An Outrageous Father and a Ne'er do Well Son

So, the Prodigal Son, better named the Outrageous Father, is a story about a father with two sons.

The younger one is an upstart, full of himself, confident of his own ability.  He asks for and receives his part of the inheritance (effectively saying to his Father, "you are as good as dead to me") turns all that cattle into cash and takes a trip to a  foreign land where he immediately spends all his money. Then there is a famine and no one knows him and no one will help him.

He gets a job feeding pigs.  Think about that for a moment:  a Jew feeding pigs....and he is so hungry he is tempted to eat the pig food.  "Aha! he exclaims."' My Father treats his hired hands better than this....I will go home, apologize profusely and offer to work as his servant."

And so a plan is hatched.  He rehearses his speech before he arrives.  "Father I have sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son."  You have to admit, it's a very good apology.  This young man is repentent and humble, a very good combination for getting our sympathy.

We are more than ready to make a path back into the family for this son.  Perhaps a few years of difficult work.  Perhaps he will always be a hired hand.  Perhaps he will have to take his meals at the 'kids table' in the future.  But we can see a way back for this son.

So can the father.  He sees him far off and runs to meet him - throws his arm around him and does everything but dance a jig. " Hurry! he calls. "Kill the fatted calf.  My son has returned and we must celebrate."

So if God is the Father in this parable, then we can well imagine that God has enough love to welcome back the younger son, even to throw him a party.  It gives us comfort to encounter this God because we want a God who has enough love to cover us when we act like idiots and wander off into our equivalent of pig country and find ourselves stuck in the mud.

We are grateful for a God whose love is this big because this is the God we want to encounter as we prepare our repentent cries and seek the Lord's favor.  We want to face a God who has room in his heart for a broken person, especially one who is repentent and humble.....as it should be, especially for those who are working very hard to be good. These are exactly the kind of people God's love should cover.

If only Luke had stopped there, we could have twisted this little parable into any number of interpretations that require the broken ones to work their way back to the Father.  We could have rested easy with a God who loves the occassionally lost one.

The problem is there is one more son, and his is an entirely different story....that, and on any given day, we are either one of the two.