The Case of the Prodigal Father

November 17, 1991

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Scripture: Luke 15:11-24

You can stay away from it just so long, and then you have to come back again and preach on it again. Every time you do, you find something new, something fresh, something you’d never caught before.

Actually, it’s too big to handle with any kind of completeness. I know that. No preacher in the world can do it true justice. To try to preach on the parable of the Prodigal Son, I think, is sort of like standing at the foot of Mount Everest, with rope and pick in hand, looking up at the expanse of rock and snow above you.....

Or like being handed a brush and palette on the first day of art class and told to reproduce the Mona Lisa.... Or like being asked to go into a corral of unbroken stallions, armed with only a chair and whip and instructed to have them ready to pull the wagons for a hayride tomorrow night....

J. Wallace Hamilton, the greatest preacher in the history of the Florida Conference, did in fact, write a whole book of sermons on the Prodigal Son story, and entitled it, “Ride the Wild Horses.” Even he couldn’t tame it completely. It’s that big.

There’s enough material here, enough psychological, and sociological, and spiritual material in this one compact story to last... who knows how long? You keep coming back to it.

It’s been called “the gospel in miniature.” It’s been called the most exquisitely crafted story even written. A part of that may be due to Luke’s genius, which was considerable, but I suspect much of even the wording goes back to Jesus Himself. There’s not a wasted phrase in it, not an excess syllable from start to finish, and I suppose it would be next to impossible to imagine a more poignant image of God than the picture in this story of the Father running up the road to throw His arms of love and welcome around the neck of that boy. If you’ve ever had a child of your own, you know. “This my son was dead and is alive.” THINK OF THAT! Even from this distance, even across 2,000 years, it sends chills up and down your spine.

I can’t do justice to it. The story itself is its own best interpreter. So let me today be just as transparent as possible and invite you to come with me and walk around inside this greatest of all parables. Let’s see afresh what we can find.

Perhaps the best approach is to see it as a series of unfolding scenes, like a play, a drama, which, of course, is exactly what it is. SCENE I is the Father’s house, where there are many rooms. The cast of characters is 3--- a Father, an elder brother, and a younger brother. If it helps you in your imagining to make the Father a mother figure, it doesn’t change anything essential. The Father in the story has many of the qualities of a good mother. These 3 live in the house. If there were others, too, we’re not told about them.

I like to picture it, in a way, sort of like the Cartwright family in the old television series, “Bonanza”. I’m not suggesting that God should be thought of as Lorne Greene writ large, but interestingly, the word “ponderosa,” the name of the ranch in the TV show, is a Spanish word, and it carries the connotation of weighty, large, expansive.... which is also the essential meaning of “prodigal”. Prodigious is the cognate form, and it means, not wasteful, as we often think, but abundant, overflowing, extravagant....

We usually misapply the modifier, give it to the wrong character. Prodigal is a more appropriate adjective for the Father, than for the son. The parable really is a story about God’s prodigious grace. In the beginning, though, back at the Ranch, the younger boy had no inkling of that, no awareness of what that meant.

Raised in grace, saturated in it, immersed in it, he had no appreciation of its buoyancy. Like many another young man spreading his wings, all he felt was the tightness of the rules imposed on him, the strictures of the Father’s regulations, the do’s and dont’s of the house. Despite everything he had, the blessings, the benefits, the advantages of being a child of the King, he felt “boxed in”.

Oh, he knew his Father loved him, but why did he have to be so hard on him? Why couldn’t he give him more rope? Frankly, the Old Man got on his nerves sometimes, the old Geezer.....WHY CAN’T I BE MORE INDEPENDENT? Why can’t I have a car of my own? Why do I have to come in at a decent hour, as he calls it, on Saturday night? IT’S NOT FAIR.

How can Pop be so arbitrary as to forbid my seeing R rated movies, or going out with the gang to J.J. Whispers?^[1] What’s so bad about chugalugging a few 6 packs with the troops? That’s how the younger brother thought, and I’m not quoting now from creative imagination, I’m quoting from memory. Some of you could, too, because the Bible is more than just a history book.

