and he said, “A certain man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. “A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. “When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”‘ “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’ “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began.
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, and he asked one of the servants what was going on. ‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’ “The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’ “His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!'”
Luke 15:11-32
When his resources run out, then the famine comes. God will use anything to move us back to Him. We don’t know what the future holds and the unexpected will trip us up everytime. The famine makes the son’s situation far worse. Interesting statement, “and he began to be in need”. He was in need before. He just didn’t know it. All human beings have a tendency to be self sufficient. We are oblivious to how dependent we are. Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, man is the most dependent and the most needy. We are more needy than we realize, especially when it comes to God-related things. Like teenagers, we all think we are invincible and bullet proof, only to learn that we are dependent on Him for everything. Farmers especially know there are just too many things that can go wrong between planting and selling what they planted. This boy was in need from the beginning, he just didn’t know it.
In the previous Gem I commented more on the significance of him leaving his community and family. But stop and think for a moment. If he takes a journey abroad, he by definition ends up with Gentiles, non Jews. He has turned his back on his own people and gone to the Gentiles. Now the text tells us, “he was joined to one of them”. [kollao] means to glue oneself to, to join to, cleave. Oh, no son. You have got the idea of leaving and cleaving wrong. Instead of leaving father and mother and cleaving to his wife, he leaves his people and culture and cleaves to a Gentile. He clings to this man, attaches himself to him like glue. Where is his independence now? He has quickly exchanged his sense of independence for dependency again, but of the wrong kind. Luke uses this word 7 times in his two books (Luke 10:11, 15:15, Acts 5:13, 8:29, 9:26, 10:28, 17:34). That is 58% of the usage of the whole of the New Testament. This is an important word. We are made for relationship. We are made to “stick like glue”. That is how God has created us. “No man is an island” as John Donne once said. You need other people. Choose your friends and acquaintances wisely.
In attaching himself to a Gentile, the son has gone all the way across the dividing line between Jew and Gentile. Peter told them, “You know it is against our laws for a Jewish man to enter a Gentile home like this or to associate with you.” Acts 10:28. This Jewish boy was now following a Gentile around, totally dependent on him. Seeking to please him at every turn, all the while hoping for a hand out of some sort. Living in Indonesia, I meet those kinds of people frequently. The people who come to my car with a dry cloth or duster and seek to clean my windscreen for me with a rag dirtier than my windscreen, or holding my door open for me when I have already opened it. All the while hoping that I will throw some money their way. They are constantly trying to find any little thing they can do for me – finding a need and meeting it. Yes, that is a principle of business but in this case it is annoying at best because “the need” they are meeting is not a real need. They are only getting in the way. I am sure this Jewish boy drove the Gentile he glued himself to, crazy.
When you think of pigs in the context of this story, don’t think of pigs in the Western context, living in a pristine farmyard with grass all around them. Many of us think that pigs like the mud hollow, a bit like hippos wallowing in mud to stay cool. There is that picture in our minds, but these pigs in ancient times in Palestine and currently in Asia are left to scavenge. They roam around the village or the city seeking to scavenge anything they can eat and they eat some pretty awful shocking things. (I am thinking more of what I have seen in Papua or Papua New Guinea than in the rest of Indonesia. Pigs don’t roam the cities here in Jakarta – just to set the record straight.) Like the pigs this boy ends up feeding, he too has become a scavenger, a gleaner to put it in nicer terms. But it is merely the actions of someone who has come to the bottom of barrel.
I am amazed at times, how God drops resources in my hands at the perfect time. While in Australia, on our way to New Zealand, I saw a book by Kenneth E. Bailey called The Cross and the Prodigal. This has often happened; talk about timely. Bailey, in this book, suggests the citizen would not have wanted the prodigal hanging around him as I have described above. He suggests the Gentile would have “tried to get rid of him by offering him a job he was confident the beggar would refuse.” It would have been clear to everyone in town that this boy was an upper class Jew by how he was dressed. It would have been known that he abhorred pigs. That abhorrence continues today in Jewish and Muslim communities. They are filthy dirty animals which eat anything. So the man would have figured that to offer an upper class Jewish boy a job feeding pigs, would have been sufficient to get rid of him. But wonder of wonders, shock horror, he accepts. How the mighty have fallen and so quickly. We don’t know how long the interval was between him leaving home and sinking so low that he would feed pigs, but the thrust of Jesus story is on the speed of it happening. The story is cut down to bring the beginning and end together, closer in time.
