Resources

Bailey’s dedicated, unified study of the entire Luke 15 trilogy — the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the two lost sons read as a single, deliberate three-panel argument rather than three separate stories. More rigorous than The Cross & the Prodigal but still readable, it draws on the sources that make Bailey’s work distinctive: rabbinic materials, the ancient Syriac and Arabic Christian translations and commentators, and a sustained comparison with Psalm 23. Two threads run through it — God’s self-sacrificing, costly love, and the sinner’s complete inability to earn that favor — and Bailey shows how even the Arabic and Muslim theological background sharpens the interpretation. Many readers consider it his most thorough treatment of the prodigal, and it doubles as the backbone for a multi-week teaching or sermon series on Luke 15.

It’s Bailey’s most focused treatment of Luke 15, and the closest companion to this project. It’s a total of 115 pages. Bailey shows that the cross is already inside the parable — the father’s running, his public humiliation, his self-emptying welcome is costly love that anticipates Calvary. Reading all three Luke 15 parables (sheep, coin, sons) through Middle Eastern village culture, he surfaces the tensions the story turns on: law against love, servanthood against sonship, honor against forgiveness.

It’s the scholarly foundation beneath everything else Bailey wrote — two landmark studies bound into one volume. Here he builds the method: read each parable both as literature (its poetic structure, parallelism, and ring composition) and through “Oriental exegesis” — the cultural assumptions Jesus’ first hearers shared, recovered from decades among Middle Eastern peasants, from Middle Eastern informants, and from ancient Syriac and Arabic versions of the text. After surveying and moving past the great parable scholars before him (Jülicher, Jeremias, Dodd), he works passage by passage through Luke — from the Friend at Midnight and the Unjust Steward to the Good Samaritan, the Rich Fool, and the two lost sons. This is the deep end: dense, rigorous, and the origin point of the whole “Middle Eastern eyes” approach.

I saw the beauty in Jesus across the gospels, something I would not have seen without Bailey. It’s Bailey’s capstone and broadest work — a kaleidoscopic tour of Jesus across all four Gospels, not just Luke. Across six parts he moves from the birth of Jesus through the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus’ dramatic actions, his relationships with women, and some thirteen parables, each read in the light of the culture Jesus actually spoke into. He draws on sources most Western readers never see — early Jewish texts and Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian Christian commentators — and lifts away layers of Western interpretation to reveal a Jesus at once ancient and startlingly fresh. Written to be followed without formal training, it works equally as a scholar’s reference and a study-group companion.

My name is Dr. Ken Bailey, and it has been my privilege over my life, my active life, for 40 years to teach New Testament at various institutes and seminaries in the Middle East. And my heritage in the Middle East goes further back in that my parents also spent their lives in the Middle East, with seven years of my childhood there. The whole world of the Middle Eastern Arabic speaking Christian community is unknown to us in the West. We hear the word Arab, and we immediately think Muslim, but no, there are 15 million Arabic speaking Christians in the Middle East, and they have been there since the days of the Apostles. Their heritage and tradition are unknown [to the West]. It’s been my privilege to participate with them, and [gaining] insights particularly into the stories of and about Jesus can be enormously enriched, once we take into account the reality of the Middle Eastern culture where Jesus lived, and where He also created the stories that ring with His name.

Today we are going to look at the great story of the Prodigal Son and try, in a brief span of time, to go through it highlighting the points where we need some cultural revision to understand it more profoundly. But before we get into the story itself, there are four areas that we need to have in focus.

The first is in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15, where this story appears. The text says, He told them this parable. Singular, then there are three stories. That means we’ve got to look at these stories as three parts of a single presentation. The text opens where the Pharisees, who felt that [their] duty before God was primarily to a precise observance of law. They came to Jesus and complained saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” Eating was a big deal for them because they were living among people who did not keep the law in a precise fashion (They called them the am ha‐arets, the people of the land). And they were under criticism for doing so. “You know, you should withdraw off to a monastery in the desert,” They’d say, “No, we can still keep our ceremonial purity and observe the law in a precise fashion even though we are living amongst Jews who don’t, as long as we’re very careful about meals. When we sit down to eat meals, no outsiders, only those who are ceremonially pure and who are keeping the law in a precise fashion are invited to eat meals with us.” [The Pharisees] see Jesus as a rabbi, they call him a rabbi, he is a learned man, he is a scholar according to the expectations of scholarship in his day—but he eats with “sinners”, people who don’t keep the law. They don’t like this!

Jesus defends himself by telling these three stories. The first story is about a shepherd and a lost sheep, the second story is about a woman and a lost coin, the third can best be called the compassionate father and the two lost sons. [The Pharisees] are saying to Jesus, “This man (talking about Jesus) receives sinners and eats with them.” Jesus responds by telling a story about a man who sat down with a sinner and ate with him. In the story of the Prodigal Son, that man is called Father. So we have traditionally thought, ah ha, that is a symbol for God—period. But when Jesus says, this man receives sinners and eats with them. [He’s saying], yes, you’re right, I do absolutely. Let me tell you a story about a man who sat down with a sinner and ate with him, and that man is called Father. That means that that man must, necessarily, at some point in the story refer to the person of Jesus. [It’s what] they are accusing him of doing, and He’d say, “Yes, I’ll tell you a story about a man who does this.” So to look for where in the story is Jesus talking about himself is absolutely unavoidable.

In the three stories, given our traditional reading of them, we’ve created, not the stories themselves—but our interpretation [of them] has created a critical problem. In the story of the good shepherd, they’re out in the wilderness, the sheep is lost, and the shepherd leaves the 99 (we’re told), goes after the lost sheep, and brings it back. He didn’t go home and say, “Well I hope that sheep gets home”, and then in the middle of the night he hears some noise outside the sheepfold, gets up and goes out the looks out over the top of the fence and say, “Oh, you made it back, great, come on in”, and he opens the door and the sheep comes in to the sheepfold. No, the shepherd has got to go out and find the sheep, and in fact carry it back. Then there’s the story about a woman and a lost coin. She doesn’t lose her coin and say, “Gee I wonder what happened to that coin, well it will show up sometime.” Then starts getting supper and— ‘click’ the coin flips out of the crack in the floor and lands on the table and she says, “Oh there you are” and picks it up and puts it into her purse. That’s not the way it happens. The story says she has to get down on her knees, and she’s got to light a lamp, and she’s got to search diligently to find the coin. The coin will not find itself. Our [traditional] reading of the story of the Prodigal Son is that he gets home on his own, no help from anyone, thank you very much. And so it looks like the first two stories are on the one side and the other story is on the other. There’s a direct clash between them.

In the history of the Christian faith, there are two major figures, who have argued the theology (and they don’t use these texts) but they argue the theology that I have just referred to. And the first is Augustine, early fifth century Latin scholar from North Africa, and the weight of his theology [conveyed that] we cannot return to God. God has to come to us and find us and bring us back to himself. So that’s the Augustinian position and it is in harmony with the New Testament which says that God has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ to find us and to get us back into reconciliation with a loving Father. But then, at the time of Augustine, there was another fellow in England and his name was Pelagius, and he said no, no, no Augustine hasn’t got it right. That’s not showing sufficient dignity to the human spirit. We don’t need any help, we can get home, we can make it on our own. God doesn’t have to come to us, we return to God. So all the way through history, you’ve got the Augustinian view and the view of Pelagius, and it looks like in these three stories, the first two are Augustinian. The shepherd has to come after the sheep, the woman has to come after the coin. And the third story looks it’s from Pelagius, the prodigal can get home on his own, he doesn’t need any help at all. Can this be solved? Or is Jesus confused? In the first two stories, he defines repentance as we’re running away, and we allow God to find us and to bring us home. In the third story, as we have traditionally read it, the story says we’re in the far country, we’re in trouble, we “come to ourselves”, [in other words] we figure out that we can solve the problem. We get home on our own. No savior and no grace are required. Thank you very much. We are going sort this out before we get done.

Also, there is a big hole in the story of the Good Shepherd. The story of the good shepherd says, a shepherd has 100 sheep out in the wilderness, he loses one in the wilderness. Then he leaves the 99 in the wilderness, he goes after the one, finds it, picks it up, takes it back to the village, and has a big party. And we’re sitting there…what, what about the 99? Don’t you tie up the sheep you carried home, and skedaddle out to find the 99, you lead them home, then you have the party? What’s this deal about leaving the 99 in the wilderness? That gaping, dramatic hole occurs in the first of these three stories, it disappears in the second one, but it comes to full force in the third one. By the third story we’ll find a resolution to these dramatic and theological problems that were created in the telling of the first story.

