Hilton Head Island, SC – November 14, 2021
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 15:1-2, 11-19; Luke 15:20-32
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” – Luke 15:32 (RSV)
William Barclay begins his commentary on this particular parable by saying, “Not without reason this has been called the greatest short story in the world.” How true that is! There are millions of people who are not Christians, and who thus have never read the Bible, who nevertheless are familiar with the essence of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, as it is universally known, although they may be unfamiliar with the details. “Prodigal son” has become a familiar concept to almost everyone.
What is little understood, however, is the meaning of the English word “prodigal.” To most people, that word connotes someone who is rebellious or foolish or utterly insensitive. The younger son in Jesus’ parable was all of those things, and much more, but that isn’t what “prodigal” means. If someone is a prodigal, he is a spendthrift. We have an expression: “Money burns a hole in his pocket.” That’s what a prodigal is. He “spends money like water,” he “spends like there’s no tomorrow,” he “blows everything on wine, women, and song.” “A fool and his money are soon parted,” we say, and that’s what happens to the younger son in the story.
Nonetheless, there are two sons in this story, not just one, so I prefer to call it the Parable of the Two Lost Sons. Remember, all three parables in Luke 15 were told by Jesus in response to the two verses at the beginning of the chapter, where it says that the scribes and Pharisees “murmured” about Jesus allowing tax collectors and sinners into his presence. They were convinced that adversely affected Jesus’ reputation, and that he should have avoided such lost souls. But Jesus wanted them to understand that he actually welcomed these folks, because they were lost, and they needed to be found. That was why he told these particular three parables.
The story of the two lost sons begins with Jesus saying that there was a man who had two sons. The younger son asked for his share of his inheritance before his father had died. In that culture, it was both the law and the custom that when an estate was to be divided, the grantor would add up the number of sons he had, and then add one more number. Then the first-born son would get two parts of the estate, and the other sons each got one part. In this story, there are only two sons, so the older son got two-thirds of the inheritance, and the younger son one-third. Everyone who heard this parable would instantly understand that. Incidentally, to illustrate one other factor in that culture, daughters ordinarily got nothing. That may seem unfair to you, and it is unfair, but back then that was an acceptable level of misogyny.
The most astonishing detail in Jesus’ parable is that the father agreed to divide the estate before he had died. Nonetheless he did, giving the younger son his inheritance right then and there. The part of this parable that everyone remembers is that the younger brother went off to the far country (and we and those who first heard this story can decide for ourselves where that is), and there he “squandered his property in loose living.” He was an excessively prodigal prodigal.
What a masterful expression is “loose living!” It instantly pits the listeners against this young man as one who made an utterly insenitive theft of his father’s ever-present good will! The ungrateful pup took what was not rightfully his, and he spent it all in a whirlwind of what we are meant to suppose were unwise and probably illicit pleasures. Soon his funds were all gone. So now what? In order to survive, he takes a job feeding pigs --- pigs! He is a Jew, for heaven’s sake, and he’s feeding dirty, doleful, smelly swine!
Finally, said Jesus, the younger son “came to himself.” He was Aaron Rodgers, whom circumstances forced to realize that not only has he damaged himself, he has damaged the team. This afternoon we will discover if the Packers will lose another game because he may not be allowed to play. He was Alex Murdaugh, having to admit that he has messed up his life in a colossal fashion, and now he must face the music. As if that wasn’t enough, in addition, in the parable, a famine came along. This saga is a mournful catastrophe. And so the young man says to himself, “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of you hired servants.’”
The Greek word that is used for “servant” is doulos. Doulos can mean either “servant” or “slave.” To become like one of the father’s hired servants would be bad enough, but to become a slave would be the lowest depths into which, culturally, the younger brother could plunge.
Did he mean it? Did he really mean that? Did he hope he could count on his father’s mercy, or did he simply realize he had no other options, and therefore he had nothing to lose in returning home, with his tail between his legs? Jesus doesn’t say, so we are left to try to figure that out for ourselves. That is one of the great features of his parables; we must complete the story for ourselves.
When he got close to the house, his father saw him, walking slowly way down the road. This detail is a master parable-teller’s touch. The fact that he saw his son means his father had long been watching for him to return! Since he left, he had been looking for him, waiting for him, yearning for him! The father knew his son would probably never make it on his own, that he had always been too impetuous, too careless, and that he would quickly spend all the money he had been given!
So the father ran to his son, and embraced him, and kissed him. How demeaning for the father; first-century affluent Middle Eastern men don’t run for anybody! It was beneath them! Their dignity would be trashed by such a self-deprecating display. But that’s what this father does. Then he tells his servants to kill the fatted calf, and prepare a feast, so that everyone in this obviously wealthy household can celebrate, because – quote - “my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found!”
But of course that’s not the end of the story. The second part is the hardest part for us to make sense of it. The older brother, who stayed home and worked hard and did whatever his father told him to do, sees from out in a field that a party is going on in the house. He asks one of the hired hands what it means, and he is told what has happened. “But,” says Jesus is this greatest of all his parables, “he (the older brother) was angry, and refused to go in.” But he had a right to be angry - - - didn’t he? When his brother took the money and left, the older brother stayed there on the farm, plowing the fields, planting the crops, harvesting them, making yet more money for his father (which, by the way, was really his anyway, since the farm already had come to him when the estate had prematurely been divided. The father had given up everything for his two sons when he agreed to bequeath his estate to them while he was still living.)
