“11 Jesus continued: ‘There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate.” So he divided his property between them. 13 Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’
20 So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. 21 The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” 22 But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate.”
Am I welcome here? That’s the first question people ask when encountering a new situation. If you are starting at a new school, a new workplace, church, marrying into an extended family—the question we ask is, “am I welcome here?”
If a relationship is to mature, we will ask other questions but we will return to our first question. Now that we know what the workplace is really like, “do I fit here?” Now that we know the expectations of this friend group, “am I really part of this?” Now that I see these people’s warts and they see mine, “do they want me here? Do I want to be here?” That’s the first and last question of belonging.
That’s this parable. It is about whether we believe we belong. The welcome of belonging is what the Catechism aimed at with, “what is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own but belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” Jesus is where I belong. Grace is where I belong. Wherever the Father is, is home.
This is the third parable in Jesus’ series on belonging. He told each of them in response to the religiosity crowd who were grumbling about him welcoming sinners. Each parable has upped the ante. One sheep out of a hundred was lost. One coin out of ten was lost. Today one son out of two is lost.
This is Jesus’ longest parable and his most loved. It’s structured like last week’s parable, which pulled the rug out from underneath you in surprise not once but twice. We will cover these two surprises over two weeks, two lost sons, but the same point, the same claim: we belong. We belong with God. That’s the claim of these sermons.
We see the younger son’s story in three points. First: leaving home. Second: coming to his senses. Third: coming home. First, in verses 11-16, we he leaves home. Second, in verses 17-19, he comes to his senses. Third, in verses 20-24, he comes home.
Let’s begin with the father’s younger son leaving home; that’s our first point. It’s likely that this son is in his late teens at this point. If you’re older than that, think back to yourself at that age. It’s a dicey age with maximum verve and minimal self-understanding.
This son asks his father for his share of the estate. In a very real way, the son had no real share at this point. The estate was what we would think of as the father’s retirement plan. The younger son would one day share in it, but wanting it now was problematic. We aren’t told how the father moved money around to give his youngest son the proportional value, but he did.
The young man’s desire wasn’t an unimaginable request but it would have been viewed negatively. It certainly would have been seen as an act of disrespect. Caring for your parents—especially your father—was nearly all important in that culture even to the point of imprisoning those who neglected their parents.
This young man was making a clear break with that. He was making a break with his family and even his identity. Who you were was largely tied in that culture to your family and your land. This son was starting a new life as a new man—out with the old in with the new.
The father let him go; “so he divided his property between them.” The father didn’t need to do any of this. God the Father, though, allows a great deal from us sinners which He doesn’t need to allow. He lets us go our own way. God giving you exactly what you’ve demanded doesn’t always turn out as you think it would. This young man will find out the hard way.
We go our own way only to find that our own way leads to death; “the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.”
You see his own sin and circumstances together. He made foolish choices. He made sinful choices. He didn’t form the famine. That’s how it tends to go for people when they hit rock bottom. Some it is their doing. Some of it isn’t their doing. A man really does get wrapped up in drugs and he really does so as a foolish response to a losing his job due to an economic downturn over which he has no control. A woman gambles her family’s money but finds it much harder to return to solvency after her father who was her employer dies.
If you’ve ever listened to someone’s descent into the sort of disaster you see here, you find that parsing responsibility isn’t as easy as at first glance; separating the shame from what was out of their hands, though, is nearly impossible for the individual in dire straits.
This young man is now financial insolvent in a famine. Most of us have lived through recessions; some remember the Great Depression; a famine, though, is outside I would imagine all our experience. Such terrors drive people to the unthinkable. This young Jewish man fed pigs. Working with pigs was seen as a disgusting job all over the Greco-Roman world, but the Jews were prohibited from it by God Himself. Life has collapsed so totally that thing young man is not only doing the unthinkable by working with pigs, but life is so bad that he wants to eat their food. Eating their pods was the equivalent of dumpster diving rotten food. The young man is as low as he can go. “The prodigal gradually descends into his own hell,” as Bailey puts it.
No one would help; “but no one gave him anything,” as verse 16 put it. We’ve heard that verb before; “Father, give me my share of the estate… but now “no one gave him anything.” That’s the contrast that wakes him up. His father had given him everything while he was with him and what he wanted when he left. He could go back to him. That’s what brings him to his senses and that’s our second point.
This coming to himself is a mystery. It can’t be engineered. It is as hidden as a seed growing under the soil as we saw with the early parables. It’s heart work. Augustine described it as his questions being over. John Wesley described it as his heart being strangely warmed. Here it’s described as the father’s younger son coming to his senses.
This downward journey to rock bottom was the path that brought him there. We do well to be cautious about judging regarding the journey it takes to bring souls to their senses—Judah and Tamar from this morning, Paul on the road to Damascus, myself, yourself. “The prodigals are not the other people,” as Snodgrass reminds us. It’s me. It’s you. Much of our judging is just self-deceit—a pretending to be something we aren’t, pretending not to have something in us.
This is our story, which is why this parable is so loved. “The strange and foreign is not interesting,” as one author put it, “only the deeply personal and familiar.” If you once were lost but now are found, this is your story. The specifics are different but the essence is the same and what business do we with the same essence have judging specifics? For one man it’s arrogance, for another it’s lust, for this woman it’s needing to be loved no matter what, for this other it’s greed. For a mother it’s loving to judge others. For her daughter it’s loving to judge her mother for loving to judge. It’s all the same color—one is mint, one is olive, one is lime, one is hunter, but they are all green. Greens can’t judge each other for being more or less green and so we would be quite wise to not judge as if we are any different.