Before we get started, let’s talk for just a minute about what the model behind is as Jesus creates this famous story, that we call the story of the Prodigal Son. In fact, I’m deeply convinced that Jesus is retelling the story of Jacob from the point where Jacob gets his inheritance until the time his father dies. This is Genesis chapter 27 verse 1, and through the opening verses of chapter 36. If you read it and compare it to the story of the prodigal son, you will observe that both stories have a patriarch, both stories have two sons, both stories the younger decides he wants to take his inheritance, and both stories do so with underhanded means. In both stories the younger son has got to take off into the far country, both stories the older son stays at home and he’s mad. In both stories in the far country there is a reversal of wealth, Jacob starts off poor and he ends up rich, and the prodigal starts of rich and he ends up poor.

The same dramatic theme is there, only, Jesus has reversed it. In both stories the one in the far country finally decides to come home. In the story of Jacob, his father‐in‐law, Laban, finds that the household gods are missing so he goes after Jacob and says, “Hey, how come you stole this stuff out of my house before you left.” They search and don’t find it, and then Laban says to Jacob, “These flocks and herds that you have, actually, they’re mine. And these women that you have as your wives, well they’re mine too—all is that is yours is mine.” Jesus picks up that line. (I write scripts for films and I also publish plays, so I’m looking for the dramatic elements and the components that make up the drama.) Jesus takes that line, turns it around and puts it into the mouth of the father when he says to the older [in the courtyard], “All that is mine is yours.”

As these two boys, Jacob and the prodigal, come back from the far country there is a divine incarnation scene. In the story of Jacob, it’s an angel. In the story of the prodigal, it’s his father. In both cases, there’s contact. In the first case, it’s a wrestling match. In the second, it’s an embrace. In both stories, a member of the family goes out of town to “deal with” the son who comes home. In one case, it’s the father. In the other, it’s the older brother. And in both cases, the welcomer ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him. In both stories, there is a best robe of one member of the family who put it on another member of the family. Nowhere in scripture do you have this referred to except the story of Jacob and the story of the prodigal. In [the story of] Jacob, it’s stolen for deception. In the prodigal, it’s given for reconciliation. I have found 52 [similarities], and I’ve written a book called Jacob and the Prodigal.

What is Jesus doing? He is retelling the foundational story that gave the community its name and its identity. This is extremely sophisticated. We’re dealing with a first‐class mind that notices the connections and re‐forms the story. It is somebody who is very, very daring. He has a new vision that can take the community to a higher level. And we look at Jesus not as a simple man who tells simple little stories for simple people, but as a first‐class theologian in the rabbinic style talking in very profound theological ways as he takes the story that forms the identity of the community and retells it.

Alright, there is something else going on is this text, and there’s some rhetoric in it. The rhetoric is in two halves, one is in the story of the younger son who goes in to the far country, and the second is the story of the older son who stays at home. In these stories, there are a series of ideas which come to a climax, and then the series repeats [itself] backwards. The climax in the middle of both stories as a soliloquy, where each of these sons talks [about how each wants more food.] The prodigal says, “I need more food, and I think I can get a job and earn it,” and the older son complains to his father saying, “I need more food but you’re giving it away to somebody else.” We’re supposed to notice that there’s a series of ideas that come to a climax, and there are two speeches from the two sons that are exactly in the same position in the two accounts. We’re supposed to notice the inter‐relationship between them. The writing of the story is done with a very sophisticated eye to the rhetorical styles of the classic writing prophets of Israel, particularly Isaiah. We’re dealing with a piece of artwork that is put together so precisely that you, in fact, can’t change a word without goofing up something, kind of like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Alright, with that in mind, let’s look at the story and start examining it one section at a time. The seven sections that we mentioned in the first half of the story we will now look at. We will look at the first one on the screen. You can see it there and it says:

There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, “Father! Give me the share of property that falls to me.” And he divided his living between them. (Luke 15: 11‐12)

Alright, let’s see if we can understand what’s going on here. A lot of commentators, particularly in the Western world over the last 200 years have said well, I mean this is not a big deal, this is a young man going off to the big city to make his fame and fortune, this happens in a lot of families and there is nothing exceptional going on here. [But] I beg to differ. I don’t know of any country in the world where a young boy can get out of high school, where he’s a part of a farming family, and he says to his father and mother, “Well I’m out of high school now, I’d like to go off to the big city and have a good time. Why don’t you just give me half of the family farm, and I’ll sell it, and I’ll put the money in my pocket, and I’ll go off to Chicago, or New York, or London or Tokyo or wherever and I can really have a good time.” I think the father is going to say to him, “Little boy, when your mother and I decide to divide the inheritance, we will let you know. This doesn’t happen to be any of your business, so why don’t you go out and get a job!” I don’t think this is so strange to Middle Eastern culture. If the kid wants to go off penniless, you know, work a little bit, get a few bucks, get a jalopy and drive off and have a good time, that’s his business. He shouldn’t ask his father to sell the family farm while he’s standing on it, in good health, farming it. That does not happen in any culture. In the Middle East, it’s even worse. It means “Dad, why don’t you drop dead.”

We’ve mentioned the comparison between the Jacob story and Prodigal story. In the Jacob story, Jacob gets to be an old man, and he says to himself, “I’m about to die, and I think I better settle the inheritance while I still have all my marbles, so then he says OK I am going to give the blessing (which meant the inheritance to my boys).” Of course, the boys are supposed to say, “No Dad, you’re going to live to be 100, take it easy, we don’t want to hear this discussion! We know that this is the discussion that comes at the end of your life, but you have many good years, we don’t have to talk about this!”

Esau does it with Jacob the way it’s supposed to be done. The boys say nothing. The old man, when he’s about to die, he decides he’s going to make the division. But in the story of the prodigal son, it’s the prodigal who raises the subject, and as far as we know, the father is in good health and he’s still managing the farm. He is supposed to be told “Little boy, get out of here”, and if he is an oriental patriarch, he’s going to take the back of his hand, and he’s going to strike the kid across the face, and he’s going to drive him out of the house.

I had a student, who after some years, told me that this had happened in his family. One of his brothers had asked his father for the inheritance. I said to him, “Nuhad, what happened then?” And he said, “Well my father hit him across the face, drove him out of the house and then he said, “We the other brothers worked to try and get my brother and my father into the same room, so we could talk about it.” “How long did that take?” “Five years” before the father was even willing to be in the same room with the brother who had asked for his inheritance.

We have got a series of 15 points that we’re going to look at where our perception of the story is flawed. The first one, the father grants the request, and not only that, he grants the freedom to sell. Because according to Jewish law of the first century, if the father makes the division, as long as the father is still alive, the land cannot be sold. The father has the right to use the profits of the estate, but if he doesn’t spend them then they are added to the capital. This is part of the older son’s problem at the end of the story. If Dad keeps the entertainment budget down, then the fatted calf is going to be a part of the capital I’m going to inherit. So he’s not really happy about this killing the fatted calf even though he can’t say anything because his father has the right to do it. Okay, one is the request—unheard of—and the second is the father’s response. Five times in the story this father does not, I repeat, does not act like an oriental patriarch. First, he grants the request. Second, he allows the boy to sell which was against Jewish law (we know this because it says, he gathered together, but really it’s a banking term which means to turn into cash). Third, when the younger comes back, he welcomes him. When his older son insults the father in public, the father leaves the banquet and, with everybody watching, he goes out to talk to the older. The older then insults his father, and his father responds in a kindly fashion by saying we must rejoice and not get angry because the younger has returned. No oriental patriarch is going to do any of those [things]! This raises for us the question of what Jesus is doing. He is taking [a father] beyond the culture of his day and saying here is the model we can use to try and understand God? [Further] Jesus is not taking an oriental patriarch as a model for God. He is taking a figure, as Henri Nouwen, the famous Catholic spiritual writer has said in his book The Return of the Prodigal, who breaks all of the boundaries of what an oriental patriarch is expected to do. One of our Arabic commentators has said, the shepherd only does those things which we expect a shepherd to do, the woman only does those things which we expect a mother to do, but the father carries out great, marvelous divine acts that are beyond anything ever seen or expected from an earthly father.

