#i see so many people boil his character down to >> greedy selfish money hungry manipulator who feels nothing narcissist

[abstract-hellbender]

quick af btw >> you can hate dutch van der linde without calling him an evil snake who eats people..,,,, genuine serious if you think hes a cannibal GET OUT OF HERE

[cycnsw]

The Story of the Prodigal Son, a Prodigal God and a Greedy Brother

The Sunday of the Prodigal Son is the second Sunday of pre-Lent, the weeks of preparation preceding Great Lent. This parable summarises the Gospel teachings perfectly, and as we approach Lent, it will allow us to look within ourselves to find humility.

The name for this Sunday is taken from the parable of our Lord Jesus Christ found in Luke 15:11-32. This is a story of two sons, which is often forgotten. It is a story of a compassionate Father. It is a story of being lost and found. It is a story of sin and Grace.

The parable begins with the youngest of the sons asks his father to give him his inheritance. The father does this, and soon after the son leaves and journeys to a distant country (vv. 11-13).

I’m here to give you all a different perspective on this story.

The Prodigal Son.

First, we must truly understand the sin that this young man digs himself into. 

The story kicks off with him asking for his share of the inheritance before his father has died. In the original Jewish context, this meant that the younger son asked his father to die. The audience hearing this parable at the time would have been horrified that a son could so cruelly ask for the inheritance before the father dies. It is an act of the utmost pride, greed and hatred.

We know that the younger son then goes on to waste his inheritance. 

He goes to a far country, as far away from his father and his brother as is humanly possible, just as people often try to run away from their Father in heaven. He physically and spiritually alienates himself from his father, just like those who leave or reject the Church.

His pride turned his soul into a ravenous, bottomless pit, and nothing of this world could quench his desires. After indulging in every sinful pleasure of the flesh, this man ends up feeling wasted and dry. He has nothing. A famine sweeps through the country and he is forced to find employment from a foreigner. He must feed the pigs, which was a truly humiliating task for a Jew, who was not allowed to so much as touch a pig.  He was so hungry that he wanted to eat the food of the pigs. He had hit rock bottom.

His prodigal lifestyle was short lived, and now he has estranged himself from his father and his homeland. 

In a way, this story echoes the story of the first original Fall. In the same way Adam and Even squandered their inheritance, so did the younger brother. It reminds us of our own fall from Grace, our pride and selfishness and sin. But unlike the story of Adam and Eve, this parable has a different ending.

Within his guilt, the younger brother finds humility. He recognises that he is lost. It is in the mess he made that disgrace turns to grace.

The younger brother is willing to pay back everything he has wasted by becoming a hired hand in his father's house (Luke 15:18). When he says, "I will arise and go to my Father" he was saying "I repent."  In Jewish theology, the concept of repentance focuses on the idea of return. The person who repents is restored by his or her return to the God. This principal also applies to Orthodox Christianity. When we repent, we return to God. 

The younger son changes directions in his life. Instead of going into a far country away from home, he intends to return to his father's house. At this point, the son still does not comprehend the depth of his father's love and continues to view him as an employer. The father changes all this.

The Prodigal Father

The word prodigal means, “spending money or using resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.” What is obvious is how the younger son fits the profile of “prodigal”. But what may surprise you is the prodigal actions of the Father.

After all this time, the Father still hopes and waits for his son’s return. He never gave up on him, despite the way his son treated him.

When the father sees his son returning from the distance, he runs to receive him with great compassion and joy. The younger son does not have a chance to make a deal because the compassionate father completely restores him without condition. There was no need to pay him back. The clothes he receives indicate his restoration, and the ring, that the father gives him guarantee his position and his access to the father's support. 

Luke 15: 21-24 | “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

The younger son is restored completely to the father's love. Because of the self-sacrificing compassion of the father, the son is restored. 