The dutiful servant goes in to tell the father that his older son is outside, angry and hurt and feeling put-upon. And what does the father do? He doesn’t tell the servant to go and tell the older brother instantly to come in and celebrate with everyone else. In yet another act of self-abasement, the father goes outside to speak to his older son, who petulantly refuses to come in. Before the father can get in a word, the son caustically reminds his father that he has stayed on the farm, and worked the fields, and has done everything he knew he should do (in the same way that the scribes and Pharisees did what they knew they were supposed to do), and yet the father never threw a big party in the older brother’s honor. The older brother exclaims, “But when this son of yours” (not ‘my brother’ but ‘this son of yours’) came, who has devoured your living with harlots” [Jesus never said anything about ‘harlots’; it’s the older brother who said that!] “you killed for him the fatted calf!”
Is it any wonder the older brother feels the way he feels? In an instantaneous flash, he thinks that all the good works he has done on behalf of his father are for naught! If his brother can get away with demanding his share of the inheritance before his father has died, and then spend all of it foolishly, what is the point of living a decent, righteous life?
Listen, Christian people, because this is important: virtue is its own reward! When we do the right thing, that is sufficient remuneration in itself.
As I said in the sermon last week, the one about the lost sheep and the lost coin, Jesus intended for us to see that the shepherd who seeks the lost sheep and the woman who seeks the lost coin represent God in those parables. In the parable of the two lost brothers, or, if you prefer, the prodigal son, the father in this parable also represents God. Therefore we are to deduce that God wants all of us to follow His commandments, because when we do, we will be rewarded just by having done them. Virtue truly is its own reward. The older brother is a fine man, a good man. Still, he has a bad attitude, so bad that he too is lost.
We do not display our highest respect for God by doing what He wants us to do. We show our greatest respect for God when we realize that God loves us regardless of what we do or don’t do, that He has a love for us which will never let us go. There is nothing we can do that will forever alienate us from God: nothing. Essentially that was the good news which Jesus Christ brought to a lost world. However, because it was expressed in that particular way, it enraged those who thought that the Bible insists we must follow every one of God’s commands if we are to validate His love for us. If we fail, we are lost, the first-century religious authorities insisted, but if we succeed, and do what the Bible tells us, we win, and we shall never be lost. That is what modern-day fundamentalist Christianity tells us; follow God’s laws, and God will love you.
To noble, upstanding citizens such as all of us are, we think the older brother gets the short end of the stick. As he himself so vociferously acknowledged, he did everything a dutiful son could be expected to do, and yet his father never threw a big bash for him. But he too was lost, don’t you see? Like the scribes and Pharisees, he thought he had to earn his father’s love, rather than to accept the reality that it was always offered to him without any stipulations. Salvation occurs when we accept the greatest gift of God, the greatest giver of the greatest gift.
Can it be that Jesus was saying that we are all lost anyway? “I was once was lost, but now am found/ Was blind, but now I see”: Is that the way it is for everyone, and not just for John Newton, one-time slave trader and then proclaimer of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Is it necessary for all of us to see ourselves as lost if we are ever to be found?
Probably not. Almost certainly not. I think some people are psychologically incapable of perceiving themselves as ever having been lost souls. Many people will always believe themselves to have lived right and done right, and therefore they will always see themselves as being alright. And I guess that’s alright.
But for those who know they are lost souls, like the tax collectors and sinners and peasants who were drawn to Jesus like iron filings to a magnet, hearing these three parables gave them the assurance that they too are loved by God as they assumed that righteous people also are loved by God. And if people truly believed they are loved by God despite their fallacies and failings, it may therefore inspire them to do what God wants, simply and solely for its own sake, and not to gain God’s acceptance.
Sixty years ago, when I was student at Trinity College of Glasgow University, to a man all the students called William Barclay “Willie.” (They were all men then; there were no women.) Listen to how Willie Barclay summarizes the parable of the two lost sons. “Beyond a doubt Jesus did not believe in total depravity.” (That’s a term that Calvin used and that Calvinists still use. It conveys the notion that everyone is a hopeless sinner who deserves eternal damnation.) Dr. Barclay continues: “(Jesus) never believed that you could glorify God by blackguarding man; he believed that man was never essentially himself until he came home to God.” (The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Luke, pps. 204-5)
We will never fully understand the forgiveness of God until we understand that all of us have things for which we need to be forgiven by God. If the scribes and Pharisees or the priests and Sadducees knew that, they never seemed to let on that they really grasped it. They saw themselves as being righteous before the biblical law, and that was that. They did not see themselves as sinners. Others were sinners, but not them, they thought.
The love of God is completely without limits. It is unconditional. There is no one outside His love, not ruthless autocrats or heartless murderers or child abusers or rapists or corrupt financiers. The sad truth is that people like that ordinarily never think about God, and many of the people who do think about God think they have to get right with God. They never seem to realize that before any of us is even born, God gets right with us. After all, it was ultimately God who created us. To accept that truth is to accept the unconditional love of Almighty God, most fully made known to us through Jesus of Nazareth.
All praise and thanks be to God, the Love that will not let us go.