And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.—St. Luke xv. 31, 32.
It is not to pay homage to Passion Week if I choose another subject than that which comes before us this morning in the course of our readings in St. Luke. The Collect for the Sunday before Easter might have been formed upon the parable of the Prodigal Son; there is no sufficient commentary upon that parable but the Cross itself.
The words I have taken are addressed to the elder brother in the story. Who he was, what his dignity and his privileges were, how he cast them aside, we may learn from the last chapter. We must not forget what has gone before—what a contrast has been presented to us in all the discourses and acts of our Lord which the Evangelist has recorded.
Every step in the narrative has been a more full revelation to us of the mind of the nation which God had chosen as His witnesses to the families of the earth. Every step in the narrative has been a revelation of the mind of Him who chose them; of the principle and purpose of His government. The self-seeking spirit in its different aspects was that which we considered last Sunday. A glimpse was given us of the opposition between that spirit and the spirit of Him who gave the feast to those who dwelt in the streets and lanes of the city, in the highways and hedges. But the difference was to be fully discovered when all the publicans and sinners drew near unto Christ to hear Him. They had not been attracted by any flattering promises. They had been told that unless they gave up all that they had they could not be His disciples. But there was a charm in those seemingly repulsive words. Each of them carried a burden. That burden was himself. He was invited to cast it away; to trust in another; to find the life which he had lost, in Him. There was that in His look, His voice, His acts, His whole being, which invited them to make this venture; in very deed to trust Him. ‘And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.’ There was the offence. No objection could have been made to mere teaching. The scribes and Pharisees were themselves teachers of the people. There is no reason to suppose that they would have repulsed a tax-gatherer, even an acknowledged evildoer, who came humbly and respectfully to learn what acts of penitence he might perform for his previous misdoings, how he might hope to recover God’s favour, or some portion of it in the time to come. But this man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.’ He puts Himself on their level. He identifies Himself with them. He behaves to them not as His pupils, but as His kinsmen. It was another mode of treatment altogether. It must have arisen from another, nay, from a directly opposite feeling and purpose. The difference He explained by an instance.
I. ‘What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?… And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.’ We have heard how in his reasonings on the Sabbath day He contrasted the care which possessors felt for their property in the ox and the ass that had fallen into the pit, with their indignation at Him for helping a human sufferer. There is in this parable, I conceive, a hint of the same kind. ‘What man of you would not take trouble to recover even a small loss?’ But it is only a hint. The scribes read and studied the holy books. The character and office of the shepherd appeared in every one of those books. The great Lawgiver learnt his first lessons in the care of sheep; the great King had the same training. They were taught to feel for their flocks; to feel for each silly member of the flocks. So they came to apprehend a little of the feelings of the Lord of all to the nation of Israel, and to each individual of that nation; so one was fitted to be His instrument in guiding them through the wilderness—the other in governing them when they were settled in the promised land. The relation of the shepherd to his sheep was not that of one who was calculating their value. They were dear to him; his rod and his staff directed them; he kept them together; he knew each one; he missed each straggler; he would go any distance, into any dangers, in search of it. The parable was, therefore, an old one. But it could never become an obsolete one. And now it came forth with a power which had never been in it before. ‘You ask me why I eat and drink with publicans and sinners? Are they not my sheep? Are not they all a portion of that flock which from generation to generation I have watched over? Can any of them be indifferent to me?’
Evidently words of this kind suggested much more than they expressed. ‘Why, He is actually claiming to be that Shepherd of Israel whom the prophets spoke of! Does he really mean that? What is ’He making Himself?’ And presently His language becomes loftier still. He tells us what the thoughts and feelings of the heavenly Host are. ‘I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.’ He speaks confidently, as one who knows. And how entirely He reverses the conceptions of Heaven which those whom He was addressing entertained! The highest joy they could think of was the joy of faring better than others—of winning prizes which others failed to win. The joy, He says, in heaven, is the joy of winning back those who have wandered; of recovering those who have chosen the wrong way. There is no joy, He intimates, so heavenly, so much partaking of the divine Nature, as this.
II. Once more the very lowest earthly symbol is used to explain the highest rapture of blessed spirits. ‘Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.’ Can it be? Can you imagine that the pleasure produced by such a cause as this, awakened in the heart of a common housewife, has anything in it that resembles the joy of angels? Our Lord says so. ‘Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.’ Their joy is like hers. It is the joy of those who have sought after a treasure. It is the joy of recovery. It is the joy of those who cannot keep their happiness to themselves—who must call upon others to partake of it. Is not all joy of this quality? Are not these its characteristics? Taken in the form which seems meanest, it must have this elevation. Try to conceive the most selfish motive for it, still it only becomes joy by bursting the bonds of self.
