This text has been
crucial in both my life and in the life of our church. This parable is famous
and for centuries has been called "The Parable of the Prodigal Son."
The son. It’s a great mistake to think that this is a story about one son. It’s
the story of two sons. It’s a story of a younger and an older brother. You are
meant to compare and contrast them. And if you don't compare and contrast them
the way Jesus wants you to, you’re going to miss the radical message of this
parable, and it is radical. Jesus is saying here this: "Every thought the
human race has ever had about how to connect to God whether East or West,
whether in the ancient, modern, postmodern era, in every religion, in all
secular thought, it's been wrong. Every human idea of how to connect with God
is wrong." Jesus is here to shatter all existing human categories. An
historian once said…and it is hard to grasp this…when Christianity first
appeared in the world, nobody called it a religion. It wasn't seen as another
religion. It was called the "anti-religion." It was seen as
anti-religion. The Romans called the Christians for two hundred years
"atheists." And the reason was that the Romans understood that what
Christianity was saying about God was so different than what any other religion
said, that is really shouldn't be given the same kind of name. It’s in a whole
other category all together. And they were right. And this passage tells us why
they were right. First, let’s tell the story. Let’s make sure we understand the
story. Then let's draw out the three things I think Jesus is trying to tell us
in this story...a story in two acts. Act One: The Lost Younger Brother Act One
begins with a speech when the younger brother comes to the father and says
"Father, give me my share of the estate." Now the original hearers
when they heard this would have been absolutely astounded. If you had two sons,
then when you died the estate would be divided two-thirds to the elder,
one-third to the younger. The reason …or rule of thumb was the oldest got a
double portion of what all the other children got. So, if there were only two, the
oldest got two-thirds, the youngest got one third. But that happened when the
father died. When the son came and asked the father for his share of the estate
before the father’s death, the original hearers would have been astounded. One
commentator, Kenneth Bailey (a scholar who knows something about the history
and culture of the time) put it like this: "To ask for the inheritance
while the father is still alive is to wish him dead.x " What the younger
son is saying is: "I want your stuff, but I don't want you. I want the
father's things, but I don't want the father. My relationship with you has just
been a means to an end. And I am tired of it. I want my stuff now."
Unheard of! But even more unheard of is the second half of verse 12 because if
the original hearers were amazed at the speech in verse 12a, they were
absolutely astonished by what the father did in verse 12b. Bailey goes on to
say: "A traditional middle-eastern father could only respond in one way.
He would have been expected to drive the boy out of the house with verbal if
not physical and violent blowsxi.” But this father doesn't do that. What does
it say? “So he divided his property between them.”
The translation uses the
word property here, but the Greek word used is bios, from which we get our word
biology. What it’s really saying is - the father divided his life between them.
Why would he say that? We do not understand the relationship that people in the
past had to their land…to their land. This father's estate was his land…his
wealth was his land. He would have had to sell off a third of his land to give
his son that part of the estate. Now if you really want to understand this you
could always read a lot of books, like those of Wendell Berry. But, if you
would like a little bit briefer glimpse you can always look at the musical
Oklahoma…of Rogers and Hammerstein. xii One of the lines in the theme song goes
like this: “Oh we know we belong to the land. And the land we belong to is
grand.” Do you notice what it says? The land we belong to. It doesn’t say the
land belongs to us. We belong to it. We don’t understand that. But ancient,
Middle Eastern families identified with their land. Their very identity was
bound up with the land. To lose your land was to lose yourself…and to lose part
of your land was to lose your standing in the community…and that standing was
tied to how much land you had. This son is asking his father to tear his life
apart…to tear apart his standing in the community. To tear himself apart, and
he does. The hearers had never seen a Middle Eastern patriarch respond to such
an insult like this. You know what this father is doing? He is enduring. He is
bearing the worst thing a human being can bear - rejected love. When someone
treats us like this, what we do is we get mad and we retaliate and we reject
and we do everything we can possibly do to diminish our affection for the
person…so we don’t hurt so much. But this father maintains his love for his
son, even under these circumstances, and endures the agony of rejected love.