It is somewhat dangerous if you take a metaphor and use it for God. Because you are likening God to something human, and there’s a danger that you will take your perceptions of that human being and then apply them to God, and so we talk about God as “our Father” in the Lord’s Prayer, it’s easy for us to take fathers as we have known them and apply them to God. Fathers, human fathers, and human mothers are frail sinners, and they make lots of mistakes and so we goof up our understanding of God when we do that, and, in fact, that’s a form of idolatry. Every major philosopher and theologian is very careful to define his or her own terms.

We must allow Jesus to do that [for] himself. He takes the 11th chapter of Hosea, where God is likened to a father and the father says, “I’m God and not man, and I will not come with my fierce anger.” Israel, the child of the covenant, has broken the covenant and violated the law. God is angry. But because he is God, and not man, he manages to reprocess that anger into grace and extend love to Israel. Jesus starts with this. He then creates a figure that portrays for us the nature of the loving heart of God, which goes beyond anything that human fathers are able to do, and certainly what the Middle Eastern world would expect them to do.

Alright, the third point of clarification is where we find that the prodigal has got to sell in a hurry. Jacob had to finish his skullduggery in a hurry. Why? Well he was afraid his brother Esau was going to walk in and ring the bell on him, and he would get caught trying to imitate his brother which is what he tries to do so that he can get the majority of the inheritance. The prodigal also has to do it in a hurry because as he goes around the village, selling property. The fight in the family is now known to the community. And to sell your inheritance, in the Middle Eastern world is to deny your genealogy. It is to say that I’m no longer accept that I am a part of this family. It is very, very serious.

The village is going to say to him, “What? You’re selling the orchard our grandfather planted? You’re crazy kid! You’re selling your own soul! Don’t you understand?” They’d slam the door in his face. But he’ll find somebody to buy, probably at a loss. Somebody who doesn’t care what the village says about him, and then he’s got to get out of town, because the anger of the village is getting higher and higher, and it’s about to explode and he’s got to get out of there. So the need to finish the deed with speed also ties our two stories together.

The fourth one is not recorded in the story, but it is assumed in the minds of Jesus’ listeners. And that is according to the early Jewish sources which we have in three different places, it refers to the qetsatsah ceremony. This ceremony was where if a young man did one of two things: married an immoral woman or lost the family inheritance among the Gentiles. If he ever dared to come back to the village, the village would get a large earthen‐ware pot, of the kind that they store drinking water in the house in. They would fill it with burned nuts and burned corn. They would drag the kid to the central square and they would break this pot and the whole village would cry out “so and so is cut off!”. After that applied in that town no one is going to feed him, or give him drink, or give him shelter, or hire him or have anything to do with him. He’s got to leave town if the qetsatsah ceremony is enacted. The prodigal goes into the far country with a little clock, tick tick tick, in the back of his head that says don’t lose the money among the Gentiles. If you do, you’ve got no way you can go home. If you go home, you won’t be able to live in your own village.

Jesus manages to find again‐and‐again, with the briefest of strokes, [ways to fill‐in] huge areas of the canvas, which is where he is painting the picture of the parable. He tells us that the boy did lose the money among the Gentiles because he tells us that the boy got a job feeding pigs. Aha! These are not Jews. The minute the audience hears that word pigs it knows he’s among the Gentiles, and when he gets back to the village, the village is going to rough him up. Everybody in that first century audience is aware of this.

And then our final point with this introductory half hour is that we often think that he ends up living an immoral life. Many of our translations have given us clues in that direction. The King James says that he lost the money in riotous living. The Revised Standard Version says he did it with loose living. And there’s the New Revised Standard that says he lost it with dissolute living. The New International Version says he lost it with wild living. All of those [versions] presuppose that he is messing around with the girls in the far country. His older brother has a few comments to say about this. And I think we’ve picked it up from the older brother, who comes in from the field and shouts this at him “asotos,” which in Greek means “without saving,” namely expensive living. It’s important for us to notice that, because we’re supposed to spot the fact that older son is exaggerating. The boy lost the money, yes, but we are not told how he lost the money. We’ve got to keep that cutting edge in the story.

Very well, we’ve launched ourselves into the story. In the second lecture, we will take a look at those points.

My name is Dr. Ken Bailey and I’m a professor of New Testament who spent his life teaching New Testament in the Middle East. In our first lecture on the subject of the story of the Prodigal Son, we observed a number of things, primarily that the son made a request that he had no rights to make. And we noticed also in some detail that the father responds in a way that no Oriental Patriarch is going to respond. To catch ourselves up on where we are and where we’re going, we’ll look now at the second little scene that occurs in the parable, and you can see this now projected on your screen. It reads,

Not many days later, the younger son sold all that he had, and journeyed into a far country, and wasted his property in extravagant living. Remember we say that that’s what it means. It isn’t immoral living, it’s extravagant living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want. (Luke 15: 13-14)

It means he also, even though he had money, now he is in want. We’ll look at our screen also in the little scene that follows that. And you can see before you the text as it continues with the small cameo that reads,

So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him to his fields to feed pigs. And he would gladly have eaten the pods that the pigs ate; and no one gave him anything. (Luke 15:15-16)

Let’s talk about this for just a minute. When we look at this scene, we see that he’s in trouble and that he needs a job. Why does he need a job? Not only he needs a job because he’s run out of money, but he knows having lost the money among the Gentiles in the far country that he’s got to earn that money back or he can’t possibly go home. His father’s house has slaves, he could volunteer to go and join those slaves. He doesn’t, he’s got to get a job that pays and hopefully he will begin to stack up a bank account. One day when he’s earned the money back, then he can talk about returning home and perhaps reestablishing relationship to his family.

So we’re at point number six, where our understanding of the story culturally needs some adjustment, and I’ve called this the search for employment. The Kezazah ceremony now threatens. He knows he’s broken the rules, they will find out where he is one way or another, some traveling merchant whatever, and then the Kezazah ceremony will be enacted and the burned nuts and the burned corn will be broken in front of his face and he will be driven out of the village. So, what is he going to do?

And this brings us to our seventh point, in which he dreams up what I have called the self-serving plan. And the self-serving plan is, he says to himself, and let’s look at it here on the screen again. This is now the beginning of his soliloquy,

But when he came to himself and said, “How many of my father’s craftsmen have bread enough and to spare, and I perish here with hunger!” (Luke 15:17)

So what is he going to do? Well, he tells us his motive. This is very important, soliloquies in any drama when the person is standing out in the field by himself and he stars to talk to himself. Now you find out what’s really going on in the guts of the person who is doing the talking. They’re a very important aspect of the tools in the hands of the dramatist or the playwright to have the person give a soliloquy. The ancient Greeks would do this with the chorus, who would sort of sound in and tell the audience what’s going on, the soliloquy does the same thing. And in this soliloquy he says, “I’d like to eat!” We have for a very long time in the west decided that this young man repented in the far country. But notice his soliloquy, this is absolutely critical. He’s telling us what he thinks is the problem, then he will tell us how he thinks he’s gonna solve it. He doesn’t say, “I broke my mother’s heart.”

He doesn’t say, “I caused my father the agony of rejected love.”

He doesn’t say, “I’m sorry I lost the money.”

He doesn’t say, “My entire extended family has suffered economic loss because of my irresponsible behavior.”

He doesn’t say any of this.

All he says is, “I’d like to get back on the gravy train, I’d like to find something to eat.” Absolutely critical for us to notice that because he’s not repenting. He’s still is looking out for number one, and that’s himself, and this is the problem, now we’re gonna take a look and see what the solution is. We will see, now you can see it on your screen, and this is the second half of his soliloquy. And he says,

I will arise and go to my father, and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; and am no more worthy to be called your son; fashion out of me a craftsman.” And he arose and came to his father.

Alright, now when he talks this way, let’s go back and talk a wee bit more about the phrase he came to himself because of the fact for a very very long time in the English language tradition around the world, we have decided this phrase means he repented. The only time we have this phrase again in the entire New Testament is in the book of Acts in the 12th chapter where St. Peter is in prison and he’s all chained up and they’re gonna kill him the next day, and the story tells us that an angel comes to him, the bonds fall off, he gets out of the prison, and he thinks it’s a dream, he thinks it’s a vision of some kind. And then the angel leaves him on a street corner in Jerusalem, he comes to, and he realizes this is for real. And the text says he came to himself—it has nothing to do with repentance.

