Week 3: The reckless son
“Get lost!”
They’re sharp words, aren’t they—angry words; words that are used to tell someone forcefully and quite rudely to go away. As we continue our Lenten theme—“Lost and found: a journey with Jesus into the Father’s arms”, we discover that—shockingly—the younger son really wants his father to get lost. He wants his own free lifestyle, but hasn’t got the cash to fund it. So the quick way to boost his account with easy cash is accessing his inheritance now. He wants his father’s things, but not his father. We could imagine the plans going around in his mind may have unfolded like this:
“I can’t wait to be free—free from this dead-end existence, stuck at home with dad. Today that’s all going to change—I’ll get my inheritance, then I’ll be free–off to a bigger and better life—free at last. No more family prayer time, no more “home by midnight,” no more Dad watching over my shoulder, no more boredom. I’m free to choose my friends, free to choose my own girlfriends, free to try whatever I want, free to be me, free to be whoever I want to be. Watch out world—here I come!”
So he goes to his father and demands his share of the family inheritance. Culturally, it was the responsibility of the eldest son to attend to the division of the estate—and let’s not overlook a key issue—his father is still alive! An inheritance was only handed over at the father’s death or in some other extraordinary circumstance, and never at the request of the younger son. The youngest son’s demand, then, was an outrageous declaration of independence, because was the equivalent of saying “I wish you were dead!” His demand shows that he resents living with his father, and that his only concern is feeding his own greedy desire. The son publicly disgraces his father by doing this, before deserting him and heading off to a distant country—as far away as he can get.
There, safely away from his father’s gaze, the son squanders his share of the inheritance—the money his father had earned over a lifetime of hard work—on reckless living until he has nothing left. The word ‘prodigal’ means ‘recklessly extravagant.’ He has blown all the money on the now, rather than using it for his future, as his father would have wanted. If this were told in today’s language, he might have used the phrase: “I’m here for a good time, not a long time.” You can imagine how this would have grieved his father. Needing cash flow, he hires himself out to work for a pig farmer. Yet after a famine spreads throughout the land and there is nothing to eat, he is so desperately hungry that he even longs for the very food the pigs are eating. The son has ruined his life.
Now, let’s pause to see just how badly he has ruined his life.
He has brought shame and disgrace on his father and family. They are as good as dead to the son and he cares nothing for them. He brings public humiliation on his family’s reputation as the village folk watch on while he walks away.
He cuts himself off from them by going to ‘distant country’. For Jesus’ Jewish audience of the day, going to a ‘far off’ country means that the son has left Israel, the nation of people which God had chosen for himself. It seems that, as well as turning his back on his father, he has turned his back on God too. He has turned to a foreign land with its foreign gods and lifeless idols of pleasure and that cannot give life and blessing as only God can, but only take away, and enslave. And so having blown all his money, he hires himself out to work for a pig farmer. To the Pharisees who were listening on, this would have been an abomination. God’s holiness laws in the Book of Leviticus forbade any of his people from coming into contact with pigs—Jewish folk still don’t eat pork to this day. Yet after a famine spreads throughout the land and the son has nothing to eat, he is so desperately hungry that he even longs for the very food the pigs are eating.
His attitude to his father was ‘get lost’! But in reality, he is the lost one.
At rock bottom, tending pigs and longing to eat their food, the son realises what he has done. Lamenting his desperate situation, he plans to go to his father and say: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He comes up with a plan: if he offers to repay the inheritance he squandered, is father might take him back as a worker. He figures that is his only hope, as he sets off on the long journey back home. He has no possessions to carry as he trudges down the road, only the burden of shame, guilt and grief―and fear of how his father will respond. He has nothing to bring, only empty hands. He can only beg for his fathers’ mercy.
Now, a traditional middle eastern father was expected both to defend the family’s honour and uphold cultural values. Should this have actually happened, it would have been expected that the father would drive his son out of the home, and would not even think about taking him back. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law would have expected that too for anyone who had turned their back on their father, turned their back on God, and sunk to the pits, making themselves ritually unclean by associating with gentiles, taking care of pigs, and even longing to eat their food. You just can’t have someone like that in your community.