Then the son goes off and he squanders everything he has. When he is literally
down in the mud, literally down in the pig sty, he realizes how stupid he’s
been, and he comes up with a plan. And his plan is: first of all, “I realize I
have been stupid. I will go home and confess to my father.” But notice there is
another part to his plan…which is to say, “I will go back and say ‘Father, I
have sinned, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of
your hired men.’” Now, that’s not that same thing as asking to be a slave. A
slave or a servant worked in the estate, lived on the estate, but a hired man
was a craftsman and lived in town and had to be apprenticed to learn his skill,
and therefore made a wage. Most commentators think that what the young man was
doing was very simple. The rabbis taught if you had violated the community
principles the only way back into the community was not just an apology…you had
to make restitution. And what the son is probably doing is coming back with a
plan and saying, “Father, if you will apprentice me to one of your hired men
and teach me a craft, I will come work FOR you. I know I can’t be your son. I
know I can’t come back into the family, but this way at least I can begin to
pay you off. Pay you back a little bit for what I’ve done to you.” So he has a
plan. And he comes back. The father sees him far off…and he runs. Middle
Eastern patriarchs did not run. Children ran. Youth ran. Women would run. But
not fathers. Not owners of estates. You’d have to pick up your robes and bare
your legs and you didn’t do that sort of thing. But this one does. Many
commentators have said that this father doesn’t act like a father. He acts like
a mother here. Middle Eastern fathers did not act like this. Mothers did. He
runs to his son. He shows absolute emotional abandon and kisses him. And the
son tries to roll out his restitution plan. You can imagine.
He gets out a
PowerPoint Presentation and he says, “Dad I got a…” (you know). He starts to
roll out his compensation plan. The father won’t even hear it…because he says,
“Get the best robe.” The best robe would be the father’s robe. This is what he
is saying. “I am not going to wait for you to clean up. I am not even going to
wait for you to take a bath. I’m certainly not going to wait for you to prove
yourself” He says to his servants, “Cover my son’s nakedness and rags with the
robe of my office and honor, and we’re going to feast.” And, to the son…“you
are not going to earn your way back into the family. I’m bringing you back.”
Act Two: "The Lost Elder Brother" When the elder brother hears about
it he’s furious. And as you see from the text, he is particularly upset about
the cost…” That may not be as obvious to you as it will be. Did you notice that
the big deal here is this calf? The elder brother says to the servant “what’s
going on?” The servant says “Your younger brother is back and the father gave
him the calf.” And the elder brother goes to the father and says, “You gave him
a calf!” (And we are sitting here reading this saying, “I know this means
something, but I don’t know what it is.”) And the elder brother says, “You’ve
never even given me a goat and you’re giving him a calf! “ What is this all
about? Well, Middle Eastern people at this time and place almost never had meat
for a meal. It was a delicacy. And if you ever had meat it was a party. But the
greatest delicacy…and the most expensive possible thing to do…was to slay a
fatted calf. The whole village would have been there. It was the sort of thing
that most families wouldn’t do as a private party, ever, it was so expensive.
And therefore the older brother is saying, “How dare you use our wealth like
this. I have obeyed you. I should have some say in this.” In other words “I
have some right over your things. How dare you do this?!” And he insults the
father, because, in verse 29 he doesn’t say “Father” he says “ Look.” Which is
a kind of English translation that gets across the fact that this is a
deliberate insult? He doesn’t give any address to his father at all. He is
basically saying, “Look you!” It is a most incredible insult. He publicly
humiliates his father by not going in to the greatest feast his father has ever
thrown…makes his father come out. He publicly humiliates him by refusing to
call him “Father.” So… what does the father do? He responds with a very tender
word. He says “My son…”…which actually could be translated “My child.” “My
child. I still want you in the feast. Almost every other father I know would
have disowned you already for what you have just done, but I still want you
in.” And as we are on the edge of our seats asking the question, “Will, in the
end, the family come together in unity and love? How will the older brother
respond? Will they all come together in the end?” Jesus ends the parable and
never tells us. Cliffhanger!! Now, why? What is Jesus trying to get across?