Hebrew has got a big word for repentance, and it’s the word return. The point being that we are far from God and then we return to God. And the word for repentance is teshuvah, shuv is the verb and teshuvah is the word repentance, and it has to do with returning to God. And we can quote from the Prophets and the Psalms about the cry of the Prophets and of the Psalmist to get the people to return to God, return means, ya know you went here now you’re gonna come back. In the little text in which we just read, the prodigal talks about going home and he says, and you heard this, “I will arise and return to my father.” No, he says, “I will arise and go to my father.” And then later on in the very text in which we read, it says he arose and returned to his father. No, it says he arose and came to his father.

Now if Jesus and or whoever translated it into Greek wanted us to think that this kid was repenting, we would’ve had the word for repentance, or the word for return in the text there. It isn’t there. And then later on in the story as we will see, the older son comes in from the field, a little boy in the courtyard tells him “your brother has come.” He doesn’t say, “your brother returned.” And then later on in the story the older son is talking to the father and he says, “this son of yours returned.” No, “this son of yours came.” So there’s four times we have the word come, go, and be. That is be or be present, but the word to return does not occur. Return is a theological word, these other words: go, come, and he’s here are non-theological. If we’re supposed to understand him repenting in the far country, one of those cases, at least would have the word return, it doesn’t.

In the parables of Jesus, time and again, the major character in the middle of the story stops, sums up where he is, and then decides what he’s going to do. The rich fool finds that he’s got all of this grain that’s hidden in a bumper crop, and he says, “what am I gonna do I’ve got no space for it.” Ah, I know what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna build bigger barns." And the introduction to that speech about the bigger barns, it says he discussed with himself. We have the story of the… of the fellow who has an orchard, and he lets the orchard out to renters, and the renters when he sends to pay the rent, they don’t pay, and then the main figure says, “hmm what am I gonna do?” And then he figures out what he’s gonna do. The little soliloquy in the middle where the main character stops, sizes up where he is, and then makes a decision about how he is going to proceed. This is one of a series in the parables of Jesus. In that series, in none of those is the person involved repenting. The person is holding up a mirror and says, “I gotta have a little chat with myself here and see what my next move is.”

So, after he has this little chat with himself, figures out the problem, “I gotta get back on the gravy train somehow.” Then we find that he decides to work out a speech that he’s going to give to his father, and he’s going to execute the plan. The plan is, “I didn’t get a paying job in the far country” because it says nobody gave him anything. We saw that, and that also attaches to the story of Jacob where Jacob is in the far country with Laban, his relative, and he’s working for the family. And after a few months Laban says to him, “hey kid, you’re a member of the family and you’re working and we haven’t paid you anything, this isn’t right, we should give you something.” They start paying him and he ends up rich.

In the story of the Jesus tells, he’s in the far country and nobody gave him anything. Unlike Jacob he didn’t get paid for his work. So, he figures out, “okay, I’m gonna go home.” He can’t get a job in the far country that pays. The only way, his only option is to go home and try to get a job that pays, but he doesn’t know how to do anything. Hmm what are we gonna do now? Well, the only way he can get training as a craftsman is if the old man backs him because his reputation in the village is zilch. This is the guy who told his father to drop dead and took the money and went to the far country and lost it. There’s no craftsman gonna take him on. Ah, if dad will back me he’ll find some skilled craftsman to teach him a craft, then he’ll start, ya know, making good, starting saving his money, one day he’ll buy back the farm that he lost. But, he’s gonna have to butter-up the old man to get the job training.

So he decides the speech is gonna have three parts: I have sinned before heaven in your sight, I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Fashion out of me a craftsman. Now the first two have to be seen in light of the third one. This, I’m gonna say this, and I’m gonna say this so that I can get the job training. We’ll see how the speech is revised when he gets in the far country, but when’s he, sorry, when he gets home. In the far country it’s a setup to get outta the old man what he wants. The audience knows this because in the story of the ten plagues, when Israel is in Egypt, Pharaoh is under pressure, “you gotta call Moses in and chat with him.” And he doesn’t wanna do it and he doesn’t wanna do it, and after the ninth plague it’s so bad that he finally calls Moses in, and then Pharaoh says to Moses, “I have sinned before heaven and in your sight.” Now is Pharaoh repenting? I don’t think so. The audience knows perfectly well that this is Pharaoh trying to soften up Moses to get Moses to lift the ninth plague. And then of course he’s gonna clamp down on ’em and not let them go anyway. So, it’s a psychological trick to try and get what Pharaoh wants, and every learned Jew of the kind of an audience that Jesus had, they were the Pharisees, know this. And then the second part of the speech is I’m unworthy to be called your son. And he’s unworthy to be called the son not because he lost the money in the far country. He’s unworthy to be called his son because he told him to drop dead. The issue is not what happened in the far country, the issue is what happened in the house before he left. So the first one is insincere, the second one is the right things to now, now we come for the reason for saying it, fashion out of me a craftsman. We ordinarily translate this make me a hired servant. And the word make was the word used for God in the Old Testament when he made the earth, and it means to train me as a craftsman.

In every culture, skilled craftsmen do well. He remembers that the skilled craftsmen who work on his father’s farm, they have this phrase says bread enough and to spare. That means they pay their taxes, they feed their families, they pay their bills, and at the end of the year they have money left over, fine. The audience are scribes and Pharisees. The Pharisees, you weren’t allowed according to the Rabbinic tradition, to take any money for the teaching of the Torah and the interpretation of the Torah. If you were a Rabi, no salary. You had to have a bread and butter profession. You could be a carpenter, you could be a bricklayer, you could be a stonemason, you could be a farmer, you could be whatever, but you had to have a bread and butter profession.

So, when we’re talking about the young man getting himself up and running to get a job. The audience, “yeah, that’s what he needs to do.” Now notice by that time Jesus has introduced into the story two very important things. The first is, the audience has come to Jesus saying, in our conceptual terms, “Rabi Jesus, your doctrine of sin isn’t serious. You’re willing to sit down and eat with these people.” So Jesus, in a metaphorical style is replying and saying, “gentlemen, I understand that you think my doctrine of sin is not serious. Please allow me to explain my doctrine of sin. Sin for me is so serious it’s like a young Jewish boy who tells his father to drop dead, who insists that he take his share of the family farm, he sells it with his father in good health standing on it, he goes in a far country among the Gentiles, he loses the money to them, and he ends up feeding pigs. He falls so low that he even wants to become a pig so that he could eat pig food, but he hasn’t got the stomach that can digest the stuff.”

Audience reaction, “fantastic! This young Rabi has a very clear and powerful doctrine of sin. He is presenting our point of view better than we could have presented it ourselves. Sin for him is so heinous that he pictures this young Jew who broke all the rules of the family tradition, lost the money, and wants to become a pig.” Alright, so what is the kid gonna do? “He’s gonna go home, and he’s gonna work hard and he’s gonna save his money, and he is going to pay the money back.” And the audience says, “yes! That’s exactly what’s he’s supposed to do.” Not only did Jesus understand sin, Jesus understand salvation. Not only does he understand the problem, he also understands the solution. So in their mind what is gonna happen is the prodigal is gonna go home. When he gets home they’re gonna spot him, and the people will drag him to the town square and they break the big pot and he is cast out, and finally after a few days he manages to get in the front door of the house and have a very embarrassing discussion with his father and he says, “Dad, I know you have no reason to trust me, but please just once more. Send me to the next village to so and so, the skilled carpenter over there and have him take me on as an apprentice and I promise I’m gonna work hard and I’m gonna learn to trade and I’m gonna save my money and I can prove to you that I can be a good boy and I can keep the rules, and after I earn the money then we’ll have a discussion about whether I can come home.” That’s the way the audience expects that the story should end, that isn’t the way the story ends.

Let’s now look at what we find in the text, and this is now scene five. And on your screen you can see. And while he (the prodigal) was at a great distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)

Alright, what happens first in the story? Does the boy give his speech, his father is impressed and says, “looks like he’s gonna fly right” and gives him a big hug. Now we think that’s the way it should’ve happened. In the back of our minds, we don’t really notice the text that it doesn’t happen the way. The father runs, falls upon the neck of the prodigal and kisses him, and the Greek has got it, you’ve got two verbs there, and it really means that they happened at once. Running, he fell upon his neck and kissed him, and those are the same three verbs that were used for the welcome of Jacob as we notice. And the father has no idea what the boy’s gonna say. Maybe the boy’s gonna ask for more money. Maybe the boy’s gonna say, “you gave me too much responsibility and I couldn’t handle it and it’s your fault.” “I know that you never really” ya know, this and that. All kinds of things that, that prodigal could say, and the father doesn’t know.

