Lent is the season for us all to hear the gospel afresh. The parable of the forgiving Father today is often called the gospel within a gospel. It is Luke’s summary of the good news. It deals with all the major issues: sin, repentance, forgiveness, and above all, the love offered to us by God at great cost.
The parable of the prodigal son is like a three act play. The first act of the parable depicts the tragic fall of the younger son from grace. It’s as if the younger son is in a hurry for his father to die; so makes a request for his inheritance. Even though such a request would have been legal, it was certainly inappropriate. There is no doubt that the Father would have been extremely hurt by this request because by demanding this, younger son is rejecting the love that the Father has been giving him all his life. But that is not all. The son really blows it in the way he squanders the money. According to property law of Jesus’ day, possession of the inheritance did not give him the right to dispose of it. In a society with no social welfare system to protect the aged, retention of capital within the family circle was regarded as essential. So when the son demands his share before his father has died, and then spends it all, he is acting as if his father were already dead; he is shattering the covenant between him and his family. To rub salt into the wound, he then joins himself to a gentile and takes up an unclean occupation; taking care of pigs. The end result for the first century Jewish listener is a picture of a living death. The son, in fact, dies as well, for he has severed his relationship with his father, with his community of faith, and hence with God.
We know that the Pharisees were constantly critical of Jesus. It is clear in the gospels that they used to Jesus, “You doesn’t understand sin” (because you eat with sinners). So as they listen to act one of this parable, they would have been nodding their heads in approval. “This is exactly how we understand sin – this young Rabbi, Jesus, is finally on our wave length.”
Now for Act Two. Act two tells the story of the return of the younger son. As a child I was taught that the moment of repentance was when the son came to himself, made up the wee speech and decided to return home. Many interpreters now think differently. When the son comes to himself and makes up his wee speech, he is sort of repenting, but he is motivated by self-interest. We notice that his primary need is for something to eat, at least as much as his father’s servants. He thinks that if he goes back to his father and becomes a hired servant, then he will be able to save up his wages for years to come, and finally restore himself to the community by paying back the capital he has squandered. So he makes up a speech that is designed to evoke his father’s sympathy. We can note two more points here. First, we note that this speech has an uncanny similarity to the one made by Pharaoh when he changed his mind and released the Hebrews from Egypt. We all know what happened next in that story. Secondly, the son’s return will be at a huge risk. He will have to run the gauntlet of the village. Villagers in Middle Eastern culture had a custom. When a person like this first lost son, had mistreated a respected member of the village like the Father, they could enact a ritual that involved breaking an earthenware pot over his head to symbolise the breaking of the covenant the son had brought about. This was usually a fatal blow; enough to kill.
The third point here: The Pharisees listening to this story continue to approve. This Rabbi Jesus, not only shares our understanding of sin, they say. He also understands what we mean by repentance. They taught that repentance was (1) a decision to return to God; (2) to make payment or compensation to God for all the sins you have committed; (3) demonstrate sincerity by changing your life; (4) then when you have repented, you will be admitted back into the community of the redeemed. This repentance reflects the Pharisees’ teaching. So far they approve of the story.
The shock comes when the Pharisee’s view of repentance is blown out of the water. The Father, aware of the hostile reaction of the village, has been waiting and watching for the son’s return. When he sees him, he runs to greet him. Now, men of status simply did not run in those days. It was bad form for a man to show his legs (women have no shame!). Men did not even uncover their feet. For a man to uncover his feet was regarded as a gross insult. Yet the Father abandons all decorum. In front of his servants and the neighbours; he runs to greet his son. This is an act of foolish, joyful, love! He sees him coming from far off, he has compassion, he runs, he embraces and kisses.