So as they listen to Jesus’ story, the eyes of the Pharisees are fixed on Jesus. They’re all ears, all right—waiting for the punchline: the father gives his son what he deserves, and tells him to “Get lost”. That’s the way they would have ended it.
But it’s not how Jesus ends it! Before the son even gets home, his father sees him and runs to his son. Before the son can even finish his confession, his father has compassion on him and embraces him.
Imagine the shock for the religious leaders—even the disgust—at this ending. No retribution, no justice. The kid gets off scot-free, and the father just takes it! Who is this Jesus with these disturbing ideas—this one who welcomes sinners and eats with them. It disgusts the religious leaders how Jesus lets down the moral standards of the community and makes himself unclean by associating with such immoral people. God could never be with this rabbi.
As we follow through this parable during Lent, with a focus on each of the characters, did you notice that the story is left unfinished. There’s a good reason for that. The story is for us to continue. How would you continue the story? What would happen if the younger son walked in tonight? What might our reaction be? A Pharisee reaction? Or a father reaction?
Well…the younger son is here tonight. I am here tonight. And you are here tonight. As much as we hate to hear it, we are all the younger son of the parable. Before we were even born, our sinful nature was passed on to us. It’s a part of our DNA. We are born in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. That happened in the beginning. In the book of Genesis we hear that we were created to live in the Garden of God—a place where there was no absence of love and life with the favourable gaze of God. It was a place in which we lacked no good thing. Yet, like the younger son, it was still not good enough for Adam and Eve too. They wanted the things of the Father, but not the Father himself. They wanted to be God themselves, having authority and power over all things, and so they listened to the serpent’s lies “Did God really say?” and “You will not surely die!” and they ate of the fruit God did surely say for them not to eat, and plunged the whole human race into sin, death and spiritual death. By nature we are all in captivity to hell.
In this season of Lent, the younger son in this parable is a mirror to show us how much we need God. It’s the human nature to seek independence, freedom from God, freedom from having to account to him. Like the younger son we wanted out. We cared for the things from our Father, but not our Father himself. We wanted to live without his interference, and so we turned away, and walked away, and left home. It’s our nature. We share the same human nature of thumbing our nose at God—“get lost!” We are the ones who wandered to a distant land, lost, demanding our life on our terms.
Our way back to the Father is not as the Pharisees and Teachers of the law supposed—not the way that today’s outwardly righteous people suppose, either: by earning God’s favour, by meriting our place in the Father’s home, working for him as hired hands. We have nothing with which to repay God our Father. We cannot work our way back into the family home with him. We too are all unworthy to be called his son; his daughter.
But our Father in Heaven sent Jesus to be as the younger son for us. He sent Jesus into a faraway country—all the way from heaven to earth. Like the younger son sat with pigs, Jesus was born in a stable surrounded by animals and their waste. He made himself unclean by taking our sin upon himself, eating with sinners and tax collectors.
Jesus has come to the far away land for you. He has come to take you home. He has come to clothe himself with our rebellion, our sin, our impurity, and clothe us with his own righteousness. That wonderful exchange happened on the Cross, where the Father meted out the treatment the Pharisees thought Jesus deserved all along, which should have been ours. There, the Father treated Jesus as if he were the prodigal son, the wasteful son, the rebellious son. There, the Father cast Jesus out. He abandoned him. He forsook him, thereby cancelling our debt of sin and restoring you to his family.
It is only as we recognise our unworthiness—and that our worthiness is in Christ alone—that we have a place in our Father’s family: that all who believe in his name, he gave the right to be called the children of God. As we believe Christ’s shed blood is all that is needed for our forgiveness, our righteousness, our salvation, our Father who knows every word even before it is on our tongue, comes to you with compassion, to embrace you before you can even finish your confession.
May we always do likewise for the younger sons and daughters; all the lost who come here, giving joyful thanks to the Father, that in Christ, he has qualified all his children to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. Amen.
