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| Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1662–1669 | Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg |
The Parable of the Prodigal Sons
Commentaries by Pete Enns & R.E. Slater
A Parable of the $20 Bill
Sermon by James Grier
“But While He was Still Far Off” (or, what if God actually loves us?)
by Pete Enns
January 6, 2013
But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion (Luke 15:20).
A lot of people have heard of “the parable of the prodigal (i.e., wasteful) son.” Some translations call it “the parable of the lost son,” which is better but not quite there. I prefer “the parable of the jerk loser son.”
Long story short (you can read the full version anytime you want to), the younger of two sons demands that his father give him his inheritance right now. This move is majorly disrespectful, for a inheritance is given only when the father dies and also the older son is supposed to get his first. The younger son isn’t being a little forward. He’s leaping over his older brother and in effect saying to his father, “you are dead to me.”
So, he left to live the life that mimicked Animal House and - spoiler alert - "ran out of money!" Of course, what should happen next but a famine and so he roamed the streets hungry and alone. He finally decided he actually has to get a job, and so wound up taking care of pigs–which, if you recall your Judaism, is about as bad an animal as you can come in contact with. He’s so hungry, he even started daydreaming about eating pig food.
He figured he needed to do something about his predicament before he starved, so his sense of self-preservation kicked in. (If you haven’t caught on, this guy is pretty focused on himself, even here.) ”I know, I’ll go back home and grovel a bit. ‘Oh father, I am not worthy to be your son. Treat me like one of your hired hands.’ That should work.”
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| "The Parable of the Lost Son" by Christopher W. French. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight." |
So, he sucks it up and heads back home.
I’m talking now to you parents out there, especially with high school and college age offspring. If you’ve ever been in the place where you son or daughter has left the straight and narrow, slammed the door in your face (actually or metaphorically), and began making some life choices that keep you up nights worrying yourself sick if they are OK, what they’re doing, are they alive, are they ever coming home–if you’ve ever been there, you know what’s going on here.
Or maybe things have not been all that dramatic for you. You child disrespects you and storms out the door to go who knows where and do who knows what with who knows whom. You’re worried and mad. The next day, the car pulls in the drive way and s/he clearly has that look of remorse.
If you’re a like most parents I’ve met (including me), you’re relieved but you also want to make a point. So you play it cool, stand at the door, and give you son or daughter that “I told you so, c’mon, admit it, admit it, you were wrong and I was right” look.
And this is where the parable hits me between the eyes.
When the son was still a far way off, rather than going back into his tent to play it cool (“Oh…You’re back. I hadn’t noticed. How have you been?”), rather than doing what normal fathers do, he was filled with compassion and ran out to meet him.
But while he was still far off…
He couldn’t wait. Even though the son had done his best to bring shame and hurt to his family and his faith …
... his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.
The son delivered his limp, rehearsed, apology, hoping at least to get a bite to eat. Instead the father ignored the speech and ordered that his son be fully restored: a clean robe, a ring (representing family membership), and sandals where he had been barefoot.
As for a bite to eat? Forget it. How about a feast? And why not, as the father says, “for this son of mine was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found.”
You get the feeling the father was pretty excited.
_-_The_Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_WGA8205.jpg) |
| Frans Francken (II) - The Parable of the Prodigal Son |
The father, obviously, represents God in this parable, but this isn’t a “get saved and go to heaven after you die” story. The son is, well, a son–already part of the family.
In Jesus’ day, he was addressing his stubborn fellow Jewish countrymen, reminding them about the love of God and that it’s never too late to come home. When this and other stories were adapted for the Christian faith, that same point remained but with a broader [non-Jewish] audience.
The story isn’t about conversion to Christianity. It’s about God being on the look out for those in the family who have wandered off, and God simply can’t wait to welcome them home.
I read stories like this and I wonder, What if this is actually true? What if there is a God who is really like this? What if God can’t wait to have us around–even with the garbage we keep carrying around and our half hearted “I’m sorries?”
What if God is glad to see us?
And the much more threatening question, What difference would really believing all that make in how I look at, well, pretty much everything?
And, what would it look like if I loved the way God loved?
- Pete Enns
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
How Does One become "Family"?
R.E. Slater
January 11, 2012
I'd like to make one small addition and add the following observation....
The traditional church view here is that "the family" refers to believers of God who follow after Jesus. To a Spirit-baptized, confessing believer, who has left God and now wishes to come back, to whom God says to His child, "Eh, verily, even now, do I love thee! Thou art my child and ever will I love thee." Of course this doesn't answer the question of "faith and works" (James, Peter, etc) so much as state a profundity of church dogma which we must save for another day's examination.
But this isn't what Jesus was saying....
Certainly Jesus had this in mind when speaking to the Pharisees about belonging to God through the covenants made in Abraham, Moses and David. As Jews under covenant (esp. the unconditional covenant of Abraham) they were part of God's people. Even if, after having broken covenant with God (sic, the Mosaic Law, and Suzerainty-Lordship of God in the Abrahamic Covenant) they were welcomed back. It's what God does as One who Loves and Redeems.
