"Two Lost Sons and Their Gracious Father"
Luke 15
The
story we know as the “Parable of the Prodigal Son” is one
of three parables Jesus tells in response to how the Pharisees and scribes have
been grumbling and criticizing him for welcoming sinners and even eating with them.
Jesus doesn't argue with them. He just tells them a series of stories, about
a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves while he went
out after one stray... about a woman who
turns her house upside down in order to find one lost coin... and about a compassionate father who deals
graciously with his two sons.
All three stories address the
Pharisees' concern that Jesus is condoning sin by keeping company with people
they find unacceptable. All three parables
reply that God is too busy rejoicing over found sheep, found coins, and lost
children to worry about what they did
while they were lost.
Jesus declares: “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven
over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no
repentance…. I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over
one sinner who repents.”
Although this is a beloved parable,
there are some people who really struggle with it. I think it has to do with which character we
identify with. here are many different
interpretations, and a variety of titles.
Personally, I don’t think “Parable of the Prodigal Son” is the best
title. I’d prefer something like, “The Two Lost Sons and the Gracious Father.”
In my study this week, I was
reminded of Rembrandt’s painting, “The Return of the Prodigal Son,”[1]
and spent some time meditating on that image.
I also read Henri Nouwen’s book with the same title.[2]
Nouwen tells about his first
encounter with the painting when he saw a poster in a friend’s office, and was
deeply moved by it. He said it made him
want to cry and laugh at the same time.
Several years later, friends invited
him to go with them on a trip to the Soviet Union, and they made arrangements
him to spend a few hours at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg with the painting
that been on his heart and mind for several years.
The painting is hung in the natural
light of a nearby window. In the hours
Nouwen studied it, the light kept changing, and at every change of the light he
would see a different aspect revealed. I
think Nouwen’s discovery in this painting points us to the amazing gift this
parable is to us. No matter how often we
hear it, there is always a new angle or perspective, a new revelation.
Luke the Evangelist tells the story
so simply and so matter-of-factly that it’s difficult to comprehend that what
happens is un-heard of. Biblical scholar
Kenneth Bailey says that the way the son leaves amounts to wishing his father dead. Bailey writes:
“For over fifteen years I have been
asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the
Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the
father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same…the
conversation runs as follows:
“Has anyone ever made such a request
in your village?
Never!
Could anyone ever make such a
request?
Impossible!
If anyone ever did, what would
happen?
His father would beat him, of
course!
Why?
The request means—he wants his
father to die.”
Scholars tell us that the younger of
two brothers would have expected to inherit a third of the father’s property
when he died. Kenneth Bailey explains
that the son asks not only for the division of the inheritance, but also for
the right to dispose of his part. Even after
dividing the property and signing over his possessions to his son, normally the
father still would have the right to live off the proceeds…as long as he is
alive. But this son lets his father know that he can’t wait for him to die, and
demanded his money, which would have meant his father would have needed to sell
off a third of the family estate.[3]
The son’s leaving is a rejection of
his home and the values of his family and community. He leaves everything to go to a “distant
country.” He squanders his property in
self-indulgent, immoral living. Then
there was a severe famine, and he began to be in need. He was so desperate that he—this Jewish
boy—hired himself out to take care of pigs.
In time, the younger son hits bottom. Out in the pigsty, he finally comes to his
senses. “Here I am starving,” he said to
himself, “when back at home my father’s
hired hands have more than enough to eat.”
As he trudges along the dusty road
toward home, he rehearses what he'll say to his father: "Father, I have sinned against heaven
and before you. I am no longer worthy to
be called your son. So treat me like one
of your hired hands."
Meanwhile, back at home, the father has
scanning the horizon, longing to see his son and welcome him home. When he sees his beloved lost son trudging
home, the father is filled with compassion.
He does a very un-dignified thing.
He hikes up his robes and runs to meet him.
When he reaches his son, he throws
his arms around him and kisses him, before the son has a chance to say anything. The son starts to apologize: "Father, I have sinned against heaven
and before you. I am no longer worthy to
be called your son."
Before he can say any more, the
father says to his servants, "Hurry-- bring out a robe-- the best one--
and put it on him. Put a ring on his
finger and sandals on his feet."
In doing this, he shows that he's
welcoming his son back as a son, rather than as a servant. The son must have been speechless with astonishment.
But the father isn't through
yet. "Kill the fatted calf,"
he orders. "We're going to have a feast and celebrate, for this son of
mine was dead and is alive again. He was
lost-- and now he's found!"