Why is this so? Our Lord in effect answers, Because He who has given that woman her joy, who gives the angels their joy, finds His own in regaining hearts that have been lost, those that have counted Him their enemy; because He cannot joy alone; He must call on all spirits to enter into His joy.” It was a strange overthrow of the notions which the Pharisees had formed, which we form (oh! how readily, how naturally), of an Omnipotent ruler, of a supremely happy Being. But how it harmonises with all the previous revelations of His care for the stiffnecked and the rebellious; with all the visions of prophets; with all the human acts and feelings that had been recognised as most godlike! How it bears witness of its worth to our consciences and hearts and reasons when it most shatters our vulgar—what we often regard as our sublime—conceptions of the majesty and the felicity of the divine nature!
It has been said, and I think most truly, that one of these parables fills up something that was wanting in the other. There is more, doubtless, of tenderness and humanity in the yearning of a shepherd over his sheep than in the longing of a woman to find her piece of money. But the sheep could bleat; it could signify where it was; it might try to escape from its thicket, even find the track by which it had left the fold. So we might say that some movements on the part of men, some cries, or prayers, or sacrifices, disposed the mind of God to be merciful. The piece of money suggests no such thoughts. All in that story must depend on the zeal and patience of the seeker—upon her determination to remove the dust and rubbish, whatever was hiding the treasure from her. Nothing can urge her to her task but her own will. That is sufficient to make her spare no toil, however little the prize may seem to deserve it, or to requite it.
III. But both these parables are leading on to the third. It needs them to make its full sense intelligible, to prevent us from thinking, as we are very apt to think, more of the prodigal than of the father. Let us try to recall the different points in it, avoiding as far as we can, any loose and vague sentimentalism, which is altogether unworthy of its simplicity and grandeur.
‘A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.’ When these two sons are taken, as they generally are by interpreters, to signify the Jewish and Gentile divisions of mankind, there is a kind of revolt in the minds of earnest and affectionate readers of the Gospel. A scheme of the world’s history seems a cold substitute for those family associations, those deep personal sorrows, which have linked themselves with this story in all periods. Such protests of the heart and conscience always deserve the most serious attention. If they cannot determine the sense of a passage, they may correct many of our imperfect judgments about it. The context of the Gospel seems to me altogether in favour of the opinion that the elder son does represent the Jewish people. And if so, nothing would seem more natural and reasonable than that he who asked for the portion of goods that fell to him should represent those who were not brought under the yoke of a covenant—who were allowed to seek after God, if haply they might find Him—to ask the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and the abyss below, whether He, or some form of Him, or some portion of His nature, was not in them. The Gospel to the outcasts of the Jewish race has already, in the parable I spoke of last Sunday, been hinted at as opening the way to a wider message still. The argument for mixing with publicans and sinners justified a message to the other sheep who were not of that fold. The appearance of this parable exclusively in the Gospel of St. Luke would be itself decisive evidence to me that the instinct of commentators on this point has not been a mistaken one.
But it will prove quite a mistaken one if the other instinct to which I have alluded does not work freely by the side of it. St. Paul’s message to the idolatrous Athenians was, ‘You see what your own poet has told you, that you are the offspring of God; therefore you are not to conceive the Godhead in the likeness of art or man’s device.’ St. Paul told the Galatians that the Father had sent forth His only-begotten Son to emancipate and adopt them; therefore they were not to be in slavery to the elements of the world. We may talk ever so learnedly about the calling of the Gentiles, but we destroy its force, we give another account of it than the Apostles give, unless we connect it with these passages. And if we do connect it with them, the parable may retain its beautiful domestic and human character—yes, and all its application to individuals—whilst we treat it as unfolding the divine method to the world. The Gentile races are sons who go out of their father’s house, each seeming to follow an independent course, each seeming to choose its own gods and its own ways of drawing nigh to those gods. Still their means of living, all their faculties, energies, impulses to thought and to worship, are gifts from their Father, He has bestowed these upon the younger son, however that son may use them, as he has bestowed other gifts upon the elder of which he must give account.
‘And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.’ These words have had infinite applications; every one, perhaps, who has heard them, has applied them in many different ways, No one need contradict the other; those who have learnt the meaning from their own experience have understood it best. How the sense of an eternal home, of a Father’s house, is awake in childhood; how it dies out as the youth begins to gather all together—to make a world for himself; how he travels further and further from the remembrance of home; how the divine treasures of affection, hope, intellect, health, become dissipated; how he loses himself in the intoxications of the senses: here you have a story which is repeated again and again, and always finds mournful facts in us and in our fellows to illustrate and enforce it. And so the records of Gentile mythology and its Gentile history explain themselves to us. We see what the cause of moral declension in the nations of the old world was; how the feeling of the invisible lost itself in visible worship; how the sense of unity broke into a number of objects of terror or of beauty; how the fear of a destroyer struggled with the hope of a deliverer; how the first overpowered the second; how the belief in justice contended with the dread of a Power which could overpower justice; how the lusts of the man darkened the images of the gods whom he adored; how he sought, by vile expedients, to avert the wrath before which he trembled; how superstitions grew to be more fearful; how moral corruptions always gained strength along with them; how protests against both mixed with an unbelief in those truths which the superstitions counterfeited, in the righteousness which the corruptions defied.