Jesus brings the parable to life with THREE RADICAL redefinitions 1. Jesus
redefines God 2. Jesus redefines sin 3. Jesus redefines salvation He redefines
God First of all, He redefines God. There’s an awful lot…and I mean an awful
lot of people who really struggle with this idea, this concept in the Bible, of
God as a Father. I’ve shown you many times in the past, however, that Jesus,
more than anyone in history, called God “Father.” He was the first person to
ever address God as Father and every single time He ever addresses God in the
Bible, except one, He calls Him “Father.” This idea of God as a Father is very,
very rare in this Old Testament. But Jesus lifts it up. Here He defines what He
means by “Father”. People struggle because so many of them say, “I just hate
this idea of god. It’s too patriarchal. ‘Father.’ I don’t like the Biblical
idea of God as a father. It’s patriarchal. Fathers are hard, and they’re harsh,
and they’re condemning, and they mean rule and control, and I want a loving
god; a sensitive god; a god who cares; a forgiving god; a god who longs for
reconciliation and relationship; a sensitive god.” But…do you have any idea…any
clue as to what Jesus Christ is saying here? Jesus Christ gives us a father
unlike any father of that time. His emotional abandon, his generosity, his
willingness to receive the agony of rejected love. And here is what Jesus is
saying. He says, “Really, I’m sorry. I know a lot of you had fathers like this,
but, my Father is not like that. For all of his power and majesty. He is all of
these things too. He is loving. He is suffering. He is longing for your love.
He loves you.” Jesus brought traits and attributes together in a Man – every
one: the meekness and majesty of God, the power and tenderness of God. Jesus is
saying through this parable, “that’s who God is…that’s what He’s like.” No one
had ever described God in those ways. He redefines God. He redefines sin The
brilliance of the rhetoric of Jesus here is that in the First Act (the Younger
Brother Act) Jesus gives us an image of sin that is very traditional. Any
Pharisee, any religious person, anybody could look at that and say. “yeah
that’s sin.” You know, prostitutes...right? insulting his father, pigsty, down
in the gutter, dissolute, self-indulgent. That’s sin. But then in the Second
Act Jesus turns the tables. Because when you get to the end of the Second Act
this is what you’re left with. There are two sons. One is very, very good. One
is very, very bad, and they’re both alienated from the father’s heart. Each one
of them wanted the father’s things, but not the father. Each one of them…think
carefully…each son used the father to get what they really loved. They didn’t
love the father; they used the father to get what they really loved: the
status, the wealth – the things they really loved. They wanted his stuff. But
one of them did it by being very, very good and one of them by being very, very
bad. They’re both lost. The bad one is lost in his badness; but the good one is
lost in his goodness. They’re both estranged from their father.
And in the end, it’s the bad son that’s saved and the good
one, as far as we know, is lost. And that is counter-intuitive to all our
thinking…against what anyone has ever believed. The lover of prostitutes is
saved and the man of moral rectitude is lost? And it gets worse. Because, when
you see why the good son was lost, he was not lost in spite of his goodness, he
was lost because of it. He says it. He says, “here’s the reason I won’t go into
the feast of the father. Here is the reason I reject you, Father: I have never
disobeyed you.” It’s not his sins keeping him from the father. It’s his
goodness. He’s proud of his goodness. It’s not his sins that are keeping him
from the father. It’s his righteousness. Ok…his self-righteousness. The reason
I’ve included the first two verses of the text is that it tells us there two
people groups around Jesus when he told this parable: (1) tax collectors and sinners
– (2) Pharisees and the teachers of the law. And you suddenly realize who the
two sons in the parable are. Sinners are younger brothers. They’ve run off.
