Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

“A certain man had two sons…” On hearing those words, people all over the world who have been exposed to the Christian faith would know what’s coming next – the beloved story of a father and his two very different sons. David Bartlett says that Luke’s gospel is the people’s gospel, the best known and probably the best loved of the gospel accounts. In its chapters we find the three most familiar Christian stories – the Nativity of Jesus, the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. If anyone was keeping count, we might find that more sermons have been preached on this text than any other. Even if I have little or nothing new or exciting to add to this body of work, I don’t think it hurts for us to consider such an important text now and again. There is something profoundly moving and still potentially transforming in this ancient story.

“A certain man had two sons…” First let us consider Jesus’ audience. Robert Tannenhill tells us that beginning with this 15th chapter, Luke launches into several chapters of Jesus’ teaching that read like a single discourse. This discourse parallels a similar set of chapters from earlier in the gospel in which Jesus confronts the critics of his dining habits and eating companions. It appears that the audience is mixed. We have a rag tag band of tax collectors and sinners and, over against them, we have an austere looking group of Pharisees and scribes. Now in Israel in Jesus’ time, you couldn’t get much lower than a tax collector, a collaborator with the hated Romans and a servant of the vile puppet king, Herod. They not only collected funds for the people’s oppressors but also skimmed off a hefty helping of those funds to line their own pockets. Sinners might have been any number of low class folk. Tom Wright says “They may just have been people who were too poor to know the law properly or to try to keep it…Certainly they were people who were regarded by the self-appointed experts as hopelessly irreligious, out of touch with the demands that God had made on Israel through the law” (Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, p. 134.)

Of course the Pharisees and the scribes included those self-appointed experts. They were a powerful social and religious force, a special interest group advocating a particular view of the ancient law that emphasized keeping it literally and zealously. They were on a crusade to purify the practice of religion in hope that God would send the Messiah and restore Israel to its rightful place of glory and power as God’s chosen people. For Jesus, who presented himself as a prophet of God and was making Messianic claims, to hang with tax collectors and sinners was an affront to their personal piety and threatened their religio-political agenda. Here, at the beginning of today’s text, we find them in their characteristic condition of grumbling, complaining about Jesus’ unacceptable behavior, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

What is Jesus to do? How is he to respond? He begins, as he often does, “Let me tell you a little story…” and he goes on to tell the tales of the lost sheep and the lost coin. In each, the principal character – the shepherd and then housewife – lose something of real value. They proceed to search until the lost is found; then they are so happy and excited they invite their friends and neighbors to celebrate with them. Very nice stories indeed! But Jesus ends each with a twist, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” “Are we hearing him correctly? He seems to be implying that God is like this shepherd, like this housewife; that the great God of the universe values sinners like a lost sheep or lost coin and actually goes searching for them. How can this be? How can our God act in such an undignified manner? Our God is a powerful and righteous judge, who holds only anger and condemnation for sinners. They are lost beyond redemption. We, of course, have no need of repentance.”

I suspect Jesus hears the ongoing muttering and grumbling in the crowd. So, he launches into one more little story to underscore his point, “A certain man had two sons…” Now there are several striking things about this story that we may miss, being so far removed from its context, and there may be some other things we are prone to overlook as the story has become so comfortably familiar to us. We like it just the way we learned it long ago in Sunday School. Still, let’s spend a few minutes digging around in it to see if we can come up with something valuable and fresh that we hadn’t seen before.

First, any number of scholars believe that the parable has been incorrectly named for the Prodigal Son. Though obviously essential, the younger son is not the central character in the story, nor is he exactly prodigal. It is true that prodigal has come to be associated with wasteful expenditure or being recklessly spendthrift, but at least one commentator suggests that, using a more literal reading of the word as profuse, luxurious, or extravagant giving, we ought to name this the parable of the prodigal father. It is he who, in the end, is generous beyond anyone’s imagining. Surely Jesus’ audience, sinner and Pharisee alike, would have been shocked by the father’s generosity – both with his wealth and his honor. Others suggest naming it the parable of the waiting father or the running father or the loving father, for clearly the father is the central character to the story.

The younger son, callow, full of himself, hell-bent on having his own desires fulfilled, demands of his father his share of the inheritance. We know that in this culture, younger sons would get a lesser share of the father’s estate. In this case, the younger son would have been entitled to a third of the estate and the older brother, two thirds. It was unlikely, but apparently not unheard of for a child to demand his share of the inheritance prior to his father’s death. In a culture so heavily focused on issues of honor and shame, it would have been a great embarrassment for this young man to ask for his share of the inheritance, then to liquidate it, selling off part of the family’s property and then leaving for a foreign land. All of these actions brought great shame on his family. It was if he was saying that his father, and his family was dead to him. The boy didn’t seem to care about any of this. He was off to see the world. Maybe he had dreams of amassing a great fortune of his own. Maybe he chafed at being under his father’s control. Maybe he fought with and resented his bullying older brother. Maybe he went to Rome or Egypt or Babylonia; maybe he went to Las Vegas or New York or San Francisco. Wherever he went, it didn’t take him long to find trouble. Temptation was everywhere; a naïve country boy, so self absorbed, was an easy mark for every con artist and get rich scheme that came along. There were the parties, the beautiful women and men, the high living, the expensive clothes. All that money wasn’t nearly as much as he thought when he was counting it back home and stuffing it into his bag. Where had it all gone? He was flat broke. What was he going to do? How would he survive? He panicked; his cell phone had been stolen and he hadn’t even saved fifty cents to phone home. He was pretty sure no one there would be accepting collect calls from him.

