Any Excuse for a Party
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
I’m guessing that this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this parable, but there’s something different about hearing it out loud as opposed to reading it in silence. The power of the parable to surprise us is more pronounced when we hear it aloud. It’s more like hearing it for the first time. We don’t carelessly rush past any words or verses thinking that we know how the story will end. Rather, we can allow the story to unfold at its own pace. We can allow our minds to linger on a word or phrase that the Holy Spirit calls to our attention.
As we begin exploring what this parable might mean for us, I want to begin at the end, i.e., with the last verse, with a phrase that struck me as I read the parable aloud to myself in preparing to write this sermon: “But we had to celebrate.” This is what the father tells his older son who is consumed with resentment. His son resents what he perceives as his father’s grandiose forgiveness for and favoritism toward his younger scoundrel of a brother.
“But we had to celebrate.” It’s as if the father is saying, “Of course I celebrate your brother’s return. Don’t you see, it’s in my very nature to celebrate, to welcome home, to forgive. It’s what I do.”
Here we are jumping around in the Gospel of Luke once more, from chapter 13 last week to chapter 15 this week. This chapter is all about parables. Jesus tells three parables one right after another, all of which are linked thematically in that something lost is found. The first parable is about a lost sheep, the second is about a lost coin, and the third and by far the longest of the three is this parable of the lost son.
Luke sets up all three parables by letting us know who is in the audience, who is there with Jesus either wanting to hear a word of good news, or conversely, wanting to show their disapproval. Both camps are represented. There are tax collectors and sinners who are drawn to Jesus because he speaks of the wideness of God’s mercy for people like them.
You may be wondering why tax collectors are grouped with so-called “sinners.” No one likes paying taxes, of course, but tax collectors in first-century Judea were especially reviled. That’s because they were Jews employed by Rome to collect taxes on their fellow Jews. They also had a reputation for keeping a percentage for themselves, so they were considered not only collaborators but also crooks.
Two religious groups are there as well—Pharisees and scribes. These were the good religious people, well versed in all matters of the law of Moses. They can quote chapter and verse, and they take none too kindly to what they perceive as Jesus’ permissive ways. Observing the morally dubious assemblage that has gathered to listen to Jesus preach, they grumble and derisively mutter, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Jesus responds to their scorn by telling a parable about a father and his two sons. The younger of the two asks for his share of the inheritance, meaning he wants to receive everything he’d have coming to him if his father were to die. It’s an outrageous request, insensitive and even cruel. He’s basically wishing his father dead. Just give me my money and I’ll be on my way.
For some reason the father does not object. If he is offended, Jesus doesn’t say. Silently he divides his assets and gives his younger son the portion due to him. This would have been no easy feat. It’s not like the father could transfer money to his son’s bank account via Zelle. Wealth in those days was primarily in land and livestock. The father likely had to sell a large portion of his property and possessions to give his son its equivalent in coins.
The son says sayonara to his father and then heads to Las Vegas for some general debauchery. He stays in five-star hotels, orders room service every night, gambles big on roulette, gets treated as a high roller, dates a chorus of showgirls, and indulges all of his various appetites until, as my NRSV Bible says, “he squandered his wealth in dissolute living.” That’s rather antiseptic language. The NRSV is sometimes too intellectual for my taste.
Other translations depict his time in Sin City as “wild living,” or “extravagant living,” but my favorite wording is from the King James Bible which says that he “wasted his substance in riotous living.” That paints the portrait of a man who has exhausted not only all his financial resources but his body and his very essence. He has indulged himself to such an extent that he is not full but rather empty. After wasting his substance, there is little left of the man who had set off from his father’s house.
In asking for his inheritance while his father is still living, the son is basically wishing his father dead.
His timing could not be worse. No sooner does he spend his last penny than a famine breaks out. He has no job, no money, no friends. When he was living large everyone wanted to be his friend, but now that he is destitute he is alone.
He manages to find a job as a fieldworker tending to a wealthy man’s pigs. As a Jew, someone for whom pigs are regarded as ritually unclean and not to be raised or eaten, this is an act of utter desperation. In a measure of just how far he’s fallen, he eyes with envy the seeds that he feeds the pigs. He thinks to himself, “If only I were as fortunate as these swine.”
The moment is a wake-up call. Jesus describes the man as coming to his senses. “But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!’” He decides then and there to swallow his pride, return home, and beg for his father’s forgiveness. He will not ask to be restored as a son but only to be treated as a hired hand.
As he makes the long journey back home he rehearses his apology. He’s still going over the lines in his head as he nears the border to his father’s property. Suddenly he sees a figure running toward him. Is it one of his father’s workers come to tell him not to bother coming home even to grovel?
