Luke 15:11-32 - Lent 4 2022

The parable of the prodigal son is without question the most famous of Jesus’ parables. It is rivaled only by the parable of the Good Samaritan. The themes that are found in this parable have inspired artists for centuries from the 17th century painter Rembrandt to the 21st century roots band, Mumford and Sons. This parable is rich with such layers of meaning and abundance of angles that we could spend hours and hours unpacking this story. But since we can’t spend hours this morning, I do want to point you in the direction of two phenomenal resources for exploring this parable in depth. Tim Keller’s book The Prodigal God and Henri Nouwen’s book The Return of the Prodigal Son are two excellent works that cover this incredible story at length - so while we can only skim the surface today, please do not stop there. There is too much goodness to be found in this parable.

There is so much goodness, that we’ll actually tackle this parable over the course of two weeks. Today we’ll begin with the younger son, and next week we’ll examine the elder son - because as many scholars have noted, a better title for this parable is the parable of the prodigal sons, because both sons are lost and in need of the father’s grace.

So to start with, let’s remember that Jesus does not tell this story in a vacuum. Look with me at verse 1.

1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them this parable...

So when Jesus gives the parable of the prodigal son, he is sharing a meal with tax collectors and sinners, and standing nearby is a group of deeply religious people: pharisees and scribes. And they are grumbling about Jesus being so congenial with this riff-raff. And in response to their grumbling, Jesus tells them three parables, including the parable of the prodigal son, in order to teach these religious people that it is the Father’s delight to welcome into his home people who are lost and broken and weighed down by their past. So it’s important that we remember whose eyes Jesus is looking into as he tells this parable.

The parable opens with the younger son demanding that his father hand over his inheritance so that he may leave his father’s house and go to a far away country. Now, inheritance back then works similar to today. A child has no right to the inheritance until the death of his father. So in essence, the younger son is telling his father that he can’t wait for him to die. It is an incredibly offensive request that equates to a heartless rejection of the father and the home that the father had built for his son.

Behind this request for his inheritance is far more than just greed. Greed alone doesn’t desire the death of your father. The younger son wants distance. He wants to be cut loose from his father’s legacy. He wants to leave his father’s house, and he wants to go to a country far away from home.

This is the same desire that has haunted humanity from the very beginning. It haunts us to this day. We want to leave our home! And I’m not talking about moving to a different city, or wanting to go to college in another state. I’m talking about the “leaving home” that is a denial of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that I am his beloved child, that I am carved in the palm of his hand.

Our home is where we can hear the voice that says: “You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.” You know you are home when you can hear that voice of love. But the great tragedy of our lives is that we somehow become deaf to the voice that calls us the Beloved. We no longer hear his voice telling us that we are loved, or maybe it’s that we no longer trust it. We start trusting other voices that tell us we have to go out and prove that we are worth something - that in order to be worthy of love, we must be successful or popular or powerful. However it happens, it always happens. We become deaf to the voice of God’s love, and so like this younger son, we leave home and set off for a “distant country.”

But whatever the younger son was searching for - whether it was pleasure, joy, success, or tragically, love - he did not find it in the distant country. Verse 13:

13 Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. 14 And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

So the younger son leaves home with his pride and the riches which were gifted to him by his father, and he squanders them away. Having spent everything, a famine strikes, and he is forced to take a job feeding pigs, which would have scandalized his Jewish peers, because the pig was an unclean animal in their eyes. But worse than that, such was this poor man’s state that he looked with envy on the food that he was giving the pigs, because no one in that distant country was lifting a finger to help him. The pigs were being cared for better than he.

In that moment he recognized that in the eyes of his neighbor, he was no longer given the dignity of being a human being. In the pig fields he felt an immense wave of isolation, and a deep loneliness. He was truly lost, and he had nothing.

Except that wasn’t true. Because whatever he had lost - be it his money, his friends, his reputation, his self-respect, his joy and peace - he still remained his father’s child. And so he says to himself in verse 17:

‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” ’ 20 And he arose and came to his father.

After all he had done - after he had wished his father dead, after he spurned his whole family and left with his inheritance, after he squandered it all on reckless passions, after he had burned every bridge - the man fell back on the only thing he had left. In fact, it was the only thing that ever mattered. He was still his father’s child. And in that hope, he starts on the long road home.

But as he walks home, he runs through the possible scenarios of what may happen when he arrives. He practices his speech. And I think many of us know exactly what he is doing, because our inner lives are filled with this kind of thing. We’re constantly conjuring up imaginary scenarios in our head to explain ourselves, or apologize for something, or defend ourselves. Before a major meeting or conversation, we role play in our heads. Before seeking reconciliation with our friend or spouse, we role play how it might go in our heads. This is exactly what the younger son is doing as he journeys back home to his father. He is practicing the speech that he will give.

And in doing so he reveals an anxiety that we are all familiar with. In his book, Henri Nouwen describes it this way:

“While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future. I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, “grace is always greater.” Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to a son. Belief in total, absolute forgiveness does not come readily.”

Belief in total, absolute forgiveness does not come readily, Nouwen says. And isn’t that the truth? Continuing on, Nouwen writes:

“One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness. There is something in us humans that keeps us clinging to our sins and prevents us from letting God erase our past and offer us a completely new beginning...receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing. As long as I want to do even a part of it myself, I end up with partial solutions, such as becoming a hired servant.”

The younger son begins the journey home worried about whether he will be truly welcomed by his Father, given everything he had done. He’s willing to accept a half measure of grace - knowing that he’s forfeited his right to remain his father’s son, he’s willing to settle for a lower position, like that of a servant. But all of that anxiety falls by the wayside when the father runs out to greet him in verse 20:

20 But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. 23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

This is the scene that has inspired countless works of art, countless stories, and countless songs. It is a universal desire to be embraced like this - to know unconditional love like this. The Father interrupts his son’s explanation, he doesn’t let him finish his practiced speech, because the motivations don’t matter, the explanation doesn’t matter, the past doesn’t matter because all the Father knows at the sight of his son is joy: “For this my son was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is now found.”

And though we all long for it, Nouwen is right when he says that it is the one of the greatest challenges in our spiritual lives to accept and receive God’s total, and absolute forgiveness. To accept and receive a completely new beginning. I am almost certain that many of us came through those doors this morning holding onto our past sins and failures. I am almost certain that many of us, during the confession, purposefully held back a portion of our selves out of fear. I am almost certain that many of us know the isolation and loneliness that the younger son felt as a result of our choices. And I fully certain that all of us long to be embraced by the Father’s unconditional love.

Well that is what this feast is for. The Father welcomed his son into his home again, and he threw him a feast to celebrate the occasion. That is what this table is for. This is the father’s feast to celebrate our return. By this bread and wine, we know that we are fully welcomed home - because the body and blood of Jesus have given us a new life. He has allowed us to become children of God once again, and he is inviting you to come home today. Hold nothing back. Drop the explanations. Drop the speeches. Drop the defence, and receive the radical love and forgiveness that is being offered.