Resurrection, Not Rehabilitation: Resentment, Restoration, and the Father's Heart

The Deep Waters Way — Episode 8 | Luke 15:11–32

Episode Summary

The Father does not merely rehabilitate wayward children — He raises the dead. In this episode of The Deep Waters Way, Ray Cooper explores one of the most familiar — and most misread — parables Jesus ever told. Drawing on Luke 15:11–32, Ray argues that familiarity with this story is itself one of the greatest obstacles to understanding it. Far from a simple tale of a wayward son who comes home, the parable is the climax of a three-story sequence — the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost sons — each escalating in the irreplaceability of what is lost, until the math stops mattering entirely.

Ray traces both brothers through the lens of Ecclesiastes, showing that each represents a different form of the same futile search for satisfaction apart from the Father: one through reckless pleasure, the other through joyless striving. The episode's central claim is that the Father's response to both sons is not a transaction but an act of extravagant, undignified, resurrection-level love — a love that redeems our nature, restores the robe and the ring and the status of sonship, and invites us back into relationship despite our deepest shortcomings. Ray closes with the observation that Jesus left the parable open-ended deliberately, because the Pharisees — and we — still have the opportunity to write its ending.

Core Takeaways

• The parable of the prodigal son is the third in an escalating series — sheep (1 of 100), coin (1 of 10), son (1 of 2) — where the loss becomes increasingly irreplaceable. In the economy of the Father, the math of loss stops mattering when it comes to family. The restoration is always extravagant.
• The younger son's request for his inheritance was not merely rude by first-century standards — it was the cultural equivalent of declaring his father dead, a move that shattered family bonds and his standing within the entire community.
• Both sons illustrate different forms of being lost, and both have a transactional relationship with the Father. The younger son tries to negotiate his way back in as a hired worker; the elder son keeps a ledger of service rendered and rewards withheld, breeding resentment and entitlement.
• God does not merely rehabilitate our behavior to make us useful workers or better people. He redeems our nature, restoring the robe, the ring, and the status of sonship. What the Father does for the returning son is not rehabilitation — it is resurrection.
• True transformation begins when we stop trying to negotiate our way back into relationship and instead throw ourselves on the unmerited mercy of the Father. The son came hoping for a job. The Father gave him back his name.
• The Father's response to both sons is identical in character: undignified, extravagant, pursuing love. He runs down the road; he goes out of the banquet to beg. This love is not contingent upon our actions — it is freely given, and it is always the same.
• The Ecclesiastes thread runs through both brothers: the younger pursued pleasure and found emptiness; the elder pursued striving and found the same. Neither can be satisfied by anything under the sun.
• Jesus left the parable unfinished because the ending belongs to the listener.

Depth of Insight

The escalating series. The three parables in Luke 15 are not interchangeable illustrations of the same point. They build. When you lose one percent of a flock, it's an annoyance. When you lose ten percent of your savings, it's a crisis. When you lose any part of your family, the math stops mattering. The escalation is deliberate — by the time we reach the sons, Jesus has made the stakes as high as they can go.

The cultural death wish. In first-century Israel, a son asking for his inheritance while the father was still living was not merely presumptuous — it was the cultural equivalent of telling his father, "You're dead to me." The younger son then compounded this by selling the property, which he had no legal authority to do, effectively treating the father as already gone before he had even left. This act shattered not only the family relationship but his standing within the surrounding community as well.

Solomonic hunger. The younger son's journey into reckless living serves as a narrative echo of Ecclesiastes, proving that searching for satisfaction under the sun ends in a pigpen of vanity and striving after wind. The one who sought to satisfy his every desire through reckless living finds himself unable to be satisfied — the same lesson Solomon recorded centuries earlier.

"He came to himself." This phrase is one of the most theologically loaded in the parable. Ray explores the tension between genuine repentance and continued self-management: did the son truly surrender, or was he still attempting to engineer his own restoration? The answer may be both — and true transformation only begins when self-management finally fails.

The kezazah. Drawing on Kenneth Bailey's cultural research via the episode's supplemental video resource, Ray explains the ancient community ritual in which an earthen pot of burnt grain was smashed at a person's feet to signal that they were dead to the community — a consequence that could be triggered by losing an inheritance to Gentiles. The Father's undignified run was likely an intentional act of mercy designed to reach the son before the community could perform that ritual — an act of protection before a word was even spoken.

