When was the last time you lost something? Little things, big things… (keys, sunnies very frustrating), bigger things a wedding ring or a favourite piece of jewellery, a family photo/heirloom…
Something I lost: an artwork I did in high school, it was a oil-painting, a portrait of my art teacher posing as a homeless person on a city street, and I actually won a cash prize for it: I can say I’m an ‘award-winning artist’ which is nice! So I retired from painting at that point, that’s as good as it got for me but that’s not the point, the point is that I lost this artwork, I think it was in-between moving sharehouses when I was a student living in Perth. So this award-winning artwork is lost, and my mum continues to remind me year after year that I lost it and I should not have!
So we lose things, big things and little things.
And we lose people too.
Most of us know what this is like, to lose someone we care about. When a relationship ends or changes, when someone passes from this life into the next, our community knows about this right now, this is the heavier side of losing something, losing someone.
That brings us to our famous parable today, the parable of Prodigal Son, the Lost Son. Very well-known, very important teaching from Jesus, but also an often misunderstood parable as Tim Keller says (not just about the lost son) > he wrote the book ‘Prodigal God,’ a very good read, also in bible study format, about this very passage we have before us today. Notice it’s called ‘Prodigal God,’ not Prodigal Son there… We’ll come back to that later.
The word ‘prodigal’ can mean ‘wastefully extravagant’ or ‘reckless,’ and the term ‘prodigal son’ is often used in the media to describe when someone makes a comeback, probably a very unlikely comeback, from the point of no return. We see this all the time in movies, TV shows, books, characters making very unlikely comebacks that no one expected them to make. The headline ‘Prodigal Son Returns’ is used all the time in sports media, usually when a favourite son of a team leaves and then comes back, which happens a lot in the later stages of professional careers. Sports fans love players on their team until they leave the team don’t they! But when the player they used to love comes back again, all is forgiven and it’s like everything is how it’s supposed to be. There’s a little bit of that in this parable from Jesus, but the love that we see here is not as fickle or shallow as the love of a sports fan…
So there’s some love, there’s a return from what looked like the point of no return, and there are three main characters in this parable Jesus tells. Who are those three characters? >>
- The prodigal son, the ‘wastefully extravagant’ son, who wants his inheritance early, who goes and wastes all of it – we read he ‘set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.’Not good, not well thought out, he didn’t invest his money or spend it wisely over time, he went all in and lost it all. That’s the prodigal son, the lost son.
- And there’s the father, the prodigal son’s father, who lets his son have what he asks for and then only comes back into the picture once the prodigal son is returning home. The father delivers the most beautiful line of this parable, not once but twice. First he says to his servants, ‘This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And then he says to his eldest son, the third character in this story, ‘this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ Beautiful words from a loving father aren’t they.
- The third character, the older brother, is the one who works hard and does all the right things, and who has a tough time being ok with his wasteful younger brother being welcomed home by their loving father. But the father has loving words for him too, ‘My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.’
So what can we take away from this parable, what can we learn from what Jesus says, what is he teaching the people listening at the time, what is he teaching us??
Let’s think about who each of the three characters represents > we hear at the start of this chapter in Luke who Jesus is talking to: tax collectors and sinners, and who else is there listening in? The Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Two very different groups of people, those who sin, and those who supposedly don’t!
Keller talks about these two groups in modern terms: the tax collectors and sinners are on a journey of ‘self-discovery,’ and the Pharisees and teachers of the law are all about ‘moral conformity.’ Two very different paths in our modern worldviews!
If we look at it this way we can see the prodigal son represents the tax collectors and sinners, those on about ‘self-discovery,’ and so the older brother represents the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, where ‘moral conformity’ is the governing principle.
What about the third character? Pretty easy one, the father of the two sons represents God of course, our loving God who offers forgiveness and belonging and all those good things. So that’s the dynamic here, and Jesus speaks into both of these opposing worldviews with the love of his and our heavenly Father.
Here’s an interesting question for you:
Which perspective on life do you lean towards, ‘self-discovery’ or ‘moral conformity?’
