A Sting in the Tale/Chapter 4

by Roy Clements

¹Now the tax collectors and 'sinners' were all gathering round to hear him. ²But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, 'This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them'...

¹¹Jesus continued: 'There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The younger one said to his father, "Father, give me my share of the estate." So he divided his property between them.

¹³'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. ¹⁴After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no- one gave him anything.

¹⁷'When he came to his senses, he said, "How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men." ²⁰So 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.

²¹'The son said 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 men.]"

²²'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. ²³Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

²⁵'Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶So 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. ²⁹But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slating for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!"

³¹”'My son," the father said, "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³²But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”’

Luke 15:1-2, 11-32

When personal relationships break down it's usually by one of two routes.

Sometimes relationships are blown apart by 'the big row'. In a marriage, perhaps, it's the discovery of an adulterous affair that is the trigger. In an ordinary friendship it might be some other kind of dispute or injury that inflames tempers. But whatever the precise details, the resulting rift is sudden and explosive. One party tells the other, 'I never want to see you again. Drop dead. Get lost.' Anyone who has experienced this kind of rift in a relationship knows well enough how traumatic it feels. It is like a bereavement. A person you have loved is suddenly snatched from your side, leaving an aching void, which often fills up with bitterness, and certainly with loneliness. It's a shattering experience, and all the more shattering because it erupts into our life with so little warning. One minute everything seems fine, and then the next our whole world has fallen apart.

Devastating though that kind of relational breakdown is, however, it's not the only way it happens, nor is it the most hopeless. Sometimes relationships simply drift apart. There's no single crisis that precipitates this parting of the ways. The emotional disengagement is gradual, so gradual you almost don't notice it happening. The marriage doesn't shatter because of the assault of some external sexual temptation; it dies imperceptibly from within. The friendship isn't terminated overnight. It slides by degrees into mutual indifference. Affection cools, communication dries up, until one day we realize we've become strangers to one another; not so much hostile as apathetic; not so much angry as frigid—because this isn't 'die big row', but the 'slow freeze'. When relationships disintegrate in this second way, there's no volcanic disturbance. The result can be just as tragic and as emotionally impoverishing. We may not have told the other person to get lost, but we lose out just the same, and perhaps even more irretrievably. At least, that's the warning which Jesus seems to be giving in his story of the prodigal son. It is perhaps the most famous story he ever told.

It is important to notice the very beginning of the chapter in which Luke records it.

Now the tax collectors and 'sinners' were all gathering round to hear [Jesus]. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, 'This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them' (Luke 15: 1-2).

This scene-setting paragraph is an indispensable clue to the meaning of the story which follows. It provides its social context; a division between two classes of people in Jewish society in the first century. On the one hand there were the 'sinners'; on the other the 'saints'. 'Sinners' is perhaps an unfairly pejorative title; not everybody in this class was categorized thus because of some personal moral failing on their part. It could simply be that they had Gentile blood, or had contracted some illness like leprosy, which made them ritually unclean. But it has to be said that a fairly high proportion of those who would have been called 'sinners' in first-century Jewish society were so called as a result of their chosen lifestyle. Some of them, perhaps, were drunkards; some of them might have been sexually immoral; others were tax collectors, corrupt collaborators with the detested occupying army of Rome. Quite a few were the sort of people who didn't go to church on Sunday, but went down the pub instead. Others didn't pray on their knees; they preyed on their neighbours. As you might expect, respectable religious people in Israel gave all such 'sinners' the cold shoulder; they were outcasts. To keep company with such people was to be defiled by them; to be, as we would say, tarred with the same brush. Religious people saw themselves as the 'saints'. They were racially pure Jews, physically whole—no leprosy or anything like that about them—and morally impeccable. The 'saints' kept God's law to the letter, studying their Bibles with a zeal that would put many Christians to shame, and observing it with a rigid and uncompromising pedantry.

