In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy spent the first part of the movie trying to find a way to get home. When she finally winds up in Oz, she spends the rest of the movie trying to find her way back home to Kansas. Finally, she learned the truth that she has always had the ability to go home anytime she wanted to. All she had to do was click the heels of her Ruby Slippers together three times and say, “There’s no place like home”
This parable was not talking about backsliders; in truth, the correct interpretation is that Jesus is speaking about lost people. The Pharisees and the Scribes were upset that Jesus was hanging out with sinners; Jesus spoke the three parables that makes up this chapter to confront the hardness of their religious heart against lost sinners. Jesus wants to show us that every life matters, no matter the state of their lossless.
In the story, Jesus tells of a young man who couldn’t wait to get away from home. And at the end of the story he couldn’t wait to get back home. This young man was very selfish, he made selfish demands of his father, and he takes his inheritance and head out into a far country to live it up, free from the restraints of his father and his rules. (Young people there is a saying: “the grass look greener on the other side until you get over there and see that there are brown spots over there as well). What he finds once there was not what he expected at all. Oh he found good times for minute, new friends, but when the money ran out so did the friends and the good time as well.
This young man finds himself living with a pig farmer, his job was to feed swine’s, job for a Jewish person was considered to be unclean and in their custom this was unheard of, he had reach the lowest of the low, he had hit rock bottom. The Jewish person would never containment themselves with people, who fed pigs, this was totally against their culture; they would not be caught dead in this situation. At this time he broke, busted, and disgusted. He is lonely and has no one who cares about him, he finally reaches rock bottom and the bible says: “he come to his senses.” And he remembers how good things had been back home.
He remembers that there is no place like home. While feeding the pigs he desires to eat the cobs that the pigs was eating for him he was starving, but when he came to his senses; he decided that he would repent and go back home. He composes an apology, his essential points:
- He confessed his sin against God.
- He confessed sin against his father.
- He renounces any legal claim to sonship; he asked to be a hired servant of the estate.
- The Father’s compassion:
- The Father gives him the best robe
- He honors the son who had dishonored him
- A ring for his finger: he lavishes on the son a sign of his love and wealth.
- Sandals on his feet: his boy destitute, barefoot. The father is quick to clothe him and care for his needs. Sandals were a sign of a freeman as opposed to a slave.
- The fatted calf: a man of his father’s status would have a calf that has been specially fed in order to be ready for a special occasion such as this.
- The father represented God the Father, and the love He has for fallen man/woman; the son represented those who have rebelled against God, who have repented, and return to God.
- Repentance is necessary for us to return to God, the sinner is morally bankrupt and has absolutely no claim on the father, only the father’s love.
- God our Father is ready to show abundant mercy. The son deserve nothing, we deserve nothing but the love of our Heavenly Father, but His love which He so freely gives.
- No matter where you find yourself today, whether it is on the high hills of sin, lost in the house or in the far country, you need to know that there’s no place like home. Why? Because there is a loving father at home waiting for you to return. A father who will always be there for you, One who promise never to leave you nor forsake you, one you can count on, a father who will always be the same; for the word say: He’s the same yesterday today and forever. He is not going to change on you, He’ll not get angry with you, He will not act funny with you, no you can count on Him to be always waiting for you to come back home.
Most of the time as Christians we are like the brother who stayed home, he acted like he was all that, but in essence he was jealous, angry, bitter he wanted to do the same thing his brother did, but he did not have enough nerves. He did not care about his brother, he didn’t care that his brother was lost, that he was dead and has now come back to life; he refused to join the celebration. Sometime we act just like the older brother, what do I mean by that? We say things like “if she going to be the chair of the committee then I am not going to be a part of that committee, I cannot work with her or him, I keep my distance from them, child they do not know enough to chair that committee. The older brother did not care about pleasing the father, he was only thinking about himself. He was waiting for the father to die, so he could get his inheritance, he was going about his daily routine holding grudge in his heart.
The same mentality exists in the church today. We will not rejoice when sinners are saved, because we sometime feel threatened. We cannot get excited when the church grows, because we see our hold on power slipping away. We say we love God, but how can you love God? Whom you have not seen, and do not love your sisters/brothers who you see all the time; people want the accolades, the pats on the back and the glory.
There service in the church is not about God, it about them!
