"two Lost Sons"

“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.