This is why the Father is prodigal. His love for his son is recklessly extravagant. He spends and uses his resources freely when he orders for a celebration of his son’s restoration and return. This is also how God’s Grace and Love is rained down upon us - recklessly, extravagantly and scandalously. None of us deserve it, none of us have earned it. But God spends it on us anyway. Jesus’ blood was the ultimate gift given, and it was truly priceless.  In this way, God’s love for us is a prodigal love, a recklessly and extravagantly spent love and a love that we could not possibly earn.

The Greedy Brother

This is not where the story ends, but it is often where our sermons will stop. There is one character that we have forgotten. The eldest brother.

This is the story of a man with two sons. Both sons were lost. Both were sinners who rejected their father.

When the elder brother hears that his younger brother has returned, he refuses to join the joyous celebration. He does not even enter the house. He is filled with a boiling resentment that his younger brother who squandered his father’s inheritance is now being thrown the biggest party of the century. 

You see, the eldest brother has served his father faithfully and feels that his brother is unworthy to receive anything. The elder son has the same problem that his younger brother had. His employer is nothing but an employer to him. He storms off to the courtyard and his Father follows, pleading that he will come inside and celebrate:

Luke 15: 29-30 | But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

It is clear that the Eldest Brother resents both his younger brother and his father. He fails to comprehend his father's love but thinks of him  as a man who has the money to pay his hired servants. There is no sense of love in his words. Essentially, he only ever carried out the ‘role of son’ for duty and to get a reward when his father died. They’re shocking words, words of rejection and estrangement. The father’s love was one sided. The Elder Son only obeyed him so he could get his rewards.

The eldest brother does not even accept the prodigal as his brother but prefers to call him the son of his father. He has no accurate information concerning the activities of his brother, but is quick to make accusations. 

The elder son is lost too. The only difference is that his separation from his father's love is more difficult to recognise. He is still within the Father’s household, but won’t go into the party. There are many religious people who are like the elder brother. They are respectable sinners. 

“Do you realise, then, what Jesus is teaching? Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently.” 

― Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith

The Unforgiving Eldest brother alienates himself from his father due to his sense of self-righteous and piousness. It is not his sins that create the barrier between him and his father, it’s his pride in his own ‘faultless’ moral record. It is dangerous to be this kind of sinner, for these sorts of people are blinded to their own transgressions. At least the younger brother found humility to repent. The older brother does not feel he has anything to repent for - in fact, he feels like the Father must repent because he has wronged him. 

In other words, it is dangerous to live a result-orientated life like an eldest sibling might, because God’s Grace is not given to us because we earned it.

Conclusion

A better name for this parable would perhaps be the Parable of the Compassionate Father and His Two Lost Sons. It is the story of a father who loves prodigally and freely, giving away his love without expecting anything in return.

“It is sometimes better to be the younger son starving in the pig pen than the elder son who, though outwardly abiding in the Father’s House, does not truly desire to love Him. It is oftentimes easier to “come to ourselves” amidst the misery and emptiness of the world than under a false veneer of piety. For it is only by realising our wandering that we have any hope of beginning the long road home.” 

Hermitage of the Holy Cross, Sermon for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son 2016

But both his sons are lost. Both alienate themselves from him. The moral of this story is that the youngest is able to truly humble himself and repent. The eldest refuses to. I pray that this Sunday, you are able to meditate on which brother you most resemble, and pray for God’s lavish and boundless forgiveness. 

Hymns And Prayers Of The Feast Of The Prodigal Son

Kontakion (Tone Three)

When I disobeyed in ignorance Thy fatherly glory, I wasted in iniquities the riches that Thou gavest me. Wherefore, I cry to Thee with the voice of the prodigal son, saying, I have sinned before Thee, O compassionate Father, receive me repentant, and make me as one of Thy hired servants.

Sources:

"The Prodigal Son" or "The Compassionate Father" by Brad H. Young, Ph.D.

The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Timothy Keller

Hermitage of the Holy Cross, Sermon for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son 2016