The Return of The Prodigal Son
Luke 15: 13 – 19 The Return of The Prodigal Son
Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate: and no one gave him anything.
When he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called you son; treat me as one of your skilled craftsman.’”
The return of the Prodigal Son: When the son spent all his money and a famine strikes the distant land, he is forced to work for a foreigner feeding pigs (a detestable animal to Jews.)
The son is starving. He would gladly eat the pods for the pigs but he cannot digest them. He thinks of the one place that there is bread. This next point that is being developed may seem subtle, but it highlights the difference between a God who is good and a God worth dying for…The son’s reason for going home is TO EAT, not to reconcile with his father. The son is not repentant. He crafts a speech that he feels might work to get him food and to save face. The Pharisees know the scriptures well and known that the speech is a speech crafted to manipulate, not to repent. This son’s wording is taken from what the Pharaoh said to Moses after the first nine plagues in Egypt. Pharaoh said anything to placate Moses to stop the plagues. Moreover, the son is not asking to become a slave, he wants to become a craftsman so that he can pay his own way.
The father (God) understands that we don’t return to him with right motives but simply want to get something-- to eat, to be healed, to be financially blessed. He understands that the only things that we can offer him are the dirty rags on our back and our dirty motives. It is in this situation that the son starts his journey back to the father--literally with only dirty rags and a contrived speech. (You can read more on this topic in Kenneth E. Bailey’s The Cross & the Prodigal).