Chief among these 'saints' were the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. The Pharisees were a first-century fundamentalist club. The teachers of the law were professional Bible scholars. Between them they constituted a formidable spiritual elite, possessing huge social prestige, and not inconsiderable political power in first- century Judea, where religion was part of the structure of society in a way that it's long since ceased to be in most western countries. Naturally they assumed that any Bible teacher would seek their seal of approval. The last thing they expected of a would-be rabbi like Jesus was that he would abandon the company of the saints altogether in order to socialize with the first-century equivalent of the local rugby club. But that's what Jesus did. Oblivious to the consequences it would have for his reputation, he not only welcomed these so-called 'sinners', he dined with them, to the shock and amazement of all concerned. 'Can you imagine anything so disgusting?' the 'saints' would be saying to one another. In twentieth-century terms, it would be a little like seeing Mother Teresa in a singles' bar in Soho, or Cliff Richard on a gay pride march; it would awaken that same kind of bewilderment. To mix with sinners was totally out of keeping with social expectation for a man who claimed to be holy.

For the disjuncture between 'saints' and 'sinners' in the minds of those religious leaders of the first century was absolute. By flouting this social taboo, Jesus, as it eventually turned out, was in fact signing his own death warrant.

But he was not embarrassed or apologetic about this social policy of his. On the contrary, this wasn't the first time he had deliberately scandalized the religious Establishment in Judea. As we saw in the previous chapter, he had caused similar controversy at a dinner party thrown by a prominent Pharisee. And on that occasion his response to the sanctimoniousness of those around him had been to tell a parable which, like a Cruise missile, penetrated the psychological defences of his hostile audience and enabled him to assault some of their most cherished and preconceived ideas.

Jesus' strategy here is just the same. He finds himself under attack for his policy of eating with 'sinners', so he again tells a parable. Indeed, it is not a single parable this time, but three parables: the parables of the lost sheep, of the lost coin, and of the lost son. It's that third and final story, the most famous story Jesus ever told, that deserves special attention.

It's a story about relationships, a triangle of domestic tension between a father and two sons. In each case the relationship is broken. Each boy, at least for part of the story, is isolated. In one case, this happens as a result of a big row. In the other case it happens as a result of a 'slow freeze'. Interestingly, the son who is alienated from his father by the first route, through the big row, is eventually reconciled to him. For the second boy, outside the circle because of a slow freeze, the story ends in an open-ended way. When the curtain comes down we don't know whether or not he is ever fully reconciled to his father and his brother.

As with all of Jesus' parables, underneath the surface detail there is a spiritual message. Jesus is making the point that our relationship with God is like that between the father and his two boys. Some people's rebellion against God is open and defiant. They are 'sinners' who have a big row with God, angrily turning their backs on him. Others, who like perhaps to think of themselves as the 'saints', still rebel, but secretly, and in a disguised fashion. They maintain a polite, nodding acquaintance with God, but they are careful that he never gets too close. Underneath there is a coldness of heart—a slow freeze.

Jesus' warning is very simple. The 'sinners' have the better chance of going to heaven. This is because people who see themselves in that class have a position that is retrievable. The so-called 'saints', on the other hand, will discover that their smug self-righteousness has placed them beyond hope of redemption.

There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them (Luke 15:11-12).

Here is a classic example of the big row. The story is a familiar one. A teenage boy rebels against his wealthy father. In days like ours, where such family disputes are commonplace, you will find many young kids of sixteen or seventeen sleeping in city parks with a story like this to tell. And for that reason, it's easy perhaps for the scandalous nature of what this boy is suggesting here to lose its impact on us. Even today in a middle-eastern context, what this boy was asking of his father was scandalous and preposterous. To demand his inheritance in advance amounted to saying that he wished his father were dead. Indeed, I suspect, for Jesus' audience the impertinence of this boy's request would have been exceeded only by their astonishment at the father's acquiescence. 'So he divided his property between them.' What sort of parent is this, who accedes to his children's reckless demands for truant independence?

The answer is, of course, a divine parent, for this is a parable. Jesus is drawing a picture for us here of how human beings, made in the image of God, find themselves alienated from him as a result of their moral rebellion. We say to God, 'I wish you were dead.' While we like the material things which he can give us, we don't like him. We want them, but we don't want him. We wish him to get out of our lives, to stop interfering with us.

Ironically, as the story goes on to point out, we are the ones who lose out every time we say that.

Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country arid 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 into 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 (Luke 15:13-16).

What was this young fellow looking for? 'Freedom' is a word we often bandy around: freedom from moral inhibitions, freedom from the shackles of outmoded conventions, freedom from our parents' cramping lifestyle. We need freedom to discover our real identities. But when this boy found freedom, it was a more complicated thing than he thought.

Imagine someone on the top of a cliff. He feels he's free. 'Free to jump, free to fly like a bird.' So he launches himself off the cliff, and flies like a bird—all the way to the bottom! He failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation! Some of us spend quite a bit of time clearing up the mangled mess at the bottom of that particular cliff of 'freedom'.

Freedom, you see, is not the licence to do as we like. Properly understood, freedom is the liberty to do as we ought, the freedom to be what we were meant to be. We human beings are not unconstrained creatures; there are norms within which we are intended to operate. Without those norms freedom is meaningless, indistinguishable from the arbitrariness of a person who just makes decisions by tossing coins all the time. That boy may have been looking for freedom, but he didn't find the freedom he was looking for when he broke free from his father. All that he found was the stink of a pigsty. In the story of this dissatisfied, degraded individual, Jesus illuminates the tragedy of all of us when we, in our folly, try to be free in an impossible way. We are not the captains of our own souls. We are made by God and cannot escape that creatureliness, no matter how hard we flap our wings on the edge of the cliff.

The words 'no-one gave him anything' are full of pathos. He no doubt found plenty of people willing to exploit his hunger; but they were all takers, not givers. The same is true today, of course. Some drug-pusher will be looking for some such young rebel out on the streets tonight. He's not really interested in him, only his money. He wants to see him feeble, wretched, and begging for the next fix. He's not a giver, but a taker. The same goes for the prostitute. She tells us that sex is the answer, and promises to give us love. The truth is that she doesn't give at all; hers is simply another kind of taking. The same goes for the New Age guru who offers his (expensive) lectures on meditation. All alike assure us that they are here to give us answers to our spiritual quest, but they are not givers, only takers.

Imagine this boy, then, hungry in his pigsty. Maybe you don't need to imagine the scene. You have had your fling in search of freedom, and it has turned to ashes in your mouth too. Deep down you have a gnawing vacuum, just like the hole in this boy's stomach. Jesus explains why this is. It has come about because we are off the track, trying to be something we can't be, that is, free from God. We are flouting the norms of human existence, and our situation isn't going to get any better till we face up to it. This young fellow, mercifully, did.

When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men 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 men' (Luke 15:17-19).

At last the boy starts to do something right for a change. The first thing he does right is easily overlooked. He refuses to eat the pig food. Jesus' story tells us quite explicitly that he was inclined to eat it; when you're very hungry you'll eat anything. But if his hunger had led him to such a degraded appetite, if he had been satisfied with the second best, what a tragedy it would have been. That choice was a real danger, of course. Many people get to the point of desiring some deeper meaning in life, and even search a little for it. In fact, most people do so at some point in their life. But many, finding no immediate (or perhaps no palatable) answer, settle for second best. They eat the pig food that's on offer and make their home in the pigsty.

I get the impression that when I was a student in the 1960s we were far more interested in social affairs than students today. We went out and about, waving our banners, staging our sit-ins and protest rallies. Quite a few of my friends waved the red flag of Marxism and the black flag of anarchism. But most of them are now in the City of London, as bank managers, stockbrokers, or something similar. A great hero of ours, I remember, was one of those South American revolutionary types; he ended up opening a boutique in Paris. Disillusionment and cynicism have a way of creeping in and corroding our youthful idealism. We discover that our revolutions don't work the way they were intended, and the result is that we give in to the materialism we said we despised so much. Our spiritual hunger for something better and nobler withers.

The strange thing about this boy's hunger is that it was also his hope. Had he eaten the pig food, all would have been lost. The first thing he did right was to refuse to dehumanize himself in that way. He decided to stay hungry. He opted to go on thinking and searching, in spite of the emptiness that was gnawing at his soul. The most tragic thing about many people in this world is that they are in the pigsty, eating the pig food, and oblivious to the fact. They have stopped looking for anything better.