They live any way they want. Pharisees, religious teachers, moral people,
religious people – they’re the elder brother. What you have here are the two
basic ways that human beings try to make the world right, to put themselves
right, and to connect to God: moral conformity and self-discovery. (1) Moral
conformity people say, “I’m not going to do what I want to do, I’m going to
comply. I’m going to submit, I’m going to be good. I’m going to work hard.” (2)
‘Self-discovery’ people say “I’m going to decide what is right for me. I’m
going to decide what is right or wrong for me. I’m going to do what I want to
do. I’m going to live as I want to live. I’m going to find my true self.” Each
group is saying, “This is the way the world would be better.” Each side says,
“This is the way that you’ll be happy.” Jesus says, “You are both wrong…both
wrong. You are both lost. You are both making the world a terrible place in
different ways.” See, the elder brothers of the world divide the world in to.
They say, “the good people are in, the bad people…you, are out.” And the
younger brothers divide the world in to do as well. The self-discovery people
say, “the open-minded, progressive-minded people are in and the bigoted and
judgmental people are out. You”
And Jesus says, “Neither.” He says, “It’s the humble who are
‘in’ and the proud who are ‘out.’” He says it’s the people who know they are
not good…or open-minded…who know that they need sheer grace that are “in,” and
the people who continue to believe that they’re on “the right side” of those
divides are “out.” The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not religion or ir-religion.
It’s not morality or immorality. It’s not moralism or relativism. It’s off the scale.
It is not half-way in the middle. It’s something else. Now you see what Jesus
is saying about sin. Now you see how different it is. There are two ways to be
your own savior and lord, just as there were two different ways for the sons to
get control of the father’s stuff. One son tried to get control of the father’s
stuff, not by loving the father, but trying to use the father to get what he
wanted. One son tried to gain control of the father’s stuff by living a bad
life, but the other son tried to control the father’s stuff by living a very,
very, very, very good life. Just so, there are two ways to be your own savior
and lord. There are two ways to try to control God…the people around you…and
your own life. There are two ways to of stay in control. One is by going off
into the blue and living any ol’ way you want. And the other is being moral,
very religious, reading your Bible, obeying the Ten Commandments, and praying
all the time.xiii Flannery O’Connor in Wise Blood, one of her novels, described
one of her characters like this: “He says there was a dark nameless
understanding in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin. xiv” She
nailed elder–brotherness. You know what she is saying? If you think, “if I love
people, and if I’m good and if I pray, and I read my Bible, then God has to
bless me.” Jesus might be your rewarder, He might be your example, He might be
a lot of things, but He is not your savior. You’re your own savior. You are
avoiding Jesus as Savior by avoiding sin. You’re trying to control God through
what you’re doing. All your morality, all your obedience is a way of getting
God to give you what you really want. And it’s not God...Himself. v Religious people obey
God…to get things. v
Gospel people obey God…to get God, to resemble Him, to love Him, to know Him,
to delight Him. You see why elder brother lostness and younger brother lostness
are both terrible? Younger brother lostness with its self-indulgence and
addiction brings a lot of misery into the world. But elder brother lostness –
you see it…you see how judgmental he is…look at his anger. He’s always angry.
Why is he angry? Because he’s lived such a good life that God the Father owes
him things his way. And of course your life never…except for a few years at a
time…never, ever goes the way you want. If you are living a good life because
you think that I deserve a good life, you’re always going to have an
undercurrent of anger. You’re always going to be looking down on other people. v According to Jesus’
definition, religion is the source of a tremendous source of amount of misery
and strife in this world. Really…it all comes down to motivation. Of course if
you love the Father, you’re going to obey him…but why? The elder brother
doesn’t obey out of love. The elder brother obeys to get stuff. How can our
motivation be completely changed around so the reason we do this stuff we do,
is not as he says - to slave, out of duty, mechanical, joyless, creating
judgementalism and superiority, but out of love and gratitude? Last point… Jesus
redefines salvation Jesus doesn’t just redefine God. He doesn’t just redefine
sin. He redefines salvation. Do you now see why Christianity cannot divide the
world into good and bad people? Moral conformity and self-discovery just don’t
go deep enough. The default mode of every human heart whether moral or immoral,
religious or ir-religious, self-discovery or moral conformity - the default
mode of every human heart is self-justification. Being you own savior and lord,
trying to control things, trying to control people. Neither selfdiscovery nor
moral conformity go deep enough to get at what is really wrong with the world…
what is wrong with you and me.