But how can one come back when covenant has been broken?
In the OT sense of "remnant (theology)" those Jews who broke covenant were no longer part of God's blessings and fidelity. They stood in jeopardy of judgment and would be treated as a non-covenanted people God knew not. This is the sense you get when reading the prophets of the OT as they preached against the sins of the people of Israel who hardened their hearts against God and persisted in refusing to repent to the prophets message that they had broken covenant with God. That they were faithless, refusing His will and word in their lives. So too had the younger son in the parable acted by rejecting his father, collecting his inheritance, and leaving the community of his birthright.
Under the Abrahamic Covenant there was a way back to God. But how?
In essence, God Himself would become the sacrifice for His people's sin, as the Lamb of God, pictured in Jesus (who was very God himself!). Hence, when God had Abraham bring a sacrifice for his, and his family's (and his future descendant's) ratification of the covenant (... a ratification that in essence was an atoning covenant for sin, a family covenant for membership, and a submittal covenant for duration of treaty, among other things... ). When this sacrifice was brought it was God Himself who cleaved the oxen in two, who functioned as both the priest and the mediating sacrifice, before Himself and Abraham (Abraham here is pictured as yet another typological figure like that of Adam for mankind).
Thus was God both the Suzerainty who treated with Abraham, and the undergirding foundation for the covenant itself, when it surely would be broken by Abraham in his doubts and faithless acts soon to come.
Even so did Jesus remind the Pharisees and religious leaders of His day of their faithlessness to God. Of their need to repent (sic, as such, Jesus was acting as God's prophet to His people Israel... ). Of their rightness of restoration based upon God's faithfulness and love as their Suzerainty who had become their surety as sacrifice upon creation of their treaty with YHWH. Which Jesus Himself would someday soon perform in His own body and spirit as Exemplar Magnifique, by way of re-establishing Israel's broken covenant with God through Himself, as God's perfect, and acceptable sacrifice.
To whom does this apply? To Israel alone?
Hence, under Paul and NT theology, God's covenant has been expanded to all men - both Jews and Gentiles alike - in and through Jesus. Jesus is mankind's surety of covenant in/under/before/beside/by God. Through Jesus is our sin removed. Through Jesus may we become adopted into God's covenant as His people. And through Jesus has Israel's covenant with God has become enlarged to all men everywhere. And if - and when - broken, as it surely will be, it will ever remain in force because it is based upon the eternal God Himself, and through His Son, and not upon our own selves. So that even in our sin, we are God's "family". By right of creation (Genesis). By right of concession (Abraham). By right of redemption (Jesus). By right of sustenance (the Holy Spirit). We are God's lost and straying remnant. We are God's faithless people to whom He seeks day and night.
And it is to this idea that God says to us today - to those standing outside His covenant, as well as to those standing inside His covenant - that all may come. And when we fail that He will be our surety. Our sacrifice. Our Oxen and Lamb. Our High Priest and Mediator. Our Savior and Redeemer. That His covenantal love restores, as well as makes, covenant with us. That He understands our brokenness and fallibility. Our sins, selfishness, pride, ego, faults, and small-mindedness. Our hesitancies, doubts, misgivings, hurts, shames, and failures. And yet, reaches out to all who wish to enter in to His grace and mercy, peace and forgiveness, healing and strength.
Then what is our answer this day? Shall we continue to despise the Father or return home?
Regardless if you have left "the covenanted family" or not. Regardless if you were not part of that family (like Abram first was before God had ever established covenant with him). It is to you that God has made covenant. A covenant that will stand the test of time through God Himself and through His work on Calvary's cross for all Jews and non-Jews alike. He is our Redeemer. Our surety. Our Promise-Keeper. Our faithful Lord and Sovereign who seeks all who are lost, and weary, and filled with the pain of this world.
Where money and riches and fast friends never brought satisfaction. Where the pigstys and self-imposed poverties of this world would grind upon our souls in our lostness and inability to find safe haven and rest. Yet God is there. He waits for you to leave yourself behind and to come to Him. Willingly. In hope and desire. Bearing ruin and destruction in your bones through the mangle of sin in our lives. Even as He searches for you. And is pained by your absence. And when seeing you come, will run to you. Embrace you. Hold you. And never let you go. Inviting all who will come to a feast held in your honor, reveling with God's broken heart of joy that yet another sinner has come home from the pigstys of the human heart and lost dens of this world. Wherever they be. For all are sought, and longed for by God, our Creator-Redeemer, with a broken and heavy heart, until "found" on the road leading back to "home". Come. And wait no longer.
R.E. Slater
January 11, 2012
The Parable of the $20 Bill
A well-known speaker started off his seminar holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?" Hands started going up. He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this."
He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill. He then asked, "Who still wants it...?" Still the hands were up in the air. "Well," he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. "Now, who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air.
"My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We may feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.
Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE. For you are priceless in the eyes of God who loves you.
AUDIO FILE
James Grier: Sermon on the Parable of the Two Lost Sons
The Father of Two Lost Sons – Luke 15
Additional Sermons on Luke: http://jamesmgrier.org/sermons/
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