“Two Lost Sons”
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
This is probably one of the best known parables of Jesus in the Bible.
I’d say it is right up there with “The Parable of the Good Samaritan.”
It is usually referred to as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.”
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word “prodigal” means: “One who spends lavishly or foolishly or one who has returned after an absence.”
So…that being said…
Is it the younger or the older son in the parable who usually gets most of the attention?
Is it the guy who runs away from home, spending all his inheritance on wild living or the older son who stays at home and does what is often interpreted as being the “right thing?”
There can be no doubt that most sermons on this parable have concentrated most heavily on the younger brother—the “Prodigal Son.”
I’ve preached on this parable approximately 4 or 5 times and I have always concentrated on the younger son.
But when we do this I think we miss the real message of the story because there are, indeed, two brothers, and both of them represent a different way of being alienated from God, and a different way to seek acceptance into the Kingdom of God.
Also, notice, if you will that at the beginning of Luke Chapter 15, we see that there are really two groupings of people who are “gathering around to hear” Jesus.
The first group are the “tax collectors and sinners.”
They are the people who are represented by the younger brother in the parable.
They didn’t follow the moral laws of the Bible nor the ceremonial purity laws.
They engaged in what would have been considered “wild living.”
Like the younger brother, they “left home.”
And they did this by leaving the traditional morality of their families and the so-called “respectable” people of society.
The second group of folks listening to Jesus were the “Pharisees and the teachers of the law.”
They are represented by the older brother in the story.
They held on to the traditional morality of their upbringing.
They studied and obeyed the Scriptures.
They worshipped and prayed constantly.
And Luke takes special pains to show us how different each group of folks respond to Jesus.
The “so-called” younger brothers of the story continually flocked to Jesus.
And this was the pattern of Jesus’ ministry.
Most of Jesus’ followers were folks who had lived some pretty wild lifestyles—the prostitutes, the drunkards, the outcasts, the marginalized and yes—the hated tax collectors.
They continually flocked to Him.
And this really made the religious people scratch their heads.
It also made them very angry, and perhaps, a bit jealous.
And so Luke summarizes the complaint of the moral and religious leaders as this: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
To sit down and eat with someone in the ancient Near East was a sign of acceptance.
“How dare Jesus reach out to sinners like that!” they were saying.
“These people never come to our services!
Why do they want to go listening to Jesus all the time?”
So, who is Jesus’ teaching in this parable really directed to?
It’s to the second group, isn’t it?
It’s to the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law who are grumbling about Him and judging the folks who are coming to Him.
Yeah, this parable talks about two sons, along with a Father Who represents God, and it reaches its climax with a powerful plea for the older brother to change his heart!
The targets of this parable aren’t wayward sinners, but religious people—the spiritually blind, narrowminded, self-righteous and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them!
And while Jesus isn’t celebrating those of us who are taking “a walk on the wild side,” He is singling out religious moralism as a particularly deadly spiritual condition!
It may be hard for some to realize today, but when Christianity started it wasn’t called a religion.
It was a non-religion, really.
I mean, imagine what non-Christians thought of Christianity when it first came about.
“Where’s your Temple?” they’d ask.
“We don’t have a temple,” they would reply.
“But how could that be?”
“Where are the sacrifices made to please your gods?”
The first Christians would have responded that they didn’t make sacrifices anymore.
Jesus Himself was the Temple to end all Temples, the Sacrifice to end all sacrifices.
No one had ever heard of anything like this.
So, the Romans called them atheists because what they were saying was totally new and unique; it couldn’t be classified with the other religions of the world—it was something else entirely!
The irony of this is that for many folks standing in the midst of our modern culture wars, 21st Century Christianity is religion and moralism.
But from the beginning, this isn’t what it was about.
The moralizers and religiously observant folks were offended by Jesus, but those who had been estranged from religion and moral absolutes were intrigued and attracted to Jesus.
And we see this throughout the New Testament.
When Jesus meets a religious person in the same story as a sexual, racial, or political outcast—the outcast is the one who connects with Jesus—and the older-brother-type does not.
In Matthew 21:31, Jesus says to the religious leaders: “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.”
And so, this parable we are looking at this morning, may very well be best called “The Parable of the Two Lost Sons.”
The younger son goes off to a “distant country” and squanders everything he has through his out-of-control lifestyle.
When he is literally down in the mud with the pigs, he “comes to his senses” and makes a plan.
He’s going to “head home” and beg his father to make him one of his hired men.
