The Lost Younger Son

by Dave Wilkinson

Luke 15:11-24

November 18, 2001

This parable, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, has been called the greatest short story ever told. It begins with three characters -- a man and his two sons.

First, there is the younger son. We will look at him today. Next Sunday we will look at the older son.

In Mel Lazarus' cartoon "Momma", the younger son, Frances comes to Momma and asks: "Momma, do you think I should stick to younger girls? Or should I go out with an older classier and more experienced type?" Momma gets a pained expression on her face and replies: "Son, you have a way of asking advice that makes it sound like it's too late."

This is certainly the case with the younger son's request to his father. "Give me the share of the property that falls to me."

What he is saying is, "Dad, drop dead! I don't want who you are. I just want what you have." Sin in this parable is not the breaking of a law. It is the breaking of a relationship -- the breaking of a heart.

Dr. Kenneth Bailey, formerly of the Near East School of Theology in Beirut writes of knowing of only one case in modern Palestinian village-life where this kind of request was made. An older son asked his father to divide the family inheritance. And the father, in great anger, took a stick and drove his son from the house. He was never permitted in the house again. All of the villagers applauded the father. They all recognized that the son was totally in the wrong and it would be improper for the father to respond in any other way.

But the father in the parable doesn't pick up the stick. Jesus says that this father divides his property between his sons.

Now the scholars and lawyers who are listening to Jesus tell this story are probably shocked. They are shocked at the son. But they are also shocked at the father who gives in to this boy's request. He should have used the stick. But he doesn't.

This parable is about people and God. The parable begins with the picture of people in utter and total rejection of their creator "Hand us the deed to the world you have made but leave us alone." It is also about a God who gives us freedom to reject His love.

The accumulated economic gains of generations are flushed away in an afternoon. In the Middle-East, days can be spent bargaining. The person who sells in a hurry sells cheap. Jesus says that the boy "gathered everything together." He turns it all into cash. With the money in his pocket he goes far away. There he squanders his inheritance on loose living. And you can bet that he has a lot of help.

Then two disasters strike. He runs out of money and into a famine. The first disaster is his fault and the second is not his fault. But together they drive him to the pig pen.

Of course as a good Jew in need he should have gone to the Jewish community and asked for help. A couple of times when I have run into trouble on the road -- like a blown water pump and ruined engine in rural Nevada -- I have turned to the local Presbyterian church and asked for help -- the name of a reliable mechanic for example. I hope that you would feel free to do the same.

But for some reason or another, this boy avoids the Jewish community. Instead, he "joins himself" to a Gentile. We know that this is a Gentile because he keeps pigs.

Why doesn't he return home? Why doesn't he at least connect with the community where he is? I think he is ashamed to face his father and afraid of the reaction of the villagers. In first century Israel there was a ceremony carried out in which a person was cut off from his people -- something like the "shun" of the modern Amish -- or at least as modern as the Amish get.

The Middle-Eastern ceremony involved taking a large earthenware pot, filling it with burnt nuts grain and raisins, and breaking it out in front of someone's house and saying to the community at large in this ceremonial act: "So and so is cut off from his people."

Now it is significant for the parable that this shunning ceremony was carried out in only two circumstances -- first if a man married an immoral woman or second, if he lost his inheritance to the Gentiles. This young man has gone through door number 2. He knows that his relationship to the community is fractured. In fact it is very possible that the pot has already been broken in his dishonor.

So he stays in the far country and ends up feeding pigs. Jesus says that he would have eaten even the carob pods that the pigs were eating "but no one was giving anything to Him." The pigs are more important.

While the young man is on his way downhill, he undoubtedly tells himself: "these hard times are only temporary. He imagines that he still has friends who are only kept from helping him by the difficult famine. My "ship" will come in. Maybe I'll win the Powerball lottery. Even when he has to take an unJewish job with a pig farmer he supposes that he is only doing it on a temporary basis to keep body and soul together until his bad fortune changes. I can see him sitting in the muck saying things like, "It's always darkest before the dawn," "Every cloud has a silver lining," and "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

But finally he changes from wishful thinking to reality thinking. When he is starving to death and recognizes that no one, not even his former friends are going to help him, he finally "comes to himself". He admits that he would be better off in his father's house even as a hired hand. At least he will get three squares a day.

This is the nature of his repentance. It is simply a facing of the facts. Jesus characterizes it as when he "came to himself."

A small boy defined conscience as "something that makes you tell your mother before your sister does."

That's the younger son's repentance. He doesn't say: "O what a terrible guy I am and look how I've hurt my father." He says: "I don't think I'm going to make it. I don't think I'm going to survive. My father and his household are eating, and here I am starving."

Jesus says that the boy's repentance doesn't start with love for his father. It starts with existential concern for his own future. This is often the initial root of repentance. It is the moment when we realize that our goals and our methods are false and we are not truly happy or fulfilled.

C. S. Lewis writes that "The hunger the lord has given you is the best gift you have." As we sit in our own particular pigpen we see that we are looking in the wrong place for what is true and lasting and worthwhile.

As Karl Barth wrote in Deliverance to the Captives: "You yearn to rise again. That is legitimate and appropriate. But I have to ask you one other question. Did you ever reach the depths? Not only the depth of any inward or outward misery, but the depth where man must acknowledge that there is absolutely no help save in God's mercy? In this depth, God's mercy has already reached out for you, has already found you, and you will experience that it will lift you to the highest heights."

This is what this parable is about -- depths and heights.

The young man decides to go home. And if his initial motive is not particularly lofty, the confession he maps out is a classic. Now this boy knows the Jewish understanding of repentance. He's learned that much in Saturday School. He knows that the one who repents must fulfill three requirements. He must confess his unworthiness and sin, he must live outside the community for awhile to demonstrate his sincerity, and he must make up for what he has lost. And so he plans a speech that contains all of the elements of good Jewish repentance: "I will go home. I will confess that I have sinned. And I will offer myself as a hired servant."

