It’s every parent’s worst nightmare – to have a child get lost. In our big, bad, very cruel world, we know that some children are found too late or never found at all. As a matter of fact, on any given day, there are as many as 3 million runaway and homeless youth on the streets in our country. At one point about 20 years ago, one of those missing children was my niece Contessa. She was 16 years old at the time. She left a nice home, loving parents, three sisters who usually got along as well as teenage girls ever do, a school where she was an A-student, and a church that was home to her as well. My brother and sister-in-law didn’t know where she was for a long time but finally heard that she was staying with a couple in an abandoned house where there was no electricity, no heat, no water, and no food. It broke their hearts to see her living like that, to know that she had, on some level, rejected them and all the love that they had given her.
This parable of Jesus describes what it’s like for a child to be lost and what it’s like for a parent to wait for that child to come home. It has been called the greatest short story in the world, and I would agree with that assessment. At its most basic level, the parable is about love. It describes a stubborn, illogical, unexpected, undeserved love that a father has for his sons, and also that same kind of love that God has for his children. I think that it is part of the richness of the story that most of us recognize ourselves in one of the two lost boys. There is the son who is lost in rebellion and the son who is lost in resentment. And their father went to both sons to let them know that they were loved and wanted at home.
We’re told that the younger brother went to his father and asked for his share of the estate. This was not something that was usually done. Normally, inheritance is not received until after the benefactor dies. This request was rude and inappropriate, and in some way was like the boy saying to his father, “I wish you were dead.” Even so, the father went ahead and divided up his estate between his two sons – notice that they each received their share. And then the father’s heart was broken a few days later when the younger son packed up his belongings, including his newly obtained wealth, and set off for a distant country, leaving no forwarding address.
Things were pretty good for a while. At first, it seemed like a great adventure. The young man quickly attracted a lot of new friends with the money he spent on food, pleasure and entertainment. But it didn’t take all that long for him to fritter away his entire inheritance. He must have been completely startled. How had that happened? How could he have spent all that money so fast? The boy’s new friends drifted off to see if they could find someone else to finance their good times.
On top of that, a famine fell on the land. There was no food to spare for this young foreigner who could no longer pay his own way. Out of desperation, the boy got a job feeding pigs, something that no good Jew would have done in normal circumstances, because pigs were considered to be ritually unclean, and anyone handling them would also be ritually unclean. The boy hit rock bottom the day he found himself ready to eat the food he was scattering for the pigs. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad; they may not be as bitter as people said they were.
Something happened to that young man in the mud and grime of the pig sty. In the midst of his struggle, with his stomach growling and his head hurting, the boy came to his senses. He took a long, hard look at himself and was not pleased with what he saw. And he also found himself thinking about home, and about his father. He remembered what it felt like to be loved and safe. He began to realize that he needed to take responsibility for his actions. So, he pulled himself together and headed for home, ready to apologize to his father and ask for a chance to find a job on his estate. He would throw himself on his father’s mercy.
But before the boy got home, his father saw him coming down the road. How did he happen to notice the boy on the way home? I think it’s because he spent a lot of time watching and hoping and praying for his son to come home. And on that day, when he looked down the road in the direction his son had left, he saw a young man heading his way and he recognized his son. He was dirty and skinny as a rail and worn out, but the father knew him when he was still a long way off. The father just couldn’t wait for his son to get there, so he picked up his robe and took off running towards his boy. This was not acceptable behavior for an older man in respectable society. But that father couldn’t have cared less about his dignity or his reputation; he just wanted to get to his son.
All the way home, the boy had been practicing what he would saw to his father when he saw him. He knew that he had done wrong, and that his father had every right to turn him away. He would have to convince his father that he had changed. But the young man was in for a surprise when he looked up and saw his father running towards him. His arms were wide open, there was a smile on his face, he was weeping tears of joy. Before the son could get out a word of his rehearsed apology, the father brushed it off, and was hugging him and kissing him, weeping, and shouting orders to the servants. “Bring him the best robe!” That would have been the father’s own robe, and by placing it on his son, he showed that the boy was accepted back into the family again. “Put a ring on his finger!” Men wore signet rings with the family seal on them and used them to stamp hot wax on sealed documents to prove they were genuine. “Place shoes on his feet!” In the ancient world, only slaves went barefoot. “Kill the fattened calf!” That meant a party. There was no way to preserve beef back then, and the entire amount needed to be eaten so that it would not spoil. Families only killed a calf when they were hosting a celebration. The father had restored his son to the family so that he had all the same honors and privileges as a son, as if nothing had happened. Forgiveness had been given to him before he even asked for it.
I imagine that the son was absolutely stunned by his father’s actions. Probably they caused a lot of gossip among the friends and neighbors who came to the party. That boy had left home after insulting his father; he had squandered his entire inheritance; yet here he was, welcomed home with a party. He should have been fed bread and water, not a banquet of wine and meat. He should have been made to wear sackcloth, not a fine robe. He should have had ashes placed on him, not a ring. He should have been kneeling in humility, not dancing with joy. Think about it.
I am reminded of a story I read about a man who was awakened in the middle of the night by the telephone. He answered it and heard a girl on the other end crying. She blurted out, “Daddy, I’m pregnant.” He was stunned, because his daughter was not married, but he forgave her and prayed with her. The next day he wrote her a letter offering his advice and love. Three days later, the man received another phone call. His daughter had received the letter and didn’t know what to think of it. She had not called him in the middle of the night and she was not pregnant. Some other girl had apparently dialed the wrong number. But the daughter said that her father’s letter was one of her greatest treasures. In it he had offered his unconditional love and forgiveness, his support in any way that she might find helpful, and his continued respect for her. He wrote, “Remember, God’s love is in even this, maybe especially this. We’re glad that in a measure, at least, we can help the daughter we love so much. This is a time of testing but hold our ground we must. We’re looking forward to your being at home. Love, Dad.”
