Shiloh Lutheran Church
State College, PA
When I was five-years old, my family lived in Santa Rosa, California. We had nice sidewalks, and I remember riding my tricycle around the block, mostly standing on the back platform with one foot and pushing myself with the other. One day my mom came out to tell me it was time for a nap, and since I wasn’t ready to go inside I took off around the block. She didn’t chase after me, so I thought I was home free. But when I passed our house to start my second lap, she was waiting behind a hedge and grabbed me by the ears and escorted me inside. I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was; I had three older siblings, and my mom knew there was no need to waste energy running after me.
Being a responsible parent involves not giving too much freedom to a five-year old. But one of the difficulties of being a parent is knowing when to give up that kind of control. My mom did a good job of handing control over to me as I got older, but I’ve seen a lot of parents who haven’t been willing to do that. I used to attend church with a guy who was intent on protecting his kids from the influence of the world, even after they reached adulthood. He refused to have a computer or internet access in his home, and he pulled his kids out of any classes in the Christian home school co-op when he wasn’t comfortable with the reading assignments. He’s not intellectually curious, which is OK. But he’s also not comfortable allowing his kids to be intellectually curious. He inhabits a very small, restricted world and he wants his kids to do the same. But maintaining this involves exercising lots of control over the choices his children make as adults. I’ve seen a similar tendency among Christians who want to help others in need but, at the same time, are concerned that their help isn’t misused somehow. I vaguely remember a story about Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri in Switzerland saying that helping others involves some risk that we’ll be taken advantage of or that people will use our help in the wrong way. But he decided that it’s better to err on the side of taking that risk than on the side of dehumanizing people and robbing them of their dignity by trying to control how they make use of the help we provide.
The problem is that when we’re dealing with adults there’s always the possibility that they will do things we don’t agree with and don’t approve of. And when we help others, we give up control over the choices they make afterward. We are called to help others, whether as parents or as fellow human beings, but we’re not called to exercise control over them. In this parable we see a man parenting two very different sons and yet treating them both with dignity, grace and mercy. He gives them the freedom to not follow his plans and wishes, and then he shows patience, mercy and grace when they misuse their freedom.
The first thing to notice in this parable is that the father gives his younger son the freedom to ruin his life. The son approaches him and says, “Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.” The father is under no obligation to give in to this request; his son is saying, “I want my inheritance right now. I don’t want to wait until you die.” The father is taking too long to die, and the son wants to get on with his life. But his father give him his share (which would be 1/3 of the property, since the oldest brother received a double portion.
Then the son sells all the property and leaves for a distant country. He shows some degree of shamelessness in asking for his inheritance, but he’s still not willing to live the way he wants to in the presence of his family. So he leaves for a distant county. We often see the same kind of thing when people join the military or go off to college. They end up doing things they wouldn’t do when they felt the social constraints of being near family members.
So he does all the things he wanted to do when he was living at home. There’s no reason to think he was miserable the whole time. No doubt he had a lot of fun and enjoyed himself. But in the end, he ran out of money and was reduced to poverty. Then, having spent his whole inheritance, he had to hire himself out to make a living, and the only job he could find was feeding pigs (a very degrading job for a Jew, since pigs are unclean animals). But his job didn’t provide enough to really live on and he found himself wanting to eat the food he’s been giving to the pigs.
Getting what we want is often the worst thing that can happen to us. A song from The Eagles has this line, “What can you do when your dreams come true And it's not quite like you planned?” Things often don’t turn out in reality the way we imagine them. The younger son’s dreams have come true and it’s ruined his life. At this point, he has no hope for the future. He selfishly asked for his inheritance early and then wasted everything his father had worked for. His inheritance is gone and he has no reason to hope for anything more in the future. He’d probably made friends when he was freely spending money, but they’re all gone now. None of them are offering to help him in his poverty and hunger. He’s alone and poor in a distant country.
