Text: Luke 15:11-33
Today’s Gospel is probably familiar for a couple of reasons. Most obviously, it’s the Parable of the Prodigal Son, one of the best-known of our Lord’s Parables. But for us at All Saints, we talked a bit about this text about a month-and-a-half ago when we read the first half of Luke 15. You may recall from six weeks ago, that Luke 15 gives us three “lost” parables: the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Parable of the Lost Coin, and the Parable of the Lost (or Prodigal) Son. You may also recall that the theme of all three parables is the mercy of God, particularly in response to the grumbling of the Scribes and Pharisees who were resentful that the tax collectors and sinners were being accepted by Jesus. The undeserved, extravagant mercy of God is the main point of this parable. Indeed, this third parable answers the Scribes and Pharisees most directly. They were to see themselves in the older brother, the tax collectors and sinners in the prodigal, and the Lord God in the loving father.
While we were traveling for Synod, A.J. and I were discussing these passages, and he made an interesting observation. While the main protagonists of the first two parables actively sought out that which was lost, the father in today’s parable waits for his son to return. Yes, the father was certainly watching the road, and thus ran out to meet his son while he was still far away, but the father didn’t chase the son down as he left for the the far-off country.
As we talked about this dissimilarity between the three parables, we wondered if they might represent two kinds of being lost. There are some who seem to drift away from the Lord. They become distracted or complacent. The cares of the world lead to a weakening prayer life, less time in Scripture, and a gradual dropping off from going to church. But others, for whatever reason, become more actively rebellious. Rather than drifting away, they make a conscious choice to run away from God and his Church. Oftentimes the lost soul in this latter state must hit rock bottom before they can come to their senses. Like the Prodigal Son in our parable, he must become desperate before he will accept the grace offered by their heavenly Father.
Consider a few of the details of the prodigal from our parable. First, he demands his inheritance while his father is still living. It’s hard to imagine a more selfish thing to do! As Peter Chrysologus, an Italian bishop from the early 5th century, points out:
Since he cannot shorten his father’s life, he works to get possession of his property. He was not content to possess his father’s wealth in company with his father, and he deserved to lose the privileges of a son.[1]
When he says, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,” the prodigal basically tells his father that he wishes he was dead. He presumes on his father’s love while simultaneously rejecting his father’s authority and worth. “I want your stuff,” the prodigal says, “but I don’t want you.”
Next, the prodigal leaves home and goes on a “journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.” He now rejects his home, his people, and the values he was raised with. St. Ambrose says that he even rejected his own identity. “What is farther away than to depart from oneself and not [merely] from a place?”[2]
When we rebel against the Lord and run away, we find ourselves in the same situation. Like the prodigal, we reject our Heavenly Father while presuming to enjoy his gifts in destructive ways. St. Augustine writes:
Through prodigal living in a distant region, he wasted what you, a kind father, had given him as he set out… To be in the realm of lustful passion is the same as to be in the realm of darkness, and that is the same as to be far away from your face.”[3]
Indeed, the prodigal’s life is one of destructive self-exile. As St. Ambrose says, “Surely whoever separates himself from Christ is an exile from his country, a citizen of the world.”[4]
Ultimately, this leads to starvation. For the prodigal son, this began as a material problem. He wasted his inheritance and had nothing to rely upon when a famine came. St. Ambrose notes that such a famine is ultimately a famine of “good works and virtues.” As we read in Deuteronomy 8, quoted by our Lord while being tempted by the Devil, “man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD, doth man live.” As St. Ambrose notes, such a famine is the most wretched of all. He writes:
Whoever leaves treasure lacks. Whoever departs from wisdom is stupefied. Whoever departs from virtue is destroyed…. He began to want and to suffer starvation because nothing is enough for prodigal enjoyment. He who does not know how to be filled with eternal nourishment always suffers starvation.[5]
Yet it is this very starvation that brings the prodigal to his senses. He had rejected his father and wasted his gifts on wicked living. But in his desperation, he remembers his father’s goodness, love, and bounty. Philoxenus, a 5th century bishop who is considered one of the most important early thinkers in the Syrian Orthodox tradition, writes that despite squandering his father’s property, he had not lost his sonship. Rather, he remembered it in his desperation. Philoxenus writes:
He was still a sinner. He had sinned to such an extent that he had thrown to the winds with his misdeeds the entire inheritance he had received from his father. [Yet, h]e still called God his father. This indicates that the grace of the Spirit, which authorizes him to call God Father, did not depart from him.[6]
The Holy Spirit was still working on the prodigal’s heart. The Spirit was still speaking to him. The Spirit was reminding him of his father’s love and goodness. The Spirit was using the hardships and tragedies of life to draw him home. And this is where we see that there is always hope for the prodigals in our lives for whom we grieve and pray.
