PARABLES OF CHRIST
THE PRODIGAL SON
DR. JIM DIXON
LUKE 15:11-32
JUNE 21, 1998
Of all of the parables of Christ, the parable of the prodigal son is perhaps the most famous. When you read this parable, some of you will identify with the prodigal. Perhaps you’ve had a wayward life. Perhaps you rebelled against your parents. You may have rebelled against God and you may have done things that you wish you could erase. When you read this parable, others of you will identify with the elder brothers, the oldest son. Perhaps you’ve lived a relatively righteousness life, relatively upright life, and perhaps you even resent just a little bit those members of the Christian community whose backgrounds have been more promiscuous than yours.
When you read this parable, perhaps a few of you, if you’ve had a particularly hard life, will identify with the fatted calf but, of course, this parable has nothing to do with the fatted calf. It is not primarily focused on the older son or even on the prodigal. The primary focus of this parable is the father, the loving, forgiving father. Jesus told this parable in order that we might understand what God is like, in order that we might understand the nature and character of the Heavenly Father. Though this is called the parable of the prodigal son, it really should be called the parable of the loving father.
On this Father’s Day, we examine this parable. As we look at this father in the parable, we see two wonderful qualities and the first quality is mercy. The father in this parable is laden with mercy. Jesus would have us to understand that’s what God is like. In the Lotus of Perfect Law which is an ancient and sacred Buddhist writing, there is another story of another prodigal, a young man who rebelled against his father and family, took his portion of the family’s wealth and ran away. He lived a debauched life.
After a period of years, he returned home in repentance and his father sent him to a distant part of the estate where he began to test his son. He gave him tasks, jobs to do, to see whether he was hard working and industrious. The father put temptation in the path of his son to see whether his son had self-control and whether his son would be faithful. The father did this for months and months and only after his son had passed all of the tests was that son finally accepted back into the family. How unlike the parable of the loving and forgiving father that our Lord Jesus Christ told. How unlike the portrayal of the father in this parable.
Jesus tells us that this rather sees the son coming from a distance. We are led to imagine this father daily looking for his returning son, scanning the horizon, longing to have his son come home. One day he saw his son and he was moved with compassion. Jesus tells us that he ran toward his son and he put his arms around him and he hugged him and he kissed him. Jesus told a stunned audience that that is what God is like. He longs for us to come home. He longs for us to repent .He is looking for us, scanning the horizon. He is moved with compassion. He longs to run to us. He wants to put his arms around us and hold us. He wants to kiss us. This is the image of God in this incredible parable.
Certainly as earthly parents we, too, want to have this great quality of mercy. Certainly as earthly parents we, too, want to be forgiving and compassionate. I thank God that I had a very merciful father. My father died 2-1/2 years ago and I ‘m very thankful for the years that he was here on this earth. I remember when I was six or seven years old, my father came home one night. He had a trophy that he had won. He had won a handball tournament at the Glendale YMCA in Glandale, California. This was a beautiful trophy and you could tell he was so proud. He had never won a trophy before and he was just beaming from ear to ear. He had taken first place in this tournament. He pm the trophy on a shelf in the hallway of our home. He had one restriction and that was, “Jim can’t touch this.” That was understandable since I must say I seem to have been kind of accident prone.
I was the youngest or three brothers. In fact, I’m still the youngest of three brothers. It does seem, oftentimes, that the youngest at least appears to be accident prone. I did tend to break things from time to time. My oldest brother Gary always said to me, you plus something equals nothing” which I guess was his form of new math. In any event, the very next day I was in the hallway and I was looking at my dad’s trophy. It was gold and it was shiny and it just looked so interesting. I wanted to feel it. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to see how heavy it was. I knew I wasn’t supposed to but I did it anyway. I held it in my hands. I began to turn it around. I don’t know exactly what happened or how I did it but somehow I dropped it and it fell off the shelf and then ricocheted down onto the floor and it broke. I was really afraid. I told my mom and I could tell she was concerned too about how Dad was going to handle this.
When Dad came home that night, I brought the broken trophy to him and explained to him what had happened. Dad looked at me and he didn’t discipline me. He just went into his room and he closed the door. I would tell that my dad was really hurt and I could tell my dad was really devastated. That made me feel worse. I mean if he had disciplined me, I think that would have been easier but I could tell I had really hurt him. I remember just wanting my dad to forgive me, wanting my dad to look at me and smile again, wanting my dad to come and put his hand on my shoulder as sometimes he did.
I had a great dad, and it wasn’t long before he did smile at me again. It wasn’t long before he did put his hand on my shoulder again as often, he did. I began to feel reconciliation with my dad as he forgave me. As I could see that forgiveness, I began to feel union with my dad. There is so much power in mercy, so much power. So much power in forgiveness. Reconciliation and union are impossible apart from mercy and apart from forgiveness. If your children need mercy, if they are in need of forgiveness, whatever their age, now is the time to offer that. Certainly, we are to rear our children with discipline and certainly we are to rear our children with nurture and instruction but that discipline and instruction should always be tempered with mercy and with forgiveness.