Undignified grace. A Middle Eastern father running to meet a wayward son was considered unseemly and undignified. Yet the Father chooses it — an extravagant move spurred by a gut-wrenching compassion that does not calculate the cost before acting.

The robe, the ring, the shoes. These are not comfort items. Each carries specific meaning: the best robe is the Father's own, clothing the son in the Father's righteousness and stripping away the old, shameful identity; the ring confers legal authority and family identity, declaring that the one who wears it is a son of the house; the shoes mark him as a son, not a servant. The son came hoping for a job. The Father gave him back his name.

Resurrection, not rehabilitation. The Father's own words are explicit: "This son of mine was dead, and is alive again." This is not recovery language. It is resurrection language. The restoration on offer is not an improvement of the old life but the beginning of a genuinely new one — the one who breathed life into us at the beginning breathing life into us again.

The elder brother and Ecclesiastes. The elder brother is not simply the villain of the second act. He is the Pharisee, the striver, the one who has been doing everything right and is still standing outside the feast, unsatisfied. Ecclesiastes 4:4 names his condition precisely: all toil and skill in work come from envy of a neighbor. Everything was fine until the younger brother returned. And like his brother before him, the Father goes out to him — choosing the same undignified, pursuing love for the son who stayed as for the son who ran.

The open ending. Jesus did not close the parable because he was speaking directly to the Pharisees, who had the opportunity to write the ending themselves. That invitation remains open.

Featured Scripture

(Directly cited by book, chapter, and verse within the episode)

• Luke 15:11–32 — The Parable of the Prodigal Son. Primary text for the episode.
• Ecclesiastes 5:10 — "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income."
• Ecclesiastes 6:7 — "All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied."
• Ecclesiastes 4:4 — "Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind."
• Hebrews 2:14 — Cited in connection with the father running: the Greek word for "aid" carries the sense of running to the assistance of someone in need.
• Romans 12:1 — Referenced in connection with the gut-wrenching nature of God's mercies and the compassion the father displays.

Theological Connections

(Scripture alluded to, quoted without citation, or woven into the episode thematically)

• Luke 15:4–10 — Alluded to throughout the episode via the escalating "math of loss" involving the lost sheep and the lost coin, which form the first two parables in the series leading to Luke 15:11–32.
• Luke 15:7, 10 — Referenced through the discussion of the joy of heaven when a single sinner repents, which the father's feast mirrors and embodies.
• Ecclesiastes (broadly) — The episode frames both brothers as living illustrations of Ecclesiastes' central thesis: nothing under the sun can fill the place in our lives made for God.
• Isaiah 43:18–19 — Ray frames the Father's act of restoration as "Isaiah's new thing in a new context," connecting Episode 8 directly to Episode 7's treatment of God doing a new and unexpected thing in the lives of his people.
• Romans 5:8 — Alluded to through the declaration that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" — the same pursuing love displayed by the father in the parable.

Scholarly Context & Commentary

• The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016. Primary formal equivalence translation used for scriptural analysis throughout the episode.
• Schaff, Philip, ed. A Popular Commentary on the New Testament.Contributor: J.J. van Oosterzee.
• Usage: Cited regarding the elder son's "slavish service," noting that while he was deeply involved in the work of the house, he remained tragically disconnected from the heart of the Father.
• YouTube. "Episode 8 Research Resource." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RMUm-hLAlo. Supplemental historical and narrative framework used to explore the Middle Eastern cultural context of the parable, including the kezazah ritual and the significance of the Father's run.

The Deep Waters Way is an independent, faith-based Bible teaching podcast hosted by Ray Cooper. New episodes available wherever you listen. Full transcripts and show notes at thedeepwatersway.com.

The Deep Waters Way — Episode 8 Transcript

Resurrection, Not Rehabilitation: Resentment, Restoration, and the Father's Heart

And the one who breathed life into us at the beginning can breathe life into us again and make us sons, lost but now found. This is resurrection, not rehabilitation.

The Deep Waters Way. Where scripture, theology and transformation meet.

Welcome once again to The Deep Waters Way. I'm Ray Cooper and I want to thank you for joining me on our continued journey into the depths of faith. As we begin today, let me remind you to subscribe wherever you listen so that you never miss an episode.

And then check out our website at www.thedeepwatersway.com where you can find every episode as well as full transcripts and extensive show notes for each episode.

