"the Parable Of The Loving Father"

“The Parable of the Loving Father”

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

So, Jesus was hanging out with the only crowd that ever seemed to want to hang out with Him.

Tax Collectors, Sinners—which referred to anyone from a person with a skin disease, to a person with crushed organs to prostitutes, and so forth—anyone on the margins who was deemed an outcast, not good enough…

…folks that the self-righteous religious leaders of Jesus’ day looked down on, judged and thought weren’t worth a lick.

So, we are told that these religious leaders—these Pharisees and teachers of the law did what they usually did when they found Jesus hanging out with His peeps—they “muttered” and they grumbled, and they judged and they looked down their noses at the whole scene with absolute disgust and said, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

And so, because of that, Jesus told THEM this parable.

And while the parable has been named by someone down through the centuries: “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” or “The Lost Son”—it’s more about the Father in the Story.

It’s more about what God is really like and how God views humanity, the sinners and the self-righteous alike.

In my opinion, it should really be called “The Parable of the Loving Father.”

Because it is all about God.

And it’s always all about God, anyway, is it not?

God is the One Who created us.

God is the One Who became One of us.

God is the One Who is ONE with us.

God is the One Who died to save us.

And God is the One Who pursues us, like a shepherd searching for a lost sheep and a woman searching for a lost coin—which are the two parables Jesus also tells before the one we are looking at this morning.

And God is the One Who finds us.

And as we are told in verse 10: “there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

So, how do we get there?

How do we get to the place where we repent—where we are found?

Do we get ourselves to that place on our own, or is it all God’s doing???

Let’s see…

There is no doubt that this parable has three main characters.

We’ve got the younger brother.

We’ve got the older brother.

And we’ve got dad.

There ARE the townspeople at the party, but they aren’t named and there is the servant and he only has one line…

…so, there are three MAIN characters.

There are themes that can be thought of as being independent of one another, but they all have something in common at a deeper level.

Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God.

His message was about a God Whose love far surpasses any and all love expressed by mere humans.

And that love of God is celebrated by those who accept it, who give into it…shall we say?

But it can also give rise to resentment in those who assume that they know all about it and claim to know who is worthy of it, and who is not.

To try and get to the radical love shown by the father in this story—who clearly represents God—we need to look at the context in which the story was originally told.

When reading and studying the Bible it is always extremely important to look at the context, to learn as much as we can about the customs of First Century Palestine—in this case.

And shame and honor were the dominant culture.

And so, let’s find out more about this shame-honor culture as it has to do with the Parable of the Loving Father.

Jesus starts the parable with the younger son asking his father for an advance on his inheritance.

In Jesus’ shame-honor culture, asking a living parent for an early inheritance was not only rude, but it was the equivalent of saying to dear old dad: “I wish you were dead.”

And Children who did such things would lose their respect and honor, and their community would ostracize them…

…very much like the religious rulers ostracized anyone they considered to be a “sinner.”

The parent’s response to such a request would have caused a huge wave of fierce anger.

Parents and children would cut all ties to one another over something like this.

But, in this case, radically and contrary to what anyone listening would expect of a father dealing with this kind of request from a son—the loving father agrees to divide the property between his two sons.

Like I said, those listening to this parable would have been absolutely shocked by the action of the father and the younger son.

No one should do such a thing.

It takes the younger son a few days to gather together everything he has inherited and then travel to a foreign country.