The Parable of the Lost Son
11 Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.
13 "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
17 "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.' 20 So he got up and went to his father.
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21 "The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'
22 "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.
25 "Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'
28 "The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
31 " 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' "
Dig Deeper
Human beings are creatures that enjoy and connect with stories. We love stories whether they are in written form, in a movie, or even recounted verbally to us. Stories are not just entertaining either, they are powerful. We have all, I’m sure, been moved by the power or emotional connection of a story at one time or another in a way that hearing the same information in a straightforward but non-story format simply could not accomplish. We can identify with stories and put ourselves in the situation in ways that any other medium just cannot achieve. In fact, if you have something monumentally difficult for someone to accept, one of the most effective ways to get them to hear what you have to say is through the timeless medium of a story. They will often be able to connect with the emotional themes of the story and open up to the moral behind it, or even the rebuke behind the story before they realize that you have aimed the story at them. That is the ideal, although not always the case. Because stories do tend to stir our emotions so powerfully, there is always the risk of a person violently rejecting the technique of using story in this way.
2 Samuel 12 is a powerful example of the effect of story. It takes place shortly after David had taken a married woman, Bathsheba, into his own bed and arranged for her husband to be killed. Nathan knew that he could not simply come in and accuse the King of blatant sin. He would not be heard and would likely be punished before he could finish. So he told a story of a rich man who stole the sheep of a poor man rather than killing one of his own flock. The story connected with David deeply and enraged him that someone would do such a thing. David had so completely bought into the emotional connection of the story that he demanded to know who the man was so that he could punish the evildoer. It was then that Nathan gave him the shocking detail that the man was him. The point of the story was a rebuke aimed at David’s own actions. The connection was so powerful for David that he immediately confessed and humbled himself before Nathan.
As chapter 15 opened Jesus was asked why his ministry and table fellowship were so open to the types of sinners that would normally be excluded from inclusion in a religious group. He has responded with three important stories that have demonstrated why he was teaching that the kingdom of God was open to those types of people and why it was such a celebration everywhere he went. But he also had some hard things to say to those who asked him those questions and to the leadership and direction of Israel as a whole. Throughout his ministry, Jesus communicated these hard things in many different ways, but none is more pointed and powerful than the story of the lost son. This wasn’t just a story, after all. This was a story about Jesus’ ministry, about the kingdom of God, and about how the Jewish nation was receiving it. The question was “would they connect with the story and let if effect them humbly or would it enrage them and cause them to sink even further into their morass of rejection?”
When it comes down to it, the Pharisees and other critics of Jesus were concerned about his doctrine of sin and what it would take to be part of God’s family. Why was he acting like sinful people were welcome into God’s family? He was hanging around sinners and this concerned them because they saw sinners as the problem. Sinners were, in their eyes, the very reason that the new Exodus, for which they were all waiting, had not yet come. God would return and purify ethnic Israel, defeat her enemies, and exalt his people to rule over God’s age to come only when Israel was cleansed of the very people that Jesus seemed so ready to have around. The response of the Pharisees to sin, then, was to urge people to cling tighter to the observances of the law like purity, food, circumcision, and the Sabbath to show themselves to be the true people of God that were not like the sinners.
But Jesus’ response was bold and decisive. He is basically saying, “You think my doctrine of sin is shallow. You’re wrong. I think rebelling against God is so disgusting that it is like a young Jewish boy who demands his father’s inheritance while his father is still in good health. He sells the estate while his father is still living on it, goes away from the holy land and loses the money to Gentiles. He ends up feeding the pigs of Gentiles and even longs to become a pig so that he may eat their food. That’s how disturbing I think sin is.” The likely response from the Pharisees would have been to applaud this doctrine of sin. They couldn’t have said it any better themselves. Sin was the problem. Those who were not following God’s laws were indeed as offensive as Jesus’ wayward son in his parable. Sin against God, for Jesus, was to desire the death of God. It was to want the gifts without any reference or respect to the giver. The Pharisees would have agreed with that in principle.
