(Delivered at St Alphege’s Anglican Church Pietermaritzburg in June 1997)
The Gospel reading tonight is Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son, as related by Luke. This is such a well-known passage that it may be difficult to hear it with fresh ears. Most of you will have read the story many times, heard it in Sunday School and in numerous sermons. So before we read the passage, I’d like us all to think about how much we can remember of the story.
There was a son who left his father, wasted his money and then returned repentant. What other details can you recall? [Get responses.]
OK, now let’s read the story and see what other details appear. As we read it, I’d like to look not just at the story itself, but to notice three other things as well — the mastery of Jesus’ teaching skill, the skill with which Luke narrates this episode in Jesus’ life, and what the passage reveals about the character of God. So here’s my sermon outline in a nutshell …
We will go over the details of the parable itself, but then broaden our focus to appreciate Jesus’ teaching technique, to understand how Luke weaves this episode into his overall narrative, and then to see what is revealed about God’s character.
You can find the passage in Luke 15, starting at verse 11. [Read 15:11–32.]
As with many of Jesus’ parables, this one starts with a setting which would have been familiar to his hearers. It’s a rural setting, and perhaps we would hear the story better if we thought in terms of a rural African perspective rather than an urban Western one. The story starts naturally enough with a fairly well-off family, well-off enough to be land-owners rather than paid workers or slaves. But from this promising start, the story goes downhill fast.
Under first-century law, the first-born son was heir to the farm itself plus two-thirds of the disposable property; the remaining third of the disposable property would go to the younger son. But of course, there would be no transfer of ownership until after the father died. When the younger son asks for his share while his father is still alive it is virtually a wish for his father’s death. The request is an act of total rejection of both his father and family.
Nevertheless, the father accepts this rejection and grants the request. The youngest son’s share of the property is divided from the estate and given to him. So he got together all he had and set off on an overseas trip. Now these days it is common for young adults to leave home with the parents’ blessing and with their financial backing to travel the world before settling down, but you can imagine how extraordinary this must have been in the first-century rural context. It amounted to not only a rejection of family, but now also a rejection of the communal village life and even his country of birth.
It was clear that the son didn’t intend to return. He wasted his inheritance until, in the middle of a severe famine, he finds himself with none of it left. As a last resort he finds a job with a foreigner. He perhaps could have gone to the nearest Jewish community from whom help would have been gladly offered, but having rejected his family and his country, he now rejects his religion too. To work for a foreigner, he must have been willing to work on the Sabbath, and, as the story says, even to work with pigs. The Law had clear prohibitions about such unclean animals and there is a Jewish saying that goes “Cursed is the man who keeps pigs.”
Now he has really hit the bottom. He has distanced himself from his father, both geographically and psychologically; he has distanced himself from his village, his country, and his religion. He is broke and friendless and alone and hungry. He would have eaten the pigs’ food, but no-one gave him even that! Now when Jesus says that the son envied the pigs’ their food but “no-one gave him anything”, I’m not sure who he meant by “no-one”. It seems to me that even the pigs wouldn’t let him near their food. When you’ve arrived at the point where even the pigs don’t want to hang around with you, you know you can’t go any lower!
With the Comrade’s Marathon on tomorrow, I wish I could make some clever and appropriate illustration in this sermon, but the best I can come up with is this — the son has gone from the high point of Pietermaritzburg down, down, down as far as he can go, that is, to Durban! So you runners this year are on the down-run. But next year there is the up-run, and so let’s continue with the second half of the younger son’s story.
In his misery, the son comes to his senses. Realising that the lowest of his father’s workers are better off the he is, he decides to return home. But he also realises that he must return in disgrace and that the best he can hope for is to be allowed to work as a day-labourer. What are they called here? “Please sir, just let me line up with the other chaps so I can get a day’s pay now and then when there’s some extra work.” So he rehearses a little speech of repentance and heads back home.
But when he gets there, his father sees him from afar (I think the father must have been on the lookout every day) and rushes out to welcome him back. The son starts his prepared speech, but the father doesn’t let him finish it. Instead of being told to get off the property, he is given a robe (a mark of high distinction), a ring (the sign of authority) and a pair of sandals (a luxury which distinguished the free man from the slave).
Not only that, but the father orders a feast to celebrate his return. And not just a little family supper — for that a lamb or a few chicken would have sufficed! No, this was to be a celebration for the whole village, so it has to be the fattened calf!
There’s a wonderful symmetry to this story which we can see from the diagram. The son who is lost at the start of the story is found at the end. At the start we see goods being wasted in extravagant living, whereas at the end goods are used for joyful celebration. The son loses everything but on his return is given a robe, ring and sandals. The son’s great sin is balanced by his later repentance. The son’s total rejection is balanced by his father’s total acceptance.
But note that the end of this section of the story is still one step lower than the beginning. We are left with a celebration of the younger son’s return, but wait a minute, didn’t the father have two sons?
