I’ll begin today on a very personal level. Many of you know that I’ve been a church person from my first week of life, my biggest rebellion being the one semester in college where I stopped going to church and instead prayer journaled in the Calvin nature preserve. Relatable, right? Despite being immersed in the church, I really wrestled with grace. Was it unlimited? Shouldn’t I be more thankful for it? Why wasn’t my life 100% in step with Jesus?
As a sophomore I was able to share my worries about grace with someone who had a few years more of life under his belt. He recommended that I read two books, Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? and Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. Reading those books set my life on a completely different trajectory, one I’m still on today two decades into professional ministry.
Whenever I encounter this parable, I remember Nouwen’s book. He uses Rembrandt’s painting of it as a way of taking a deeper dive into the whole of the parable. Now, we usually shorthand this parable by calling it “The Prodigal Son.” Sometimes, like my Study Bible, it gets a little more expansive, calling it “The Parable of the Prodigal and His Brother.” But all of these titles are insufficient. They actually miss the central focus of the parable. The main character is the father. He’s the through line. Jesus even starts by drawing our attention to the importance of the father. “There was a man who had two sons,” he begins. Three characters, but the first listed is the father.
So, what I’d like to do today is this: I’m going to dwell on each of these characters. Like Nouwen, I’m going to use Rembrandt’s painting to help guide our understanding. And I will invite us all to consider how we encounter these characters. How do we feel about the unbounded grace of the father? Do we see the prodigal in ourselves? Do we see the older brother lurking in our lives? In this season of repentance, how do we identify with this compelling story?
Let’s get right to the father. His presence is all over the parable, and he’s clearly a stand-in for God. The father runs a bountiful household, where sons and servants are busy and cared for. But don’t we like to think that what we have isn’t enough? That the grass is greener elsewhere? The younger son sure thinks so and demands his share of the inheritance. With two sons, that means the younger son would be entitled to one-third of his father’s estate.
Only there’s a problem.
Dad’s not dead yet. Not even close.
Now, the father could have said to the son, “Hey, I hear you, bud. I know it’s frustrating to have to wait. But that’s the way things have to be. If what you have isn’t enough now, I’ll double your allowance.” But, that’s not what the father does. He gives the younger son what he wants. The father allows a remarkable amount of freedom. The father grants this freedom even though there’s a significant risk that it will lead to hurt. Which is exactly what happens to the father — and to the prodigal.
Imagine your son did this to you. His request is essentially, “I wish you were dead, dad, but since you’re not, I just want out. Give me what’s mine, and I’m gone.” How wounding! Yet the father gives freedom and space for even the worst of our decisions, and this one is a doozy.
As we look at Rembrandt’s paining, do you see the hurt in the father’s eyes? He’s weary. I suspect he hasn’t slept well the whole time his son was lost in a distant land.
But notice also his hands. They hold. They embrace. They welcome even the one who spurned his loving home for a distant land. The prodigal’s head is welcomed right into the father’s heart with tenderness.
Let’s draw our attention now to the younger son, the one who rejected his father, thinking life far from home would be better. He had plans, didn’t he? I imagine him letting his mind go to bad places long before executing his bold demand. He’s a teenager sick of the limits his parents put on him. What do you mean I can’t stay up all night? Why can’t I use ChatGPT to write this essay? Everyone else does. Finally, so sick of it, he makes his demand, and the father relents. A few days later, the son packs it all up and goes as far from home as he can. Surely life will be better over there than it is here, he thinks.
Life in a foreign land is one big bachelor party, until he’s spent everything he had on what made him feel good. Jesus is speaking to a Jewish audience, so it’s safe to assume that this is a Jewish family and that this distant land is not Jewish in the least. Notice in the painting that the son’s head is shaved, one sign of identity lost. He’s so desperate that this once-noble son is doing the lowest of work. This Jew is feeding pigs — that’s not kosher, folks — and the pigs are faring better than him. The people employing him are not treating him well at all. Jesus says, “He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.”
But do you know who gave him everything? His dad.
He has none of it left, but he does have a memory that home is far better than this hell he has created for himself. He decides it’s better to come home as a servant than to continue on in the mess he’s made of his life. He’s repentant. He’s taking personal responsibility for his life. You may recall in last week’s sermon that the question of blame was underneath the stories in Luke 13, but there’s no question of blame this week. The prodigal is to blame. He has made his bed and is lying in it. Yet, the invitation in this teaching is that the father is not ever done with the son, no matter what he’s done. (That’s what’s so amazing about grace, by the way.)