Actually, nothing new about any of this. It’s not only contemporary, it’s as old as humankind itself. When Adam and Eve were “children” in the Father’s original house, that garden, that Ponderosa called Eden, Paradise... they also balked at the strictures of the Father. Remember?

THERE ARE ALWAYS LIMITS....That’s the way life is. The apparently restricting “thou-shalt-nots” are always there.... everywhere in life. They HAVE to be there as reasonable boundaries to keep life from falling into chaos. THE RULES OF THE FATHER IN THE HOUSE, LIKE THE PROHIBITIONS OF GOD IN THE GARDEN, WERE NOT CAPRICIOUSLY IMPOSED OUT OF SPITE, or something.

They were put there in love, as something solid to push against to help children grow toward maturity. Wise parents always do that. That those loving guidelines were recklessly ignored is the tragedy of the Garden of Eden, which is not a story about 2 people, but about ALL people.

Well, the younger brother here, of course, knew nothing about that. He didn’t know he was replaying an old, sad story. He thought he was the first person in the world ever to feel so intensely about freedom. To have freedom meant, simply, doing whatever you want to do.....a pretty paltry definition of freedom.

Maybe they talked about it together, Father and son.... Maybe it was a discussion topic at the dinner table. The elder brother probably threw in his 2 bits worth.... Maybe they argued; maybe voices were raised. We’re spared the details of the squabble. Enough to say it came to a head.

I guess I see the boy, intense, driven, determined to taste life, to see for himself, to try his wings....and the Father wise enough and big enough not to humiliate him by pulling rank. That’s the way of God, of course, always, even when our own best interests are at stake.

I don’t know whether the young man looked back over his shoulder at the house, at Home as he went whistling down the road with his inheritance jingling in his pocket.... but I’m absolutely sure the Father was watching... and I’m sure that from that moment on not an hour passed when there wasn’t a prayer on the Father’s lips for the welfare of that boy.

SCENE II shifts to a lavish apartment in a place called “the far country”. Talk about a pad.... Wow! There he is, living it up. I mean... STYLE.... Pierre Cardin neckties, Gucci loafers, Ralph Lauren Polo Cologne..... People turn around in the street to look at him as he zips by in his red Lamborghini Diablo convertible.

He has hot dates coming out of his ears.... a full calendar, a Diner’s Club card, a glorious life. He had developed a taste for culture; he appreciates the right things, says the right things, knows the right people....

He’s made countless friends, or at least acquaintances. He’s hit town with a bang, the envy of everybody, a swinger, a success... outwardly... yet somehow it doesn’t satisfy as he thought it would. How very, very strange.

After the initial rush of excitement, a sense of brittleness, emptiness creeps in. SO WHAT TO DO? He steps up the pace. He accumulates more things; he redecorates the apartment; he begins to treat the things themselves as Reality, to depend on them more and more.... He collects not for need, but for show. He becomes a user, a consumer, an exploiter.... He even begins to treat people as things and things and do add them to his trophy case.

The more he has, the more he craves; the more he craves, the more restless he becomes; the more restless he becomes, the harder he drives. IT TAKES MORE AND MORE TO SATISFY HIM. His sense of gratitude is first dulled, then stifled. He forgets completely that everything he possesses is there because of his Father. There wouldn’t have been any of it if it hadn’t been for Him.

You want a good stewardship illustration? There it is... a tragic one, but a powerful one. In that lavish apartment in the “far country” ....outwardly sparkling, but inwardly empty. It’s like Oscar Wilde’s famous dead mullet on the beach in the moonlight----“it glitters, but it stinks.”

For you see, he forgets the source of his bounty. That’s the tragedy. It isn’t that things themselves are bad. Of course they’re not. After all, they came from the father, but as he uses them, or misuses them, they become his undoing. He uses them simply for himself, without consideration for the Father or anybody else.