The costly offer of love is first, then we will look in a minute and see how the boy responds. What we need to notice is that the father takes upon himself, the form of a suffering servant, and in public humiliation he leaves the house, comes down and out, and goes after his boy, exactly what the shepherd did when he left the flock and went after the lost sheep, and the woman did when she went down on her knees to search for the coin. The father is now coming after his boy, who he’s convinced is still lost.

I call this the costly demonstration of unexpected love, all four words are critical. It is costly, why is it costly? In Middle Eastern world, gentleman who own land and on a position of authority in the community, everybody’s wearing long robes, but in public those gentlemen walk at a very slow, stately pace and they do no run anywhere. This in not cost contemporary life. Aristotle said a gentleman is known by his walk, and Ben Sirach, a scholar in Jerusalem about 200 years before the time of Jesus said the same thing, that slow, stately pace of the gentleman tells you that he’s a scholar. He has his affairs in order, his life is under control, and he never has to hurry going anywhere.

Little boys can take their robes in their teeth and play football in the street, and when they do that their underwear shows, and they don’t care. But you can’t run unless you pick up that robe. Try running in a choir robe down the street and see how you get along. The only way you’re gonna do is to take that robe up in your hand or put it in your teeth. Everybody sees the old man running down the road, they have never seen that in the thousand years of the history of the village. They are quite shocked and they obviously observe that the father is making a fool out of himself, to say the least. The boy has been stealing his nerves to enter the village. Jacob came back with gifts for the family, he was able to send ya know, flock after flock of expensive animals to his brother trying to buy him off.

Any Middle Easterner who goes into a far country is supposed to come home with gifts for everybody down to his sixth cousin five times removed. But, that’s somebody who goes away with honor. This guy goes away with dishonor having claimed his inheritance when he had no right to it. Now he comes back having lost it, and the village is going to be extremely hostile and it’s going to be utterly humiliating. You do not attend the 25th anniversary of your graduating class if you are in rags and you’re sleeping in the street and you really look, you’re a mess, you just don’t go. Everybody else shows up in a nice car with a husband or wife that’s nicely dressed and talk about how nice things are going at the company. Everybody shows off how well they’ve done over the last 25 years. If you’re sleeping in the street you don’t go. This guy shows up, and we’ll see he is not the one like Jacob who gives gifts, he’s the one who receives them.

Now when this costly demonstration the deepest things cannot be spoken, they have to be acted. It is unexpected because he didn’t deserve it or earn it, and its nature is love. For the father to do that, the father has to, before he makes that costly demonstration of love, he has to reprocess his anger into grace to say that he’s not angry that the boy told him to drop dead and sold the family farm. Is to say the guy isn’t human, but he manages within the greatness of his own soul to reprocess his anger into grace. That’s what Hosea says God does with Israel. “I will not come with my fierce anger, I am God and not man.” And this God is like a father we’re told and comes with compassion. So the son is the recipient of this costly demonstration of unexpected love that is the result of the reprocessing of anger into grace.

How is he going to respond? He can say, “it’s okay Dad, it’s okay thanks, but I’m gonna make it up to you, just gimme it and let me get trained. Ya know, I’ll do anything. I’ll shover the manure, I’ll fix the terraces, I’ll repair the house, whatever job you need. You send me off for training and I’ll come back and do it, and you can pay me like you do the others and I’ll get work elsewhere and I’ll make it up to you.” But you see, the issue is not the money. The issue is the father’s broken heart. If this is a servant who stole money, all he’s gotta do is pay it back. If this is somebody who robbed the bank, and he’s got a chance to say, “ya know made a big mistake I’m sorry.” But if it is a loving father with a longing that there should be a relationship of love within a family, paying back the money is going to be a deeper insult because it’s going to trivialize the problem. I insult you before the whole village today, how much shall I make out the check for? The very fact that you say you’re gonna make out the check means you don’t understand what you’ve done, you have shamed your family before the entire community.

Alright, the next thing that happens is that we see the son in his speech, and here’s what he says, we see it on the screen. The son said to him,

‘Father I have sinned against heaven and before you; and am no more worthy to be called your son.’ And the father said to the servant, ‘Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet.

Perhaps you noticed that the son revises his speech. We noticed in the far country that he was gonna say three things. I am, I’m going now to unworthy. Sorry, before heaven and your sight I have sinned. And the second thing he is going to say is, “I’m unworthy to be called your son.” And the third thing is, “here’s how I’m going to solve the problem.” Now when the older son doesn’t say that third one that means he gives up any hope that he might solve the problem. He’s surrenders saying the problem is, I can’t solve it. The only reason he was gonna give the first two parts of the speech was because he wanted to soften up the old man to get a job. When that drops out, those two earlier phrases take on fresh meaning. He confesses that he has sinned before heaven and in your sight, and I’m no longer worthy to be called your son period. He accepts to be found. He says, “I now understand that I broke your heart.” He doesn’t get it until he sees his father getting hurt for him.

When he was back in the house before he left, the request to take his inheritance wasn’t just a root out of a dry ground. You can be very sure that there was a lot of yelling and shouting that led up to that. His father was offering him costly love from day one, but he never got it. He never got it until he saw his father’s tears. When he saw his father getting hurt for him, all of the sudden the vision of the costly love breaks through to him and he says, “we’ve got a problem here I can’t solve, and I’m not gonna offer any bright ideas about how I am gonna solve the problem.” Now we have the God who comes to us in the form of a suffering servant with a new name, and that’s Jesus Christ, offering costly love. The son hears that when he sees the costly nature of the love, it’s possible for him to see the issue is not the money, the issue is the agony of rejected love. “I can do nothing to solve this problem. All I can do is to accept the grace that is offered to me.” That’s what he does, and a new day dawns and is born as the result of that acceptance.

My name is Dr. Ken Bailey, and this is the third of our series of brief lectures on the great parable that Jesus taught, which we have traditionally called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I prefer to call it the Parable of the Compassionate Father and his Two Lost Sons. One of the points that we talked about in our last lecture needs to be somewhat expanded here. Remember we talked about the fact that the parable interacts with the story of Jacob. When you look at the story of Jacob, you recall that Jacob has a father and a mother. And the mother in Jacob’s story, at this point, is bad news because she joins with Jacob, her younger son, to deceive her husband and to deceive her older son. She’s never heard of again until the day she dies. So it’s a sort of sad ending to a beautiful love affair.

When Jesus comes to tell this story, which, as we mentioned, has many points of relationship between the story of Jacob, there’s no mother. Why doesn’t Jesus have a mother in the story? I think there are very clear reasons. One is the mother figure in the story of Jacob is bad news, [so] he leaves her out. If he includes a mother then Jesus’ theology of God has a male and female in it, and we’re back to the Canaanites with Baal and Astarte, one male and one female God. Jesus doesn’t want to do that, and so he has a father who acts with the tender compassion of a mother. A mom is allowed to run down the road and shower the dear boy with kisses, that’s okay. Dad is supposed to sit in the house “rumph, rumph, what do you have to say for yourself young man?” And it’s okay for Mom to show that extravagant love, Dad is supposed to be the one who cracks the whip. [But] no, that won’t do in the theology of Jesus. The one who creates must be the one who redeems. The one who is the Father must be the one who offers costly love to redeem. So it is a motherly/father (if you please). It is a father who acts with the love of a mother.

Something else, when Jesus creates the story of the good woman and her coin, he takes the female image and elevates it to parallel with the other images. God is like a good shepherd, God is like a good woman, and God is like a good father. If you look at the Psalms and run all the way through the Psalms, you’ll ask the question, what are the dominant images for God in the Psalms? And you will find that there is a collection of images that are loud and clear. God is High Tower. He is strong place. He is the high hill. He is the fortress. He is all of this. And the language is the language of homeland security. We’re going to retreat up to the mountaintop, and we’re going to be safe up there.

But there is a second view in the Psalms. The Psalms talk about in one case God is like a father, in another place it talks about God is like a mother, then the 23rd Psalm talks, about God is like a good shepherd. Jesus has taken that undercurrent in the Psalms. He has not used the [theme of] homeland security, but has substituted that undercurrent of the Psalms, and uses the good shepherd, the good woman, and the good father. So the female is elevated up to the top rank of the three major symbols, and it’s now a positive symbol, not a negative symbol. Which means that the importance of God, whose spirit is neither male nor female, yet male and female are created in the image of God. Thereby we would expect characteristics of both male and female to be a part of the nature of God, and in scripture they are, and in this story they are. That’s an important aspect of this story, which holds incredible tension and brilliance in the way this story is put together.

