Chapter 1 A Parable of the Dancing God
The third parable of Jesus in Luke 15 is without question among his most famous. It is also his most loved. It is about a father and his two sons. And this fact alone endears the parable to us. It is most often called “the parable of the prodigal son.” Perhaps this is because the “wayward” son’s story comes first and because it is so real and moving. But there is far more to the parable than this son’s journey. That is why the story does not end when he finally comes home. The story moves on and the older son takes center stage. If we were to focus on this son and his life, the title of the parable should be something like “the parable of the blind son,” or “the parable of missing the whole point.” But this story is not really about either the prodigal or the blind son. It is about the father. He is the central figure. And Jesus is using this father and his relationship with his two sons to reveal to us the shocking truth about God.
This story is about who God is and what God is actually like. It is about the way God thinks, how He thinks. It is about the way God acts towards us. It is about the Father’s heart and joy. It is a story of a God we can believe in--a parable of the dancing God.
Jesus picks the worst person that he can possibly find and he has the Father running after him. This most pitiful excuse of a son, Jesus tells us, is the object of the Father’s intense longing and passion and affection. He is the object of the Father’s care and unconditional no-strings-attached forgiveness.
Jesus paints a picture of God standing on the balcony of heaven, watching, searching the horizon for the least inkling of a shadow of His son’s return. And once He sees him, this son, Jesus has the Father running and embracing him and commanding a great party to be thrown on his behalf.
What a picture of God! I tell you there is no greater statement about God in the whole Bible than verse 20: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed and kissed and kissed him” (NASB). He was absolutely thrilled to see him.
The first question for all of us, and maybe the only question, is this: Have we met this Father? Have we met the God of this parable? Do we know Him? Can you not feel Jesus’ heart here? Can you not see, written all over his face, the words, “You have just got to meet the real God”? Can you not feel Jesus struggling with the whole wrongheadedness of the prevailing conception of God around him? Can you not hear him saying to himself, “If they could
just meet Him and know Him, it would change everything”? The Real God
This parable, together with the two which precede it, are told by Jesus in direct response to the apparently “righteous” critique of the religious leadership. The “leadership” of the Jewish institutional church did not like the fact that Jesus Christ received sinners (v. 2). Swindlers and sinners, outcasts and failures, were flocking to him and he was treating them as old friends. He was glad to see them. He was excited by their presence, even eating with them and going to their parties. And such outlandish activity quickly found itself under the scrutiny of the ever present religious eye.
“Some kind of holy person you are, Jesus, embracing sinners. Don’t you have any religion about you, Jesus? How could you possibly hang out with these people? How could you receive such unrighteous sinners, blasphemers?”
You can almost feel Jesus’ reaction. He is certainly shocked by their scrutiny and judgment. But it is more than shock, it is disbelief. “Are you guys for real? Are you really that clueless? Do you really not understand why I embrace sinners and eat with them? I do this because that is the way God is! Because my Father runs to embrace these sinners and eats with them, indeed He throws a loud and lavish party for them.”
“Here,” Jesus says, “let me tell you about it.” That is what is going on in these parables. Jesus is responding to the way
the leading lights of Israel think about God and to the way that their thinking about God leads them to judge him. And He has a shocker for them. They have it all wrong and he attacks their thinking.
These parables of Jesus are a direct assault, an all-out frontal attack, upon the Pharisees’ perverted idea of God and the way He operates. They think that God is a bookkeeper. They think that God is keeping tabs. They think that He is keeping a list and checking it twice to find out who is naughty and nice.
And they think that these sinners do not have a snowball’s chance in a hot tub, because they are miserable failures. These people have not qualified for divine favor. They have done nothing for God. In fact, they have done everything possible to disqualify themselves from everything divine--from everything, that is, but sure and certain judgment.
But Jesus has God embracing these failures. Jesus, the Father’s true Son, who dwells in the bosom of the Father (JN 1:18) and who knows the Father inside and out (MT 11:27), throws them a theological curve ball which absolutely blows their minds. He turns their theology on its head. Instead of a bookkeeping, list-checking, divine legalist, Jesus confronts them with a picture of God who dances in sheer joy at the sight of a failure coming home. He confronts them with a God who turns out to be a divine sprinter, who runs after sinners, who throws parties for those who have not and cannot possibly qualify for His favor.
Instead of a God quick to judge--a hangin’ judge, who has one hand on the rope of the trap door and searches for an excuse to jerk it--Jesus’ version of God is of an amazing Father who steadfastly, persistently and unswervingly remains exactly what He is, a Father, even and especially when His sons become rebellious, twisted and wayward.