The second thing in this parable is that when the younger son returns – having ruined his life and hoping only to find work for his father as a hired servant – his father welcomes him back into the family. Up till now the son has been in survival mode, just trying to stay alive in this bad situation. There’s no evidence till now of real repentance. But Jesus says he “came to himself.” In being alienated from his father he has not really been himself, and he hasn’t been able to see things clearly. He’s been blinded up till now, but he comes to himself and realizes that he doesn’t need to remain where he is.
He sees his unworthiness and the foolishness of the choices he’s made. He realizes that he’s squandered everything that was given to him, and yet he knows that servants in his father’s home are better-off than he is, so he decides to return and ask to be admitted as a servant. John Newton’s great hymn “Amazing Grace” says “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” The younger son has been blind, but he comes to himself and is awakened to the truth of his condition and sees that he would be better-off as a servant in his father’s house than to remain where he is.
So he makes his way back home with a prepared speech: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” But his father sees him from a long way off – it seems that he’s been waiting and watching all this time – and runs to him, embraces and kisses him. So the son launches into his speech, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But that’s as far as he gets. His father isn’t even listening to what he says. Before he can ask to be treated as a hired servant, his father says, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.” All of these things mean that he is being readmitted as a full member of the family. None of these things would have been given to a paid servant.
And then he calls for a celebration, “bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” This son had ruined his life and had lost everything and yet his father received him with joy and welcomed him back into the family. But then the older brother returns from working in the fields and hears the commotion. So he asks a servant what is going on, and when he learns the truth he refuses to even enter the house.
The third thing to notice in this parable is that the father responds with patience and grace even to the jealousy of the older son. This son doesn’t come out looking very good in the story. Listen to how it reads in The Message: “The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!”
He’s been dutifully serving all these years, but there’s no joy in it. Have you ever known people like that? They’re concerned to maintain correct behavior, but there’s something lacking. There’s no joy in it. It’s not very attractive. He’s been building up resentment and anger and it all comes out at this point. He doesn’t even identify the younger son as his brother; it’s “this son of yours.” He points out that the younger brother has wasted the father’s property on prostitutes, but we’ve never actually been told that this is the case. It may be true, but it also may be true that this is how the older brother imagines things. Maybe this is what he would have done if he overcame his grim commitment to doing his duty. But in reality this man knows nothing of what his brother has gone through; he knows nothing of his brother’s genuine repentance. He’s like the Pharisees, whose grumbling led Jesus to tell this parable.
But the father responds to him also with grace and reminds him that the younger son is his brother. Here it is in The Message: “Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours – but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!” “All I have is yours,” because when he divided up the inheritance the older son would have received his double portion, 2/3 of the property, and that has not been spent.
He reminds the older son of who he is; he’s not just a son who hasn’t gotten everything he wants, and this should not be the thing that defines him. He’s the older brother of a man who has been lost to the family until now and has been through an extremely difficult experience. Yes, it’s through his own fault, but he’s returned in genuine repentance and this man needs to acknowledge him as a brother, a part of the family. So the father reminds him of who he is and reminds him of the importance of his relationship with his younger brother.
The point of this parable is to correct the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling because Jesus associated with sinners. Their perspective on God is primarily legal, and they see themselves as people who are in God’s favor because of their legal observance. They’re like the older brother; there’s no joy in their obedience and they can’t even recognize it when they see others repenting or their sins. A.W. Tozer said, “Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than low or unworthy conception of God” (“God is Easy to Live With,” in The Root of the Righteous, p. 13). They have a low, unworthy conception of God which is twisting and deforming their souls, but even so Jesus, in this parable, offers them grace to return in repentance to a loving and merciful Father.
Tozer goes on to say, “Much Christianity since the days of Christ’s flesh has… been grim and severe. And the cause has been the same – an unworthy or an inadequate view of God. Instinctively we try to be like our God, and if He is conceived to be stern and exacting, so will we ourselves be” (p. 14). Both the younger son before he left and the older son as he remained home had an unworthy view of their father. The Pharisees and scribes have an unworthy view of God, which is why Jesus tells this parable. Tozer says this about God: “God is the sum of all patience and the essence of kindly good will. We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything and loves us still” (p. 16). During this Lenten season, let’s remind ourselves often that God is like the patient, loving father in this parable and let’s cast ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections.
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