we soon find out that a carefree life
without rules is not always what it’s cracked up to be. Nevertheless, the son
leaves behind the familiarity of home for the adventure of a distant country.
“‘A distant country’ already suggests the non-Jewish world, and this
identification is helped along by the prominence of pigs, abhorrent to Jewish
sensibilities, in the story.”[3] The
text tells us that he squandered his wealth on wild living. The Greek word used
for squander paints a picture of “Tossing one’s possessions into the wind.”[4] No
sooner had he run out of money when a famine envelops the entire country where
he is currently living. That’s when things go from bad to awful.
“Had he
possessed his initial, relative wealth he might have been able to ride out the
ensuing period of depressed economy. Having spent all he had, however, he had
little recourse but to locate himself in a situation wherein he has not only
shamed his father, but has plummeted from his status as the son of a large
landowner to that of the ‘unclean and degraded,’ for whom even the life of a
day laborer would be preferable.”[5]
In our culture, it is difficult to see the gravity of the
son’s situation. He was left with the choice of dying or tending to pigs—as
though one would be better than the other for a Jew. Pigs were unclean animals.
This represents the absolute bottom for him. He is so low that even the
despised pigs are eating while he is starving. He would gladly eat with the
pigs at this point if someone would allow it. Let me try and paint a picture of
what his life looks like: He insulted his father, he has no money left, he’s
starving, he has committed countless sins, he is working in and among unclean
animals and no one will help him—he is all alone, he is at the end of the line,
he has hit bottom.
17“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s
hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18I will set out and go back to
my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
19I am no longer
worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20So he got up and went to his
father.
We see that there at the bottom in vv. 17-20a, he begins to realizes that something has to change. He
recognizes the irony in his situation—his father’s slaves are better off than
he is. They have more than enough food while he is starving to death. At this
point he devises a plan to return home to his father. But after what he’d said
and done, how could he?
“The
struggling son decides to acknowledge his folly before God and to his father.
This combination is a merism to indicate that he sinned against God and his
father…The son will act quickly and humbly. He knows he has forfeited all
rights to sonship and inheritance, but it is better to cast himself on his
father’s mercy than remain in a distant land, living a life lower than the
unclean beasts and suffering hunger. The confession pictures his repentance,
coming to the father bearing nothing but his need…He accepts the consequences
of his choices. There are no excuses, only confession and a humble request. The
picture shows what repentance looks like: no claims, just reliance on God’s
mercy and provision.”[6]
The son acknowledges to himself that the “something” his
father’s servants have is better than the “nothing” he has, so he sets out on
his way home.
“But while he was
still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for
him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. 21“The son said to him, ‘Father,
I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be
called your son.’ 22“But
the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him.
Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast
and celebrate. 24For
this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So
they began to celebrate.
Verses 20b-24
lead off with my favorite part of the entire story. The text says that while the
son was still a long way from home, his father saw him and started running to
him. When he reached him, he took the boy in his arms and kissed him. This
scene touches my heart at the deepest level. As a father, I can recognize my
girls from a long way off. I know how they look from the back, from the side
and from the front even at a great distance. But that’s not what I want to
bring to your attention. The text leaves us with the distinct impression that
the father was watching for him. Maybe he happened to be in the right place at
the right time or maybe he was regularly watching for him. Don’t forget, this
is a parable, it is a story with a deeper meaning. I believe it paints a
picture that the father is waiting, watching, always anticipating and hoping
for the son’s return. I want you to notice something else in the text that we
generally breeze right over—the father “ran” to his son. This may not seem
unusual to you and me but in that culture, it would be quite rare to see a
wealthy, respected and elderly man running anywhere! Add to this the public
display of affection lavished on the very son that had shamed him publicly and
we see a beautiful picture of the father’s merciful and compassionate heart.
