Faith In Real Life Blog25 “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’
We are beginning a new four week series. We will be examining aspects of forgiveness and this week we will focus upon recognizing sin. Forgiveness doesn’t make much sense unless we can identify what we did wrong. This particular story illustrates the point well. We need to figure out who this story is about and how it applies to us. At least as I was coming up, this story was titled the ‘Prodigal Son’, later it was sometimes labeled ‘The Parable of the Two Brothers’, and in some cases, it was called the ‘Parable of the Loving Father.’ Each title draws attention to different aspects of the story and it is important to look at each.
In FIRL, I asked our group who sinned and what made their behavior sinful.
THE PRODIGAL AS SINNER
On the face of it, the prodigal is the easy choice. The younger brother wants his inheritance. Though he certainly had a ‘right’ to an inheritance, it is usually considered bad form to try to claim it before the parent is dead. Then it gets worse when we read what he did with it: “the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living.” Another trust fund baby gone bad. In this version, the prodigal is self-serving. He wants to get out from under the constraints (and work) of family life, and wants to take his money and run.
A more generous understanding of the same man, is as the younger brother, he has no future in the family. He is second and always will be. His older brother will forever receive the larger share of the family inheritance as well as the mantle of leadership when his father dies. As long as he accepts his place, he has a good chance of living a secure life within the family structure. But if he has any ambition. If he wants more, he will have to go his own way. His decisions about how to use his inheritance are certainly spectacularly bad but he would not be the first person, nor the last, to make questionable, pleasure first decisions. Do these decisions make him a sinner?
The younger brother may be evil to the core. He could have been conning an overly indulgent father who desperately wanted to believe his son had changed. Most of us have at least one family member who is looking for a free ride—and seem to get away with it over and over again. In this story, we don’t actually know what happened after the party. Did the younger son live in a new relationship with the father? Or, did he silently smirk and think—”Fooled the old man again.” Assumptions about motives are tricky. And trickier still are assumptions that we are ‘right’.
THE ELDER BROTHER AS SINNER
The first time I considered the thought that the elder brother was equally sinful was an eye opener. It certainly appears that the older brother is getting the short end of the stick. And secularly, he is. As he points out, he had been the ‘good’ son but had gone unrecognized. In contrast, the younger brother had not only wasted his inheritance, he was reinstated in the family. Which meant in turn, that he was STILL due an inheritance. That could only happen if the older brother’s share was reduced. There is no way that is fair. No wonder the older brother was upset. Unfortunately such thinking shines a bright light upon our struggle to grasp grace. The father loves. Period, end of sentence. No matter how desirable, such an understanding is difficult to grasp. We want explanations and conditions so we will know what to do. We, unwittingly, are trying to control love.
In real life, we are reluctant to actually trust God’s love. That was certainly true for both sons. Both men were jealous of what the other had. Both wanted to protect their self interest. Both acted as if they were entitled. Both measured their worth by what the father gave them. Both separated themselves from the father. They looked different but they shared the same Sin. Neither could grasp the nature of the relationship the father offered. Their failure to receive God’s love became their Sin. They each wanted love as they defined it. In real life, living with what we have is very hard—especially when others have more or especially when we are in pain. But if we can give up insisting upon our own way, we will discover that God is present in every circumstance. We begin to learn that God’s promise is to be with us—not to fix us.
In order to recognize sin, we need to look harder at what drives our sinfulness. Very simply, Sin is a turning away from God. Behaviors like stealing, adultery, murder, slandering, etc. are sins with a lower case ‘s’. Sin, with a capital ‘S’, is the turning away from God that those behaviors expose. We want to identify the sin of the younger brother as his entitled, dissolute living and his poor stewardship of what he had been given. All of that is true but his turning away from the father and his insistence upon his own self sufficiency reflected his need to prove (or gratify himself). The love of the father was not enough for him. The same was true of the older brother. He was so busy trying to earn favor that he failed to see he already had it. His exemplary living was not out of gratitude, it was to earn favor. That was not obvious until his jealousy exposed him. It was a blow for him to realize that his obedience and faithfulness did not put him in higher regard with the father. That was disturbing both to him and to us.
THE LOVE OF THE FATHER
The love of the father was inexplicable to both young men when they insisted upon their own way. The father loved without regard to outcome. He offered care whether or not his son squandered what he had been given. He also loved whether or not the son was contrite. Notice the father is joyful before the younger son could deliver his carefully rehearsed speech—”But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” We want to believe the boy was welcomed because of his contrition. But neither contrition, or lack thereof—determined the love of the father. What the contrition did do was give the boy a way to enjoy a love he had never understood. Neither son actually affected how the father loved. The same is true for us. We have no choice and certainly cannot explain why God loves us. Our only choice is whether we will enjoy it.
This was the predicament the older son struggled with. In the face of his son’s complaints, the father says: ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ But we don’t know if the elder son ever ‘came to his senses”. We don’t know if he ever realized that joining with the father would bring more joy than any fatted calf or any inheritance. Our need to measure and compare erodes (if not destroys) joy. The older boy’s insistence upon measuring his father’s love left him self excluded. His isolation was every bit as profound as his brother’s sojourn with the pigs.
It is almost a sure sign that we have turned away from God when we lose touch with humility and gratitude. Both boys had a good life and both, in different ways, turned away from it. Both wanted to define the ‘good’ life on their terms and both stood to lose what really mattered. That is the risk of Sin. The inevitable isolation that occurs is not a punishment. It is a natural consequence of losing touch with what we have been given. We need to recognize that the Sin that drives all of our sins is our failure to trust and receive the love that is given.
We can not love like the father—don’t compare yourself. Instead, seek to love in that direction. Recognize yourself if both boys. Learn to live with what we have—even when it is terribly hard. That is how we will find the love of the father. It is always there.
Let it be so.
