"The Prodigal Returns" by Rembrandt, one of my favorite artists.
I really liked studying for the sermon I gave this past Sunday about the Prodigal Son. Re-discovering the story with the father being the active agent in the restoration of the boy rather than the boy being the active one really put the story in perspective. It also helped so much for me to understand the disconnect between the two preceding stories of the lost sheep and lost coin. In those two stories, the shepherd and woman are the ones initiating the search and doing the finding and now I see how the father in the Prodigal Son story is the one doing the restoring, not the boy.
One thing I ran out time to say yesterday: the second son often gets the short end of the stick. But he is also in need of rescuing. I see the Prodigal Son as being the person in need of rescue because sin has wrecked him. I see the older son as being the person in need of rescue because he has been wrecked by religion. Whereas the younger son knows he is unacceptable and hatches his own scheme to work his way back in, the older son thinks that his actions necessitate the father's love.
The key to Luke 15 is this (a nod to my Reformed leanings): it is God who seeks and God who saves. He is the shepherd seeking the sheep, he is the woman seeking the coin, he is the father seeking the restoration of his sons in spite of their deep offenses to him.
Seeing God as Father is something that I am just recently stepping into -- somewhere over the course of the last four or five years -- but it is something that is revolutionizing my relationship with Him. It's a cool journey.
2 comments:
Good questions. My guess is that the older son never had asked for a goat cause he doesn't say that he did. Knowing the goodness of the Father's heart, if his son had wanted a goat, he would have given it to him. So I think he just expected it cause he thought he deserved it.
Point of note: goat is gross. I had some in Bulgaria. Definitely does not taste like chicken.
He definitely thought he deserved it -- that's the point and the problem. This reminds me a lot of the other story Jesus told about the workers who were hired at different parts of the day. Some worked all day, some just for a few hours, all got paid the same. That's life in the upside-down Kingdom. It doesn't matter how good you are or how bad you are, all are dead in their sin, all have fallen short, and to all Jesus extends the same grace.
Yes, you can know grace without fans getting covered in poo, because extension and understanding of grace and mercy is a work of the Holy Spirit (see Titus 3). Circumstances often provide a deeper "awareness" of need of grace, but by no means are necessitated or even acknowledged.
Billy goats are not well represented in children's books, but I think mountain goats are pretty cool -- although they probably taste terrible too.
I like to pretend that I'm living in California.
McCaulay Culkin annoys the heck out of me except in Saved -- he was pretty good in that.
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