Monthly Archives: August 2016

Do you remember?

Maybe it was the day you got your driver’s license.

Maybe it was when you graduated from college.

More likely, it may have been the day your parents dropped you off in the college dorm for the first time. They said goodbye and you were on your own – well, sort of.

Maybe it was when you took your first cross-country road trip.

We recall the thrill that surged through us in excited anticipation of all the experiences that would come from being free?

When we’re young and filled with hope freedom, in some way, has to do with leaving our parents and discovering the world on our own terms.

We want to leave home. We think we’re ready to leave home. Sure, the world is a challenging place but we can handle it.

We’re jumping out of the nest and will learn to fly. And when we do, we’ll soar.

Because most of us have done this and know the youthful emotions that go with it, few of us find it difficult to identify with the impulses and desires of the young man who left home in the most famous of Jesus’ stories.

This young man wasn’t just leaving home to move into a rental around the corner. He’s headed out – way out.

The wings will be spread wide.

Jesus tells us this younger son left his family – especially his loving but compliant father – and “took his journey into a far country” (Luke 15: 13, KJV, emphasis added). This kid wasn’t taking any chances with a retreat or return. Where he was headed dad wouldn’t know and couldn’t possibly find him.

Freedom meant being far away from all that cramping restraint and boring familiarity.

Distant meant exotic and exciting.

When most kids leave home they aren’t carrying much money. This young man was quite the exception. He had his full inheritance from what was arguably a fairly large estate. His dad had humiliated himself by giving this wealth to his son just because he asked for it.

The great thing? This young man is on his own.

The bad thing? He’s on his own.

The great thing? The kid’s got money.

The bad thing? He’s got money.

This money he’s not earned through either hard work or wise investment. He has no appreciation of its value or the many strenuous efforts and sacrifices of a father who gave it to him against his better judgment.

And speaking of judgment, we soon discover this is an intemperate youth devoid of discernment or self-control. In casting off the restraints and disciplines of family and home, he exercises utterly no restraint or discipline upon himself.

This young man is naïve, inexperienced and trusting.

There is a Proverb that reminds us that “the glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head” (Proverbs 20:29).

Two men went into business together. One furnished the money, the other had the experience. Before long, the man with the experience had the money and the man with the money had the experience.

Sudden wealth can be challenging enough. Ask Mr. Deeds, the innocent country bumpkin who in the classic Depression-era movie inherits $20 million and spends most of the film fighting off those who would try and take it from him.

When you’re as impulsive and flagrant as the kid in this story, your fate is almost sealed from the start.

Prodigal means “extravagantly wasteful”. This son was prodigal.

When he arrived in the big city, he was a child in the candy shop. Nothing was too much. There was partying every other night. The days between were for sleeping off the party from the night before.

Once the word got around – and it did, fast – the kid was instantly popular.

Loose money has lots of friends.

The young man’s lifestyle? What did Jesus call it?

“Riotous living” (Luke 15:13, KJV).

“Wild living” (NIV).

Jesus also says this young prodigal “wasted his substance” on this debauchery. He didn’t invest it or even spend it – he “wasted” it.

In this distant land, far from home, all his father had bestowed upon him – the work and savings of a lifetime – was thrown away on corrupt and shallow amusements.

“He squandered his estate with loose living” (Verse 13, NASB).

And it didn’t take long. Money is far harder earned than spent.

The good times went on – for a while. As the old song says, “those were the days my friend; we thought they’d never end”.

But they did.

A devastating famine hit the land. Hard times fell like a black shroud.

The young man was broke. The money – every last silver denarius – was gone.

“He had spent all” (Luke 15:14, KJV).

His new buddies – who told him during those crazy parties he was their “absolute best friend” – were gone too. Not one stayed. The last one out turned off the light.

Undisciplined and dissipated, now he was alone – broke, scared and desperate.

And he was getting hungry.

He’s about to be humbled.

And to experience the Reality Check of a lifetime.

For this lost and lonely kid the real extravagance is still ahead.

