Yesterday the church read in worship the Parable of the Prodigal son from Luke chapter 15 . This brilliant parable Jesus told is perhaps one of the best illustrations in all of scripture of the gospel- God’s perfect love and forgiveness brought to us through Jesus. There are many aspects of the parable that could be a singular focus for our spiritual growth between the younger son, the older son, and the father. During this season of Lent I have elected to focus on the younger brother and the meaning of his journey to a far away country.
A number of years ago a theologian named Kenneth Bailey set out on a venture to further elaborate the meaning of the parable of the prodigal son. He visited small villages in several continents seeking to find the closest equivalent cultural parallel to the village Jesus had in mind in telling the parable of the prodigal son.
Bailey asked people of the villages he visited if they had any knowledge in their oral tradition or collective memory of anyone ever asking for their inheritance from a father. The answer was the same everywhere he went.
Never! Unheard of! Nobody would dare ask this question of their father. Bailey asked why? To ask for an inheritance is to wish for your father to be dead. This is the question that Jesus began the parable with. “Father give me my share of the inheritance that is coming to me.”
Jesus was painting a picture of not just a young man hungry for adventure, but a young man who despised and rejected everything he ever received in life, including the love of his father. A young man so self centered and selfish that he despised the very God who created him.
It is hard to imagine a more offensive action than taken by the son in this parable to demand his inheritance ahead of time and then leave to a far away country. Leaving his family behind as if they were dead to him, never to be heard from again.
In the parable, when the younger son demands such unthinkable luxuries and considerations from his father, he is not met with resistance. Certainly we can imagine the other family members and people in the village looking down at this young man who is threatening the order of society by his selfish and destructive example.
Just picture other parents pointing him out to their children as he left town on a wagon loaded with all of the riches of his inheritance. “Don’t ever be like this boy, look what he is doing to his family, look at how shameful he is.” But the father lets him go freely. He does not begrudgingly give his inheritance to the young man.
This parable is very fitting for the season of Lent. The discipline of Lent is recognizing by the correction of God’s Word the depths and extent to which we have departed to a far away country in our lives, and seeing that the Father is waiting for our return with an open embrace.
We are allowed to go by our Heavenly Father. When we make bad choices there are no lightning bolts or signs from the heavens trying to turn us back. Our heavenly Father lets us go in love, trusting that we will come back more able to understand and receive His love than ever before.
This departure could be as simple as losing touch with reading God’s Word in your daily life. Perhaps you experience being in the far away land when you struggle with contentment and live in a land of coveting material possessions and worldly markers of distinction and honor. Perhaps at other times a faraway land is arrived at through strife and conflict with others in your life, quarrelling and arguing to get your own way, as you give a little more allowance to your pride than at another time.
Henri Nouwen in writing about the parable of the prodigal son makes the distinction between the needs we have for family and friends and a home, and the needs we have for knowing the one true God personally. In this way we can be in a far country even when we are right at home, whenever we are preoccupied with the comforts of home and family without a connection with Jesus.
In another context in the book of Genesis, Abraham was asked to leave his people and travel to a far away land. “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.’ For Abram a far away country was not leaving God, but leaving the idolatry of his homeland and family. Abram was called by God to leave.
In the parable of the Prodigal son, the younger son left to a far away country to escape living according to the moral order of his homeland. He was not called by God to leave, he summoned within himself the mandate and purpose to leave. He was running away from God by running away from family.
For us running away from God could mean staying with the values of family and home- in the case where home is characterized by the idolatry of economic prosperity, happiness above faithfulness, or family pride above justice.
Jesus comes to us in the far away land that we dwell in and brings us back to him. Jesus is able to bring us back because he journeyed out of love for us to the far away country of betrayal, arrest, scourging, and crucifixion. As he took on the sin of the whole world Jesus was forsaken and separated from God- a rift in the very essence of the Trinity.
By his resurrection Jesus was restored back home within the community of the Trinity and Jesus brought us home again. He brought us home from the long exile that we chose for ourselves beginning with the Fall into sin. Where Adam and Eve were exiled from the paradise of Eden, Jesus has opened the door of eternity to us.
And though we were away in a far country for so long, the Father was waiting for us all along: Quick prepare a robe for him and kill the fattened calf, for this my son of mine who was dead is alive, he was lost and now is found. In the parable the son was given a ring on his finger, with the family seal. Showing that he is just as much a part of the family now as ever before- as if he never had left. The fattened calf was kept waiting all along- suggesting that the father never gave up and was preparing for his son’s return.
Even in the far away country we can never be truly separated from God. We cannot imagine what it would be to be completely separated from God in this life- for that would be the suffering of hell. Instead Jesus is with us throughout our life, so that no matter how alone we feel we may know that we are not alone. When you feel God is far away, when the chances and changes of this life make you feel alone, May you know that God is with you even when we are not aware of it. May you know that Jesus has paid it all so that we would never be alone- so that we would rest securely in his family the church. Amen.