Of course life can be more complicated, it’s not always so black and white for us, we might move between these two things, but I wonder if you would lean a particular way here…
There’s a huge amount of ‘moral conformity’ in church. There are pros and cons to this, pros and cons to both of these worldviews of course. Doing the right thing is very important, and for good reason! God does call us to do good and be good, he calls us to serve others and put others first, to worship him alone, to have good order in worship, to live obedient and faithful lives, hearing and keeping his word as he teaches it to us. Absolutely all good things, things we should all do. But when this becomes the most important thing – when it’s more about ‘have you done the right thing’ than having a relationship with Jesus – we get caught up in living more by what we do than what Jesus does.
I don’t know if there’s as much ‘self-discovery’ in church for the most part, I would say ‘moral conformity’ is the more dominant one – I don’t know about you. And again, this is for good reason. The prodigal son is wasteful, makes very bad decisions, doesn’t think about anyone but himself on his ‘self-discovery’ journey. He’s selfish, short-sighted, sinful. That model of ‘self-discovery’ is a bad choice, this is the wrong path! Of course self-discovery can be a very useful thing as well – as in learning more about ourselves and how we relate to other people – but again if we have ‘self’ (‘me, myself and I’) as the most important thing, what have we done? We’ve taken God out of the picture once again.
So we’ve got two opposing perspectives, one that leads to ‘morality’ as the number 1 thing, and another that leads to ‘self’ as the top priority.
What does Jesus say to both of these perspectives/worldviews? He says no to both of them. They’re both not going to be enough.
So what if we can shake these two terms up a bit here, to get a God-informed picture of this, to follow along what Jesus is really saying here:
Let’s do some word substitution > let’s leave in the words ‘discovery’ and ‘conformity,’ and take out the words ‘self’ and ‘moral.’ Instead of those two words, let’s put in ‘God’ at the front of both of these terms, so what is it now?
It becomes >‘God-discovery’ and ‘God-conformity.’
Does that hit a bit different??
Discovering God and being conformed into the image of God, the image of Christ, now this is what Jesus is really on about here. Neither self-discovery or moral-conformity alone will ever be enough, both will leave us empty, they’ll leave us lost > just as these two brothers find out!
The prodigal son gets to the point of no return, where he thinks he has no choice but to de-mote himself from his father’s son to his father’s servant! Imagine the shame and the embarrassment of that.
And the older brother is angry! Jesus doesn’t say but we could probably assume the older brother would be happy for his younger brother to earn back some credibility as a servant!
The prodigal son is full of shame, the older brother is full of pride. Shame and pride, these are the ultimate results of living with either ‘self’ or ‘morality’ as number one.
Jesus has more for us than that. He has a new life to give us, a new life to discover, a new image to be conformed into, to be shaped and moulded in > his.
So back to the name of Keller’s book, this concept of not only a prodigal son but a prodigal God… what’s going on there?
The way God loves can be described as ‘prodigal’ > not in a sense of being reckless and wasteful, but in a sense of being extravagant, undeserved, free for all as we talked about last week. We get his love even though we’ve done nothing to deserve it. Going by the dictionary definition of the word prodigal we can see God’s love is freely given, on the most lavish scale.
This is exactly the type of love the two sons receive > one has been shameful, one has been proud. One has been too focused on himself, living by whatever he felt like doing, finding value in feeling good. One has been too concerned with doing the right thing, upholding standards, finding value in his own good work rather than the free love Jesus offers to all.
But they both receive the same love, the beautiful love of their father who says to the older son ‘all I have is yours,’ and who celebrates at his younger son’s return because ‘he was lost and is found.’
We see the father can provide for what both sons need, he forgives the shame of one and the pride of another. He’s not holding a grudge or staying angry or wishing things were different. He loves and he forgives – wouldn’t we all like to receive love like that? That is the love God has for you, for me, for all people.
This prodigal love of this father takes these two brothers from ‘shameful’ and ‘proud’ to ‘loved.’ From lost to found. Really both sons are lost aren’t they, until the father’s love reaches them and turns things around, the prodigal love of this father who celebrates and recognizes both of his sons.
And this is what Jesus is teaching us today > I have enough love for you, whether you’ve been shameful or proud, whether you’re in great life circumstances or things are really tough, whether you’re hurt or grieving or feel lost and like you don’t belong > come and do life with me he says, I will help you, you belong with me.
Lord we thank you for your prodigal love for us, your extravagant, undeserved, free love you pour out on us. Lead us to live with you as our number one, to return to you when we get it wrong and to know the deep love of your forgiveness. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Tom Kitson 