So how can we be saved? Jesus says we need three things. Not
moral conformity, not selfdiscovery. We need three things. First, you need the
initiating love of the father. You notice the father goes out to both sons in
order to bring them in. He goes out to the younger brother and he kisses him
before he repents. The repentance does not trigger the kiss. The kiss
facilitates repentance. You’re never going to seek the Father…unless first He
seeks you. And in many cases, by the way, even as you read this book…He might
be seeking you right now. That might be the reason why you’re feeling the way
you feel at this moment. But notice that the father goes out to the older
brother, and this is amazing, because if you remember, Jesus is telling this
parable to Pharisees. And…Jesus knows that it’s the religious people are the
ones who are going to kill him. And he knows that, because the Gospel is every
bit as offensive to moral and religious people as it is immoral and
self-discovery people. Every bit as offensive. Except the religious people
usually have more power. And yet, in the parable, He has the father go out and
plead with the Pharisee to come in. Jesus is not a Pharisee about Pharisees.
He’s not self-righteous about the self-righteous. It’s amazing. You know, as we
saw in the 2004 Presidential election, the red states thought the blue states
were the trouble, and the blue states thought the red states were the trouble.
And Jesus says, “You are all are the trouble, and I love you.” Secondly, you
need to learn how to repent for something besides sins. I phrased that very
carefully. You have to learn to repent for something besides sins. See…the
younger brother comes back and he’s got a lot of sins to repent of. You and I
and most everybody in the world would say, “Oh, that’s what you do. That’s how
you get right with God. You repent of your list.” But do you see how radical
this parable is? The elder brother is lost…but he’s got nothing on his list
(...that’s how he thinks). He says, “I have always obeyed you” and the father
doesn’t contradict him. So how does a person who is lost, with no sins on the
list, get saved? And of course there is no such thing as a person who is
sinless, we know that. But here is the point: when Pharisees sin, and they do
sometimes, of course they repent. They feel terrible about their sins. But when
they’re done repenting, they’re still Pharisees. The difference in a Christian
and a moralist is this: Christians also repent of what they’ve done wrong. Sure
you do. You have to. They repent of what they have done wrong, but a Christian
is someone who has also learned to repent for the reasons he or she did right.
Now…I know almost none of my readers understand what I just wrote. Don’t sit
there like New Yorkers thinking, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” Christians…of course
they repent for what they’ve done wrong, but they also recognize that the reason
for even the right things that they do is self-justification…and a desire to
control God and others. And when that penny drops, when you begin to see the
desire to be your own savior and lord not only of the bad things you’ve done,
but also the good things, and when you say, “that’s got to change,”…when that
epiphany happens, when that penny drops, that changes everything. Everything.
Everything in your life changes. The way you handle criticism…the way you see
people who are different than you. Everything changes - the way you live, the
way you relate to God. Everything. It’s called the new birth because it’s so
radical. Do you know how to do that? Have you done that? Thirdly, you need to
be melted and moved by what it cost to bring you home. Now you see, I just said
the key difference in a Christian and a Pharisee is motivation. v The Pharisee obeys God to
get things. v The
Christian obeys God just to get God. Why? Because something the Christian has
seen has melted his heart toward God so he loves the Father finally, or she
loves the Father finally. What is that? You have to see what it cost God to
bring you home. Well you say, ”It didn’t seem to cost him anything. The kid
came home with a kind of desire to compensate, we think, but the father
wouldn’t let him, so it was free, it didn’t cost anything.” It didn’t cost him
anything, but it cost somebody else a lot. At the very end Jesus gives us the
hint. The last verse, when the father says, “Everything I have is yours.”