But of course that momentous refusal wasn't enough. Not only did the boy refuse to eat pig food, he also took a long hard look at his situation, and faced up to some unpleasant truths. It takes courage to look in the mirror and accept what you see. None of us likes doing that—for we live a lot closer to despair than perhaps we can afford to admit. To surrender our precious delusions, to admit that deep down inside we are falling apart and don't know where we're going, to stop playing a role and be real with ourselves—that is brave. Most of us hide our uncertainty about ourselves behind a mask. For some of us the mask is that of the cool academic type; for others the muscular, athletic type. For some it's the 'girl who knows how to handle boys' type, for others the shy, lovable type. For some, it's the 'life and soul of the party' type, for others the aloof, detached, 'I don't need anybody' type. Some people even develop a kind of schizophrenia, adopting different roles depending on where they are and who they're with. I find this happening with some students I know in Cambridge, who have one mask for home and one for university, one for church and one for college. Fundamentally it's a sign of insecurity; they don't know who they really are, or want to be, or are meant to be. Such people are confused about their identity, as this boy was confused. Tragically, some never get beyond that role-play. As they get older the roles change, but the masks become even more firmly fixed to their faces. Eventually the masks never come off, not even in those quiet, private moments when there's nobody there to see them.

To get away from the audience and to engage in radical self-examination marked an indispensable step in this boy's salvation. This is the point Jesus is making. The same courage is required of us if we're going to get out of the hole we're in. We must face up to certain truths, according to Jesus.

The first truth is that we are lost. Our lives are dissatisfied and unhappy basically because of this. The root of his problem dawned on this boy as he sat there in his pigsty: it was not that he lacked something called food. Rather he lacked someone called 'father'. Augustine, one of the greatest prodigals of them all, came to the same discovery. 'You have made us for yourself,' he confessed to God, 'and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.' We toy with material things, trying to slake a thirst that lies not in the physical realm but in the personal. That, of course, is why personal relationships are so important to us. The experience of human love points to an ultimate relationship. It reflects a greater destiny for which we were made, which is to be in fellowship with God. But no human relationship, no matter how deep, real and long-lasting, can ever really satisfy the hunger of our soul. We delude ourselves if we think it otherwise. It's simply one more route to disillusionment if we invest that kind of ultimate importance in a boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse. Such an expectation is bound to let us down, no matter how wonderful that other person is. No-one can sustain that weight of significance in our lives, for it's a weight only God can carry.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, was an atheist. How perfectly he spoke for modem men and women when he wrote, 'That God does not exist I cannot doubt, but that my whole being cries out for God I cannot deny.'

Sitting in his pigsty, the boy in the story appreciates his true identity as the son of his father. That's where he had gone wrong. He had tried to run away from that identity; he had sought an impossible freedom, failing to realize there are some freedoms that are simply not accessible to us because they contradict who we are. Jesus would have us reach the same conclusion. Our bid for moral autonomy is doomed to failure. We can't run away from God; the hole inside us will still be there—aching with a spiritual hunger only he can meet.

The first thing this boy has to face up to, then, is that he's lost. The second is that he is guilty. 'I will... go back... and say... : Father... I am no longer worthy to be called your son,' he says to himself. At this key point in the story Jesus is reminding us that the root of our folly is our moral decision to try to be independent of God. This is how we have got ourselves into our confused mess. We've flouted God's rules, and as a result we have offended and hurt him. 'We have sinned against heaven and against you,' to use the boy's words.

It's important we understand this. Some people think of God as some kind of cosmic traffic warden who's got a set of impersonal laws that he's duty bound to enforce, but with which he doesn't really feel personally involved. Jesus' story reveals that it is not like that at all. The moral law is the law of God's own heart and nature. When we sin, when we fail to love people as he says we should, when we fail to speak the truth as he tells us we should, when we fail to honour our parents as he says we should, and particularly when we fail to love him and honour him as he says we should, we are not simply parking on a heavenly double yellow line. Rather, we are parking on the traffic warden's foot! We are offending him personally. He feels angry and hurt about it.