The elder son has been out working and has missed the start of the celebration. When he returns and hears all the music and dancing, he doesn’t rush in to find out what the good news must be, but asks one of the servants. In anger he refuses to even go inside.
Once again, the father takes the initiative and goes out to the angry son to explain and appeal to him. But it is to no avail. The elder son cannot accept his brother’s return and reproaches his father. He doesn’t even acknowledge him as his brother but rather as “this son of yours”. The father tries again — he reminds his son that “everything I have is yours” (quite rightly so, for the younger son has already received his share of the estate), and the story ends unresolved.
As we can see from the diagram, this second part of the story is not as neatly structured as the first part. But this is neither a shortcoming of the story, nor was it unintended by Jesus. The incomplete structure is a skillful means of focusing the emphasis on the missing end of the story. The loving father’s attitude remains consistently gracious throughout both sections of the parable and the literary structure draws attention to the crucial difference between the two sons. The younger son who was lost repents and the family rejoices, the elder son refuses reconciliation and is lost. It is quite apt that the New International Version of the Bible, from which we read, ambiguously entitles this passage the Parable of the Lost Son, prompting one to ask which son it is who was lost.
Jesus has a knack of pitching his teaching at a level which hits his audience right in the heart. As a teacher of computer science, I find that hard to do (the subject matter is too cerebral), but nevertheless Jesus is my role model as a teacher. He always seems to give answers which go beyond the face value of a question and which touch the deeper issues which motivated the question. His parables are illustrations which are tailor-made to the immediate context; they are captivating stories and piercing in their spiritual and psychological insight. I wish I could do the same. It is fascinating to look behind the stories themselves and to think about the mastery of Jesus’ teaching ability.
So let’s step back from the parable itself and look at the context in which Jesus told this story.
As Luke reports this incident, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem for the last time [13:22, 17:11, 18:31, 19:28]. Jesus has been there before of course, but he knows that this trip is different. He is aware that this will be his last visit and that it will end in his death [13:33, 18:32]. As he travels on this three-day journey [13:32], he instructs his disciples, the religious leaders he meets along the way and the crowds which follow him.
Luke was not there himself but later had close associations with people who were there. Luke was the first person to apply himself to a thorough history of the formation of Christianity. His two books — the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles — are notable for their historic accuracy. Luke has a special concern for the marginalised people in society — the Samaritans, Gentiles, widows and women in general, children, lepers, the demon-possessed, the sick, the poor and tax collectors — and Luke’s Gospel stresses that God’s welcome is open to all, even to these people.
On this particular occasion, Luke says that Jesus was talking with a collection of such social outcasts and at the back of the crowd some religious leaders were muttering against the way he is so friendly with these “sinners”. In response to their murmured criticism, Jesus tells three parables, of which the one we have read comes last.
The first parable tells of the shepherd who has lost a sheep, and of his joy when the sheep is found. The second tells of a woman’s search for a lost coin, and her joy when it is found. Both of these parables end with the claim that this human joy is but a pale reflection of the joy God experiences when he recovers what has been lost, namely us.
As we have seen, the third parable repeats the same message — the father’s joy when the younger son returns — but then adds a sting in the tail. I can just imagine Jesus looking directly into the eyes of the muttering religious leaders as he ends the story — ”We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” This is a clear response to their complaint against him. They say he is too welcoming to “these sinners”, but Jesus addresses them just as the father inthe parable addressed the elder son — “I must welcome them; they are your brothers and sisters who have been lost but who now are found.” Like the elder son the religious leaders are left with the option of either joining in the celebration or remaining unreconciled and lost themselves.
So it’s no accident that Luke includes this incident in his history of Jesus’ ministry, nor that he places it right here, on the final trip to Jerusalem. The incident highlights the central message of the Gospel. This parable could well be called the Parable of the Loving Father, and so perhaps it is especially appropriate that we are reading it on Father’s Day! As a response to the criticism that he is too welcoming of sinners, Jesus says in effect “But of course I welcome sinners, because that is what God is like.” And so Luke’s narrative skill has highlighted this central aspect of the character of God. Like the father who killed the fattened calf rather than a lamb or chicken, God is outrageously generous. God is forever waiting, watching for his lost people to return to their senses, just as the father must have been continuously on the lookout in the hope that one day his son would return. The way the father takes the initiative to foster reconciliation with the elder brother mirrors God’s initiative in offering us forgiveness. God is a loving father, always ready to rejoice when something lost is found, always ready to provide a reception far more generous than we deserve.
Let us pray. Lord God, loving father of us all, thankyou for your great generosity. Thankyou for you patience with us and for your constant readiness to embrace us with a welcome whose warmth assures us that we are forgiven. Thankyou also for the power of Jesus’ parables and the skill with which they have been recorded in the Bible. Save us from the hardness of the elder son, and from the snobbish exclusivity of the Pharisees. Give us a heart like yours which rejoices when people who were lost return to you.