A PASTORAL LETTER
Dear family,
Thank you for your attention on Sunday as we looked at the second half of the parable that is commonly named “The Prodigal Son.” However, as we’ve noted, this story was introduced by Jesus like this: “There was a man who had two sons…” So it is a story made up of two equal accounts. The second son is not just a sub-text to the first. We’ve already noted that though silent, the elder brother was present at the beginning of the story. He witnessed what happened, he too received inheritance, but he failed to respond as any son would have been expected to, in discouraging the brother or intervening. He disappears for all the years that the younger son is gone. He too, though apparently in the outward geography of the father, though appearing to be functioning in the father’s house, is actually no less in a distant country of the heart. He is not in the town, where the reunion would have taken place. The sound of music and dancing, the sounds of another’s experience and testimony of deliverance fall on his soul. The code word “fatted calf” tells it all. This is as high as you can raise the restoration stakes of celebration. But this is as low as someone can respond to the joy of another’s restoration to the father.
Note the parallelism: another son coming towards his father’s house, equally bound, equally in need of restoration of his relationship with the father. The answer of the young boy to his question about what was going on is not quite as passive as it sounds: the brother “has come”. The nuance, so the textual scholars tell us, emphasizes the action of the father in bringing him back. The imperfect tense of v26 implies that the brother kept on asking the young man questions no doubt getting all the information available, so he would have known the state in which the other son arrived and all the responses of the father. The word for “safe and sound” is the same one used in the Greek translation of the OT for “Shalom”, which is the ultimate word for healing and wholeness. So we are left in no doubt about the extraordinary nature of the recovered relationship between the younger son and his father, the nature of the healing and deliverance. The immediate response of the older brother leaves us in no doubt about his equal estrangement from the father. “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.” Now we start seeing what is in him by what is coming out. There is indeed a deep root of entrenched anger and even hatred. The refusal to go in is another defiance against expected responsibilities, as tradition required the older son to be the one at the door to welcome guests. There is a root of rebellion here, and it’s been around for a long and unresolved time.
Let’s not beat about the bush here. What is the primary object of his anger? It is not the brother, but the father. He represents those who have clenched their fists at God for their own aggrieved reasons. There is then a repeat of what happened with the younger son. The father takes the initiative and comes after the son, who is now arguably acting worse than the younger one did. At least that exchange was private; this is public as the son stands in the open courtyard in his defiance and rage. This is another but different presentation of the pain of broken relationship between father and son. But despite the son refusing to be the son, the father refuses to stop being the father. He didn’t order his son’s compliance but pleaded. There is such poignancy in these pleadings. We know that the spirit of our father goes to great extents to strive with men and women: to persuade, to draw, to convince, to woo. But the same father who went after the first son, goes again after the enemy of grace. He wouldn’t come to where the father and his brother was, so note that the father went to him! This is pursuing paternal love and grace!
There is a tenderness and terrible vulnerability in the way that the father puts himself at the mercy of the son, and puts himself into his hands through this loving appeal that may be rejected to the heart-break of the father. What we witness is the elder son having his way with the father, as the crowd that crucified Jesus had their way with the Father’s heart not long after he told this story, and in the same way that we have our will when he is rejected by us through our disobedience and neglect, or when, in the terrifying words of the writer to the Hebrews, we harden our heart and sin, and treat the blood of Christ as an unholy thing, and trample underfoot the holy Son of the Father and thereby reject the Father.
You almost hold your breath as the elder son responds with such anger, disdain and accusation, to these pleadings of the father’s love. Even the prodigal at the beginning of the story at least addressed his father as “Father!” There was at least a modicum of social respect even if his heart was also in rebellion. Here there is nothing. The son goes straight into his tirade against the father. Commentators who understand the cultural background and setting here that Jesus’ listeners would be familiar with, have no words to describe the intensity of the shock, not just to public civility, but to familial honor that this outburst would carry. It is as heightened a level of insult as you could imagine. It would be grounds for any father having him beaten and thrown out for good. It is the ultimate dismissing, denying and degrading of a father’s authority. But in his anger he exposes himself: “I’ve been slaving for you.” Long before Paul wrote to the Romans or to the Galatians, the contrast between a slave and a true son is identified by Jesus. The two sons are equal in their estrangement from the heart of the father, whether through license or whether through legalism. Here is the tragedy of living in the father’s house but still as a slave. It also shows us some of the bad fruits of this bondage – the anger is of someone who is bound. Because of this spirit of a slave, contempt has come into his heart for his father. Trust has been affected. His entire perspective on life and others has been twisted so there is no discernment of the father’s heart. For example, he can only see the party as an insult because it seems to suggest the younger son’s worth and value, and isn’t he a scumbag? What about his, the elder son’s, worth? He has no way of discerning that it is first about the heart of the father, the joy of the father. It is the father’s party, not the son’s! (Have you noticed how joyless the legalist is, how joyless is one who is enslaved, how joyless is the one with unresolved anger?)
