The Father, the Prodigal, and the Good Son
Written by Dan McDonald
The fifteenth chapter of St. Luke’s
Gospel is surely one of Christendom’s favorite Bible chapters. The parables of
the lost coin, lost sheep, and the prodigal son are all found in this one
chapter. I have been reading Maggi Dawn’s Lenten devotional Giving it up
and her meditations on this passage within that Lenten devotional have led me
to think more about this wonderful passage.
I think Maggi Dawn pretty much
perfectly describes what Jesus was doing in telling these parables to the
Pharisees and scribes. She writes; “This is a sequence of stories that takes
the Pharisees’ and scribes’ idea of what a religious person ought to be like,
and turns it around to ask instead what is God like.”[i] That
sums up the chapter perfectly. I think we often have to have our thinking about
religion turned around so that instead of focusing on what we ought to be like
if we are religious people; that we really need to have our thinking refocused
to see what God is truly like toward us. The reality is that there is always
more for us to do, to learn, to be, in regards with our seeking to be godly
persons. We most need to realize what God is like toward us. He truly is good
as our creator. He is also good as the one who desires that all men and women
should be redeemed and brought near unto him. A prayer that I once questioned
in the Book of Common Prayer is now a prayer that I realize does sum up very
well God’s desire for us. The prayer in the Book of Common Prayer says, “We are
not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy table. But thou art the
same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy:”[ii] That
was what Jesus was seeking to teach the Pharisees and the scribes. In their
mind, only a certain group of people who had kept the right way of life could
expect to be viewed by God as good. But Jesus tells how a woman who has lost a valuable
coin will seek it all day long until she finds it, how a good shepherd who has
one sheep that gets separated from the flock will seek it. Finally he speaks of
how a Father with two sons will not be satisfied with just one son sharing in
the life and joy of the family.
The story of the prodigal son
reminds me of a story I once heard when I was a tourist visiting Russia. The
story revolved around a man who had lived a sinful life. He then had a near
death experience. He was clinically dead. His soul descended downwards because
he had lived a bad life. But then much to his surprise instead of being
punished, the devil and the demons took him partying. He was realizing this
wasn’t at all how he had expected things to be. Then the doctors above revived
the man and his soul returned to earth. He now didn’t mind if he was going
downward when he died and if anything he lived more selfish than before. He
then died, this time for real. This time the Devil turned him over to the
demons and they started tormenting him. He protested, crying out, “Hey don’t
you remember me how we partied the time I came before.” A demon replied, “Then
you were a tourist, now you are an immigrant.” That is what the Prodigal found
out about life in the country he went to. When he had money as a tourist he
could live it up. But when the money was gone, he was an immigrant living at
the bottom rung of existence as an outsider in society. He was feeding the
hogs, wishing he could eat as well as the hogs which had their fill of pellets
while he went to bed at night without enough to meet his daily needs.
Photograph downloaded from Shutterstock.com
It was as he fed those hogs that he
remembered how good his father treated his servants. He felt he could not go
back to his father expecting to be treated as a son. He was no longer worthy of
gathering crumbs beneath his father’s table. But maybe he could be a servant, a
hired hand. He began to make his way back towards his father’s house.
As he neared the property his father saw him. One wonders
how often his father must have wondered if he would ever see the long lost son
again. The father, upon seeing him runs out to greet him, and orders a lavish
banquet to celebrate his son’s return.
The older brother becomes upset. He
remains in a field outside of the house and refuses to join the celebration. He
complains that his father never threw a lavish banquet for him. He had given
up everything to stay with his father, to be the good son. But now the
returning prodigal gets special treatment. This is once more, where Maggi Dawn
makes a wonderful observation. She points out that upon hearing how the older
brother refused to come in, the father went to the field to meet the older
brother and to ask him to come in and celebrate; to ask him what was wrong and
to encourage him to put away his anger. Just as the father had run to the prodigal son, he now runs also to the field to meet the elder brother who grumbles at his father's kindness to his brother.
I wonder if the Pharisees realized
where Jesus took them in this parable of the older brother and the Prodigal.
They were Old Testament experts. They were taken to a field of a story of an
older and younger brother. The older brother was angry. His brother’s sacrifice
had pleased God, and God said something was missing in regards to his
sacrifice. Cain was in the field when God urged him to set aside his anger. The
older brother did not feel God’s love. He had complained about what he had
given up all these years while being in his father’s presence. Beneath all his
self-righteousness there was this feeling that he wished he would not have had
to make so many sacrifices for his father. But something else was also wrong.
He did not understand his father’s love for his children. He did not understand
that his father could not be happy if only one son returned home. If he had understood
his father’s love for him, he would have been happy for his father seeing his
son return home. He would have understood that one cannot fully love the
father, without also realizing his father’s love of his sons. In essence, Jesus
was reaching out to the Pharisees and scribes as if God were speaking to them
as the older brother and saying, “Won’t you come home also?” In essence, Jesus
was showing them and us that he was the true elder brother, the beloved son of
his Father. He is the one who had seen his Father’s perfect love and had perfectly reflected
that same love in his own being; showing the fullness of the Father’s love for all his sons, and for his daughters and for his very good creation.
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