Last week we looked at how God desires to do a new thing in the lives of his people. Today we're going back to the New Testament to see a story of how that new, unexpected, never before seen thing can look in practical terms. So grab a cup of coffee or hot tea and settle in. It's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters.

Have you ever found yourself keeping track of and maybe even comparing how much you do in a relationship compared to someone else?

Have you ever tried to negotiate your way back into a relationship you've damaged, calculated exactly what it would take to make things right, and offered just enough to get back in the door?

Have you ever had a moment where you suddenly saw yourself clearly — not who you thought you were, not who others said you were — just yourself, exactly as you were, with nowhere left to hide?

Those questions feel intensely personal, and yet I think each of us can relate to them in one way or another, and in many ways they are at the heart of today's passage. We're going to be looking at Luke 15, verses 11 through 32, the parable of the Prodigal Son.

This is probably one of the most well known parables that Jesus told. Many people are familiar with the story. We've heard it in Sunday school. We've seen it on Bible videos. We've seen adaptations of it.

We think we really know it. And while familiarity with scripture is a good thing, it can also be very dangerous.

It can be those shallow waters that we've been talking about leaving. When we get too familiar with something, we find ourselves tuning out slightly when it's read or talked about. After all, we know what it's about. We know what happens in the story. Or at least we think we do.

That also means that sometimes we don't read closely. When we come to a familiar passage, we find ourselves skimming over it. In fact, as I began preparing for this episode, I caught myself doing that very thing. The thing is, I know to be aware of this problem. I've even said something recently about it to my Sunday school class. And yet I caught myself about halfway through the passage, just skimming, not actually reading.

So even when we know to be aware of that trap, we still sometimes fall into it. With this passage in particular, another thing we often miss is that it's not a standalone story. We read it that way, we talk about it that way. And today, certainly, I'm just going to be dealing with that one parable. But you need to be aware that it is actually the third in an escalating series of stories.

We often think of them in terms of a sheep, a coin, and a son. But each one builds on the other. And if we focus just on the sheep, the coins, and the sons, we miss the part about the one who lost something and went to extravagant lengths to restore it — the shepherd, the woman, the father.

I said the stories were escalating in nature. Let me show you briefly what that looks like before we move into our text. In the first story, the shepherd loses one of a hundred sheep. In the second, the woman loses one of ten coins. And in the traditional reading of the third story, the father loses one of two sons.

When you lose 1% of a flock, it's an annoyance. When you lose 10% of your savings, that's a crisis. But when you lose any part of your family, the math stops mattering. The loss is entirely irreplaceable. For it to be 50% is unfathomable. And yet, as we look to our story, that's exactly what we immediately see — a father losing one of two sons.

So let's look at verses 11 through 13.

And he said, "There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.' And so he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living."

So the younger son does what, at minimum, would be seen as crass in our society. In his, it not only would have been crass and presumptuous, it would have been unthinkable. He asks the father to divide his property and give him his portion of the inheritance.

Now, in first century Israel, a father could make the choice to leave his property to his children when he died, or he could voluntarily choose to divide it among them while he was still alive. If he did the second, then until his death he still retained authority and control over the property. But who would get what upon the father's death is decided. In the case of the parable, the father does not make the choice on his own. The son asks — demands, really — and the father goes along with it. He allows his son to take what the son thought of as his and do with it as he pleased.

The younger son says, let me have my inheritance now. Again, we see it as crass. In that culture, it was the equivalent of saying, "You're dead to me. Give me what I'm owed." This son makes it clear he values stuff more than relationship.

This becomes equally clear when we see that just a short time later, he gathers up his belongings and leaves, presumably having sold what could be liquidated, maximizing his cash on hand. How much cash? Well, we don't know precisely. What we do know is that in the cases of inheritance with two sons, the younger would have received half of what the older did. So whatever value the younger son received, it was one third of the entire estate. That would include land, livestock, crops, and anything else of value.

And then he disposed of it all by selling it and left the country. Remember, though, the son doesn't have the authority to do this — the father still retains control of the property. So not only has he essentially said in his mind the father is dead, his actions have shown this as well. And because he doesn't control the property, in order to sell it he has to be underhanded or find someone who doesn't care what the larger community thinks about them. So the son has not just wished death upon the father, he's completely shattered his family relationships and his relationship with the community.