There is no list-keeping in this Father’s heart. There are no Pharisaical- religious steps to forgiveness. There is no mention at all of forgiveness here and especially of earning it in any way. Because forgiveness is already done. It is, in Jesus’ word, “finished.”
This is about a son, who is and remains a son because he has a father who is and remains a father. This is about a sinner coming to his senses and encountering the truth of who he is because of who God is. This is about a son encountering the truth that he has a home, that he has a father, that he has an inheritance that he cannot squander. This is about coming to know God, coming to know and believe the good news of God the Father’s immutable heart.
The son is lost in the far country in tears. He is miserable, for he knows to the root of his soul that he has failed. He cannot escape tasting the bitterness of his shame. His soul is haunted by embarrassment and helplessness. He cannot undo his wrongness. All that he can feel or say is, “Oh, oh, oh, my father, I have sinned against heaven and before your eyes and heart. I am no longer worthy of being your son at all. Make me as one of your hired men.”
He feels intense personal humiliation and condemnation. And yet, right in the midst of this, Jesus has the gospel coming out of the son’s own mouth. He speaks the gospel to himself in the depths of his misery, but he does not hear it. It is just rhetoric. Did you notice what this son said? He said, “I’m going back to my father” (v. 18, TM). Out of his own mouth comes the truth which he cannot see, much less dare to believe--yet.
In spite of all that he has done, there remains an abiding, unchanging, rock solid fact. There remains an inheritance that he cannot squander away. He has a father.
While he is far off, while he is rehearsing his “Maybe I can earn a place by my repentance” speech, the truth comes crashing down upon him like the mightiest peal of thunder. His father is his father.
What hits this son between the eyes is the fact that he cannot change his father’s heart. His father does not love him for what he does. His father does not stop loving him because he has rebelled and miserably failed. His father is his father--no matter what. He is and remains the beloved son because his father is and remains his father.
This poor boy thinks, as we all do, in religious terms. He thinks that he can and must do something. He knows that he has blown it, but he thinks that perhaps his sorrow and repentance will win a point in his father’s heart. He thinks that, while he has rebelliously squandered everything, just maybe his mourning, maybe his deep moaning and groaning, maybe his humility and religion, will at least get him a job and some food.
That is what he is doing. He is putting on religion because he thinks that it might just pull on the strings of his father’s compassion. But how striking and glorious and wonderful it is that he is not given the chance to even open his mouth. He looks up and he sees his father running. He freezes in his tracks and the next thing he knows is that he is completely covered up by his father. All he feels is his father’s embrace and kiss. All he sees is his father dancing with joy over him.
“That,” Jesus is saying, “is who God is and how God thinks and acts.”
But the boy still does not get the point. He still thinks that it is about what he does and does not yet see that it is about who God is. It has nothing to do with him and everything to do with God. He has rehearsed his speech and is determined to blether it out. And blether it out he does: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before your eyes and heart; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But notice what the text says next. Eugene Peterson captures it best: “But the father wasn’t listening” (TM).
Here is this great speech, this confession, but the father is not interested. He is not interested in the least. All the boy sees is his father dancing with joy. All he hears in response is his father’s shouts: “Get the best robe and put it on him, get the sandals and put them on his feet, get the family ring and put it on his finger, and fire up the bar-b-que pit! We are going to have a party! My son was dead, but is now alive. I had given him up for lost, but he has come home.”
The glorious good news of grace is crying out of the father’s being and action. The gospel has wrapped itself around this boy and drowned out his best speech. Volumes are proclaimed here in this one picture.
“Son, this is not about your opinion of yourself. This is not about your worthiness. This is not about winning points with me. This is not about what you do or fail to do. This is about the fact that I am your father and therefore you are my son. This is about you coming to know who I really am and therefore who you are--you belong to me. This is about you coming to know as you are known. This is about you seeing the real riches of your inheritance in me and being filled with a great hallelejuah! This is about you coming to bask in my relationship with you.”
A Note on Heaven and Church
It has been said that while the Bible speaks often about heaven, it does not actually tell us much about what heaven is going to be like. Well, if you want to know what heaven is like, here it is. It is a party. It is a feast. It is a celebration thrown by God the Father and He is the lead dancer. Heaven is about being at the Father’s party and being the celebrated guest of honor, in spite of your disqualifying failure.