The younger son is simply not ready for this. Imagine the son coming back, rehearsing his speech; it’s a good wee speech too, he’s rehearsed many times with the pigs. Well his father is in no mood to sober up and listen. He is not interested in a discussion about who is worthy and neither is he interested in being paid back; he stops his son midway and never hears his request to treat him as a hired servant. No way! The Father is already stirring up the servants for a royal welcome; a robe, a ring, shoes, kill the fatted calf! This is a homecoming! These gifts evoke deeper meanings as well, the robe, a symbol of authority; the ring is a signet ring so that the son can act with his father’s authority, shoes worn only by free people. This, brothers and sisters, is the moment of real repentance. When the Father greets his son, the son is transformed. It’s like a bomb going off in his heart! His life will never be the same again. The son is unexpectedly accepted as he is. We know that the takes a great risk to do this. The villagers have been lining up to smash an earthenware pot over this wayward son’s head. The fact is, that the Father could well have copped it himself. Hence the risk and the cost to the Father. This is a demonstration of costly love, of unexpected love. But this is the moment that the Son is restored. Indeed, he is restored to a position greater than the one he had when he left with his share of the property. Notice how Jesus has turned our ideas of repentance upside down. Repentance in this story is the act of being found by God, of being loved and restored by God. It’s like, I thought I was lost, unlovable, useless. But God searched me out, found me, and restored me, and brought me home. Now I can’t imagine being anywhere else but at home with God.
That figure of the Father running in welcome is the essence of the God revealed in Christ. God is revealed in this parable as forgiveness. He longs to welcome us home, to forgive, to restore, to heal. We may wander away from God or simply find that our lives are in chaos, just as the lost son did. But God is longing to welcome us home, to make us whole; God is longing to restore his image in us. Like the younger son we may feel alone, cut off from life, undeserving of God’s grace. But the parable tells us what God sees; that we are a loved child that he can’t wait to welcome home. God is infinite compassion; God is generous, faithful and loving. God will always receive us no matter what state we think our lives are in. The first son in the story experiences God’s goodness and grace today. But God’s grace is not to be taken for granted. His task now is to respond in faith and to pass on that love and forgiveness to others.
Now we come to the second lost son. Act three is about the older brother who is also lost. He represents the Pharisees who are lost too. We know this, because in accordance with Middle Eastern custom, he should have been there at the beginning defending his Father when the younger son takes his share of the estate. By not doing so, he has treated his Father as if he were dead as well. He too, is lost. He enters the story, annoyed that this newcomer, this outcast, is welcomed into the family. The second son represents that part of us that strives to do the will of God; that sees God as a negotiator, someone that will give us a good deal if we do enough favours for God. He is the part of us demanding a special relationship with God because we believe we’ve been more faithful than anybody else. The older son’s relationship with God is a contractual view of relating which says, “If I adhere to this list of obligations God, then I will be more acceptable to you.” The fact is: the older son has become the slave in the story; he is enslaved to the obligations he has set for himself.
So God becomes a servant for the second son too. Jesus is saying that our relationship with God is not to be like that. If we try to make ourselves measure up to God’s standards, if all we do is work harder and lay ever increasing burdens upon ourselves, in the end we are like lost slaves. We will never know what it is to be loved and forgiven. Instead we end up grumpy and depleted, sitting grumpily outside the feasting of the kingdom, just like the elder son. Well, all of us are welcomed into the feasting of the kingdom because of God’s grace; not because of any special effort of our own. We don’t need to prove ourselves to God. We don’t need to burden ourselves with unachievable demands to please God. God loves and accepts us as we are; a simple message yet so hard to believe; so hard in fact, that we are not sure whether the second son accepts the Father’s invitation into the meal of he kingdom.
Like the father in the parable, God is forgiveness. He is one who loves us unconditionally as we are. Forgiveness is not something we should take for granted. We are called to forgive as we have been forgiven; to love as we have been loved. Forgiveness does not mean denying pain, or dismissing our hurt feelings. Forgiveness is a willingness to let go, to stop ourselves storing up grudges so that they become like hardened cement around our hearts. Forgiveness is about speaking truthfully while remaining open to a relationship. It is an openness to be reconciled.
God forgave both of lost sons and loved them unconditionally. The challenge for us today, is to open our hearts to receive this grace filled love from God, and then to pass it on and forgive as we are forgiven.
