Luke 15:17-20 NIVUK
[17] ‘When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! [18] I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. [19] I am no
longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.” [20] So he got up and went to his father...
Maybe it’s because of the amount of time we have spent in Europe, but we love genuinely historic old towns.
One of our favourites is in a city quite close to home: the city of Edinburgh.
Edinburgh’s Old Town is built around the cobbled splendour of the Royal Mile, with Holyrood Castle and the Scottish Parliament on one side of it and Edinburgh Castle at the end. On either side, as in every old town, there are a myriad of alleyways and side streets and passageways. It’s quite easy to become disorientated and get lost.
Believe it or not, even wide vehicles like delivery vans have found this problematic. Satnavs that have not been updated have caused drivers to accidentally drive their heavy vehicles onto ancient staircases, causing them to need to be towed back onto the road.
While guidance errors like this might be mildly amusing, they can have devastating consequences. Google Maps is being sued by travellers to Johannesburg, South Africa, who, while following its guidance when travelling in hired vehicles, found themselves in crime-ridden townships and been the victims of armed robbery.
Being lost can be no joke.
Apart from the physical risk of accidentally wandering into neighbourhoods where your presence is unwanted, the somewhat discombobulating emotion of being lost is itself something to be reckoned with. That feeling that you are separated from everything familiar and seem to have no way of getting back to where you should be is deeply painful.
Not to mention seriously offensive to our dignity and self-respect.
It explains the quite legendary outburst of the proud but disoriented traveller: ‘I’m not lost. I know where I am. It’s this place that’s lost.’
I have often returned to the Parable of the Two Sons, popularly named the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Of the three parables in Luke 15, it is the only one that shows an object which is aware it is lost and wants to do something about it. The other parables – about a sheep and a coin – are lost objects that are lost and that are sought after. In this parable, it is the thing that is lost – the youngest son – who, in a sense ‘finds himself’ and heads home.
There are three stages of this realisation that mirror what happens when anyone comes to their senses and has the painful realisation that they are lost.
The first of these is that the younger son realises Who he is:
Luke 15:17 NIVUK
[17] ‘When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!
This is quite a realisation. He may have been under the illusion that he was a big man. Or, as Frank Sinatra once sang:
'...A number one
King of the Hill
Top of the list'
You can see that, can’t you? In his arrogant departure from his father’s side and his riotous, chaotic lifestyle (Luke 15:12-13).
But yet all of that has gone. Circumstances have more than got on top of him. He, a Jewish man, is hundreds of miles from home, feeding ritually unclean animals and even those pigs are better off than him (Luke 15:14-16).
It is there, at the very deepest of rock bottoms, that this young lad realises who He is. He remembers his identity: ‘coming to himself’ is what the Greek literally means. He realises his ancestry – he remembers who his father is. He is the son of a rich, landed man, not an animal herder.
He realises, doubtless with considerable pain, that he should not be where he is. This is not his place.
He needs to go home.
When we realise that we are lost, the first realisation is that we don’t belong where we are – we are out of place and out of time: in the wrong movie, so to speak.
But we need to understand why, and the reason for this is simply because someone like us does not belong in somewhere like this.
This whole series is about discovering our identity in Christ, and the benefits this brings to us. One of the biggest benefits is the tension and the friction it causes with where we are – how we perceive and acknowledge the impact of this.
Let me give you an example, from Paul’s moral teaching to the immoral Corinthian church:
1 Corinthians 6:18-20 NIVUK
[18] Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. [19] Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; [20] you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies. https://bible.com/bible/113/1co.6.18.NIVUK
Paul’s point is that if you realise who you are, then you will no longer do the things you once did.
Again, in Ephesians:
Ephesians 5:8 NIVUK
[8] For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light https://bible.com/bible/113/eph.5.8.NIVUK
The younger son’s realisation who he was created a kind of dissonance, an unease, with his surroundings. The son of a wealthy Jew like him had no business feeding pigs and starving to death. It was that unease that drove him to want to return.
What about you? Do you feel lost? Do you feel a dissonance and unease with your situation? Do you no longer feel at home where you are?
If so, you are in good company.
But as well as who he is, he also realise Where he is.
Now, this is where things get real.