The first of these three parables says that there is “joy in heaven” (v. 7, NASB) over one sinner’s rescued life. In the second parable the angels of God throw a party when a sinner gets the point and turns from his nothingness to the Father. In the third parable there is no mention of joy in heaven, no mention of angels throwing a party, there is only this wonderful picture of the dancing God. There is only this vivid image of the Father running, embracing, and kissing this fallen son, and commanding a great celebration.
That is heaven. It is the excitement of God; it is the Father’s dancing joy, exploding into the greatest party in history.
Is that not a wonderful picture of what church is to be like here and now-- the joy of God taking shape in our hearts and producing a celebration? We are into “models” today when we talk about the church. Well, here is a great model: the partying church.
Is this not the very heart of evangelism? Should it not be that when people, like the older brother (v. 25), come in from work, they hear music and dancing in the church, and want to know what this is all about? Is this not the very heart of our mission? Are we not called to be a celebrating people who are so excited and filled with the grace and joy of our Father that the celebration gets the attention of the world?
Religion
Jesus told this parable to confront and attack the wrongheaded understanding of God that was percolating through institutional religion in his day. He told it to bring about a reformation, a revolution. He told it to liberate the poor people who were living, or trying to live, under the bondage of a list- keeping theology. And he told it as a serious call to repentance. And I believe he told it in tears. Because he saw that the religious people of his day were not going to God’s party. They were offended. Jesus’ deepest concern in this parable is with the older brothers of this world and the fact that they were missing out.
There are few verses in the Bible that are more pitiful than verse 28: “The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in” (TM). He became bitter and would not go to the party. Jesus tells us why the older brother was bitter. It was because of his theology. It was because he had been relating to what he thought was a bookkeeping, list-checking father all of his life. And he kept his own records as well. And, according to his own records, he never once failed: “Look! For so many years I have been serving you, and I have never neglected a command of yours; and you have never given me a young goat, that I might be merry with my friends” (v. 29, NASB).
You see what is happening here. This brother had done it all correctly. He had been obedient, perfectly so. He had kept the rules. “And you have never rewarded me. And on top of this, when this whoremongering son of yours straggles in from the far country, you go plumb berserk in celebration and make a fool out of yourself drooling over him in front of the servants. You should be ashamed, father! That is not fair! It is outrageous! It is heinous!”
Can you imagine the look on the father’s face when he realized that his son had been with him (in church?) all those years and had never understood his heart at all? He must have been astonished and grieved and brokenhearted. “Son, what on earth are you talking about? You have completely missed the point. You ask me why I have never given you a side of beef to have a party with your friends? Son, it is all yours and always has been yours--don’t you know that?” Take a look at verses 11-12: “A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ And he divided it between them” (NASB). Did you get that? He divided it between them.
All that the father had, had already been given to the older brother. It was already his. The gift had already been given to him. And yet the older brother spent all those years trying to earn it, trying to earn what was already his. And he never enjoyed it. He never understood his father nor his graciousness. And he never enjoyed his father nor his abundant, lavish gift.
He could have been having a celebration all along the way. But he could not accept it on those terms. He had to invent his own terms. He turned it into religion. He spent his time trying to earn what was already his and keeping strict tabs to make sure he had done so.
His anger and bitterness at his father and the great feast thrown for his lost brother was not a temporary flare-up. It was the anger of the whole pattern of his life. It was the expression of his warped theology and false assurance.
He had never understood grace. He had never celebrated grace. He had never enjoyed his gracious father. He had never truly known his father nor life in his house. He had completely misunderstood who his father was and what made him tick. He had no idea. All he could think was that this whole deal was bitterly unfair. And he refused to go to the party.
That is what the religious people of every generation fall into. They invent their own terms. Instead of recognizing their own failure and nothingness, and then basking in the Father’s sheer grace and living in His lavish embrace, they create a religion. They create imaginary definitions, so that they can convince themselves that they are good, righteous and loving. And things get so twisted and wrongheaded, they cannot get to grips with a gracious Father who embraces and accepts the fallen ones, nor a Jesus who receives them freely and treats them as old friends.
They never know the real God and life in His pleasure. Their self- righteousness keeps them from seeing and experiencing His grace. They never join in the divine party. How could they? They do not see themselves as desperate failures who stand helpless and powerless to change--they are doing religion.
Inevitably, bitterness wells up within their heart when they see the freeness of the Father’s embrace and His lavish feast. And their religious presence stifles the marvel of amazed sinners and turns the celebration into a dead and boring act of “religious service” to God, which is lifeless and vacuous of glory.