If we have any doubt about this, then we must look at the cross. That stark symbol of agonized death is there to show us how much the sin of the world offends, angers and hurts God. It demonstrates how much it cost him personally to keep the door of reconciliation open to us. The boy had to realize not just that he was lost, but that he was guilty; not simply that he needed his father's fellowship, but that he needed his father's forgiveness. Once he discovered that, Jesus tells us, only a few short steps separated him from joy. But I think they must have been the hardest steps he ever took in his entire life.

'I will set out and go back to my father' (Luke 15:18).

A minister of a church once met a boy who had run away from home, and counselled him. He pointed to this very parable of the wasteful son, and advised: 'Now, you go back to your father and see if he doesn't kill the fatted calf to welcome you.'

Some weeks later he met the boy again on the street.

'Did you go back to your dad?' he asked.

'Yes, I did,' he replied.

'And did you apologize?'

'Yes, I did,' he nodded.

'And did he kill the fatted calf?'

'No,' said the boy, 'he jolly well near killed the prodigal son!'

By contrast, the warmth of the father's reception of this boy in Jesus' story is surprising. It's unlike most of us to be reconciled so totally, with no recriminations, no grievances.

While [the son] 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 15:20).

It would have been so human for the father to have made the boy squirm a bit for his folly, to have demanded some restitution or inflicted some punishment. But the story has none of that. Instead we are presented with a wonderful readiness to forgive. The father seems to have been waiting and watching even while the boy's back was turned against him. Notice how the father runs to him? In the ancient world that was something a senior man simply would not do in public. It was considered undignified. Clearly this man's heart is so full that it compels him, careless of the embarrassment or of what his neighbours might think, to pick up his long gown and run! He is filled, says Jesus, with compassion for the boy. He throws his arms around him and, to translate the Greek a little more precisely, covers him with tender kisses.

The boy, for his part, has determined that he is going to try to make it up with his father. His thought is to offer to work as a wage labourer on the family farm, so as to repay the money he had so recklessly wasted. The father, however, will hear none of it. He does not even give him the opportunity to make such an offer. He interrupts the boy in mid-confession. 'Quick'! he orders his servants,

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 (Luke 15:22-24).

Jesus the story-teller, then, is making a very wonderful point. If we have had a big row with God, and our relationship with him is in tatters as a result, matters can be set right again. If we will come back to him in genuine repentance, turning from our rebellion and our foolish independence, seeking his face again, he is not going to grind our faces into the dirt beneath his feet, as many a human father would do. No, God is not going to make us feel ashamed, or put us into bondage as punishment. Jesus teaches us here the reliability of God's grace and mercy. He will rejoice, and all heaven with him, to have us back again.

It is true that we have turned our backs on him. In a hundred ways we've told him to get lost. But no matter how big the row that has divided us, he wants to make it up, and he will do so. Even now he waits. He waits for sinners, people who know they're on the wrong side of him, to come back. When they do so he will not let them take the role of a slave. He invests in them the dignity of being his sons and his daughters.

But the story has not yet ended. There is a sting in the tail!

Meanwhile, the older son was in the field (Luke 15:25).

Why does Jesus now introduce him? The answer lies in remembering the original context of the story. This parable, we said, was not primarily designed as a therapeutic word of comfort to those sinners Jesus was eating with. It was a Stealth bomber charged with the mission of exploding the complacency of those so-called 'saints' who were criticizing him for eating with the 'sinners'. And it is those so-called 'saints' that this elder brother so clearly represents. This is evident from what he says about himself.

'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders' (Luke 15:29).

There is the perfect son for you. Surely he has to be Jesus' ideal. For years he'd been serving his father, and had never rebelled. Or had he? Is there perhaps just a hint of petulance, of whining self-pity, in that phrase, 'All these years I've been slaving for you'? Are we wrong to detect the thinly veiled resentment of one who'd been 'working my fingers to the bone for you'? We know exactly what people mean when they talk like that. His do-gooding, you see, has no more liberated him as a personality than his brother's licentiousness had. Rather, it has rendered him humourless, prudish, constrained in his affections, incapable of enjoying himself, repressed, inhibited, pouting, and censorious. He condemns his brother, not because he really feels outraged by his brother's behaviour, but because he envies him. Listen to what he says about him: 'He has squandered your property with prostitutes' (Luke 15:30) - the unspoken grudge being, 'I would like to have done that, but I never did. And you've never rewarded me with a roast goat so that I could celebrate with my friends.' He's jealous of his brother—it is as simple as that.

