Sermon Tone Analysis

Of all the rebellious, inconsiderate actions a young adult can do, the young son in this parable takes the cake with his ungrateful show of defiant independence.

Demanding his father’s inheritance while his father is alive is a slap in the face.

He may as well have said, “I hate you!

I want you dead!

You mean nothing to me!

I don’t need you at all!”

The Father, instead of making an invoice marked payable on demand for all he had done to raise his child, the patriarch quietly remembers Shirley Caesar’s song, “No Charge:” For the time and tears, and the costs through the years, there is no charge.”

Father freely gives his son a share of his own estate.

What love!

What TOUGH love - to release the child you’ve given life to back into an unprotected world to make his own choices; to give in to the noisy rants of one son while looking after the silent brooding of the other.

And when the son winds up in the gutter of life, realizing his shameful mistakes, aA compassionate Father knows his children, and loves us even when we mess up.