How many times do you suppose that story has been replayed in the history of the world? This old Book is more than a book. Don’t kid yourself. It’s a MIRROR.

Finally, inevitably, the roles of the one in charge and the one who serves are reversed.....

just switched. What an irony! The things themselves take over the driver’s seat, and

the person becomes the passenger.

Starting out to be free, the boy has become a slave. He’s trapped. He has to have more; he has to be entertained; he can’t stand to be alone....and on and on it goes.

That’s how freedom looks outside the Father’s house---bound to a lifestyle, compelled to feed one’s desire, tied to the need for greater and greater accumulation. It may appear luxurious when viewed externally, but the son, like Marley’s ghost, feels the weight, heavier and heavier, of his confining chains.

Who cares? Who cares at all? All those new-found friends? All those acquaintances ready to go for a ride if the car is full of gas? Not on your life. ONLY THE FATHER, BACK AT THE HOUSE, WHO WATCHED HIM GO AWAY. SCENE III requires an intermission to change the props. It’s a radical change. From lavish apartment to pigpen....  From fashion to filth. The whole thing has fallen apart. The inheritance has run out and so have the friends.

No money, no influence; no influence, no credit; no credit, no lifestyle.... GONE, right out the window. We’re talking depression now. Deep Depression, apples on the street corner, box cars, and hobo camps. When you’re hungry, you’ll resort to almost anything. For a Jew to work in a pigpen had to represent the ultimate in desperation. Don’t think that point was lost on the first hearers.

But there he is, reduced to that level, so that even the swill---are you familiar with pigpens? Do you know what they smell like? EVEN THAT HAS A SICKENING ATTRACTION. Now he’s really lost his freedom. From emotional slave to literal slave....at the very bottom. Anxious to be his own master, he now works for a master, who doesn’t give a hoot about his pedigree, or his parentage, or his previous glittering past.

And you see---this is what it comes to. WE ARE ALWAYS SUBJECT TO A MASTER. No choice about that. IN FACT, WE’RE ALWAYS SUBJECT TO ONE MASTER. It takes a while for many to learn it. Some NEVER learn it, but that doesn’t negate their bondage. We all have one thing, or SOMEONE who controls us......

We’re either subject to God, and then we’re in the Father’s house, possessing the freedom of the children of God...... or we’re subject to our urges, to things, to our dependence on people, to our fears, to our worries, to our hormones....TO SOMETHING. YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS!

Jesus said it when He said, “You can not serve God and Mammon.” Not at the same time.

Martin Luther in a brilliant insight talked about human life as a battlefield between the

masters. We’re not masters, as this boy wanted to be. We’re only battlefields between the real masters. The only true choice is whether we want to be a child of the Father or a

servant to the great god Mammon.

AND THE ONLY WAY TO BE A TRUE CHILD IS TO BE WILLING TO GO HOME AS SERVANT.

It finally came to the boy in the pigpen. Sometimes it takes that kind of knock to get your attention, and it did here. It took a desperate situation to bring him to the realization. The parable describes it with the simple statement, “He came to himself.”

That’s a beautiful phrase, I think, and so like Jesus to say it that way. The boy wasn’t himself when he was squandering the Father’s resources indiscriminately. Not really.

He wasn’t himself when he was trying so hard to impress everybody, buy acceptance and recognition.... He wasn’t himself when he was reeling through the night wind, or shivering through the cold, or wallowing in the mud with the pigs. HE CAME TO HIMSELF ONLY WHEN HE REMEMBERED TO WHOM HE BELONGED.

I don’t know whether it came to him with a flash of insight. Maybe it did. Maybe it was a gradual awareness. The stench of that pig slop might have hurried it along.

No doubt disgust played a part in it.... He looked at the dirt beneath his fingernails and down in his heart. He looked at what he’d had and what he’d done with it. But I think most of all he looked and saw in his mind’s eye the face of his Father as it was when he left, and he knew his Father was waiting for him.