Wild pigs or famished pigs will turn and attack you. I have seen it happen. A cornered wild boar will turn and attack the one who has cornered it. Kids in villages in PNG are frequently bitten or attacked by the pigs they feed. This is the background to the current plight of this foolish Jewish boy. Everything about this story is contrived to contrast what the boy has turned his back on, with his current situation. When is he going to wake up to reality? Remember again the contrast between the stories of the prodigal and Jacob. Jacob also travels far from home and is deceived by Laban. The connection of Laban to the Abrahamic family is kept hidden at first until the news is dropped on us that this man is family – “and Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban.” Gen 24:29. We are told in Gen 24:3-4″Swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not allow my son to marry one of these local Canaanite women.Go instead to my homeland, to my relatives, and find a wife there for my son Isaac.”Intriguing isn’t it. In these two stories that are so parallel, there are contrasts too. In the Jacob story the servant sent to search for a wife for Jacob, leaves the land of the Canaanites and heads back home. In the prodigal story, the younger son leaves the land of Palestine and goes to the Gentiles. This one has gone to extraordinary lengths to shun his own. The reverse of John 1:11 where He came to His own but His own did not receive Him.
Having experienced all of this, the younger son finally COMES TO HIS SENSES, and finds himself. But look what it took to bring him to his senses. Sometimes the drive to sin or to kick over the traces to “be free” is so strong that it takes a huge reversal to bring us to our senses. Our human propensity to self destruct is scary. There is one more cultural element I would like to draw out from this passage before I close this Gems. Here is this young son of a Jewish nobleman living amongst the Gentiles and sitting amongst the pigs, wishing he could eat what the pigs are eating. Have you any idea of how degrading that must have been. It was expressly forbidden for a Jew to go near pigs. To end up feeding them is the epitomy of depravity. To go further and wish you could eat what they are eating is worse than disgusting. I am sure he must have come to his senses and stopped himself by considering that in his weakened state, if he attempted to steal the food from the pigs mouths they would tear him apart. But notice there is one more element in what he says. “But coming to himself he said,My father’s servants have enough bread, and I am perishing with famine.”
Take a look at Jer_38:9: “My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet whom they have cast into the cistern; and he will die right where he is because of the famine, for there is no more bread in the city.”
We think of there being no bread in the city, as meaning it is in the grip of a famine or perhaps the bakers have gone on strike. Bread to many of us from the West means a lack of the staple food. Many Indonesians think we eat bread just like they eat rice. Rice is the staple food. I would say in the west, at least New Zealand that potatoes would probably be the substitute for rice rather than bread. But yes at some meals it is bread that is used as the sustaining core element of the meal. Perhaps at breakfast with toast or lunchtime with sandwiches. But in the middle eastern situation in ancient Palestine (and today) we are talking about a lack of cutlery – edible cutlery. Bread was the means of eating the food before you. Dipping the bread in the bowl or using the bread to transfer what was there to eat, to your mouth. When Jeremiah says there was no bread in the city, the inference is that the famine had become so bad that they didn’t even have the eating utensils, let alone the food to eat with it. This is what the younger son is contemplating. Here he is starving to death and he thinks of the fact that the hired hands at home on his father’s estate have plenty of bread. “They don’t lack for bread to scoop up the food they have to eat, and here I don’t even have the bread to eat anything with.” It is a sad statement on the depth of his plight. Not only do I have nothing to eat but I don’t even have bread to eat it with. No edible knives and forks.
Next Gem we will look at his conclusion and the little speech he rehearses for his father.
The reason we have rules is to protect freedom. The greatest threat to freedom is freedom itself.
A R Bernard
It’s never too late for grace. Your stack of sins is never too high. You’re never too old, too messed up, or too worn out.
Max Lucado
The best thing in life is finding someone who knows all of your flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses and still thinks you’re completely amazing.
Anon
When God sets our spirit free then our emotions and body begin to fall in line.We determine how long the process takes by our submission or resistance.
Bob Gass