Editor’s Note: The AMI Quiet Times for January and February are provided by P. Ryun Chang, Teaching and Resource Pastor of AMI.
Devotional Thoughts for This Morning
Luke 15:25-30 (NIV): “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. [26] So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. [27] ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ [28] The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. [29] 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. [30] But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’”
Is. 28:10 (NIV): “For it is: Do this, do that, a rule for this, a rule for that; a little here, a little there.”
During my earlier days as a Christian, I made up some good rules for myself so that I could please God. Each day in my monthly calendar, I recorded how long I prayed (timed to seconds), how many chapters of the Bible I read, etc. I felt great about myself for a while (partly because I was out-performing others), but once I couldn’t keep it up (lots of zeroes), I felt like God was displeased and even angry with me; as a result, I was joyless and felt bound.
The Pharisees, Israel’s religious leaders, to whom this parable was told (15:2), knew that the “older son,” who couldn’t stand his younger brother, represented them. They, too, couldn’t stand the sight of those whom they dubbed as “sinners,” consisting of tax collectors, who corroborated with the hated Romans, and prostitutes. Why? Because these spiritual lowlifes weren’t as holy and righteous as they who kept God’s laws. Thus, they prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evil doers, adulterers. . . . I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get” (18:11-2). In their zeal to further differentiate themselves, the Pharisees tagged on additional rules, “such as the washing of cups, pitchers, and kettles” (Mk. 7:4). Upon seeing those who didn’t keep their rules, the Pharisees condemned them, even saying to Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders” (7:5).
Part of the reason behind the spiritual descent of the Pharisees was because they grossly mishandled the benefits that came their way as a result of honoring God. During the intertestamental period, when Israel was under the Gentile domination, many of them died as martyrs for defending the Torah; subsequently, they became very prominent and were highly respected by the Jewish people. Liking the attention, the Pharisees looked for ways to make certain that they sustained their position. In fact, they couldn’t hand out a bag of groceries to the poor without calling in the press to make sure that everyone was aware that they were obeying God (Matt. 6:2). This is how the Pharisees and the “older son” became legalistic about their own faith, while judging the rest who couldn’t keep up with them.
As for my earlier spiritual journey, after months of feeling bad, I began to see that God’s acceptance of me is based on His acceptance of Christ’s works performed on my behalf; since I’m in Christ, God accepts me apart from my own “works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:9). Now, I can obey God out of gratitude and love towards Him instead of having to earn what has already been obtained in Christ.
Bible Reading for Today: Isaiah 11-12
As for the skit, the team presented two prodigal sons who, after the weeklong party, are told by the father to rise up early to work; being grateful, they eagerly assure him that they would. But once the morning arrives, the undisciplined sons struggle to rise: while son #1 never does, son #2 shows up late. The father isn’t upset, but understanding. By the end of the week, son # 1 finally arrives on time, while the other son, seeing that he doesn’t get punished, becomes brazen and makes no effort to get up to work. Finally, the father pays the sleeping son a visit; meanwhile, the audience assumes that he is going to punish the son for taking his grace for granted. Instead, the father says to his lazy and ungrateful son, “Let’s go have lunch.” At that moment, the song based on Romans 2:4 is played: “It’s your kindness that leads us to repentance, O Lord, knowing that you love us, no matter what we do, makes us want to love you too.”
Then in the 1990’s, an article (Kenneth E. Bailey) about the cultural significance of the “running father” jolted me. According to the Jerusalem Talmud, during the time of Jesus, a ceremony called “Qetsatsah” was given to young Jews who lost their family inheritance to the Gentiles. The villagers “would bring a large earthenware jar, filled it with burned nuts and burned corn, and break it in front of the guilty individual while shouting, ‘So-and-so is cut off from his people’. . . . Th[is] . . . shun appears to have been a total ban on any contact with the violator of the village code of honor.”
What was the younger son thinking when it became evident that the blurry object from afar running towards him was his father? Perhaps, the son was assuming that the father was still fuming with anger, and even might have appeared to be so; his eyes might’ve been closed and his teeth clenched as the father lunged forward. But instead of a blow, the son was warmly embraced with a kiss, and given a hero’s welcome: a robe and ring of the highest quality, fancy footwear, and a party where nothing was spared. 
The 4th century British monk Pelagius, being austere and moral, insisted that man is “still capable of choosing good or evil without special divine aid.” To him, the younger son in the parable was being genuine. That, however, is tantamount to seeing man as capable of saving himself without God’s initiative; the two preceding parables in Luke 15 suggest otherwise. The lost coin and the lost sheep didn’t return home on their own willpower; instead, they were found by their respective owners who searched for them.
The lost son, who, at this point in the parable, has yet to encounter his father’s grace, is no different. Lost in his sin, he is still clueless about his father’s heart, believing that his anger will only subside unless he becomes a servant. The son’s decision to return is a desperate attempt by a desperately hungry man who, once again, was scheming to get what he wanted: it worked once (making him rich) and it should work again, that is, if the right things are said with the right emotions, so that he can eat.
Jesus has the penniless, younger son work alongside of, not sheep, but swine—the very animal he was told from a young age not to touch, much less eat. The downward spiral of sin had reached its destination; there was no place to sink lower for this Jewish man who wished to eat the very pods that the pigs were consuming only if someone would offer them. Perhaps, he whispered to himself, what good are the lessons my father taught me when my stomach is empty?
To a typical Middle-Eastern father, this was a preposterous request. A brazen son making such an inappropriate request would’ve been thrown out of the house instead of being “coddled.” So why does Jesus allow this father to appear so weak? While that certainly doesn’t depict the Father in heaven whom we love and fear, Jesus is implicitly showing what free will is capable of: rejecting or accepting God; or obeying or disobeying Him.
But going back to today’s passage, isn’t it amazing that if Luke hadn’t included the oft-cited Parable of the Lost Son in his Gospel, no one would’ve known about it? When this story was first shared by Jesus, his listeners were all Jews consisting of “tax collectors and sinners,’” and “the Pharisees and the teachers of the law” (15:1-2), respectively. The legalistic older son represented the latter who mercilessly judged the reckless younger son who represented the former. However, when Luke, the Gentile writer, retold this story, it was addressed to Theophilus (1:3), “the normal title for a high official in the Roman government” (Barclay). So, in the context of making appeals to the Gentiles, the older son represented the Israelites who had no love for the Gentiles whom the younger son represented. Subsequently, the original message aimed at the Pharisees—“Don’t be judgmental”—was now applied to the entire Israel; and the promise of God’s love and acceptance of Jewish sinners was now extended to the Gentiles who saw that Israel’s God was universal. And that’s a story worth retelling!