Alright, now we are back to talking about the boy, and how he responds, and what his father does. We’ll look now at scene six. On our screen it says, “And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; and am no more worthy to be called your son.’ And the father said to the servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet”.

If you look at the story carefully, as we have tried to do, this all happens at the edge of the village. The father is at the edge of the village, half of the village ran after him, the servants from the house also followed their master out there to see if the master wants any kind of help. And you’ll remember in the story of Jacob, his older brother Esau comes out of town with retainers. The retainers are 400‐armed men that are out there to beat up on Jacob. The father also has retainers, he meets the wayward son some distance from town. The retainers are not armed soldiers ready to beat up on Jacob, they are the servants ready to serve the master in case the master has some ideas and wants their service. The same theme is borrowed out of the Jacob story and is now transformed into its new use.

After seeing that the son totally surrenders his plan to solve the problem by working and paying the money back, the son says, I’m unworthy to be called your son.” He now means it. The father hears it and agrees. Yes, absolutely you have been unworthy to be called my son since the day you demanded your inheritance, and before that. I’m glad you finally see the point. Having realized that the son has accepted the costly love that is extended to him, this is now Jesus’ definition of repentance. That definition is in the story of the lost sheep, because in the story of the lost sheep Jesus says “even so there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous who need no repentance.” Or who would think they need no repentance? The “one sinner” who repents in the story is the sheep? What does the sheep do? It gets lost. It rejoices in being found. That’s what happens to the prodigal. The prodigal rejoices and accepts that he should be found by costly love. Then the father orders the banquet. The father says “bring the robe.” They’re going to stand at the edge of the village until the servants bring the robe, and the servants put it on him, they’ll dress him, as if he were royalty.

Why? The boy is going to be wearing the father’s festive garment that [the father] wears only on the three festive feast days of the year. When the villagers sees the boy wearing his father’s festive garment, they will respect the son rather than spitting on him, because of the robe he‘s wearing. Knowing the depth of acceptance that the father has extended to him, the community will now, for the sake of the father, also accept the boy. Shoes on his feet—slaves don’t wear shoes. And the ring, is used the Greek word for signet ring, which means he now has the authority to sign documents. His father now trusts him. This restoration to son‐ship is made at the edge of the village, and now we’ve got this parade back into town. And the father tells the servants, “Kill the fatted calf because we’re going to have a party.”

The final scene of our first half of the parable reads,

“And bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to make merry.” (Luke 15:23)

Remember the story began with a death wish. The son himself demonstrated himself to be dead because he is denying his genealogy by demanding his inheritance. He wants his father dead so he can get the property and go off and do with it whatever he likes. At the end of the story we find that the father says “he was dead and is [now] alive, he was lost and is [now] found.” The

Jews said at during period, don’t say the word “God.” Why? [Because] you might say it in an improper fashion, and then you’d break the ten commandments. So whenever you can, use a “passive” to avoid saying the word God. The beatitudes say, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Passive. From whom? From God. We might say it “Blessed are the merciful, for God will be merciful to them”. That’s the meaning, but God is not mentioned because of that Jewish custom. We call these divine passives. There are 250 if them in the Gospels, and these are two of them. What the father really means, “the prodigal was dead, and I brought him to life. He was lost, and I found him.” Where did the father find him? He found him at the edge of the village. Was he still lost there? You better believe he was. He was so lost that he thought he was going to work and pay it back, because he thought the problem was just a broken law. And as we discussed in our last lecture, it isn’t. It’s a broken relationship. So he’s now being restored. And the party is a celebration of the success of the father’s costly efforts at winning his son from servanthood back to son‐ship. The Coptic translation, which was made at the end of the fourth century in Egypt, changes those passives into actives. It deliberately says in the text, “He was lost, and I found him, he was dead, and I brought him to life.” And the Arabic versions (that are translations of the Coptic) preserve that affirmation of the active.

We turn now to the second half of the story, which is the account of the older son. And here we’ll find that there are again four themes, which come to a soliloquy, then those themes repeat backwards—only the last one is missing. The soliloquy in the middle is divided into two sections. We’ll look at each scene by itself. The text reads,

“As he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the boys and ask what this meant.” (Luke 15:25,26)

In both accounts, the story of Jacob and the story of the Prodigal, somebody starts off in the field and in both cases somebody comes back to the house. That theme Jesus uses to tie these stories together. The music has already begun. This means that the paid entertainers have started their act. They haven’t served the meal yet, probably they’re waiting for the older son to show up. The older travels through the narrow village street (streets are about six or seven feet wide and houses are about the size of a one car garage. And if it’s a big house it would be the size of a two‐car garage). The music involves a drum beat, and the drum beat can be heard a quarter of a mile away. The tune of the drum will tell whether or not it’s a party. He hears the drum beat, “Oh, there’s a party somewhere in the village. That’s great!” As he gets closer and closer to home, the sound is getting louder‐and‐louder. He enters in to the courtyard. “Whoopee! The party is at our house!” Then he rushes in to enjoy the party. That’s what we expect to happen. But no, that’s not what happens.

What happens is that when he gets to the house, he calls one of the “pais.” The word “pais” in Greek can mean son, or it can mean servant, or it can mean young boy. The word son doesn’t make sense, so our choices are servant or young boy. Traditionally we’ve translated it servant. But the servants are all in the house getting ready for the big feast. Young boy is what we should use, and young boy is what Christians in the Middle East over the last 2,000 years have used to translate this word “pais” in this text. They know it’s a young boy. Who are these young boys? Well, the elders are at the banquet, and the little boys (about Junior High) can’t go in to the banquet but they can stand outside. They’ve got sticks, and they’re dancing to the music, and they’re stirring up a lot of dust. The older son comes to the courtyard. He calls one of these kids and he says, “Hey kid! What’s going on?” Here’s the text, and we’ll try to lock its secrets.

“And he said to him, ‘Your brother is here, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he received him with peace.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. (Luke 15:27,28)

What’s going on? The kid says your brother is here. He’s present. He “showed up.” Then the boy offers the second explanation. Keep in mind the village is not happy to see the prodigal. He offended the culture of the village and the honor of the family on a very deep level. Now he comes back in failure, and nobody is going to show up at that banquet to honor the return of the prodigal. They can’t stand him. They’ll show‐up to honor the father, whose shown costly love. Paul uses the same idea. God was—in Christ—reconciling the world unto himself. And that’s what’s going on in this story. The boy says, “Your father has killed the fatted calf.” Ah, this is the second explanation as to what the banquet is all about. The father received the prodigal, uses the word “hygiaino”. As a Greek word, it has to do with good health, so we’ve [historically] translated it “safe and sound.” But that Greek word for somebody who’s first language is Hebrew, it has a larger meaning. The Jews, in Alexandria, before the time of Jesus translated the Old Testament into Greek. Did they use the word “hygiaino” in their Greek translation? Yes. How many times did it occur? Fourteen times. Is there a single Hebrew word that those translators, Jewish translators, use to translate, that came out “hygiaino?” Yes, there is. And the Hebrew word is “shalom.” When those Jewish translators saw the word “shalom” they translated it “hygiaino.” I’m very sure that the word on the lips of Jesus was the word shalom (peace).

What is the young boy telling the older son? He’s telling him “your father has made a banquet because he’s received your brother with peace.” Alright, this is very important for us to catch. If it were a health report…that is the banquet is because the younger got back, and he’s safe and sound, it would be very churlish of the older son not to enter the banquet. The older son would know that after the banquet there’s going to be a family discussion and the older son wants to be there to represent his point of view which is “to throw the bum out until he pays!” But if the banquet is in celebration that the father has created shalom that means that the older son’s point of view has already been lost. We now know why he’s mad.