I think this kid has gotten a bum rap.

He was, after all, just a young man with a lot of ideas about what the world was like.

He wanted to see it, experience it and enjoy it.

Life had to be more than this. Why wait?

He wanted out. He wanted to be free – free from restraint, from routine and from responsibility. He’d had enough of the drudgery of the accountable life.

It was time to find out what lay beyond the ranch gate.

He’s been condemned as rebellious and disrespectful and he likely was. But our rush to judgment must be tempered by our own experience.

Anyone who has ever known the young, taught the young, raised the young or has ever been young understands that in this great and familiar story Jesus touched a universally responsive chord.

Youth is often filled with big dreams and big ambitions. It’s natural.

Even sweet-hearted George Bailey, stuck in Bedford Falls, chafed to be free.

“I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet,” he told a friend, “and I’m going to see the world.”

Expressed or repressed, this is the desire of the young.

“A man had two sons”.

With this simple understatement Jesus begins the story that has moved hearts and impacted the world for more than two thousand years. In art, in literature, in film and in pulpits the Parable of the Prodigal Son has been told thousands of times.

Here is a story that will never grow old because its truths and lessons are timeless.

In no other biblical account save the birth, death and resurrection of Christ himself do we see the essence of Christianity so purely and beautifully portrayed.
We recall it and love it because, in the end, it is our story.

It is the story of all of us and of each of us.

We see and hear the characters of this poignant drama – by turns despicable, desperate and devout – and, if honest, we identify with each one. Here is the range of human emotions as if captured on canvas.

We know this feeling. We’ve felt this way. We’ve acted this way. We’ve thought these thoughts.

The younger son musters his chutzpah and tells his father he wants his share of the inheritance.

Now.

The father knows this is the wild one. He’s seen his spirit and his resistance as he entered his teen years. Dr. James Dobson would have called him The Strong-willed Child. But the dad loves him, even admires his tempestuousness. He may even have spoiled him a bit.

In Jewish custom, this demand of the younger son is a flagrant offense – an indignity to the father. It’s an embarrassment to the family and a scandal to the neighbors. To ask for one’s inheritance while the parent still lived was an unthinkable affront.

Those hearing this story for the first time were a mixed bag.

Dr. Luke, who records this parable in the 15th chapter of his gospel, points out in the opening verses of the chapter that there is strong tension. The “tax collectors and notorious sinners” flocked to hear this most winsome and fascinating of rabbis. The envious religious establishment – the Pharisees – viewed him as a threat and complained about the unsavory company he often kept (Luke 15:1-2).

It’s safe to say that both mutually suspicious groups were found in Jesus’ audience that day. They governed the story and its purpose. Jesus knew their hearts.

We don’t know how the father reacted to the son’s demand. Was he stunned? Was he angry? What did he say? Did he object or try to talk his son out of this intemperate insistence?

Was there any argument? Was there any attempt at reasoning?

We know what the father did.

He gave both his sons what only the younger one had demanded: his wealth.

This broke the father’s heart. Whatever he said or didn’t say, the dad knew this was wrong – a bad choice made by a good kid under the headstrong influence of an urgent impulse.

If he thought there was anything he could do about it he probably didn’t try.

That night his pillow was wet. He didn’t sleep.

Many of us have been here.

Some argue the father was weak. Or was he just wise?

The boy didn’t leave at first. He stayed around a few more days. Then Jesus says he “packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land” (Luke 15: 13, NLT, emphasis added).

He left his home. He left the father who had raised him, cared for him, taught him, encouraged him and provided well for him.

He left the father who loved him – so much that even now, as the boy packed and prepared to walk out, his father longed more than anything else simply to embrace him and tell him how much he loved him. He wasn’t too proud to beg but knew it was useless.

We shake our heads. How could this kid be so thoughtless, self-centered and short-sighted?

How could he spurn his own father’s love?

Yes, but remember, this is our story.

It is the story of all of us and of each of us.

It is the story of every sinner.

It is the story of humankind.

But it’s not over.