The Prodigal's Shame

Jesus continued, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to the father, 'Father, give me my share of the inheritance.' So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.' So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him..."

Luke 15:11-20 NIRV

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This week, I've been sensing God leading me back to the story of the prodigal son for the sake of deeper reflection, and so he can reveal some things to me about myself and about Him through this parable. It's one that many Christians are very familiar with, myself included, but which keeps revealing more and more as we continue diving deeper into it.

In this case, what has caught my attention this time around is the description of the rebellious son's fall into poverty. There were a couple of key things I noticed this time around about the significance of the situation he's in which would have stood out to the Jews who were originally hearing Jesus teach this parable, and how this is significant for my own life.

Firstly, let's look at the son's actions and what it reveals about his mentality. To begin with, he demanded his portion of the inheritance while his father was still alive, essentially declaring, "I can manage my resources better than you, and I want to experience pleasures that I feel you've denied me of, so I will take from you what I think belongs to me and abandon you as though you were dead." This indicates arrogance and rebellion.

Then, the son's resources ran out - he didn't use the resources he took from his father to build something bigger, but let it slip from his fingers like sand by spending it on the Ancient Near East equivalent of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. This indicates foolishness and immaturity.

Next, let's look at the son's circumstances following his actions. AFTER he had wasted the resources he took, hardship came. All his arrogance and rebellion gives way to desperation as he finds himself with nothing at all. All the money he had foolishly spent on immature ventures left him with no friends, no resources, no options.

Now, he finds himself starving while stranded in the middle of a Gentile country. Reminder: the Israelites were God's chosen people, and they were meant to act very differently to the rest of the world to demonstrate the characteristics of God. One example is that Jews were instructed by God to take very good care of their servants, treating them as if they were family. The Gentiles, on the other hand, treated their servants as mere objects, there to be used until they die.

Here, we reach out next point of shame for the rebellious son - he hires himself out to someone who places no value on his life or wellbeing. We see the confirmation of this a few verses later, when it says that nobody gave the son anything to eat despite his starvation.

Further, this Gentile slave master has no regard for the son's values or faith. He sends the son to feed his pigs - an animal which the Israelites couldn't eat or even touch, because it was considered unclean. The son is being told to feed an animal which he can't even eat, and by touching them he himself becomes ritualistically unclean, which means that he becomes separated from God and is unable to offer sacrifices at the temple to ask for God's forgiveness for his sins. Because he has to keep touching the animals to feed them, it means he is in a continuous state of unclean-ness, continuously unable to return to God and have his relationship with Him restored.

The final moment of shame - in his starvation, he becomes so desperate that he not only considers, but desires to eat the filthy food that these unclean animals eat, and can't even find that mercy extended to him.

To summarise: the rebellious son has become a worthless, mistreated slave in a Gentile country, forced to care for an animal which separates him from relationship with God, and is starving to the point of wanting to eat that animal's disgusting food - and all of this has happened because of his own arrogance, rebellion, foolishness, and immaturity in declaring his father as dead to him and demanding his father's resources for the sake of his own self-indulgence.

To the Jews who were hearing this parable, I doubt there could have been a person who had messed up so monumentally and made themself so completely unworthy of acceptance and forgiveness. This son deserved what he got, and there could be no return or restoration for him. His plan to return to his father to ask to become a servant is one that is doomed for failure, a desperate attempt by a desperate and humiliated man.

But then, Jesus flips the script.

The son doesn't even get the chance to arrive home and pleas his desperate case. The father beats him to it, bringing shame on himself in order to go meet his son - after all, Middle-Eastern patriarchs wearing robes don't run.

The Israelites listening to this story in its first telling must not have even been merely perplexed - my guess is that they must have found this absolutely outrageous to the point of not being believable. For someone this deeply entrenched in shame to be met with a shameless act of love and desire would have been utterly preposterous.

And yet, Jesus insists, this is the love that our Father has for us. You and I are entrenched in a shame of our own making, having stolen our Father's resources for the sake of our own self-indulgence, until those resources run out and we are forced to degrade and dehumanise ourselves in order to just barely survive. We live with a hunger that can't be satisfied and we long to fill ourselves up with even the smallest scraps of filth, and yet Satan, our slave master, who gives no regard to our worth or values, demands we continue engaging in activities that offer of no sustenance while simultaneously separating us from God and His forgiveness.

And yet, in the very moment that we choose to admit our hopelessness and shame, then turn our face back towards our Father and begin taking stumbling steps towards our home with Him, He shamelessly races towards us. He abandons every sense of decorum and dignity - in fact, Paul asserts that Jesus became shame for our sakes - in order to come and meet us. He meets us with compassion, grace, and forgiveness. He rejects the lie we had been told by our slave master, which said that we didn't even deserve to be God's servants, and He instead reminds us that we are His children, clothes with all of His authority, power, dignity, and beauty. He celebrates our return, not mildly but with the fullest joy and delight.

The reminder in this - for you, for me - is that we are never too far gone from the compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and restoration of God through Jesus. In the deepest, darkest depths of our shame, He waits for us, not to condemn and scold us when we've finally managed to travel the whole way home and plead with Him for a place as the lowest of the low in His service, but to race towards us shamelessly the moment we turn our face towards Him in repentance and declare us forgiven and restored as children of God.

If the father can forgive, accept, and restore the rebellious son in Jesus' parable, then the Father can forgive, accept, and restore you. You are not too far gone. Your shame does not run too deep.