However, to get mad in this kind of a scene is really serious. Because if he gets mad now, all of the extended family, and all of the most important friends of the extended family are at the banquet. This is like a younger son in an American family who is being married. After the wedding, there is a banquet. And at the banquet, the older son stands up and has an angry shouting match with his father. Very bad taste! The whole banquet is going to be really upset because they’re going to say “if there is a quarrel in this family, fine, settle your problems quietly when there’s nobody around.” But to do it at a public banquet is really a slap in the face of the father. The older son is offending his father on a deeper level than the younger son. The younger son broke his relationship by asking for his inheritance, the older son broke his relationship by insulting his father at a big family gathering at that banquet. Now what’s going to happen? The text reads,

So his father came out and was entreating him. (Luke 15:28)

The father calls a halt to the music and the dancing. He tells the servants, “Don’t put the food on the table. I’m going to go out and talk to him.” We expected, however, for the father to ignore him and proceed. Pretend that everything’s okay. The father, for the second time in the same day, must take upon himself the form of a suffering servant and go down and out. This is God who comes to us in His divine Word made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, in costly love to win us back in reconciliation to himself. The father has to do it for the younger son. Now he has to do it for the older son.

The gaping hole in the story of the good shepherd is now filled. The good shepherd goes after the one sheep that is lost, brings it home to the village, and the good shepherd has the party, but when is going to go bring in the 99? The older son represents the sheep that “don’t get lost.” Now we find that the story has a completion in that he now goes down and out for the older son. The same act of self‐emptying love is required for those who break the law and for those who keep the law. You know, I pay my taxes, and I don’t beat my wife, and I don’t kick the dog, and everybody thinks I’m a good guy and that’s enough. That’s fine if you’re a servant. If you’re a son or a daughter, there’s a relationship which is broken and which must be repaired.

Now the father must offer even more costly love because the insult is fresh and the whole village is watching. So when he goes down and out, how does the older son respond? Is he totally overwhelmed that the father doesn’t order some form of punishment but comes himself in self‐emptying love to talk to him? No. Let’s look at the problem as he sees it.

“But he answered his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have served you and I never disobeyed your commandments, yet you never gave me a kid (a goat) to make merry with my friends.’ But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf.” (Luke 15: 29,30)

The problem, he says, “I don’t have as much food as I’d like to have.” That’s the same problem his brother focused on in the far country. And he also says to his father, “I have kept the law. All these years I have served you.” And the verb to serve means to serve as a slave. He’s defining his relationship as master and servant. He doesn’t understand the loving relationship of a son who accepts the love of his father and responds to it in a loving fashion. He sees himself as a servant. I don’t break the rules, so nobody could ask more of me than that. And he accuses him of favoritism. “You give him a calf? You don’t even give me a goat! You love him, and you don’t love me to make merry with my friends.” He puts himself outside of the family the same way his brother did who denied his genealogy. He says, “I am not part from this family.” Then he starts blaming his father by saying, “You killed for him the fatted calf.” The father says, “The calf is being killed because I have restored my son to life. I have found my lost son.” And when he gets both of his boys back, he is going to say to everybody, “Rejoice with me for I have found my sons.”

Why does the average Christian hear the definition of the older son as “you killed for him the fatted calf,” and we don’t notice that this is exactly opposite of the father’s definition. It is not for the prodigal. It’s for the father. I’ll leave to you my viewer and friend to answer that question, and we will take up the final discussion in the next section.

My name is Dr. Ken Bailey, and we are now on our fourth lecture. Now after the older son shouts at his father is public, accuses his brother of wasting the money on harlots. (Peasants from Afghanistan to Spain kill each other over those kinds of public accusations.) After an accusation like that, if he can make it stick, no one is ever going to marry the prodigal, no family is ever going to give their daughter to the prodigal. And if the older son can make this stick, he can then get his brother defined as a rebellious son, and the law of Moses says he has to be stoned. Also, I think the older is raging out of control, and he’s shouting all kinds of irresponsible nonsense. The father has every right, in fact, he is expected to put up his hands and say “Enough! I don’t have to put up with this! Lock him up! I will deal with him later!” They’d lock him up in the basement, the father would stomp back into the house. He’d tells everybody let’s continue with the banquet. He’d order the musicians to start playing and the dancers to start dancing. And there’d be a grim look on his face, but they’d continue with the banquet.

But this is not an Oriental Patriarch. The father in the parable concludes by pleading for joy. My son was lost, and I found him. He was dead, and I brought him to life. Implied in what he’s saying, “And you are dead, and I am willing to bring you to life. And you are lost, and I’m out here trying to find you.” The audience waits expectantly to see how the older son is going to respond. Is he going to accept the costly love offered to him and go into the house and be reconciled to his brother and to his father and to the community? Or is he going to remain outside mad? Because grace is not only amazing, but for certain types, it’s infuriating. And he is one of those types.

Now the audience is on stage. Their understanding of sin is in the story. Their understanding of solution to the problem of sin is in the story. And they are represented by the older son. The father in self‐emptying love represents the person of Jesus. What is the audience going to do with Jesus? And this is the question in this participation theatre that is placed on the heart and in the mind of everyone who reads and perceives the tensions and the beauty and the power of the story.

We’re now ready to try and make a summary. There are voices in the interpretive world for the last 100 plus years that have said every parable has but one idea. And you follow that idea and you end up with a parable that is a delivery system for an idea. Jesus has an idea, and the idea is like a great big cannon shell, and the parable launches that idea and of course the gunner takes the shell casing and throws it away. He doesn’t need it after he gets the idea launched. And there’s one idea, and it goes toward the target. When you look at this story, which one are you going to pick if you go that route?

Does it talk about the compassion of the father? It does. Does it talk about the rebellious son? It does. Does it talk about the nature of forgiveness? It does. Does it define sin on a deeper level? It does. Does it talk about joy in restoration? It does.

Are you going to pick one of those and ignore the rest? I don’t think so. I view the parables of Jesus as a house in which we are invited to take up residence. Jesus creates a new view of the world. When we step into a parable, we step in to that house, and we look out on the world from the various windows of the house, and we’re able to see the world through different eyes.

I think that there are 12 theological themes in this parable. We can also call it a theological cluster. And we want to summarize our study of this parable by going over these 12 very briefly.