The household bursts into activity,
and soon a joyous feast is underway.
The younger son never dreamed that
his father loved him so deeply. There
were no "I told you so's."
This son's life was far more precious to the father than being right, or
putting his son in his place. The
younger son finally saw deep into his father's heart that day… and what he saw was pure love.
When the elder son gets back from work, he’s surprised
to hear music and dancing. "What's
going on?" he asks one of the
servants.
The servant tells him, "Your
brother has come home, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he
has got him back safe and sound."
The elder brother refuses to go in
to the party. Luke doesn't tell us why,
but my hunch is that he wasn't angry because his younger brother came
back. Maybe he wasn't even angry because
his father forgave him. But the party--
that was another matter.
Let the sinners come home, by all
means. But what about facing the
consequences of your actions? What about
reaping what you sow? Where's the
moral instruction in that kind of welcome? What kind of a world would this be,
if we all made a practice of having a party for sinners, while the dutiful, obedient
folk are still working in the fields?
His father comes out and begins to plead
with him. "Your brother has come
home, son. He was lost and now he was
found. Come in to the party and celebrate
with us!"
Do you hear how he answers his
father? "Listen!" he says.
"For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and
I have never disobeyed your command!
I've done my duty and followed all your rules. Yet you have never given me even a young goat
so that I might celebrate with my friends.
But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with
prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!"
God help him, the elder son. God help all of us who understand his hurt and
resentment that run so deep that we cut ourselves off from the very ones whose
love and acceptance we so desperately need.
"This son of yours,” the elder
brother says, excluding himself from the family in those words. This son of yours, who is no kin to me. The older son believes his father has chosen
the younger brother over him.
The father knows that he has lost
this son to a life of resentful self-righteousness that takes him so far away
from his father that he might as well be away in a far country.
The elder son wants his father to
love him as he thinks he deserves to be loved-- because has stayed home and
done the right thing, the dutiful thing.
He wants his father to love him for all of that.
His father does love him, but not for any of that--
any more than he loves the younger brother for what he has done. He doesn't love either of his sons according
to what they deserve. He just loves
them-- more because of who he is than because of what they do. But the dutiful older brother can't comprehend a love that transcends
right and wrong... a love that throws homecoming parties for sinners and
expects the hard-working righteous people to rejoice.
He can't stand it, and so he stands outside. Outside his father's house and his father's love-- refusing his invitation to come inside.
But his father turns out to be a prodigal, too-- at least as far as his love
is concerned. He never seems to tire of
giving it away. "Son," he
says, "you are always with me. All that is mine is yours."
"It was necessary that we
celebrate and be glad," the loving father says to his older son, "for this your brother"-- not just
my son, but your brother-- "was
dead, and is alive. He was lost and is found."
In
other words, the father is saying, “I’m welcoming my son back because it makes
me happy to do it. I love him as I love
you—not because of what either of you deserves…but because you are my
children. I’m thrilled and relieved to
have him back home. The only thing that
could make me happier right now would be to have you with me too…to have the whole
family at the table together.”
I don’t think Jesus is telling us
that we shouldn’t take sin seriously. We
are all sinners. But I believe Jesus is
showing us that we need to take GRACE seriously.
It is by God’s grace that we are all
beloved children of God. It is by grace
that each one of us receives not the love we deserve—but the love God wants to
give us. Whether we see ourselves more
like the older brother or the younger brother, we can rejoice because God loves
us all abundantly, out of God’s grace.
The parable doesn't tell us how it
all turned out. The story ends with the
elder brother standing outside the house in the yard with his father, listening
to the party going on inside.
Jesus leaves it that way, I think,
because it's up to each one of us to finish the story. It's up to you and to me to decide. Will we stand outside the celebration of love
and grace? Or will our yearning for love
win us over?
We're invited to go inside and join
the party. Like the loving father in the
story, God refuses to give us the love we deserve... but persists in giving us the love we need…
and rejoices over the return of every lost child.
Thanks be to God for God’s amazing
grace!
Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
March 6, 2016
[1]
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606-1669.
“Return of the Prodigal Son,” and oil painting likely completed within
two years of the artist’s death in 1669.
The original is in the Hermitage,
Museum in Saint Petersburg.
[2] Henri J.
M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal
Son: A Story of Homecoming.
Doubleday, 1992.
[3] Kenneth
E. Bailey, quoted in Nouwen, Location 449 in Kindle Edition.
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