The parable of the prodigal son is one of the best known and most loved passages of the bible. I partially avoided splitting Luke 14 into two passages just so that I got to preach it! The whole chapter is so clearly and engagingly focused on the passionate love of God for all people, regardless of their past, and his sheer joy over their repentance - their ‘humble return home’. There’s a lot to like. But of course, as much as this chapter of the bible is meant to send a clear, affirming message to repentant sinners, it is primarily intended to send a warning, a loving rebuke, an invitation really, to ‘the righteous’. The beauty of Jesus’ teaching in Luke 15 is the way it draws the connections between our attitudes towards other people and our own relationship with God. The Pharisees grumbled at Jesus welcoming ‘sinners and tax collectors’ because they could not see how God would welcome such people, which of course reveals their convictions regarding the basis of their own acceptance with God. Jesus expresses it as ‘earning acceptance through slavish obedience’ in the dialogue between the older son and the father. 

 

The overarching concept that is common to this passage and many others in the gospel is ‘the more we appreciate how much grace we have been shown, the more readily we show that grace to others.’ And of course, the less we have experienced grace, or appreciated it, the less inclined we are to extend it to others - or to rejoice in God’s display of grace to others. Especially if we deem them particularly undeserving of such kindness from God. And that’s really the heart of it. None of us ‘deserve’ grace. Otherwise it wouldn’t be grace! What the Pharisees needed to understand, and what we always need to keep coming back to, is that none of us earn or deserve acceptance with God - each of us receives it because of his underserving kindness, his grace, towards us, on the basis of humble repentance and faith alone. We are all in the same boat.

 

Now I don’t mean to say ‘we are all as bad as each other’. I think it’s perfectly reasonable and biblical even to acknowledge that some people’s lives express sin, greed and selfishness to a greater extent. Some people give themselves over more wholeheartedly to patterns of behaviour that are destructive and exploitative. God sees all this, and he takes note. He is a God of justice. But the complementary biblical truth is that the sin that takes fuller expression in these people has darkened all of our hearts and leaves all of us on an essentially equal footing when it comes to seeking God’s acceptance. And the only pathway is humble repentance and faith, and this is of course only possible because of the gracious and merciful death of Christ on our behalf, which opens the way for our free reconciliation with God.

 

So I think the way this passage will continue to challenge and speak to me is to draw my attention to those times when I might look down on others, when I might catch myself considering others ‘less worthy’ than myself of God’s acceptance and welcome. And in those moments to recognise that I myself need to repent and remember the only real basis of my acceptance with God, and to look again at these people through the eyes of the compassionate father, the concerned shepherd, and the desperate old woman - those who rejoice at finding what was lost.