It’s ironic that in the context of insulting and accusing his father he thinks he has never disobeyed him. But what about the fifth commandment that seems to have hit the dust in this explosion? Note the accusations: partiality and favoritism, injustice and neglect, lack of judgment and discernment. This is a litany of complaint, both about how he has been treated and how the father has dared to treat the other son. Essentially he argues his deserts; the father owes him, the father is his debtor and therefore his integrity and his authority and his honor are denied and derided, and consequently the father is defied. Other things then tumble out that betray his real state:
• “my friends”: this implies a self-consciousness of other relationships other than his father and family that are from another disconnected part of his life.
• “this son of yours”: not his “brother” because there is no recognition of a relationship, and this is yet another example of separation from the family. (Loss of fatherhood always produces this separation effect in relationship with others in the family – disunity in the body – finding a counterfeit fellowship – a counterfeit family – a counterfeit father)
• “with prostitutes”: this is particularly interesting because there is no word used earlier in the passage that implies immorality on the other son’s part. The word used implies financial recklessness with resources, and wastefulness. That is not to say he was not immoral, but it is to say that the only mention of sexual sin in this story was in the elder brother’s mouth and therefore in his mind. Did this “never disobeyed your commands” son betray more problems of an enslaved spirit than the younger prodigal? Did he envy the brother’s profligacy and possible sensual excesses? Was the fact that he hadn’t slept around have more to do with cowardice than righteousness? And while he and his friends may never actually have visited a brothel, did they share their mental pornography, or live in the brothels in their heads? It was not a heart-obedience but a religious compliance that he had manifested. (Don’t forget that Jesus’ audience here included prostitutes and Pharisees!)
The father’s response to this venom is as overwhelming and as consistent as the response to the younger son. The word “huios” has been used mostly for “son” up till now. But here the word he uses for son is “teknon” (beloved son) which is the same one Mary used to address Jesus when she found him in the temple: it is a sensitive mixture of heart concern but deep affection and love. Again, before the expositions of the epistles on sonship and slavery, it is Jesus in this story who puts in the mouth of the father the words of rebuttal to the slave designation of the son. The father’s answer is simply: no, you are the heir. So what Paul writes should sound familiar! “Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into your hearts, the spirit who calls out ‘Abba father’. So you are no longer a slave but a son: and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” (Gals. 4:4-7) The father assures him of the truth about who he is and what his holy rights are as a son, that he does not need to grasp and does not need to fear something will be taken or removed. The tragedy is to live as a slave and fail or refuse to avail yourself as a son, of all that is available in the father’s house. He could have had a fatted calf if he had wanted one. The fact is that the father had already given it to him by deed and title at the beginning of the story. His blame of the father was shameful, because unfounded, ungrounded, just wrong. The other thing that the father is so concerned to communicate is that he was always there and available. “My son, you are always with me.” It is the devil’s work to steal and rob and destroy the family of the father. There is no limit to demonic envy and hatred for the intimacy of the father and son/daughter relationship. You see this so deeply in the High Priestly prayer of Jesus in Jn. 17, another crucial passage for understanding the father-son relationship. You can hear echoes of this passage in it. Jesus keeps talking about himself being with the Father (“with you” vs.5) about the Father being in Him and he being “with them” (vs.12) The tragedy, as for many professing believers, is that proximity doesn’t necessarily translate into an experience of presence. Being in the field (as the elder son was) doesn’t mean intimacy.
The second half of the story now ends on the same note exactly that the first one did: with the father’s joy at the dead son being alive, at the lost son being found. But it doesn’t actually end. What do I mean? This is a carefully structured story. Each half is meant to have eight stanzas and they careful parallel each other. But the second half has only seven stanzas. It finishes open-ended. There is a missing stanza which can only be filled in, only be completed by us. It is an inconclusive ending. The brother is still standing outside the door. Did he go in? He is left standing outside the door of the father’s house. Where are you in your relationship with your Father? Are you inside, or on the outside? If the latter, what keeps you there? What is the source of your resistance, of your reticence, of your rejection? Why are you angry at him? Are we submitting to the father’s ring and robe job or is there a part of us that is standing outside the door, for whatever reason, from unresolved anger to feeling hard done by, from being enslaved and bound, for whatever reason, whether self-inflicted, other-inflicted, or devil inflicted? What is our response to a fresh invitation from the father to live in his house on his terms and at his expense? The pride of both sons needed to be broken by an encounter with grace. One humbled himself and submitted himself again to the father’s gracious ministrations. The other one…I don’t know. But this story of the father and his sons, this story of the father’s love and grace and patience and forgiveness, invites us to choose how our stories will continue and how they will end. What is your response to the father’s invitation? How will your story end?
Pastorally yours,
Stuart
http://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)