But then, as he so often did, Jesus turned this all on its head. The father was not someone they would have respected. He was full of grace and mercy and took this sinner back with no pre-conditions. Not to be missed throughout this story is that Jesus was doing something quite common in his day. He was basically re-telling the broad narrative of Jacob and Esau. This was so common in his day that the Pharisees almost assuredly would have understood this to be the case. But we must not forget that Jesus was answering questions about his ministry. What this means is that he has clearly put himself in the position of the father. Usually the father role was a symbol for God himself, so Jesus was being outrageously bold in casting himself in the role of Yahweh himself. This meant that the younger brother, the Jacob of this narrative, were those sinners that came to Jesus in humility and repentance (or, as the story made clear, they often come for their own reasons only to be overwhelmed by the genuine grace and mercy of God). The shocking part, then, was that Jesus clearly cast folks like the Pharisees (ones who had “never left” God, at least not in their own eyes, and who held tightly to the law as the marker of God’s people) in the role of the older brother, the Esau of this story.
The point was that they were being like the older brother. In holding so tightly to the laws, they were not honoring the father, they were actually working against him. They were opposing and dishonoring the work of the father every bit as much as they thought the “sinners” were doing. That they were being like Esau is what they would have clearly understood Jesus’ point to be. Esau was the ancestor of the Edomite people, and Edom became, throughout the Old Testament, a common symbol for sinners. Malachi 1 contrasts the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, as being hated (which meant severed or rejected as the inheritance people) by God. Jesus was turning everything upside down. Yes, he was saying, sin is horrendous and it wounds God deeply. But they had God all wrong. He wasn’t an angry and vengeful God waiting to strike down the sinners and the pagan hordes so that he could finally show off his faithful son to them. No, Jesus’ ministry was the perfect embodiment of what God was doing. He was the expectant father that was closely looking for his lost son, the one that was dead to him, so that he could run out and find him and restore him to to the life that he wanted for his son all along. The people that the Jewish religious leaders thought were the problem were the very people that Jesus was now saying were being welcomed into God’s kingdom and celebrated over. But they were the ones that were opposed to all that. Everything was upside down. The son who thought himself so faithful was the one that actually was opposing what God wanted to do.
One of the most striking aspects of this narrative is that the end is missing. It is not that there was an ending and it has been sadly lost to the cruel waves of history. No, Jesus never ended this story properly. A story like this would have been typically balanced in equal stanzas for easy remembering. In this story, in the Greek, the first half has seven stanzas but the second part has only six. The ending is missing. Where is the ending and does it matter? It actually makes all the difference in the world.
The exclusion of an ending is signal from Jesus that this was the path down which they were heading, but that the final decision had not yet been made. It was a warning and a plea. The end was up to them. We can read this and hope that the parable would end with the older son entering the house, joining in the festive banquet, and reconciling with his brother and father. Then the father could rejoice with the two sons that he had found and brought to life. But in the case of the nation of Israel, we sadly know that this was not the ending. Instead, the older brother picked up a wooden stick and beat the father to death. He was so angry that he could just never accept that this is how the father was going to handle things. The older son beat the father to death, or should we say more appropriately, they hung him on a cross.
As with all of Jesus’ parables and other teachings, though, we need not leave this story in the first century and chalk it up as something that is quite irrelevant for us. The principles of this story continue to apply to all lost men and women throughout the ages. We must recognize where we have gotten ourselves in our rebellion against God, whether we have wandered off from him or grew up considering ourselves to be “faithful” to him. We must all realize at some point in our life, that we are lost. We must understand that we often come to God and try to hustle him for our own advantage or for the things that we want. We cannot through our own understanding or repentance reconcile to God. It is his kindness, love and grace that make reconciliation a possibility. All we need to do is to humbly accept that offer. If we do so and recognize that we really were lost, the father will wrap the robe around us and put sandals on our feet and a ring on our finger. He will bring what was once dead to life and restore us to the family of God. What was once dead is now alive. What was once lost is now found. And the party in God’s presence will strike up.
There is also a stern warning in this story for us. We must recognize our tendency as “religious” people to begin to think and act like the older brother. We can ever-so-subtly begin to think that we deserve certain things. Or we can start to get angry when God’s grace of love is shown to sinners. Of course, we don’t like to think that we would do such a thing, but what about some young sinner who comes into God’s family and suddenly seems to be changing much faster than you ever did or being put in positions of leadership quicker than you have? Then our true older-brother-like-tendencies can come out if we’re not careful. Or what about the uneasiness we feel when someone who is in the throes of their lost state comes into church and plops down right next to us? If we ever start to think this way, let us return to this story and challenge us just as surely as it challenged its first hearers. And may we add on an ending of reconciliation to the story.
Devotional Thought
There are so many points within this story on which we can reflect. Spend some time today and over the next few days reflecting on this story and what it means for you. How is God challenging you through this parable?
No comments:
Post a Comment