The son, however, is not deterred from his plan. No doubt
he recognizes the warmth and acceptance from his father but he, nevertheless,
confesses his sins to his father with the deepest humility and no expectation
to be treated as a son. I envision the scene in my mind as the father is
holding his son’s face in his hands and looking at him intently as his son is
speaking but acts as though he hears nothing his son says. Instead, even before
his son is finished speaking, he directs his servants to drape the son with a
robe, place a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. “The embrace, the
kiss, and gifts of robe, ring and sandals—these are all emblematic of the son’s
honorable restoration to the family he had snubbed and abandoned.”[7]
Thereafter the father orders the celebration to begin and the party is on! But
why? Why did the father make such a big deal out his son’s return? Well because
the son’s shame and abandonment meant that he was dead to his father and
family. He was lost, his father had lost a son. I can’t even imagine the
anguish of losing a child spiritually or physically. Sadly, some of you have so
you know very well what the father must have been going through when his son
returned. What had been lost was now found and the only response was joy and
celebration.
25“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the
house, he heard music and dancing. 26So
he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27‘Your brother has come,’ he
replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back
safe and sound.’ 28“The
older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and
pleaded with him. 29But
he answered his father, ‘Look! 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. 30But
when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes
home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ 31“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and
everything I have is yours. 32But
we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is
alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
The older son re-enters the scene in vv. 25-32. There must have been some party at the house because the
older son could hear the music and dancing from the field. When he asks a
servant what is going on, he is told that his brother has returned and his father
has ordered a celebration. He is incredulous! So much so that he won’t even go
into the house. The older son tries to make a case for himself to his father as
the faithful son who served him and honored him while his brother did neither.
But it appears the older son, even while he stayed behind and fulfilled his
proper duties, didn’t know his father very well. How could he not know that his
father would react in this way to his brother’s return? The older son is angry.
He sees himself as having done everything right while his brother has done
everything wrong. Yet his brother is celebrated and he isn’t. He wants his own
celebration. He wants his own fattened calf. He doesn’t want a celebration for
his brother. Instead, he wants justice! The father addresses the older son
gently, in love and understanding—the Greek is translated in our idiom as the
father referring to the older son gently as, “my child.” The father makes it
clear that celebrating the younger son’s return in no way negates the value of
the older son’s faithfulness.
“He
affirms the faithfulness of the elder brother and his special place in his
heart. He accepts that his son has always been at his side. He reminds the son
that all he owns belongs to him; neither the father’s activity nor the
brother’s return in any way diminishes the elder’s status…the elder should not
lose sight of the benefits he has always had because of his access to the
father. In a sense, he has always had access to the celebration. The animals
are his!”[8]
But the
younger son relinquished the benefits of being a son by turning his back on his
father. He was already suffering the self-inflicted wounds of arrogance, pride,
sin and disobedience. What would harsh justice or punishment by the father accomplish?
Perhaps the father believed the consequences endured by the younger son were sufficient.
In any event, the father’s focus was on reconciliation not on justice or punishment.
The father refuses to focus on anything other than the fact that his son was
once lost but is now found.
Application
Although the story is known as the parable of the Prodigal
Son it really should be the parable of a Loving Father because the father’s
actions are really what stand out don’t they? I mean, many, if not most of us
can associate very closely with the Prodigal Son, lots of us can relate to the
older brother. Some of us can even relate to both of them. But few of us can relate
to the actions and attitude of the father. The depth of the father’s love is
just so foreign to many of us. We can relate to the Prodigal Son’s need for
reconciliation, we can relate to the older son’s desire for justice and
punishment, but can we relate to the father’s attitude of grace? We struggle
with trying to determine exactly where forgiving sin and condoning sin
intersect so that we don’t offend either.