Well, as the party continued back at the estate, we discover that the man’s other son was also lost, lost in resentment. At first glance, he would appear to be everything a father could want in a son. He was responsible, industrious, hard working. He took life seriously and did what had to be done. He was coming in from work when he heard the noise of the party going on. He asked one of the servants what it was all about, and when he heard that his younger brother was home and that his father was throwing him a welcome home party, he because furious and refused to even go into the house. Instead, he sat outside, fueling his anger as he listed all the things he had done right, how he had stayed home and done his job and never run off with a pile of money to waste on wine, women, and song. He was ungrateful, and self-righteous. He was full of condemnation and judgement, and was not about to forgive, let alone forget, what his brother had done. He may have lived under the same roof as his father, but his heart was far away, farther than the far country.
The father also went out to meet this son. He left the party to go and encourage his son to come and join in the celebration. He couldn’t understand why his son did not understand the reason for the celebration: the boy had been lost but was found. But this son could not feel anything but resentment.
Henri Nouwen, in a book he wrote about this parable, remarked, “Did you ever notice how lost you are when you are resentful? It’s a very deep lostness. The younger son gets lost in a much more spectacular way – giving in to his lust and his greed, using women, playing poker, and losing his money. His wrongdoing is very clear-cut. He knows it and everybody else does, too. Because of it he can come back, and he can be forgiven. The problem with resentment is that it is not so clear-cut; it’s not spectacular. And it is not overt, and it can be covered by the appearance of a holy life. Resentment is pernicious because it sets very deep in you, in your heart, in your bones, and in your flesh, and often you don’t even know it is there. You think you’re so good. But in fact, you are lost in a very profound way.”
Consider the story of Leonard Holt. He was the image of respectability. He was a middle-aged, hardworking lab technician who had worked at the same Pennsylvania paper mill for nineteen years. He had been a Boy Scout leader, an affectionate father, a member of the local fire brigade, and a regular church attender. He was admired as a role model in his community. But one day that image exploded in a well-planned hour of bloodshed on a brisk October morning.
Leonard Holt was a proficient marksman. He stuffed two pistols in his coat pockets and drove to the mill. He went in slowly and began shooting. He hit several co-workers multiple times, getting off more than 30 shots, killing men he had known and worked with for more than fifteen years. When the police finally found him, Holt shouted out defiantly, “Come and get me! I’m not taking any more of this!” The entire community was shocked and could not understand what motivated him to do such a thing.
But slowly a different picture began to take shape. Down deep in his heart, Leonard had harbored great resentment. He may have looked calm, cool and collected, but in fact he was brimming with hatred. Several of his victims had been promoted over him, while he remained in the same position. More than one of the members in his car-pool had recently quit riding with him due to his reckless driving. He had allowed these kinds of things to build up until he was no longer able to control himself. And he acted on his feelings in a horribly destructive way.
I see the older brother in the parable in something of the same way. He had probably resented things for much longer than just the time his brother had been away. It couldn’t have happened as quickly as that. Who knows when it started? But it came to a head the night of the party. His hatred boiled over and his resentment blew up. When the parable ends, we don’t know whether or not the brother ever joined the party. We don’t know if he ever made things right with his father or reconciled with his younger brother. All we know is that he was still out in the yard seething.
Two sons. Two lost sons. One lost in rebellion, the other in resentment. They both needed to get found. They both needed to come home. And the ultimate gift that their father offered them was his love in welcoming them home. It didn’t matter how they were lost, it just mattered that they were found. It doesn’t matter when or how we get lost. God will come looking for us and will find us.
A woman named Charlotte Elliot lived in Brighton, England, in the early 19th century. She was a bitter woman, due to health problems that had worn her down and worn her out. She would say, “If God loved me, he would not have treated me this way.” One day a Swiss minister visited the Elliot family and he tried to reach out to Charlotte over dinner. She lost her temper and complained against God, embarrassing her family to the point that they left the room. The minister remained. “You’re tired of yourself, aren’t you?” he asked. “You are holding on to your hate and your anger because you have nothing else in the world to cling to. That is why you are sour, bitter, and resentful.” Charlotte asked, “What is your cure?” He replied, “The faith you are trying so hard to despise.” Charlotte was willing to listen to him, and she finally asked, “If I wanted to become a Christian and to share the peace and joy you have, what would I have to do?” He answered, “You would just give yourself to God, just as you are right now, with all your fightings and fears, hates and loves, pride and shame.” “I would come to God just as I am? Is that right?” she asked. “Yes,” he answered.
Charlotte did come to God, just as she was. Her heart was changed forever. Several years later, she wrote a poem that was printed and sold all across England. You might be familiar with it: “Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidds’t me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!”
Do you feel lost this morning? Are you caught up in rebelling against God? Have you built up resentment in your heart that keeps you from being close to God? Well, the good news is that God has come for you. God doesn’t wait for you to come home, he runs to meet you when you are only partway there. He doesn’t wait for you to join the party, he brings the invitation directly to you. When God comes to you, meet him halfway and decide to come home. There is important work to do and you are needed and wanted and loved.