‘And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.’ The sense of a hunger, of an infinite want, oh my friends, in individuals and in nations, there are times when this becomes intolerable! Outward calamities may produce it; sometimes it comes only from discontent with the spiritual nourishment which is offered to the man or the people. So we may understand a little of those periods in the old world when men tried new religions, sought auguries about the future, tried to hold communications with the world which they could not see; all leading on to this mournful issue: ‘And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.’ The stye, the almost utter transformation of the man into the swine—that would be the last scene of this sad eventful history if it were only a history of man’s dealings. Thank God it is not so. It is the history of a Father’s dealings with a child whom He has created to desire other food than that of swine, whom He will not suffer to be filled with that or with anything that man can give. Therefore, in the crisis of famine and of despair, begins that agony which our Lord describes as the process of the prodigal coming to himself. And with the arousing of self-consciousness,—with the terrible recollection, ‘I exist,’—comes a sadder, deeper, more blessed recollection, ‘How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!’ Yes! the dream of a father’s house, of a home somewhere, is once again stirring in him. ‘Those cattle on the hills, how peacefully they graze; these trees, how they put forth their leaves in spring; these streams, how they break their ice-chains and flow freely as if they would flow for ever. Are not all these my father’s? Does he not sustain their life? And I perish with hunger.’ To hundreds of thousands of men and women in Christian Europe have these words revealed what was passing in them. Do they not tell what must have passed in the minds of the Samaritans, Ephesians, Thessalonians, of whom we read, when the good news, ‘Children, you have a father,’ burst upon them, and when any one of them formed that wonderful resolution, which has echoed through all ages, ‘I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants?’
Then follow the passages to which all else in the parable is subordinate. ‘And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said unto his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.’
This infinite joy in the father’s heart seems to us appalling when we read of it, and try to believe that it is an actual revelation of the Divine mind. It is high, we cannot attain to it; that is our natural language. And yet all Christendom is but an expression of this truth. What does the message of Christ’s full and perfect sacrifice mean?—what do the Sacraments mean,—if it is not this? Are they not manifestations of One who of His tender love to mankind gave his only-begotten Son to take our nature upon Him, and to suffer death upon the cross. As I said at the beginning of my sermon, Passion Week is either a dream, or it is a translation into fact of this parable. It is a witness that the parable applies equally to both the sons of the father; to those who are near, and to those who are afar off.
IV. And so we come to the last part of it, which recalls the occasion that suggested it. The elder son is in the field. He hears music and dancing. He asks what it means. He is told that his brother is come, and that his father has killed for him the fatted calf. And he was angry, and would not go in; therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.’
How plausible this reasoning sounds! How perfectly invincible it must have seemed to this dutiful son! And yet, if we examine it, what does it come to but this? ‘I have been obedient, and I ought to be paid for my obedience. My brother has been disobedient. Why art thou glad that he has ceased to be disobedient? I see no cause for satisfaction in that. It causes me no delight.’ Here is that flagrant opposition between the Divine purpose and the purpose of those who had been called to be the ministers of His will and purpose, which our Lord has been detecting in all His dealings with the scribes and Pharisees. ‘The Father’s joy is in the restoration of the lost. ’You have no such joy. You think the removal of their curse, of their sin, is an injury to you.’
But is this consistent with the words, ‘Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine?’ Thoroughly consistent. For what do these words signify but this: ‘Son, I have called thee to know my goodness and loving-kindness. I have called thee to be a dispenser of that knowledge to the children of men. I can give thee no greater treasure. I can make thee partaker of no higher bliss than my own. Thou wilt not have that? Thou wishest for another kind of joy than mine? Well, if thou choosest it thou must have it. ’Thou must try what that selfish joy is worth; whether it satisfies thee better than the husks which the swine eat have satisfied thy brother. But before thou formest that terrible resolution I will come out and entreat thee. I will urge thee to partake of my festival. I will vindicate thy right to it. I will con- jure thee to enter into thy Father’s blessedness. ’Thou dost enter it when thou ownest the outcast for thy brother, when thou makest merry and art glad because he was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.’
So pleaded the Eternal Father by the mouth of Jesus with His Jewish people. So pleads He with us in this Passion Week. Do you want wages for your virtue, for your faith, for your superiority to the rest of mankind? You must ask the devil for those wages; for the service of pride he will give you strictly and punctually the wages of death. Do you desire the delight of the Father who so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son for it? Do you want the delight of the Son who poured out His blood for all men, who is the Saviour of all men? Do you want the delight of the Spirit, who is seeking to bring all to repentance and the knowledge of the truth? ‘Son thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.’ Thou mayest possess my own character. Thou mayest declare my purpose to those who have lost themselves. Thou mayest be my instrument in finding them. And if they never hear thy feeble voice, thou needest not doubt that they will hear the voice of the Son of Man; that by hunger and misery He will remind them of their Father’s house; that they will arise and go to Him; that He will meet them when they are a great way off; that He will embrace them and bring them to His banquet; that His Spirit will enable them to feed on the perfect Sacrifice, and to offer themselves acceptable sacrifices to Him.