I was in Chapters the other day and bought a copy of Henri
Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son.
It is a special two-in-one anniversary edition, which also features another of
his works, Home Tonight. While not
yet through the book in its entirety, I am having a hard time putting it down,
which in my way of thinking, speaks volumes for the quality of a book. It is
rich with insight and application, which for Nouwen began with a chance
encounter with a copy of Rembrandt’s The
Return of the Prodigal Son.
I guess I’ve always related to the Prodigal Son (Luke 15),
often identifying myself with the younger of the two brothers in Jesus’ parable.
No doubt you recall the story, of how a father had two sons, and the younger of
them goes to his father and asks for his share of the inheritance, and then
promptly takes off to a far country where he squanders everything in a wild
lifestyle, eventually becoming destitute. After a season of hiring himself out
to feed someone’s pigs, who the parable tells us ate better than the son did, he
comes to his senses and returns home, apologetic script for dad in hand, and
throws himself at the mercy of his father, not really expecting to be accepted
as a son anymore, but hoping that perhaps he might just maybe be accepted as a hired
servant, or even as a slave.
But for there to be a “Return,” there had to first be a
“Leaving.”
Now when I said that I had often identified myself as the
prodigal, I meant that only insofar as I was identifying with leaving home at a
young age, a little ruff around the edges with a questionable lifestyle, a
sixteen year old with forty years of life experience (or so I thought and acted),
full of attitude and thinking the world owed me a big fat living. Boy, if I
could only go back and meet that young man once again, I’d like to knock some
sense into him! Several years later after (thankfully) maturing a bit more and
coming to my own senses, I too returned as a changed man to my father’s house, figuratively
speaking, though I never actually lived there again.
However, there is so much more to the parable of the
Prodigal Son than just that of a rebellious teenager gone amuck. There is
another way that maybe we all, from Adam right up to today, are just like the
Prodigal Son; we all have gone astray to some far off country. “There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away,
they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even
one” (Romans 3:10-12). No exceptions; we’re all painted with the same
brush. Ultimately, are we not all prodigal sons and daughters? I think we are,
the only question is, where in this pilgrimage exactly are we?
The part in the parable in which the younger son asks for
his share of the inheritance, I could not relate to, as that just was not a part of
my experience, and in truth, it seems that for some reason, I usually tended to quickly read over that part without
too much meditation. However, we would do well to think about that a little bit,
for it really is quite troubling, especially when read through the eyes of eastern cultural understandings. In that light, Henri Nouwen goes
on to quote Kenneth Bailey, who writes:
For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same … the conversation runs as follows:
Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?
Never!
Could anyone ever make such a request?
Impossible!
If anyone ever did, what would happen?
His father would beat him, of course!
Why?
The request means – he wants his father to die. (p. 40-41)
I can honestly say that I have never ever thought of it that
way. Pretty harsh, wouldn’t you say? Do you suppose that is what the father in
the parable was thinking too? If so, then that request from the younger son
shows, not just an awful lot of nerve and disrespect, but also the extremes
possible when sin is allowed to have the day. I mean, what was he thinking? Was his dad not dying
fast enough? Maybe the younger son really did need a time out behind the
woodshed with dad and a good old fashioned strap! But that was not the father’s way. The son
didn’t get the lashing that he deserved for being disrespectful and wishing his
father were dead; instead the father gave him what he wanted, and the son
packed up and left his hometown, and his father's house, and moved far away to some distant place.
We’ve all wandered away from our Heavenly Father’s house,
taking our share of the inheritance with us, though not perhaps wishing the
Father were dead in so many words (and yet remembering that they did kill God the Son), but falling for the devil’s lies enough that
the rest of the story may just be a case of semantics. What we really deserve is to be
taken behind the woodshed and taught a lesson or two, but Father God, in his
great love, just let’s us go, not giving us what our disrespectful and
downright sinful ways deserve, but letting us choose our own paths, and hoping that one day we'll return home.
Thank God the story doesn't end there.
But the story doesn’t end there; the younger son returns and
is welcomed home with the father’s embrace. I like to see Father God in that
light. Yes, we’ve all gone off to our own “distant country,” and squandered our
heavenly inheritances in immorality and debauchery, living lives that only prove
all the more our need for a Saviour; our need for a Redeemer.
But the story also has an older son, and while he dutifully
stayed home with his father, in his own way, he too left and became distant and sinful. He was angry and needed to be welcomed back into the fold. Maybe, as
Nouwen observed,
“The parable that Rembrandt painted might well be called ‘The Parable of the Lost Sons.’ Not only did the younger son, who left home to look for freedom and happiness in a distant country, get lost, but the one who stayed home also became a lost man. Exteriorly he did all the things a good son is supposed to do, but, interiorly, he wandered away from his father. He did his duty, worked hard every day, and fulfilled all his obligations but became increasingly unhappy and unfree.” (p.80)
So which of the brothers was closer to the heart of the
father?
Did not the father love them both equally? Of course he did. But when
the younger son returned from his “distant country,” the eldest son was still
stuck out in his own “distant country.” Did the eldest son ever come around, make
peace with his father and his lost brother, go into the house and join the
party? While we hope that he did, we aren't told, we don’t know; all we can do is speculate.
While we all can conjure up images of the prodigal son
easily enough; the child who grew up in a good Christian home, went to Sunday
School, was baptized at an early age, and then somewhere in his or her young
adult life, perhaps, he or she walked away from the church and from the faith
that Mom and Dad raised him or her in. We’ve all witnessed or heard about those
stories, although often mentioning them has become somewhat taboo in many church circles.
But the image of the older son we don’t really see as
clearly; it’s a little hazier, perhaps, than that of the younger son, and as such is
easily missed altogether. As I think about him or her, I see someone steeped in
religion, going through the motions of a faith they don’t really necessarily
even believe in. Tradition, perhaps, dictates their “walk with God,” though
it’s questionable at best if God is even in that thing they so dutifully do
Sunday after Sunday. I see someone who is perhaps even a little hypocritical,
such as the Pope recently called them, suggesting that they try atheism instead (ouch!). Is this the older brother? He’s going through the motions well
enough, but without his own genuine journey back to the Father, it may be that he
remains just as lost as his younger brother earlier was.
Which son do you identify more with?

Though I am no longer in the pastoral ministry of the
institutional church, my “ministry,” and that of everyone identifying with the
father in Jesus’ parable, is really the only true ministry of the church today;
it is the “Ministry of Reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5: 11-21). That is what
the younger son received from the father; that is what the father wanted to
desperately give the older son as well, but he wasn’t going to force the
matter. When we identify with the father, the “Ministry of Reconciliation” has
us saying with the Apostle Paul, “We are
therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through
us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians
5:20).
Do you identify more with the younger son or the older son? Regardless
who you once were, may you now identify with the father. May the "Ministry of Reconciliation" now be yours.
Something to think about. Peace.
First photo source: Rembrandt copy of "The Return of the Prodigal Son," taken from Henri Noun's book by the same name; Anniversary Edition.
Second photo source: Entitled simply, "Born Again." From a framed poster my wife and I have had hanging in our living room for many years. (2 Corinthians 5:17). Artist unknown.
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