When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.
Luke 15: 14-16
Several years ago a professor from Luther Seminary was teaching a text study on the story of the lost son. And he asked his class a very straightforward question about the text. “What happened that caused the son to end up losing everything?”
At the beginning of this parable, the son is living with his family. But through a set of circumstances he finds himself with nothing. His only means of survival is to hire himself out to feed pigs.
Of course, the professor knew the answer that the students would give him. It’s obvious. He lost everything because he was greedy and he wouldn’t wait for his inheritance. He wanted it all right now.
Sometime later this professor traveled to Russia as part of a seminary exchange program and once again used this gospel text in his class. And he asked the same question. “What happened?”
But not one student gave the answer that he expected. They all said that the prodigal son ended up where he did because there was a severe famine in the country. That really threw the professor for a bit of a loop, but he realized that he couldn’t argue because the text says that “… a severe famine took place throughout that country.”
This got him to thinking. As Americans, we don’t really even see that line in the text. We skip right past it because famine is something that very few of us have ever experienced. But to the people of Russia, famine is something that is painfully familiar.
Not long after that he traveled to Tanzania on a mission trip, and as you might guess, he wasn’t going to come back home without finding out which answer he would get from the students there. Was it greed or was it famine that caused the son in this parable to fall? But to his surprise, all of the students agreed that the son fell into hard times because no one helped him! It’s right in the text. The story clearly says “… and no one gave him anything.”
Again, we look right past that sentence, but in a tribal culture where the welfare of the group comes first, no one goes hungry as long as anyone has food to eat.
How did the prodigal son fall into ruin? Well, it depends on who you are and where you live. Are you an affluent retiree living in the north woods or an inner city teenager? Are you a minority Christian living in a Middle Eastern country, or maybe a child sold into slavery in Southeast Asia? No matter where we are, scripture speaks to us.
But it doesn’t speak to all of us exactly the same. The Bible shares with us the living and breathing Word of God. It comes to us no matter who we are, and it brings the story of God’s forgiveness into our lives by speaking to our own experience.
What I love about the story of the prodigal son is that no matter how it speaks to us, we can’t escape the joy of how this story ends. When the son finally returns home his father runs and throws his arms around him.
While this may not strike us as being particularly powerful, in Jesus’ day grown men were too dignified and modest to run like that. And so, to the very first readers of the gospel, this would have been the shocking part of the story. They would have passed right on by some of the other details, but they would have been deeply touched to hear God described as a grown man who, of all things, runs to his son. Here then, almost hidden in the story, is found the essence of the entire gospel.
No matter how our lives may fall apart, God runs to us and embraces us.
This is the good news. God loves us so much that he couldn’t wait to come into the pain of this world and save us. He came to us even though he knew that it meant suffering and dying between two thieves.
That’s true love, and it is shared with us each day that we live.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Pastor Tom Murray of the Lutsen Lutheran and Zion Lutheran Church of Finland.
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