The Prodigal Son (Part II)
Luke 15:11-32
Luke 15:13-19
When the son spent all his money and a famine strikes the distant land, he is forced to work for a foreigner feeding pigs (a detestable animal to Jews.) He is starving, and he would gladly eat the cornhusks for the pigs but he cannot digest them. He thinks of the one place that there is bread. This next point being developed may seem subtle, but it highlights the love of the Father. Why does the son want to return home?
The son’s reason for going home is to eat, not to reconcile with his father. The son is not repentant. He crafts a speech that he feels might work to get him
food and to save face. The Pharisees knew the scriptures well and knew that the speech is a speech crafted to manipulate, not to repent. This son’s wording is similar to what the Pharaoh said to Moses after several of the plagues in Egypt. Pharaoh said anything to placate Moses to stop the plagues.
The father (God) understands that we don’t always return to him with right motives but simply want to get something—to eat, to be healed, to be financially blessed. He understands that the only things that we can offer him are the dirty rags on our back and our dirty motives. It is in this situation that the son starts his journey back to the father—literally with only dirty rags and a contrived speech.
Luke 15:20-24
As the son comes closer to his home, he would likely be feeling fear and shame. He wished his father dead, left family and community, and now he has lost
everything. He expects to face his Father and brother’s anger and rejection. Besides the family, the close-knit community would also reject and banish
him, as was the custom. Any Jew who loses his money among foreigners will face being cut off. The cutting off would be performed by breaking a clay
pot at the feet of the man as visual symbol that the community rejected him forever. What do you think the son felt when he saw his father running to him?
In the Middle East, it was considered humiliating for men over age forty to run. As the father ran, he would have had to lift his robe; another humiliation.
As the father drew closer, the son would see not anger, but joy. And when the father reached him, the father kissed him over and over.
After seeing his father’s love for him, the son’s manipulative speech was gone, and all he could say was that he is not worthy to be the father’s son. But
the father restored the son: put shoes on the son (sons, not slaves, wore shoes); put his best robe on him; and put the ring on his finger (a signet ring would give him the power to transact business). The son’s repentance is simply accepting being found.
God joyfully takes the responsibility to find us and restore us. We too simply need to accept being found. Notice that the father’s suffering at the beginning of their estrangement had no effect on the prodigal son. He was not even aware of it. A demonstration of the father’s suffering for him must be witnessed by the son. Without this the son in his callousness will never
discover the suffering of his father and will never understand that he is its cause. Without this visible demonstration the prodigal will return to the house as a hired hand. Without this visible demonstration of costly love, there can be no reconciliation. Isn’t this the story of the way God deals with the sin of the
world on Golgotha, where Jesus died on the cross?