But, he is a survivor after all. He takes the only job he can find, working for a pig farmer, back out in the country, away from the bright lights and big city. The thing is, he can’t make enough to keep going. He realizes this when he is so hungry the pig’s food looks good. Jesus’ hearers would have been appalled. You just can’t get any lower, as young Jewish lad, than working with pigs, so hungry you were eying the pig’s food. In the pig pen, he came to his senses. In twelve step language, this is a real bottom and he’s hit it – hard!

“OK, even my father’s hired hands live better than this. I’m going to have to suck it up and face my father. If I acknowledge how bad I’ve screwed up, assure him that I’m not worthy to be called his son, tell him that I’ll work for food and shelter, maybe he’ll take me back.” It is interesting to note that the parable doesn’t tell us with any certainty whether this was a genuine change of heart or manipulative move on the young man’s part, but in the end it makes no difference to the father’s response.

There is the old man standing tall and looking imperious in his flowing robes and flowing beard, scanning the horizon, looking up and down the road, secretly waiting and watching for his son’s return, hoping against hope that he is still alive and can find his way home. There is that tiny figure coming over the crest of the hill and the old man is running. No one can remember ever having seen him move so quickly, his dignity trailing far behind. The boy has practiced his speech over and over as he’s wended his way toward home, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” But, before he can get the words out of his mouth, his father has grabbed him and kissed him, shouting over and over to anyone and everyone, to earth and to heaven, “…the dead is alive; the lost is found!!!” And before anyone can stop to consider the implications of this, the party is on. The father doesn’t care what the boy’s story is, what is motivation is, where the boy has been or what he’s done. This is his boy come home and he will be received and treated like a son.

Ah but there is another character to consider. We turn to the elder son as he returns home from a long, hard day, working the estate. He’s tired and a little irritable, looking forward to his supper and good night’s sleep, when he hears noise from the house. There is music and dancing and laughter. It sounds like a celebration. He catches one of the slaves, running toward the storehouse, and demands to know what is going on. Breathlessly she responds, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” It is not brotherly love that wells up inside him, it is sheer anger, rage, really, at what is so patently unfair. He sits outside and sulks until his father comes looking for him, pleading with him to join the party. The boy takes this opportunity to unload all the bitterness of a lifetime playing the best little boy in the world. “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” It seems the supposedly faithful and loving son is harboring a load of resentment. His righteousness is also the result of self absorption, a life poured out, trying to earn his father’s favor and love, not knowing that it was always there for him. He just was too caught up in his own insecurity and his efforts to satisfy those feelings with self-righteousness, he didn’t see the extravagant gifts, the prodigal love of his father that was always there for him. The tale doesn’t tell us how either boy turned out in the end. We don’t know if the older brother repented of his self-righteous anger, embraced his brother and joined the party. We don’t know if the younger brother ever sinned again against his father and family. But we do know the father was always there, loving and loving and loving his problematic boys into the fulfillment of their lives.

Donald Miller, in his commentary, says that this is “really the story of a father who loses two sons. Both boys, the one who strayed and the one who stayed, were lost to his love.” He goes on, “The sheep was lost by heedless wandering and the inanimate coin had nothing to do with its own fate. But the sons are lost by their deliberate choice…A breach of love is chosen…The prodigal’s sin…did not consist of wasting his part of the inheritance. This careless behavior was merely a symptom of the deep desire to be his own master, to live independently of his father’s will, to do as he pleased, to shed the protective influences of home and love as unworthy of his own free manhood…The elder brother like the Pharisees, did not understand God’s grace. He was basing his relation to his father on achievement and merit, seeking reward for his righteous deeds. He had served and obeyed…He had no more of a relation of sonship to his father than did the prodigal. He served for reward rather than for love of his father. Thus, he could not understand the father’s joy…” (Donald G. Miller, The Layman’s Bible Commentary, Volume 18, The Gospel According to Luke, pp. 120-121.)

I have a sense that there is still a living word for us as we consider this ancient tale. “A certain father had two sons…” Does anything in this old story strike a personal note in you? Do you know anyone like these characters? Have you ever felt yourself inhabiting one of these roles or a role very much like it? Do you know anything first hand about being prodigal, whether it is lavish giving on your part or extravagant gifts received? Do you know anything about self absorbed wandering, about wanting what you want when you want it, to the exclusion of all loving relationship? Do you know anything of deep anger and welling resentment when you discovered life wasn’t fair, at least not by your self-centered calculation? Have you ever been disappointed to see love triumph over judgment, relationship over rules, life over death? Then here is a story of hope and promise for you and those like you. Repentance, that simple, terrifying turning around and heading home is always available. Waiting just over there is the prodigal father, the extravagant mother, running in a most undignified manner to embrace us, kiss us, welcome us home. Just inside the door is the mother of infinite love, the father of amazing grace, pleading with us to come on in and join the party. It’s right here, right now, for you and for me. It’s never too late. Come home, come home. Amen.