That’s literally true. Why? Because the younger brother had liquidated and now
had spent every bit of his inheritance, and now every single thing that the
father had, belonged to the elder brother- every robe, every ring, every fatted
calf belonged the elder brother. The younger brother could only be brought back
into the family at the enormous cost and expense to the elder brother. It’s not
free. It’s not simple to be saved. Somebody has to pay. The elder brother had
to pay and he was furious about it. Now why does Jesus offer up this parable
about such a nasty elder brother? Because He’s showing the Pharisees what they
look like. But what would a true elder brother have done? A true elder brother
would have seen the agony of the father and said, “Father, I’m going to go out
and look for my brother. And if he has ruined himself and he’s squandered all
of his inheritance, I’ll bring him home even at my own expense.” That would
have been a true elder brother. Poor kid. He doesn’t have a true elder brother.
But we do. Jesus Christ shows us a bad elder brother so we’ll long for the
right one. We don’t just need an elder brother to go out into the next town to
find us. We need someone to come from heaven to earth. We don’t need an elder
brother who brings us into God’s family just at the cost of his wallet, but at
the cost of his life. You’ve got to understand that on the cross Jesus Christ
was stripped naked so that we could be clothed in a robe of honor that we don’t
deserve. On the cross Jesus called “My God, my God,” the only time He never called
Him Father…because at that moment He was not being treated as a son - so you
and I could be. There He paid the debt that deep down we all know we owe. And
because everything He had…was the everything the Father had…but He shares it
with us…and He brings us home at the enormous expense to Himself. And when you
see that, to the degree you see that, it will absolutely change your
motivation. It will change your whole approach to God. And you won’t be into
self-discovery or moral conformity. You’ll be a Christian. Applications First,
a lot of you would be younger brother types. Why? Because where do you think
younger brothers go? They go to New York. Where do you think this guy went? He
left Ohio… he left Alabama…he went to New York. And a lot of people in New York
say, “The problem with the world, to a great degree, is religion. The problem
of the world is the moralism. The problem with the world is the
self-righteousness, the strife. That’s a big problem with the world.” And guess
what? This parable says, Jesus says, “You’re right. But guess what? Your
selfdiscovery mode hasn’t really been working real well lately.” But…you don’t
want to go back into Christianity…it’s just another religion, and Jesus says,
“You’re wrong.” Would you start to reconsider it? Reconsider and realize maybe
you’re wrong. That Christianity isn’t just like other religions at all. You may
have had a lousy home. You might have had the kind of father that everybody
else thought this guy should be. This is the love you need. Secondly, this
parable is really the elder brother’s. You know why? Why do you think it ends
the way it does? Jesus is basically speaking to Pharisees and He’s inviting all
elder brothers to listen to this appeal and to put yourselves in it, and
respond. It is participatory theater. And there are a lot of you that you’ve
got an elder brother type of heart. And so you’re always mad. You’re mad at
those people who have hurt you…and you’re mad at people who’ve hurt you and
there are classes of people you look down on. And mainly, you feel like “my
life’s not going the way it ought to and I’m the good one in my family and why
is it everybody else has broken my parents’ heart and they’re happy and I’m
not?” And the reason you are so unhappy is because of your goodness. The main
thing between us and God is not our sins as much as our damnable good works.
And you’re mad at people and you’re mad at things because “I’ve tried hard,
I’ve tried hard and my life is not going right.” Lay your deadly goodness down,
down at Jesus’ feet. Stand in Him and Him alone, gloriously complete. xv We’ll
never stop being elder brothers until we see and are melted by what our true
elder brother did for us. And lastly, hey, if you’re going to be in a church
that believes this is Christianity, we’re going to be always misunderstood,
because there are going to be things that we do here, attitudes we have,
practices we do. Some people are going to say, “Well now wait, that sounds like
a liberal human institution.” Or, “That sounds like a conservative institution.”
Of course that’s the way it’s going to be. We’re going to be misunderstood all
the time. People are going to try to stick us in human categories and though…of
course, since we aren’t Jesus…to some degree we have a tendency to go into
human categories. But ultimately you are not going to be able to stick a church
that cares about the Gospel like this into those categories. We are going to be
misunderstood, but that’s alright. Jesus understands, and He is our true older
brother.
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