His strategy probably went something like this: since he had disgraced his family and the entire community he was “dead” to them, as the father describes it.
The rabbis taught that if you had violated the community’s standards, as the younger son had, an apology wasn’t enough—you also had to make restitution.
So, the younger son plans to say: “Father, I know I don’t have a right to come back into the family.
But if you apprentice me to be one of your hired men, so I can learn a trade and a wage, then I can at least start to pay off the debt I owe you.”
But when the younger son comes within sight of the house, his father sees him and runs—runs to him!!!
As a general rule, distinguished Middle Eastern patriarchs did not run.
Children might run.
Women might run.
Younger men might run.
But not the dignified pillar of the community.
But this father does.
He runs to his son and, showing his emotions openly, he throws his arms around him and kisses him.
“Quick!” he says, “Bring the best robe and put it on him.
Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.”
In other words, “I’m not going to wait until you’ve paid off your debt; I’m not going to wait until you’ve groveled in the dust.
You don’t have to earn your way back into the family!!!
Instead, we are going to celebrate.
“Kill the fattened calf!
Let’s party!!!”
He invites the entire village to the feast, word spreads quickly, and soon there is a full-fledged feast going on, with music and dancing.
What a scene.
And what is Jesus saying?
“God’s love and forgiveness can handle any and every kind of sin or wrongdoing.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done.
God loves you—and God will always love you!!!
There’s no evil that God’s love cannot cover, there is no sin that is a match for God’s grace!!!”
If the parable stopped right here, it would only be about the younger brother.
But it doesn’t stop there.
There are two sons.
The “bad” one by all conventional standards, and the “good” one.
And yet, both sons are alienated from their father.
The father has to go out and invite both of them to come into the feast of his love.
And so, both sons are lost.
But the older brother is left in his lost-state.
The bad son enters into the father’s feast but the good son will not.
The “lover of prostitutes” is saved, but the man who is morally righteous is still lost.
We can almost hear the gasps of the Pharisees and teachers of the law when Jesus finishes telling the parable.
It is the complete reversal of everything they had ever been taught.
But Jesus isn’t simply leaving it at that.
It gets even more shocking.
Why doesn’t the older brother enter God’s party?
He, himself gives the reason: “I have never disobeyed you”!
It’s not the older brother’s so-called “sins” that create a barrier between him and the Father, it’s his pride; it’s his self-righteousness.
And that is because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting ourselves in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge.
Now, there are two ways of being your own Savior and Lord.
One is to break all the rules and going your own way.
The other is to keep all the moral rules and rely on your own “supposed goodness” to save you.
You see, Jesus doesn’t divide the world into the moral “good people” and the immoral “bad people.”
We are all prone to the goal of “self-salvation.”
We just go about it in different ways.
A wise theologian has said, “The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism—it is something else altogether.”
It’s that we are all sinners.
We all fall short!
We are all equally loved and equally sinful.
We all need Jesus!
And so, it may be that what Jesus is trying to say to us is that both the younger brothers and the older brothers represented in this parable are equally wrong, but it is the older brothers who are in the more dangerous position.
And the reason?
They are blind to their sinfulness.
“How dare you say that!” is how many religious folks might respond if it’s suggested that their relationship with God isn’t right…
…that they are just as lost, if not more so, than those who are “obviously lost.”
No one had ever taught anything like this before.
And it got Jesus killed!
Could Jesus be saying that “the people who confess that they aren’t particularly good or openminded are moving toward God, because the prerequisite for accepting the grace of God is to know you need it?
And the people who think they are “just fine, thank you” are moving away from God?
When a newspaper asked the question: “What’s wrong with the world?” the Christian theologian G.K. Chesterton wrote a brief letter in response: “Dear Sirs: I am what is wrong with the world. Sincerely Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”
That is the attitude of someone who has grasped, at least part, of Jesus’ message.
Why do I say “part?”
Because, I don’t think Jesus considers any human being to be “what is wrong with the world.”
We are all equally loved.
We are all of sacred worth.
Jesus’ aim of this parable, which was primarily to the Pharisees and teachers of the law, was to show them this great and wonderful truth that we call THE GOSPEL—the GOOD NEWS!!!
YOU are ALL LOVED BY GOD!!!
ACCEPT IT.
REJOICE IN IT!!!
Now, come into God’s great party!!!
All of you!!!
Celebrate together.
No one is to be left out!
May it be so with us.
Amen.