It is not only parents who need to show mercy to their children but it’s children who need to show mercy to their parents. Perhaps on this Father’s Day there are some of you here who need to forgive your dads. I don’t say this flippantly and I know that for some of you that is very hard because some of you have experienced great pain. I’m not calloused towards that but there is this call of Christ. It’s clear in this parable and in so many other places of scripture. God understands whatever anger and whatever pain you have and certainly that you need to process that but it’s meant to lead to mercy.
You know, I want to tell you the story of a young woman whose name is Mary. That name is a pseudonym but the story is absolutely true. Mary was about 20 years old when I met her or when I talked to her. She had not spoken to her father in eight years. Her father had committed adultery when Mary was 12 and had continued in that adulterous relationship. It broke up his marriage and it broke up the family. His father wound up marrying the young woman he committed adultery with. What made it all the harder for Mary was that the woman that her father committed adultery with was her baby-sitter.
Mary was the oldest of three kids and she was most able to understand and she was deeply wounded. The hurt and the anger was great. Over a period of a few years, Mary’s father repented and recommitted his life to Christ.He called Mary and asked for forgiveness but she could not grant it. Mary’s father came down with liver cancer. It was terminal and he was dying. I received a phone call from a member of our counseling staff asking me if I would go with Mary, who was now willing to forgive her father and wanted to forgive her father before he died. I was glad to do this because her father had been my friend, and her father had been my roommate for two years at Westmont College.
I remember a Saturday afternoon when we met, Mary and I, in the church parking lot over on Colorado Boulevard when our church was there. I went with Mary down to Castle Rock where her father lived. As we drove up to the little house and we approached the door, we could hear crying. In fact we could hear almost a wailing. We knew something was horribly wrong. When we went inside, Mary’s father had just died within the last 15 minutes. His wife was on the bed shaking his body, screaming for him to come back. It was an indescribable moment. I could see on Mary’s face how devastated she was that she had arrived too late to give forgiveness and show that mercy to her dad.
But I told Mary, as we were driving home that day, that the trip was not in vain. I told Mary, as we were driving home that day, that God knew her heart and God knew what she was prepared to do and God knew that she had made that trip to forgive her father and to show mercy to him. I told Mary that surely God has already told her father in heaven. I said that then and I believe that now but is it not true that the time to show mercy, the time for forgiveness is now. If you have some grievance with your father or your mother, the Spirit of God wants you to know the time for mercy is today. We have a merciful Father in heaven and we are called to mercy.
There’s a second wonderful quality in the Father in this parable. The second quality is the quality of grace. The Heavenly Father is not only characterized by mercy but He is characterized by grace.
Some of you have heard of the Witch of Wall Street. She died in 1916. Her name was Hettie Green. She was, of course, not a witch in the sense of occultism or spiritism. All of her witchery was socioeconomic. When she died in 1916, historians tell us she was the richest woman on the earth. Hettie Green had inherited $6 million from the family whaling business and she had invested that money in gold and in U.S. government bonds and in railroads and real estate. By the time of her death in 1916, Hettie Green, the Witch of Wall Street, was worth more than $100 million. But it’s safe to say she was a little bit tight. She was not generous to the needs of anybody. She was even tight with regard to her own needs. She went around in frayed, worn out clothes. It was a kind of disguise for her. She didn’t want anyone to think that she was rich. She was afraid that people would come up and ask her for money which she didn’t want to give. Of course, the disguise didn’t work. Everybody knew who Hettie Green was. Everybody realized how she dressed but nobody went up and asked her for anything because everybody knew that she would never give away a penny.
Incredibly, she traveled around in a carriage that was made of an old chicken coop. She didn’t even own a home. She lived in boarding houses. Every morning she would go down to the street and she would buy a newspaper. She would go back upstairs and she would read the newspaper. Then when she was finished reading it, she would re-wrap it and put the string around it and go back to the street and try to sell it to get her money back. When she went to the grocery store, she would take bottles with her. If she bought anything in a bottle, she would go to the proprietor and she would ask if she could get a discount if she put the contents of the bottle into her own bottle. She was tight.
Historians tell us that she was the greatest miser in the history of the world. Have you ever thought about the word miser? Where does that word come from? What is its etymology? The word miser is just a transliteration of the Latin word “misare” which means “to pity.” It is true that a miser is a person who has no pity on the needs of others. A miser is a person who has no compassion, who does not give or respond to the needs of other people. Ultimately a miser is a person who doesn’t even respond to his or her own needs. A miser is wretched and pitiable. In fact the word miser and miserable have the same root.
