LOST.

Quick, think of a parable!! Okay, times up.

Did you think of what we like to call the “parable of the prodigal son”? I’m willing to bet that half of all the people that read this (so like 1 person) thought of that story from Luke 15. I’m going to call it the “parable of the lost son” for reasons that would take up an entire post in itself (in fact, Tim Kellar wrote an excellent book about it called The Prodigal God and you should read it!)

Moving on.

This parable is probably one of the most used stories among Jesus’ parables. And it’s a great one to use. But I think sometimes we miss part of it. When we’re reading the parable, those of us that grew up going to church know that the son comes back and gets a party complete with cake and presents. Pretty sweet deal, right?

But what if we paused halfway through the story? Or just a few verses into the story? What if we read only verses eleven through thirteen? What if we ended it with the younger son deserting his family and wasting everything he had been given on things that didn’t matter? Pretty depressing scene. But unfortunately, we see that scene played out over and over and over again. Friends who used to be right on track are suddenly doing things against which they used to have convictions. As sad as it is, I think we can all name at least one of these friends.

So what do we do if that’s the entirety of the story for people in our lives (or us) so far?

I don’t want to read too far into the parable, but I think these principles are consistent with the entirety of Scripture. We’ve been given free will from the Lord, meaning we have the option of rebellion. Hence the problem of the mess we call sin and the presence of lost sons. However, I do not think that free will negates true salvation. Once we have been stamped with the Holy Spirit, our eternal plane ticket doesn’t get reprinted with a new destination. God, in His goodness and wisdom, draws us back to Him. He will complete the good work He started within us! In my opinion, this is largely due to the fact that the core of who we are has been altered. When you become a follower of Christ, your deepest, truest desires are changed from what our flesh wants to what the Lord wants. Its like those times when at the surface you would ask for what’s behind Door #2, but (if you were honest about what was in the depth of your heart) you would say Door #1 was it. Sometimes we choose Door #2 because the flesh is still apart of our being at this point. But God draws us back to Door #1 because it is who we are now. Little by little, He reminds us the person He desires for us to be. The person He was forming when we walked away. Gently, slowly, but surely, He pulls us back into His loving embrace.

So whether you’re the lost son realizing you’re no longer home or watching a brother walk away from home, do not lose heart. Walking away doesn’t mean you can’t run back.

In the parable of the lost son, though, the younger son wasn’t really the main character. When Jesus was sharing this story, He was addressing a group of Pharisees who were judging His interactions with the “sinners” (vv. 1-2). The sinners were the younger brother, but this parable (I think) was directed at the Pharisees. The older brothers in the room.

In that day’s culture when this parable’s situation actually occurred, it was the eldest brother’s responsibility to find and restore his brother. The older brother should have found his way to that distant country. He should have searched until he found his brother, whether that was in the wild living or in the living with the wild. His job, his role, was to make the family whole once again. To lead his little brother home into the arms of their father.

But he didn’t.

Later in the story, the older brother even points out with pride the fact that he never left his father. He stayed behind to take care of the farm and the animals, things for which the father already had servants. I would be willing to guess that the father, if given the choice, would have chosen for his servants to have to take a double-shift at cow watching in order for his son to be carried home.

We don’t know how that older son responded to his father at the party. The Pharisees there experienced one of the first choose-your-own-adventure stories. That group of older brothers, though, had chosen their ending: they refused to enter the party. They had stayed at home.

For our generation of older brothers, on the other hand, the adventure is still up for grabs. We still have the opportunity to chase our younger brothers as they’re walking away.

We weren’t commanded to be sure that the building we use is the biggest in town. We weren’t commanded to have weekly editions of who wants to pastor the biggest church. We weren’t commanded to stay within the comfort zone of those who are following the Father.

We were commanded to GO. We were commanded to follow Christ’s example of loving the lost. We were commanded to spread the Church through every tribe, every people, every tongue, every nation.

And so, older brothers (myself included, too much of the time), what’s your adventure? Will we too choose the comfort of what we’ve always known? Will we sit within the confines of what already belongs to the family and watch people we care about walk away?

If it’s all the same to you, I’d like my generation to write our own version of this parable.