We are much more similar than we assume and we are also each much more complicated than we tend to think. I was speaking with a delightful individual regarding this very parable. This person has any number of reasons to identify with the prodigal but told me they always felt like the older brother. That’s instructive. Both these lost sons are in us. We are complicated. The Belgic Confession begins by telling us that only God is simple. The question for you is whether you can believe you belong with God as you are. “God’s grace allows us to come to ourselves; only there do we know who we are and are we able to speak the truth, truth without which we cannot live,” as Snodgrass puts it.
Some question the sincerity of this young man’s return. After all, he’s just coming home because he sees no other options. Has he really changed? He doesn’t phrase his intended speech to his father with the totality some want. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.”
There is something in us which wants wrong-doers to continue crawling through the doggy door. There is a pride which wants others to grovel sufficiently to satisfy our discernment. While there can be wisdom in the Russian maxim borrowed by Reagan to “trust but verify,” we would do well to beware of ourselves in this regard because quite often it’s our own doubts about our own earnestness which drive us to hound the sincerity of others. It’s worth asking how total are any of our repentances. When we demand perfection we wind up condemning ourselves. That’s Jesus with, “with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
The younger son’s focus on his own need in coming home isn’t a sign of his duplicity. It’s a revelation that need is all he has. Need is all you have. Need is all I have. It is what we have to offer God. Martin Luther’s last words were, “we are beggars. This is true.” Under all the layers, repentance is an admission of desperate need.
If you think you have anything else to offer God, He disagrees. We have no idea how soaked in sin we all are all the time in this life. We are endlessly and constantly and at best still misguided, confused, ignorant, arrogant, and you can find that in even our best efforts. Paul began to consider anything he had to offer to be human refuse. His image to the Philippians on this would say, “how about we all drain our septic tanks, offer it to God as if He’s want it, and then judge each other by the relative cleanliness of what was in those tanks.”
That was what the religiosity crowd was doing when they heaped distain on others as a way of coping with the shame of being a fallen person. That was true for Paul before Jesus showed him the Father. Such shame is not a helpful way forward. Come to your senses. Acknowledge your need. Bring it and yourself to God.
The father’s younger son isn’t just coming to his senses regarding his current state. He’s coming to his senses about never wanting to have left in the first place. He’s now ready to raise higher not just than his current depth with the pigs but higher than his desire to leave home in the first place. He’s coming to himself. He doesn’t see it but he’s not coming home as less than a son before; he’s coming home as more of a son. The father sees that. That’s our final point: coming home.
The son has rehearsed his speech. In it he takes responsibility. “I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.” The father’s younger son was willing to be hard on himself. He was harder on himself than his father will be; “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
His father was watching. His father wanted him to come home. His father wanted him. Am I welcome? Do I belong? The son always had. His father’s run showed that. “The Middle Eastern gentleman in the village always walks down the street at a slow, pompous pace in order to preserve his honor,” Bailey tells us; “to run down a village street would be humiliating and degrading.” Ben Sirach of the second century tells us that, “a gentleman is known by his walk.”
This father was known by his walk too. He didn’t care at all what any thought of his honor because he cared so much about his son. That’s how God the Father is with any sinner who will come back home.
The son was perhaps afraid that he wouldn’t get the chance to give his speech. He didn’t get the chance but not for the reason he feared. His father interrupted the display of shame saying, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
The message here is that we have to come to the Father on His terms. There is no other way. The glad surprise is that his terms are more gracious than we imagine. You must come to the point of receiving whatever God will give before you realize how He gladly He gives. You must give yourself over to Him before you finally understand experientially He is for you and not against you.
The father didn’t welcome back his son on punitive terms. He had no interest in a display of shame. He thinks displays of celebration are what’s in order. This younger son had been so hungry he wanted to eat pig food. Now he’s going to enjoy a feast. That’s a sign that, “a relationship is being restored. With repentance comes reconciliation… the son goes from destitution to restoration,” as Bock put it.
Shame is what we fear we’ll experience in the presence of a holy God. It’s what we are already experiencing, though, when we stay away from Him. When we turn around from our foolishness and wickedness and come back to Him, we find not shame but celebration. “Lay down, then, your reasonings,” as John Owen advises; “take up the love of the Father upon a pure act of believing, and that will open your soul to let it out unto the Lord in the communion of love.” You do belong. You are welcome. You are cause for celebration.
Celebration is what these three parables are all about. They all end with it—the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost sons. That’s a contrast with the grumbling of the Pharisees and the religious leaders at the beginning.
The father will not allow his celebration to be ruined by the self-absorbed. The fullness of that will be the new creation. You can’t be at that party if you won’t party. This younger son needed to get over himself to the point that he was able to celebrate his father’s grace rather than be shamed by that on top of everything else.
Learning to be loved is not as straightforward as we might think. We all have dozens of ways of fighting against it. Leaning to be a reason for celebration is part of obedience as a repentant sinner. If you disagree ask yourself how it would go if this younger son told his father to stop the party because he didn’t deserve it. Deserving has nothing to do with it. The father wants to celebrate and the son honors him to by learning to be celebrated.
This is the experience of being welcome—of belonging. That’s the joy of the new creation and the final welcome—coming to learn that you belong with God. That’s the unicorn in the final Narnia book; he sees the new creation and says, “This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”
Welcome and belonging are what we want because they are a glimpse of that next life. They are a revelation of the Father. He is the star in the sky of this parable. Yes, we identify with older and younger son, but it is the father who we hope against hope will welcome us. That’s where our eyes are fixed. The good news is that as happy as we will be to be home, He’ll be happier to have us home. That’s belonging. Believe it. Amen.