Just look at the shape the son is in upon his return. His hair is gone. He’s dressed in rags, which is especially noticeable compared to the father and his older brother in their red finery. Maybe he rode a camel or a ship to the distant land, but he returned home by foot. Rembrandt highlights his feet. One sandal on and one off. His feet calloused and worn. His sandals begging to be done with their work.
The prodigal has his speech prepared. “I’ve sinned; it’s all my fault; I deserve nothing.” And his father interrupts his speech. He’s already seen the son from far off. (The language here of “distant land” and “far off” is actually the same, which gives us the sense that the father knows it all and still saw the son, no matter the shape he was in.) Grace stops the son in his tracks and brings him something he absolutely does not deserve — restoration. He’s home. His father calls for clothing fit for his family. He throws a party. He celebrates.
Which brings me to the older brother. I told you at the outset that I had trouble with the extravagant grace of God. There was a part of me that was like, “Well, shouldn’t I go do a bunch of reckless, terrible things, have a lot of fun, and then experience this grace?” (Bad idea, I know!) But what had never dawned on me until I read Nouwen’s book and studied Rembrandt’s painting was that I was the disgruntled older brother. I’d minded my moral p’s and q’s. I’d gone to church all the time, worked at Christian camp, read my Bible. I was pretty good — not perfect but trying to get there.
I didn’t live like a prodigal, but I envied the way the most broken down could be welcomed into the father’s love, could be home in a place I never left but wasn’t fully at home myself. Isn’t that the attitude of the older brother? His status in his family is certain. He’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing, but he’s going through the motions. He doesn’t realize how good he has it. He didn’t go to the distant land, but he has his eye on it. But his distant land isn’t so much loose living as it is finding a way to receive his father’s love and grace in a way that goes far beyond doing the right things.
The older brother hears the commotion and asks what it’s all about. He’s told that his younger brother has returned and that his father is throwing a feast. And that makes the older brother angry. You can see it in the painting. His eyes could burn holes into his father and brother in their embrace. He’s holding his hands to keep from breaking them up. The father says, “Everything I have is yours. You’re always with me.” This brother has not awakened to the grace he’s lived in for his whole life. It’s something he’s taken for granted, and that’s made him bitter.
James Edwards puts this well. “The younger son, reckless in disobedience, confesses his sin; the elder son, ungrateful in obedience, insists on his rights. The younger renounces all claims to sonship and invites servitude; the elder complains of disappointed sonship and despises the servitude to which he thinks himself unfairly reduced. The younger receives mercy from his father; the elder accuses the father in resentful self-righteousness.” After all of this time spent in his father’s household, you’d assume the older brother would come to resemble the father far more than he does.
So, you’ve heard the parable, and you’ve heard some of my relationship to it over time. I’m curious about where you see yourself in this parable. Looking to your past, who have you been in it? I’m sure some of us — myself included — find lots of the older brother in ourselves. We played by the rules. We didn’t make any noise. We were always there, but we weren’t curious enough about our Heavenly Father to see God as more than someone who wanted us to lead quiet, polite lives. When we saw others turn to God from hard places, we were both glad that they found new life but also a little frustrated that God’s posture to them is one of complete openness and acceptance.
Of course, some of us have been the prodigal. We’ve run far from God. We’ve tried to find answers everywhere else but church. We hit rock bottom, and it was there that God found us. Isn’t that wonderful when that happens? If I’m being honest, I’d love to see so much more of that as a pastor. I’d love to see those stories where people truly repented and with God’s help turned their lives around.
And none of us are static. Our posture towards grace changes. Who are we today? Do you find yourself trying to find answers apart from God? Do you wonder if life in the distant land would be better than home? Are you here because it’s simply always been home but you haven’t found your life very receptive to God lately?
And perhaps most importantly, are you striving to see others through the eyes of a father who loves with extravagant, unquestioning grace? That’s how God sees you and me, even when we don’t see ourselves like that.
This parable ends with a party. It leaves the older brother’s response to the party open-ended. One son was lost and is found. That’s worth celebrating. But God our loving father wants even the lost child who never left home to be found and embraced by that same extravagant love. This party’s for all who would come. You’ll never be forced to attend, but you’ll never regret leaving your old life behind to be a member of God’s family.