The text says that the father came out and began entreating the older brother (v. 28): “Come on, son, this is your party too. This is our celebration. This is life in my house. Come join us, you belong here.” The word used here for “entreat” is parakaleo. It is a word that is used in the New Testament for
The father entreated, begged, his older son, in the power of the Spirit, to be a part of the celebration. But the son would not listen. He could not accept it. It made no sense to him. His religion and false assurance prevented him from understanding. And he resisted the Spirit and refused to go to the party.
Some Honest Questions
Let’s step back now and think about all of this. What are we to make of this?
Jesus confronts us with a God who is not quite what we expect. This God is shocking. Jesus turns everything around. The religious people, the ones we would naturally think are in the thick of God’s things, end up missing out on the real thing. And the wayward failures find themselves amazed at the Father and in the midst of a party which He throws in His joy over them.
Where do we fit into this picture? A quick way to find an honest answer is to ask ourselves a question about how we listened to this parable. As we heard it retold, we sided with someone. We listened through one of the character’s ears. It may have been the younger son, or the older. It may have been the father or maybe Jesus, the teller of the tale. But we all most surely identified with one of these figures and saw things through his eyes.
It is important to think about this question of identification. It has a way of searching us and revealing our real thinking--the thinking that may well be hidden, but nonetheless profoundly affects us and how we live. This question brings to the surface what we might call our “working theology.” This is different from the theology that we discuss in church or Bible studies. Working theology is our thought about God that really is at work in us and on us. It is the thought of the soul. To ask, honestly, the question about how we listened to the story helps us to see what we really think in our innermost being.
Let’s take the younger son first. If you identified with him, then stop and take a honest look at your life.
Stare your falsehood and failures and pride and wrongness and squandering in the face. Ask yourself this question: Is it possible that this father in the parable is God and thinks about me as He does about this son? Can it be, that given all that I have done and not done, that God is and remains my Father and is moved with compassion for me and is running to embrace me in sheer joy?
Is it possible that He is coming right now, not tomorrow, or when I die, or when I finally get my act straightened up, but right now--and with full knowledge of who I am and what I have done-- and is shouting for His servants to bring His best robe and sandals and the beloved family ring and place it on my finger?
Can you believe that God is like this? Can you believe that God the Father is excited about you? Can you believe that He is commanding a party on your behalf? Can you believe that about God right now? If not, I say to you brother or sister, repent! That’s right, repent! Change your thinking and believing completely. Turn from believing such grotesque lies about our Father. Take a long look at verse 20: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion for him, and ran and embraced him, and kissed him” (NASB). Memorize it. Believe in the God that you see here. Feed on the truth. Drink it in. Bask in it. Sit down and marvel at our God and Father.
Now, let’s think about the older brother. If you identified with him, then there is a question facing you about what we might call “religiosity.”
Ask yourself honestly this question: Do I harbor hopes in my heart that my religion will get me points with God? Do I think that my goodness and my obedience will make me acceptable to the Father? Do I think that my church attendance and my humility and confession will affect God’s heart? Do I think that somehow His relationship toward me is dependent upon my religious performance? If so, I say to you brother or sister, repent! That’s right, repent! Turn from believing such grotesque lies about God our Father. Take a long look at verse 31: “My child, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours” (NASB). Memorize it.
You are confronted here with a God who has already accepted you in Jesus and given everything to you in Him. How can you earn what is already yours? Do not sell yourself short. Put the ledger down and come to know Him. Join the marvel. Come to the party of grace thrown by the dancing God. It is your party too.
Now let’s look for a moment at the father. If you identified with the father in this story, then I say do not let the proud older brothers of this world turn the party into religion, and thus turn church into a funeral home. Beware of that self-righteous pride which lurks behind our humility and service. The humble are those who know their failure and are absolutely amazed that God has relentlessly pursued them in Christ, embraced them, and accepted them anyway.
Humility is the acceptance of grace. It is the acceptance of the Father’s shocking and unearned embrace in Jesus. Beware of those who are proud of what they do for God, rather than filled by what God has done for them. But do not stop entreating them to come to the party. Don’t give up. Do not stop telling them that it is their party too. And keep an eye squarely on the horizon.
If you identified with Jesus, the teller of the tale, then I say to you, continue to grieve for those who do not yet see, and for those who refuse to believe. But by no means stop telling the tale. Keep telling it and telling it, until the church again gets the message. Keep telling it until the church of the next millennium becomes a marveling church, a church shocked by the real God, and thus a celebrating church, which gets so filled with the joy of the Father that the world hears the party and wants to know what is going on.
May the Father’s heart overwhelm us so.