Now imagine this young man as he walks toward his home. He had wanted his father dead. But not now. Because if the father is dead then the older brother is in charge and he already knows what his brother is like. He prays that his father has not been made hard and bitter by the immense pain of his rejection. He prays that he can get to his father before he gets to the older brother. He is fearful lest the shunning ceremony be carried out on his arrival. He walks down the road in inner turmoil, practicing his homecoming speech.

Now the father. What is he doing? He is waiting for his son to come home -- spending each day in the highest window looking for a lonely figure on the road. Yes, the father has demonstrated some tough love. He's not co- dependant. He hasn't gone to the far country to pull his son out of the pigpen. He knows his son has to decide to leave on his own. But now that he has come to himself, that father is eager to welcome him home.

At last the father sees his son. He's coming into the village -- bracing himself for whatever happens -- mumbling his speech.

The father sees his son coming and he does something that is completely out of character for a dignified village patriarch. He goes running down the road to meet him with his long robes flapping behind him. The word Jesus uses is the word for running in a race. The father sprints down the road. This is shameful, undignified behavior for the father. And the father knows it.

But by acting this way he draws the attention of the watching villagers away from his son and to himself. He makes himself the focus. Reconciliation takes place on the edge of the village where it is visible to the entire community. The father takes the embarrassment and shame and responsibility entirely on himself. In this act, we see the gospel. The father surprises his son by running to meet him.

Once the boy frees himself from his fathers embrace, he goes into his speech, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son."

He has the rest of the speech all practiced but the father won't let him finish. He is welcomed back without payment and without plan for restitution and without probation by the father's grace alone.

Someone has said that "justice is getting what we deserve, mercy is not getting what we deserve and grace is getting what we don't deserve." This boy receives grace. The father doesn't day, "Get a shower, shave, ands get some clothes on." Instead, he tells the servants to dress him. "But the father said to the servants, 'bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for his my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' And they began to have a party." The boy is reconciled to his father and to the community by his father's great love.

The robe was a token of honor. The ring was a badge of authority -- a signet whose stamp carried the authority to buy and sell in the father's name. The shoes were a sign of wealth. This set the son apart from the peasants and slaves of the land who walked barefoot. The fatted calf is literally the "grain fed calf" - the highest quality meat and a lot of it. In these few gestures the father lifts the boy from shame to honor, from impotence to authority, from poverty to wealth -- and all in an attitude of tremendous merriment and rejoicing. And that, Jesus says, is what God is like and what God longs to do for us when we "come to ourselves."

Now note in this story that the father finds the boy before the boy finds the father. And the father asserts his authority over his son. The boy has it all planned out to be a servant. This will preserve the honor of the father and allow the boy a place in the village. It will enable him to survive. But the father has much more in mind than that. He wants his boy to be his son -- not a servant.

How was this young man found? Jesus suggest that it is not the result of a great spiritual insight or revelation. The revelation only comes later when the boy finally sees his father for who he is. First this willfully lost young man "comes to himself" which simply suggest that he makes a smart choice. He says: 'this is stupid. I don't need to live like this. I have a home and I have a father. Maybe he'll take me back as a servant." This is not a mystical experience. But then comes the great surprise of the father's sacrificial love.

It is an interesting thing to place very young children in front of a mirror. They enjoy seeing a face looking back at them as they enjoy seeing all faces but they don't realize that that face is them. Then, all of a sudden, the expression changes. They somehow recognize the connection between their motions and the motions reflected in the mirror emotion -- a connection between their emotions and the emotions they see. They suddenly seem to realize, "That's me!"

The same thing happens to us when we read this story. We listen to it at first as if it were an interesting tale with which really has nothing to do with us. This prodigal is an interesting type -- the kind of person we have all met at one time or another. And certainly we feel a bit of sympathy for him. But suddenly we look at him and say, "That's me!" We find that we can read the whole story in the first person. Because it describes us and God.

And there is a truth in this parable that is very reassuring -- that you and I have a home in God. When we're lost, it's because we've strayed from the place where we're meant to be. Each of us has a God shaped hole in our lives, and nothing else will fill that hole -- not marriage, children, job or success. The story of the Garden of Eden is our story. When we left the Garden, we left the presence of God and we have been homesick ever since. For we were created for life with God.

If there are any here this morning who feel away from home I would like to talk to you. Maybe you are at the stage of riotous living -- you have lot's of friends because your money is good and the famine hasn't hit yet. But you feel like you are missing something vital in the middle of the rat race. Talk to me.

Maybe you find yourself living in some kind of pig pen. Maybe it's a very nice, 4,800 square 8 pig pen with piped in stereo and wall-to-wall carpeting. But it's still a pig pen. You are starving to death inside and no one is giving anything to you. I want to talk to you.

Or perhaps you have been on the road -- practicing your speech over and over again and thinking how you're going to make yourself acceptable to God. You don't have to do that. Let's talk.

Or maybe your back home. But maybe you have come back to be a slave to God -- wrapped up in all sorts of rules and regulations. You may have come to God as a slave. But God doesn't want that. He wants you as a son or daughter. He wants to put shoes on your feet, a robe on your back, a ring on your finger, and throw a party in your honor.

You need to learn that. You see, this parable isn't about a boy and his father. It's about us and our God -- a God who doesn't want us as slaves but as sons and daughters; joint heirs with Jesus Christ himself. Let's talk.

God can take an empty or drifting or broken life, fill it with the Spirit of His beloved Son, and make that life complete and a blessing to humanity.

And that is the good news.