Now, in Latin there is a word which is the opposite of the word miser. It is the Latin word “grotis,” a word which means grace, a word which is used to describe our Heavenly Father. You see, our Heavenly Father is the opposite of a miser. Our Heavenly Father is characterized by grace and that means that He is generous. In fact the word grace in the Greek, the word “charis” means “to give” and it is related to the Greek word “charisma” which is the word for “gift.” To be a person of grace means to be a giving and generous person.
In this parable we see the incredible generosity of the Father. He not only forgave his son but he gave to his son. Not only mercy but grace. Mercy is forgiving. Grace is giving. “And so,” he said, “bring the finest robe, the best robe, and place it on my son. I want to honor him. Put a ring on his finger.” Most Bible scholars believe it was the signet ring, giving the authority of the family back to the son. “Put shoes on his feet.” Of course only slaves went about unshod. This son was to be no slave. “Kill the fatted calf that we might make merry and celebrate.” A giving dad. And, of course, the son knew that his father was generous. He knew that even the hired servant had bread enough and to spare because his dad was generous. The oldest brother begrudged the father’s generosity but even to the older brother the father was generous, saying, “Son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours.”
So when you look at God as Jesus portrays Him in this parable… when you look at the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, you are to understand that He is giving and forgiving, filled with mercy and grace. As earthly parents we are to be giving and forgiving, filled with mercy and grace, and yes, we are to rear our children in discipline and instruction but always to be tempered with mercy and grace, giving and forgiving.
I thank God that my father was giving. When my father died 2-1/2 years ago, at the funeral in December of 1995, I did not conduct the service. I did not think I would be able to. I did do the committal service at the graveside but Darrell Johnson, the Pastor at Glendale Presbyterian Church in California conducted the funeral service. Darrell, in the course of the funeral service, asked if there was anyone who wanted to stand up in an impromptu way and say something about my dad. Many people did stand up, but I think many of us were surprised when my wife Barb stood up. She said she just thanked God for my father’s generosity. I think most people who knew my dad, that’s the quality they would have most mentioned, my dad’s generosity.
When Barb and I were married, I borrowed the money from my dad to buy the ring for Barb.I didn’t have any money. I was a theology student. I did work part-time at the YMCA but things were tight. When Barb and I went on our honeymoon, we spent every penny we had on the honeymoon. We came home absolutely totally broke. We came home to a one-room apartment which was in an apartment house owned by my father. He was letting us stay there for free if we would do certain chores around the place which we were glad to do.
It was shortly after we came home from our honeymoon that we were driving in Barb’s Volkswagen and suddenly smoke came out of the back. I went back and opened up hood to look at the engine and it just was virtually on fire. I said, “Barb, when was the last time you put oil in your car?” Barb didn’t know. She didn’t even know that you put oil in cars. She did not know that you put oil in cars. You know, my dad had mercy on us. My dad showed grace towards us. He knew our situation and my dad said, “You know, son, your mom needs to get another car and we’re going to go ahead and get her another car. Why don’t I take that Volkswagen. We’ll put a new engine in it, sell it and we’ll give you mom’s car.” They gave us my mom’s Mustang. That was the car we drove back here to Colorado when we took our first job at Faith Presbyterian Church and bought our first home, which my mom and dad helped us buy.
I know that there are many of you here who are not able to do all those things for your kids because you don’t have the money but you wish you could. God understands that and hopefully your children understand that. The message here is to think of ways that you can show grace and mercy. Sometimes just the gift of your time is worth more than money. It’s not easy being a parent. It’s not easy being a father.
I wanted to read to you, as we close, these funny little descriptions of some tests that you can take to see whether or not you’re ready to become a parent and whether or not you’re ready to rear children. For women, this is a test that will prepare you for maternity. “Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag chair down the front. Leave it there for nine months and after nine months, remove 10% of the beans!” You’re ready to go after that! To men, this is a test to prepare you for paternity. “Go to the local drugstore, tip the contents of your wallet on the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Next, go to the supermarket and arrange to have your salary paid directly to the head office. Go home, pick up the paper and read it for the last time.” This is one of my favorites to find out whether or not you’re ready to feed a 12-month old child. “Hollow out a melon, make a small hole in the side, suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from the ceiling, swinging it from side to side. Now, get a bowl of soggy Fruit Loops and attempt to spoon it into the hole of the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane! Continue until half of the Fruit Loops are gone and tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.” That’s a good test to see whether you’re ready to feed kids.
But, of course, it’s not easy is it? I mean it’s not easy being a dad. It’s not easy being a mom and yet the rewards are so great. We are all in need of mercy. We are all in need of grace. This great parable tells us of the mercy of God. This great parable tells us of the grace of God.It tells us of His willingness to give and forgive and it calls us to be giving and forgiving in all of our relationships for His sake. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.