“It was
the music and dancing that offended the older son. Of course, let the younger
son return home. Judaism and Christianity have clear provisions for the
restoration of the penitent returnee, but where does it say that such
provisions include a banquet with music and dancing? Yes, let the prodigal
return, but to bread and water, not fatted calf; in sackcloth, not a new robe;
wearing ashes, not a new ring; in tears, not in merriment; kneeling, not
dancing. Has the party canceled the seriousness of sin and repentance?...The
father not only had two sons but loved two sons, went out to two sons and was
generous to two sons. Perhaps it is because of the competitive rather than
cooperative spirit of our society, but the common thought is that there must be
losers if there are winners. Hence, even in religion, it is very difficult not
to think Jews or Greek, rich or poor, saint or sinner, publican or
Pharisee, older son or younger son. But
God’s love is both/and not either/or. The embrace of the younger son did not
mean the rejection of the older; the love of tax collectors and sinners does
not at all negate love of Pharisees and scribes.”[9]
Part of
being a follower of Jesus means always trying to see people from God’s
perspective not from ours. God is first and foremost in the business of
reconciliation. Justice and punishment for sin is also very important. It is
why Jesus died on a cross—to pay for all the things we did wrong so we could be
reconciled to God. You see, God’s plan has always been about relationship and
reconciliation to restore relationship not about justice and punishment
specifically. Justice and punishment are necessary in order to make reconciliation
available. However, now that Jesus has paid the ultimate price on the cross,
the Father comes running to meet us as we turn back toward him. Justice has
been served; punishment has been meted out. Repentance (turning away from sin
and toward God) leads to forgiveness and that leads to a party of
reconciliation! I hope you might someday love the story of the Prodigal Son (or
Loving Father) as much as I do. Sometimes we read these stories and we (ok
maybe just I do) put a lot of thought into the theology of the story and miss
the deep and gentle beauty of the actual story because we know it’s a parable
with fictional characters intended to convey a deeper spiritual truth. So I
wanted to share another story with you from Philip Yancey’s book, What’s So Amazing About Grace, about a
teenage runaway. This isn’t a parable so you don’t need to think really hard about
some deeper spiritual meaning. It’s a story about Finding Grace In The Lost And
Found.
“A
young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her
parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she
listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she
seethes inside. ‘I hate you!’ she screams at her father when he knocks on the
door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has
mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.
She has
visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to
watch the Tigers [baseball team] play. Because newspapers in Traverse City
report in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown
Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look
for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.
Her
second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He
offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives
her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before. She was
right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun.
The
good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big
car—she calls him ‘Boss’—teaches her a few things that men like. Since she’s
underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse, and orders room
service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home,
but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe
she grew up there.
She has
a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton
with the headline ‘Have you seen this child?’ But by now she has blond hair,
and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would
mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody
squeals in Detroit.
After a
year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the
boss turns mean. ‘These days, we can’t mess around,’ he growls, and before she
knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a
couple of tricks a night, but they don’t pay much, and all the money goes to
support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal
grates outside the big department stores. ‘Sleeping’ is the wrong word—a
teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands
circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.
One
night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything
about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world.
She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins
to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls
her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspaper she’s piled atop
her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her
mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with
her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in
chase of a tennis ball.
God, why did I leave, she
says to herself, and a pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she
knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go
home.
Three
straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine.
She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time
she says, ‘Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m
catching a bus up your way, and it’ll be there about midnight tomorrow. If
you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits
Canada.’
It
takes about seven hours for the bus to make all the stops between Detroit and
Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaw in her plan. What if
her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited
another day or so until she could talk to them? And even if they are home, they
probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time
to overcome the shock.
Her
thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is
preparing for her father. ‘Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your
fault; it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?’ She says the words over and
over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized
to anyone in years.
The bus
has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the
pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires, and the asphalt steams. She’s
forgotten how dark it gets out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus
swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse
City. Oh, God.
When
the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the
driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, ‘Fifteen minutes,
folks. That’s all we have here.’ Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks
herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her
teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her
parents will notice. If they’re there.
She
walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand
scenes that have played out in her mind prepared her for what she sees. There,
in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City,
Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and
uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They’re all
wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire
wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads ‘Welcome home!’
Out of
the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears
quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, ‘Dad,
I’m sorry. I know…”
He interrupts
her. ‘Hush child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be
late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home.’”[10]
[1] Darrell
L. Bock, Luke—The NIV Application
Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), p. 412.
[2] Darrell
L. Bock, Luke 9:51-24:53—Baker
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books,
1996), p. 1310.
[3] Joel B.
Green, The Gospel of Luke—The New
International Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), p. 580.
[4] Bock, Luke—ECNT, p. 1310.
[5] Green, Luke—NICNT, pp. 580-581.
[6] Bock, Luke—ECNT, pp. 1312-1313.
[7] Green, Luke—NICNT, p. 583.
[8] Bock,
Luke, ECNT, p. 1319.
[9] Fred B.
Craddock, Luke—Interpretation,
(Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), p. 188.
[10] Philip
Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace,
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), pp.49-51.
(Audio version; Music: "Prodigal" by: Sidewalk Prophets and "When God Ran" by: Phillips Craig & Dean)
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