There are hundreds of people like that today: respectable, conventional, good people. They look down their noses at the permissive society; they curl their lip at the decay in moral standards. They think they're good, but they are not; they're simply dull. They think they're being moral, but they are not; they're merely feeling sanctimonious. They think they are Christians, but they are not; they are Pharisees. Jesus would have us know how huge the difference is. Joyless in their hypocrisy, sterile in their respectability, their religion has no more in common with Christianity than a frigid marriage has in common with a real love affair.

The elder brother had fallen victim to the slow freeze. It is true that he was still at home, but his relationship with his father was as distant as his brother's in the remote country. Notice what Jesus says of him in verse 28: he 'refused to go in.' He chose to miss the party. His father threw a great celebration, and this elder brother had not got the grace to enjoy it. Instead, he makes a big public scene on the doorstep, with all the neighbours looking through their windows. The embarrassment of a middle- eastern father in such a situation is not hard to imagine. Yet his arms of mercy are open to this son just as they were open to the younger one. Notice how the father comes out to him, just as he went out to the prodigal. He pleads with him. Just as he showed compassion to his brother, so he encourages this son with tenderness and affection. 'My son,' he insists, 'everything I have is yours' (Luke 15:31). He tells him how precious he is to him, how appreciated and valued. Yet he still refuses to go in to the party.

Can anyone be so foolish as to choose hell in preference to heaven? Yes, they can! And the reason lies in a single word; pride. Pride is the thick hide that grace simply cannot penetrate. Think of that younger boy when he had been in the pigsty, coming to his senses, seeing what a fool he had been. He could have kept his pride and stayed in that pigsty had he wanted to. The reason he was rescued and reconciled was that he had the humility to repent.

Many people feel remorse over their life, kicking themselves and telling themselves what fools they have been. But that feeling will not take you to the Father. Remorse is simply wounded pride, a wallowing in self-pity. Repentance begins only when you get up and come to the Father. It was that willingness to humble himself and to enter the house that the elder brother lacked. It was his pride that kept him outside, just as it was their pride that would keep the Pharisees and teachers of the law Jesus encountered outside the kingdom of heaven. It was their pride that would consent to his death and nail him to the cross.

Some of us think of judgment as God sorting out the human race into those who are going to heaven and those who are going to hell. The ones he likes he sends to heaven, and those he doesn't he sends to hell. But that is not the picture Jesus gives in this story. He portrays rather a God who overflows with grace and generosity, opening his arms to all: elder brother, younger brother; saint or sinner. He makes no distinctions. If we stay out of heaven it is because we refuse to go in. It is because we are too proud to accept his grace. This elder brother felt he deserved a reward. 'All these years I've been slaving for you.' Jesus is emphatic: we cannot have heaven as a reward, only as a gift—a gift we are humble enough to receive, knowing we don't deserve it.

Maybe, like the younger brother, you've had a big row with God, and are in the distant country, or in the pigsty. Now that you have thought about it, you know that a lot of what Jesus is saying about the lost son is true of you. Is it pride that prevents you from coming back home?

Perhaps you are like the elder brother. You have grown up in a Christian home, maybe. You have a religious background. You are very morally minded. But as John Wesley said of the years before he became a Christian, 'I had then the religion of a servant, not of a son.' Is it pride in you that wants to earn your ticket to heaven, and hasn't yet learned to open your arms to God's generosity and say, Thank you'?

All of us would feel a lot more comfortable about the thought of becoming Christians if only we could walk into heaven with our heads held high, with everybody clapping and congratulating us. 'You made it! What an achievement! Well done, old chap!' But none of us can enter heaven in that way. There is only one way back to the Father, according to Jesus, and that is on our knees, humbly accepting his grace and mercy, like a son who was lost, and then was found again.