Luke 15:18 NIVUK
[18] I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
He was in a ‘distant country’ (Luke 15:13). This was deliberate – he had chosen it so he could be as far from his father’s influence as he could, so he could behave as he wanted. By ‘distant country’, this likely meant Syria or Persia – places that were linguistically similar, but culturally very different, and where Jewish morality did not hold sway.
So heading back home is no simple undertaking, especially as he had no money.
No trains or planes or automobiles in those days. No money to afford camels, or even a stay at the many traveller’s inns that straddled the great trade routes across the ancient world, particularly the Silk Road from Asia into the Middle East. This poor lad would
have to make the long journey on foot, across mountains and deserts, feeling the exhausting heat during the day and the bitter cold at night, and avoiding the violent and immoral robbers who would make their illicit living from the traders on this route.
Let us not think at all that returning to the father was at all easy for this young man. He had increased the distance between him and his father; he would now need to decrease it, and pay the price for doing so.
This is an interesting situation. Elsewhere in Luke, it is the seeker that reduces the distance to the object that is lost. Both in the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, the seeker sets out to find the object that was lost (Luke 15:4, 8).
And that is what Jesus does, as we se here and will explore later:
Luke 19:10 NIVUK
[10] For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’ https://bible.com/bible/113/luk.19.10.NIVUK
But, while Jesus is quoting from, and then updating, a Jewish moral tale meant to regulate the lives of their rebellious youth, He is also emphasising a very important aspect of our transition from lost to found: it also takes effort on our part. We must repent:
Mark 1:14-15 NIVUK
[14] After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. [15] ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’
Acts 3:19 NIVUK
[19] Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.
We have to understand this. Once we realise we are lost and feel that dissonance with our surroundings, it has to provoke something in us. We must do something about it. And that must be to repent.
That leads us to the third stage. After who he was and where he was, this young man had to realise What he needed to do, and that realisation led to a simple, but profound, conclusion:
He needed to go home.
Luke 15:18-20
[18] I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. [19] I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.” [20] So he got up and went to his father. ‘But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms round him and kissed him.
I have heard various interpretations of these verses, wondering whether or not this repentance was genuine or just a means to ingratiate himself into his father’s household once again and improve his material status. Whichever way you look at it, the realisation that he had got it wrong, the dawning in him of who he really was and the lack of ease he felt about his situation led him to walk back in humility the path he had previously walked in hedonistic, rebellious glee.
This is the very nature of repentance.
He was wrong, now, whatever his motivation, he wants to be right.
Whether or not he is repairing the relationship with his father purely for material gain is itself immaterial. The lost son is going home. That is what counts.
And it is also the point of this parable: when we feel far from our Heavenly Father, He is not the one who moved – we did. To return to our Heavenly Father, it is us who need to make the move, not Him.
That is why, when we see this reaction to Peter’s Pentecostal sermon, Peter tells the people what to do:
Acts 2:37-39 NIVUK
[37] When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ [38] Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. [39] The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.’
It is why David repented also, once he was convicted of his sin:
Psalms 51:17 NIVUK
[17] My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.
When we realise we are lost, we must then do something about it. And that something should not be to revel in it: to eulogise it in songs or poems or TV dramas; to dress and talk like we have no way out; to surrender all hope and just enjoy our time with the better-fed pigs.
That is useless. Not to mention pointless.
If we are in a bad situation, then it does not do us any good to simply accept that it will never change. Instead, we should do what we can to get out of it.
And the way out of being lost is to be found. It is that simple.
But how are we found?
In three steps that are easy to say, but sometimes not so easy to do. We realise who we are – that we don’t belong; where we are – that we are far from where we should be; and what we should do – we should go back to our Father in Heaven.
In the 1990s, Scottish hard rock band The Almighty had a hit with a song with these words:
'We′re all searching for deliverance
When there ain't nowhere to run
Let your spirit down easy
Cos we′re always gonna be
A little lost sometimes'
But are we?
Apart from God, yes.
But if we realise today that we are lost and return to Him?
No. Absolutely not.
Then we are truly found.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I am lost. I admit it. I am further from You than I should be. I know that , as Your child, this is not where I should be. I want to return to You now. I’m coming home. Help Me, I pray. Amen.
Questions
1. When the younger son realises who he was, why did this make him want to return home? Do you ever feel this way?
2. How far do you feel right now from the person you should be? How will you put that right?
3. Why was the youngest son’s journey home not easy? How did his father react when he came home (see Luke 15:22-24)? What can you learn from this?
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