As the figure draws closer it appears to have the gait of an older man, but who? Then in disbelief and wonder he makes out the face of his father. The old man throws his arms around him and kisses him. Stunned, he nevertheless begins to recite the apology that he has rehearsed every step of his journey. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
But before he can get to the line about wanting to be treated merely as a hired hand, his father says to his servants, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
The father doesn’t merely welcome his son home, he lavishes him with the best he has to offer—a robe, a ring, sandals, and a feast. He throws a banquet to celebrate because his son who was lost has been found, his son who was dead is alive again.
This parable is about many things—forgiveness, reconciliation, the poisonous nature of resentment, which we’ll get to in a moment—but at its core it is about death. The parable begins with death. In asking for his inheritance while his father is still living, the son in effect is wishing his father dead. And in granting his son’s request, the father in effect dies. The father is willing to die for his son.
Then in turning from his father and losing himself in sin, the son also dies. He dies to the man he was, i.e., his father’s son. We hear it in the apology that he practices: “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” We hear it also in the father’s declaration upon seeing his son return: “This son of mine was dead and is alive again.”
The son was willing to remain dead as a son and live only as a hired hand, but it is the father’s forgiveness that raises him from the dead and restores his status as son. This we must understand: reconciliation between father and son does not occur because of what the son does but because of what the father does. What has raised the son from the dead is not the son’s repentance but the father’s love and forgiveness. Before the son can return home, his father is rushing out the door to greet him.
This is how God is with us. God is not sitting back observing from afar and waiting for us to return home and fall on our knees in repentance. Instead, God the Father sends his own Son to come and meet us where we are, still lost, still alone, still dead in our sin—but not forgotten and in fact already forgiven.
I fear sometimes that we have an image of God as a stern and disapproving teacher who keeps score and grades harshly. To that way of thinking the gospel is an if/then proposition. If I repent, like the younger son does, then God will forgive me. If I want God’s forgiveness, I must make the first move. I must repent.
But that is to get the order of salvation precisely backwards. The father doesn’t sit at home waiting for his son to return and repent. He doesn’t withhold forgiveness until his son comes crawling home and humbles himself. Instead, he rushes out the door, and when he finds his son he embraces and kisses him.
The lesson of this spectacular parable is that rather than an if/then proposition, the gospel is a because/therefore declaration. Because God is merciful, gracious, forgiving, and loving—like the father depicted in this parable—therefore we are free from fear and judgment and can live in the freedom and joy that God intends for us.
The lesson of this spectacular parable is that rather than an if/then proposition, the gospel is a because/therefore declaration.
Someone who does not live in the freedom that God intends is the older son. He’s too busy keeping score. He’s too busy being the “good son” to his younger brother’s “bad son.” He is too captive to his own resentment to experience any sense of freedom or joy.
When he returns from working in the field, being the good son that he is, and hears music and dancing he wonders what in the world is going on. What’s the special occasion? It’s not a holiday. When he learns that the party is for his good-for-nothing brother, he refuses to go inside.
Very well. If he won’t go in, then once again the father will go out. As the father went out to meet his younger son, he does the same for his older son. He goes out and pleads with him.
But the older son doesn’t want to hear it. Unlike the younger son who rehearsed his apology, the words of resentment rush from him in torrents like water from a broken dam. “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, but what have you ever given me? Not a thing! And yet when this degenerate son of yours returns from having wasted your money, you throw him a party!”
He has a point, does he not? If you have been a lifelong Christian, if you grew up in the church, you likely are able to identify with the older son. You’re sober-minded, responsible, reliable, trustworthy. You attend worship almost every Sunday. You show up for special events in the life of the church. But when God’s searching, seeking, healing love reaches into the life of a fellow sinner and calls them home, we take offense. We think that they don’t deserve God’s grace. They haven’t worked for it. They haven’t been laboring in the fields of the church all these years the way we have!
This parable is traditionally known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son, prodigal meaning wastefully extravagant. Clearly with that title the focus is on the younger son. But while the younger son left home and lost himself in riotous living, the older son, even though he never left home, was also lost. He thought that his father was keeping score. He thought that his own dutifulness as a son was earning him points. He thought that his father’s love was a zero-sum game—as though more for his brother meant less for him.
The good news for the younger son and older son alike, and the good news for all of us, is that God is not keeping score, not of what we do right or what we do wrong. God is not the great vice-principal in the sky. God does not want to reward or punish. God wants to celebrate. God wants to celebrate with us the joy of our salvation that Jesus accomplished for us on the cross. God wants there to be joy and freedom in our lives. God wants to throw a party because we have to celebrate.