Towards the end of St. Luke’s gospel, we see a particularly extreme example of this kind of hope. When our Lord is on the cross, you’ll remember that he was executed alongside two others, described by St. Luke as “malefactors.” Based on the other gospels, they were probably condemned for the 1st Century equivalent of armed robbery and murder. One of the two joins with the soldiers and crowd in mocking Jesus. The other, however, rebukes his partner in crime, saying “Doest not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? Ad we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.” Repentant and remorseful, he then turns to Jesus and says, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” And Jesus does indeed promise that he will meet him in paradise.
The language of the repentant malefactor doesn’t sound like that of a pagan or atheist. No, those are the words of a man who had been raised in the faith, but ran away. And at the absolute lowest part of his prodigal journey, when he was hanging on the gibbet of a cross, he came to his senses, repented, and asked to come home.
The “good thief” (as he’s often called) is often and rightly used to illustrate God’s mercy in extraordinary circumstances. And if God showed him mercy, surely God’s mercy will extend to the prodigal in your life. Trust the Holy Spirit to keep working and the Father to be merciful.
Indeed, the father in our parable is an exemplar of such mercy. Though he doesn’t chase after his son when the son is running away, that’s not because he doesn’t love him. It’s because he knows it will do no good! But as soon as the father sees his son on the road heading back home, he runs out to meet him. The prodigal doesn’t even get his full apology out before the father is embracing him, ordering a welcome-home feast, and clothing him with a new robe, ring, and sandals, all of which are signs that the son was accepted back as a son with all the benefits of sonship.
This, does not, of course, please the third member of the family, the older brother. The older brother was resentful that his brother, who had acted so foolishly and squandered his father’s goods, had been accepted so readily. Remember that the prodigal son had intended to beg to be considered a servant. Yet the father took him back as a son without even letting him make the request. There’s some irony, then, when we look at the older brother: though he was a son and the heir, he acted more like a servant. He says to his father, “Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends.” He basically says that he didn’t get paid what he deserved for a lifetime of good service! And notice that he wanted to celebrate “with his friends,” not as part of the greater family feast.
All of this shows a heart problem, exactly like the heart problem that the Scribes and Pharisees have at the beginning of the chapter. Yet the father also reaches out to the older brother. The older brother was so angry that he wouldn’t go to the feast, so the father leaves the feast to find him. Again, see the father’s mercy. I can’t help but wonder if the father searching out the older brother is supposed to remind us of the shepherd searching out the lost sheep and the woman searching out the lost coin. That is, the older brother was also lost. Perhaps we should call this third parable the “Parable of the Prodigal Sons” (plural).
It is certain that the Scribes and Pharisees were supposed to see themselves in the older brother. I wonder if they picked up on the father searching for him as well. I wonder if they realized that, in the end, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between them and the sinners they were looking down upon. The prodigal’s desperation was needed to bring him to his senses. We could even see it as something of a means of grace used to bring him to repentance and embrace his sonship. What would be necessary for the older brother to likewise repent? What would be necessary for the Scribe and Pharisee to embrace their sonship?
Notice the father’s words to the older brother: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” Why are you begrudging the mercy I’ve shown to your brother? Why are you envious over a goat and a feast? All of this is yours! You’re my son! This is your kingdom! So come to the feast. Don’t separate yourself from me and from the family. Share in my mercy.
And this is, of course, what Jesus was saying to the Pharisees at the beginning of the chapter, as well as to that inner Pharisee in your and my hearts. Share in my mercy. Come to the feast. It is for you as much as it is for your prodigal brother. Come to the feast.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[1] ACCS NT, III, 248.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 249.
[6] Ibid.