Isn’t repentance always that way in the New Testament? THIS IS GOSPEL! It’s less a turning FROM than a turning TO, less a disgust with the past than a beckoning of the FUTURE, less a repudiation than a recognition, less an abandonment than an avowal, less a NEGATIVE thing than a POSITIVE thing, less a giving up something than a claiming something, less a leave taking than a reunion.....

When the New Testament speaks of repentance, it’s always with drum rolls in the background, the singing of legions of angels, shouts of joy, and unrestrained celebration. How did Jesus put it, NOT “repent or burn in hell”, but “repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

That’s the dynamic here. A lost boy, at the end of his rope, remembered the face of the One who loved him and wanted more than anything just to go home. “I will arise and go to my father”, the parable says. AND THE CELESTIAL CHOIR BEGAN TO WARM UP.

SCENE IV. Like Charles Kuralt....on the road. What kind of reception could he expect? What kind of greeting could he anticipate? What could he say? What can you ever say to those you’ve hurt, taken advantage of, exploited? Is there any remorse more painful than that?

It may well be more difficult sometimes to ASK for forgiveness than to FORGIVE, just as it’s often more difficult to RECEIVE than to give. Many have found it so. I think the surest sign of the genuineness of the boy’s repentance is that as he walked up the road in the gathering dusk, with both homesickness and guilt churning in his stomach, he knew what his approach had to be----

He knew he couldn’t come with a proposition, or some kind of bargain.... THAT was out.

He knew he couldn’t come with a flock of excuses. He certainly couldn’t say, “Look, I learned a lot out there in the cold, cruel world; I’ve paid the piper; I’m grown up now, and I have a right to your acceptance.... That’s not how true repentance talks.

He knew the only thing with integrity he could possibly say was the simple, unadorned

truth: ”Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” I have no claim whatsoever

but your bare mercy. WHEN YOU’RE READY AND WILLING TO SAY THAT, HOME IS NOT FAR AWAY.

Now, are you ready! The exquisite thing is that he never had to say it. He did say it later, the Record shows, but he didn’t have to. Here’s the miracle.

THE FATHER ALREADY KNEW. Before he was in hailing distance of the house, not at the front door, not at the gate, not even in the driveway leading to the gate, but way down the road, the Father had already seen him.

He recognized his walk, even under the filthy rags...... He knew that gait, that limp, and that heart....and was out there, running as fast as his old legs would carry him, to grab that boy in a bear hug.

This is the part, I confess, that’s too big for me. Have you ever waited at a train station, or at an airport terminal for a child to come home from another country?

I think it’s the only place in Scripture, right here, where God is portrayed as RUNNING. In Paradise, in the Garden of Eden, back in Genesis, there’s a scene where God is pictured as walking.... “in the garden in the cool of the evening” .... BUT THIS IS BETTER. This is even better than

that. THIS IS GOSPEL.

Here in the cool of another evening, God RACES......Can you see it? God races with eager, outstretching arms of redemption to clutch his boy to his bosom.

It says, doesn’t it, something very, very wonderful about the heart of ultimate reality. (I guess this is why I have to be a preacher!) God will never make us come home. He really won’t. We can stay, if we insist, as long as we want in our pigpens, whatever they may be.

But He’s always out there....on the road, every road, looking for us....in His track shoes.

Somebody has said, “There wasn’t just a little candle burning in the window of the Father’s house in the boy’s absence.... THERE WAS A SEARCHLIGHT.”

That’s the eternal greatness of the God of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Boy, what a story! Ponderosa! Extravagant, expansive, overflowing, abundant.....not the boy. He finally learns... but the Father. That’s what Jesus was talking about. The prodigious love of the God who finds us.

Have you let Him find you yet? Hear the music, the festivity.... (We’ve just come back from Australia) Smell the “barbie” cooking.... See the robe and the dancing shoes. It could all be for you.

There’s a homecoming for everybody, because thank God, there’s a HOME.

--

^[1] A nearby nightclub in Winter Park, FL