‐ The first one is the nature of sin. Sin is not what the prodigal does in the far country. Sin is of two types. The first, sin is breaking the law, and the second, is a broken relationship while keeping the law. Both are sins. Both sons are sinners. They break their relationship with their father, only in different ways. And the costly love of the father is offered to both of them. It’s the father who gets hurt. They have to see that costly love in a demonstration before it gets through to them. This is what the cross of Jesus is all about. The broken heart of God becomes visible. ‐ The second, the parable talks about freedom. God, the Father, in this parable grants ultimate freedom to these two types—namely the freedom to reject love. The deepest pain known to the human spirit is the agony of rejected love, and the ultimate freedom is the freedom to reject the love that is offered. ‐ The third theme is the theme of repentance. Defined by Jesus in the first story as we’ve mentioned. Now we find that the prodigal gives up his hope to solve the problem when he decides he cannot do it, and he accepts the love of his father. That acceptance of that love is Jesus’ definition of repentance. The repentance in the far country is repentance before law. The authentic repentance is when the prodigal accepts to be found. The older son is challenged to do the same thing, and the story is left open, and the audience is given the chance to join the party by accepting the love that is offered. ‐ Then the next theme in the story is the nature of grace. Grace is offered to each of the sons from the beginning of the story to the end. Grace of the father to the younger son when he allows him to take his inheritance and throw it away. Grace that is offered to the younger son when he returns. Grace that is offered to the older son when the father goes out to talk to him. Grace that is extended even after the older son insults his father in public and yet he’s able to transform his anger into grace. ‐ Then we find also fatherhood. The image of God as a compassionate father is here given a compassionate father who acts with the tender feelings of a mother is given its finest expression. No other definition of the understanding of God as Father is allowed to anyone who wants to take the biblical witness and the witness of Jesus seriously. ‐ We find here a definition of sonship. What does it mean for us to be sons and daughters of God? He doesn’t just give us a set of rules. Then once he’s given them, he doesn’t stand there with a whip. He doesn’t say, “If you break them, I’m going to clobber you.” Rather, he calls on us to respond as children before a compassionate father. ‐ The story also has a clear affirmation as to who the person of Jesus is. How does Jesus understand himself? We noticed in the beginning of our first lecture that the Pharisees are complaining saying this man receives sinners and eats with them. And Jesus does not reply and say, “Well, yes, gentlemen, occasionally I do but very rarely. And we always clean them up first, and we always close the blinds, and we keep the numbers down. God of the Old Testament is a God of judgment, yes, but he is also a God of mercy so we’ve got to leave a crack in the door just a wee bit.” No, He doesn’t say that. He says, “Gentlemen you are right. I do sit down and eat with sinners, but it’s much worse than you imagine. I sit down and eat with sinners, but I also run down the road and shower them with kisses. And I drag them in that I might be able to sit down and eat with them.” Jesus is taking the symbol of father and reusing it to define himself. Not that he is the father in the house, which is the symbol of God. But God becomes a suffering servant, takes upon himself the form of a servant to offer costly love to his children. Thereby, it is God who comes to us incarnate, in his Word, in the person of Jesus. And that is what we see Jesus defining here. What happens in the third story mirrors also what happens in the first story. ‐ When Jesus tells the story of the good shepherd and defines himself as the good shepherd, he audience knows that behind Jesus’ telling of that story is the 23rd Psalm, which says the Lord is my shepherd. Jeremiah in the 23rd chapter of Jeremiah retells the story and God says, “I myself will come and round up the lost of Israel.” And Ezekiel has an entire chapter, chapter 34, in which he retells Psalm 23, only it takes him 31 verses to do it. And God says, “I myself one day, I am going to come and round up the lost sheep.” When Jesus tells the story of the lost sheep, he is asking, “Why do I go after lost sinners? [Because] I am fulfilling this classical promise of God that one day He would come Himself and round up the lost sheep.” ‐ Jesus defines himself as the good shepherd, he defines himself as the good woman, and he defines himself as the good father. The story is infused with Jesus telling us who He is. ‐ Then we notice about family and community. There are seven different collections of images in the New Testament that talk about the nature of the community Jesus founded, which is the church. Sometimes they are political, some of them have to do with nature, some of them have to do with cosmic images. The one that Jesus chooses is that of a family, and we have it here in this story. That’s why the early church called one other brother and sister. They saw themselves as a single family. Jesus had women disciples because he in the 13th chapter of Matthew gestures to his disciples and says here is my mother and my father and my sisters and my brothers. There isn’t any place in the world you can gesture to a group of men and say here’s my mother and my sister. When he does that, he is gesturing to a room full of people who are both male and female. ‐ Jesus shapes his parables to ring the big bells for his men and for his women listeners. So amongst his disciples are his men and his women. They are a part of this family and a part of this ministry. When Jesus talks about the church, he uses the language of the family. His primary image for the new community that he creates. Did you ever worry about how Luke tells us that Jesus was traveling with the 12, going from village to village with some women, and their names are mentioned. So here they are sleeping night after night in various villages, and how did he get away with this? Very simple answer. He told everybody we’re all relatives. And the community says, “Oh okay, you’re all family, okay, fine.” If you’re not of the same family, it’s not okay, then and now. They saw this community interacting and using the language of a family, and they accepted that this has become a new family. The family is Jesus’ primary image for the church. ‐ And then number 10 we notice incarnation and atonement. We notice Jesus taking upon himself the form of a servant. That’s Christmas, God comes to us in a person, and we find him in costly love restoring his sons to himself, and that’s Easter and we call it atonement. The two are back to back, they are a single coin. When you get one of them you get the other. His name shall be called Emmanuel, God with us, that’s Christmas. And we will call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins, because the word “Jesus,” the root of the word is to save. He is with us and he saves. Christmas and Easter. One of them happens in Bethlehem and one of the happens in Jerusalem. They are only seven miles apart. And in this story the two are the two sides of a single coin. ‐ And then we find the overtones of the Lord’s Supper. When the children are restored to their family there is now a party in celebration. The Eucharist, the Last Supper, the Lord’s Supper which he instituted the night before his death. The many scenes, particularly in the gospel of Luke where Jesus sits down and has meals with his disciples. And so the Eucharist, or the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a continuation of the quality of fellowship that was available to the disciples when they sat down and ate with him. Not only does Jesus do that in real life, but he creates the same scene in the parable, this parable has people who sit down and have a meal together. The Eucharist looks to the past, to what happened the night before Jesus died. It is celebrated in the present because we participate in that banquet, and it looks forward to the end of times when the Messiah will sit down with all those who have called upon His name. ‐ And finally, there is eschatology. The story looks to the future because this celebration is a celebration of a banquet which ends with the end of history. We this fantastic parable, the finest summary of the teachings and message of Jesus that is available anywhere. It’s not different from what Paul teaches. Paul takes this theology, puts it into conceptual language for a Greco‐Roman world that thinks in conceptual language rather that picture language. There is none of this that Jesus is a simple rabbi who is teaching simple stories to simple people then along comes Paul and he dreams up all this wonderful theology that is the foundation of the church. No, one is a glove and it fits on a hand. The hand is the teaching of Jesus, and the glove is the conceptualization of that story as we find it in the teachings of Paul. And so in this famous story, I urge you to take this story seriously and think deeply as I have been privileged to do to try and understand what it means when we see it. And see Jesus not as just a simple man, but as a theologian offering to the community a way to honor their past in the story of Jacob and to reshape that into a higher level of the perception of the human predicament and how that human predicament can be solved.

I’ve created a little parable if you please. It’s got faults in it, and I’ve had people point out those faults, and I know them, but I’m going to tell it to you hoping that it might be helpful. Imagine now a mother who is going to have a tea party with some of her friends, and she’s got two sons, and one of them is Johnny, and he’s about 5 and the other is Billy and he is about 10. And Billy is in the next room doing his homework. And so Mom is getting ready for the tea party. The dining room and kitchen are together, and she puts a tablecloth over the table and takes a glass pitcher of lemonade and puts it on the tablecloth. She is going to get out some cookies and get the coffee ready, and she tells Johnny, “Johnny please don’t pull on the tablecloth. If you do the pitcher of lemonade’s going to come down on your head.” She turns her back, and guess what, Johnny starts pulling on the tablecloth. Mom turns around and sees the pitcher of lemonade just about to come down on Johnny’s head.

Now the parable’s got three endings. In the first ending, she rushes over and says, “Johnny, I told you not to pull on the tablecloth,” and she dumps the pitcher of lemonade on his head. This is the definition of God as law‐giver. He gives the law to humankind, and we’re warned if we break it, we’re going to get in trouble. We break it and we’re punished. I don’t find that in scripture.

In the second ending, Mom picks up the pitcher of lemonade, and she says to Johnny, “I told you what not to do, and you still did it, so I should dump this on you, but if I do, you’ll probably catch your death of cold. So she calls Billy over and she dumps it on Billy. She says to Johnny, “See what you made me do?” Johnny breaks‐down feeling guilty and starts crying. This could be called divine child abuse. Why are you beating up on the wrong kid? Why aren’t you beating up on this one, not that one? What’s Billy have to do with it? That’s not appropriate. The understanding of the solution to the human predicament that the New Testament gives us. In the third ending, Mom sees the pitcher of lemonade about to come down on Johnny’s head, she rushes out, she knocks the pitcher aside and it breaks. Mom sustains a deep cut on her arm and she starts to bleed profusely. She pulls a towel off her shoulder, begins to wrap up the wound. Johnny sees Mom getting hurt, and he realizes if Mom hadn’t come over and gotten hurt that pitcher of lemonade would have fallen on him and he would have gotten hurt. Now he needs to be comforted, and Mom picks him up and comforts him. It is Mom who got hurt, not Billy. There is a unity between Mom who told Johnny, by the nature of tablecloths and the nature of pitchers of lemonade and gravity and all that good stuff, if you break these rules you are going to get hurt. Not because I arbitrarily tell you to stand on your head in a corner. I’m telling you that to live life well, it will require you to learn how to live in a way that you live in harmony with the people around you and the world around you. And if you break those rules, for example, if you go on drugs, you are going to fry your brain. That judgment comes out of the nature of who we are, the nature of the community and the nature of the world around us.

God said that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Paul also said that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. Mom took upon herself a form in which her suffering is visible in order to protect Johnny from getting hurt. Mom did have a quick flash of anger to begin with. She looked over and she said, “Oh if he had just listened to me, we wouldn’t have this problem.” But like the father who is in the story of the prodigal son, Mom manages to transform that deep disappointment in to an action that is costly and that lets Johnny understand that what Mom tells him is for his own best interest and the interest of the harmony of the family.

Yes, Christ died for our sins, and we start thinking “Well, I paid $20,000 for the car, so Jesus has to suffer because I have caused so much sin.” That’s not an adequate correlation. This is not a mathematical formula. We are talking about God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. The Father in the form of a suffering servant reconciles his boys to himself. Mom, in the form of someone willing to demonstrate costly love, reconciles Johnny back to herself. This is the story of the Gospel, and it’s the heart of everything Jesus did and everything that He taught us.

My prayer is that this story may enrich you and your life the way it has enriched me and mine.