Wednesday after Reminiscre + Luke 15:11-32 + Februrary 28, 2018
In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
This young man had had enough of home life. He wanted to get
out from his father’s roof, be on his own and spread his wings. Actually he
wanted to live high on the hog. He wanted to live the good life on his own
terms. That meant pursuing whatever pleasures his heart desired. He loved the
things of the sinful world much more than he loved his father. This is evident
by the way he approached his father. “Father,
give me the portion of goods that falls to me,” meaning, “I’d like my
inheritance now, thank you.” Inheritances are typically only disbursed to sons
upon their father’s death, making this quite a request. The father doesn’t
argue with his second son. “He divided
to them his livelihood.” According to Jewish custom, the eldest son
received two-thirds of an inheritance while all the other children split the
final third. This son gets one-third of his father’s possessions. Not many days
after the disbursement, the young man gathers all of it together, a great
amount, no doubt, and leaves his father’s house. He journeys to a far county “and there wasted his possessions in
prodigal living.” Jesus doesn’t give us the sordid details, though the
older brother fills in the blanks when he says that his younger brother “devoured your livelihood with harlots.”
All the gifts given by his father are used for the sake of pursuing his carnal
pleasures. All the blessings of the inheritance he devours to fulfil his carnal
appetites. Except his inheritance can’t satisfy his sinful desires. All that
money can’t fulfill his desires because sinful desire is a raging lust which,
once satisfied, only wants more.
Eventually the inheritance runs out, as inheritances tend to
do. But the young man’s grief is compounded by the fact that a great famine
strikes just as his money dries up. Just like that he went from extravagant to
empty. He quickly went from having everything to having nothing at all. The
parable shows us just how far this young man has fallen because of his selfish
recklessness. He joins himself to a citizen of that country as a swineherd. He
is an alien in a distant land. He has to hire himself out doing manual labor,
but not just any manual labor, labor that was spiritually repulsive, for hogs were
unclean animals to the Jews. By this Jesus means to impress upon us how far
this young man has fallen into sin. He has lost his inheritance and has nothing
to show for it. He forfeited the freedom he enjoyed in his father’s house. He
once had plenty to eat. Now he “would
have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave
him anything.”
Finally he comes to himself. He
wakes up to this pitiful condition. The slaves in his father’s household have
plenty to eat and then some, and here he is, a son, living in squalor. At this
moment repentance fills his heart. He sees what he has done. He sees the depth
of his sin. He sees what he has brought upon himself because he loved pleasure
more than his father. He treasured the things of this world more than his
father’s inheritance. He screws up his courage to go back. There is only one
remedy for the sorrow in his heart. Confession. “I have sinned against heaven and in your sight.” He knows full well
that he is not worthy of being of the father’s son. Perhaps then he can be a
slave or a hired hand. He doesn’t deserve even this. But nonetheless he goes to
confess and beg for a place, even the last place, at the table. Not because he
deserves it. There’s no deserving about it. He goes back to to confess because
he believes his father, above all else, is compassionate. In this way the
prodigal is similar to the Canaanite woman from this past Sunday’s gospel
lesson. Both trust in mercy in spite of what they actually deserve. Both know
they are little dogs. I’ll take scraps from the table. Make me a hired servant.
But the father has none of that.
This has to be one of the clearest pictures of God the Father’s love for His
fallen sons. The father is waiting by the roadside. He sees his second son
while he is still a ways off. He runs to meet him! He embraces him and kisses
him! This is not the stern judge. This is the father who is full of compassion
for his child who has chosen to walk the path of sin, self-gratification, and
the pursuit of worldly pleasures. The son confesses his sin. No long listing
out of them is necessary. The Father accepts the confession and immediately
sends for the signs of sonship. Fetch the stately robe. Get the family ring.
Put sandals on his feet. The father doesn’t need another hired hand. He wants
sons, not slaves. The fattened calf is slaughtered and prepared. The feast
begins. What once was lost. . .more than lost. . dead, is alive once again.
This parable is an incredible
comfort to us when we fall into sin. Like the younger son, we often sin and
sometimes we even willfully sin, choosing to sin even though we know that it is
against God’s commandments. When we chose to sin we, like the prodigal, give up
the sonship that God gives us when we believe the Gospel, “for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” says
Paul in Galatians 3:27. But when we choose to sin we drive out the Holy Ghost
and our faith, because faith cannot coexist in the heart where sin is allowed
to free reign. We despise our birthright as sons of God. We waste our heavenly
inheritance and trade it for carnal pleasures, earthly honor and glory, wealth
and comfort, or whatever we are allured by. But God is rich in mercy and
desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Even when
we turn our back on our heavenly Father and pursue sin, He is gracious and
compassionate and often gives us repentance and allows us to see the depth of
our sin, so that like the prodigal, we can come to our senses, return to our
heavenly Father, and confess that we have sinned.
Confess because you know His
compassion. Like the father in the parable, He desires our conversion. When we
fall into sin, He desires our life. He is willing to forgive all things. This
picture moves us to repent. We don’t confess our sins, whatever they may be,
because there’s an ounce of deserving in us. We are the little dog who will
settle for table scraps. We are the prodigal who would be thankful for the
lowest seat in the house. But the Father wants sons not slaves. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Then there is the royal
robe He puts on us, which is Christ’s perfect righteousness and merits. Then
the ring, which bears the insignia that belongs to the sons of the Most High.
Then the sandals. Then the meal which celebrates our aliveness, for we had been
dead in trespasses and sins. During this Lenten season, let us take heart in
the example of the prodigal son so that we learn all the more firmly that God
wants to be merciful to us poor sinners, no matter our sin and no matter how we
fell into it. He wants us to rise through daily repentance so that He can daily
forgive us as the compassionate father He is.