Nonetheless, he takes his ill-gotten gains, sells the property and leaves for a foreign country. And once there, he wasted everything away. The ESV says he squandered it in reckless living. So not only did he not value his relationship with his family, he really didn't value his possessions either. It seems in fact that the only thing he did value was satisfying his own desires — whether it was having what he thought he was owed, or living however he chose.

Verses 14 through 19 continue.

"And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in 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 into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.'"

So some time later, having spent everything he had, there comes a famine. Now, we could make all sorts of arguments and draw conclusions about living frugally, saving for a rainy day, making contingency plans, and all those things are good. And certainly we could draw those things out of this parable. But that's not the point of the story.

What we see is the young man finding himself in the midst of circumstances beyond his control, with no way out of the affliction. So he does what any of us would do. He starts trying to figure out how to fix his situation. He hires himself out to a farmer to feed the pigs.

And Jesus has just made this as revolting to his audience as he possibly could. Think about it. The young man acted in unthinkable ways toward his father, sold his inheritance to probably unscrupulous people, traveled to a presumably Gentile area, lost all of his money, and now he's feeding unclean animals.

And as if none of that is sufficient, we then see that in order to satisfy his hunger, he's willing even to eat what is being fed to the pigs. He has sunk so low that not only is he willing to defile himself by feeding unclean animals, he wants to eat their food. The ESV here says "longing to be fed." The Greek literally is "set his heart upon filling his belly." And yet no one would give him anything.

Oh, the irony here. The one who sought to satisfy his every desire through reckless living finds himself unable to be satisfied. And here's the thing — you and I are the same. We're the same way in life. We do the same thing. Oh, don't get me wrong. We pride ourselves in never going down that path. But ask anyone who has ever dealt with addiction how quickly you find yourself unable to be satisfied by the thing you crave the most.

This is in fact the same lesson Solomon records for us in Ecclesiastes. In many ways, the younger son is walking the very path Solomon described centuries earlier. Solomon pursued pleasure, possessions, wealth, accomplishment, and every desire his heart could imagine, only to discover that none of it could satisfy.

As he writes in Ecclesiastes 5:10, "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income." The problem was never how much he possessed. The problem was that he was looking to possessions to do something they were never designed to do.

Later, Solomon observes, "All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied." And the word appetite there means more than just hunger. It's an internal desire — it's the deepest desires of a person's heart. And that is exactly where this young man finds himself. He sought satisfaction through reckless living, and now he sits in a pig pen, setting his heart on filling his stomach with pig food and remaining empty.

Ecclesiastes is ultimately the story of a man discovering that nothing under the sun can fill the place in our lives that was made for God. The younger son is learning that lesson the hard way. The farther he runs from his father in search of satisfaction, the more empty he becomes.

And it is at that rock bottom moment that something breaks inside this already deeply broken young man. He came to himself. In the midst of the pigsty, longing for something to fill him, fully aware of his emptiness and need, he finally sees clearly. For the first time, probably ever in his life, he realizes something is wrong.

It could be argued that this is a moment not just of recognition, but also of repentance. It could also be argued that the young man is still trying to fix things himself. I think there may be a bit of both going on. He realizes the depths to which he has sunk, and even that he has, as he puts it, sinned against heaven and his Father. But he still thinks he has the power to fix it, to make things right.

And this is the path many people find themselves on today. They reach a place where they recognize their brokenness and their need. And for some, that's enough to jar them into recognizing that they can't fix what's wrong in their lives. Others see the brokenness and still try to fix it themselves. Both can be genuine repentance moments. But true transformation doesn't begin until we reach the place where we stop trying to fix it ourselves.

I've been in this place. You may have even been in it yourself at some point. If so, you recognize what's going on here. For this young man in Jesus' parable, it happened in a pigpen. For me, it happened in a county jail cell. That brief moment of clarity where light finally breaks through into the darkness and you realize you have a choice — surrender completely to the working of the Holy Spirit, or descend completely into madness.

And that's where our young man finds himself. He recognizes that he has nothing where he is at and that his only hope is to throw himself on the mercy of his Father. Some see this as him repenting and trusting his Father to be merciful. Others say he's being manipulative, trying to control the outcome and fix things himself. Honestly, it could be either one. Jesus doesn't make it clear.

Now let's look at the next few verses and see what happens. This is verses 20 through 24.

"And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the Son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the Father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.' And they began to celebrate."

Honestly, the homecoming is as unthinkable as anything else so far in the story. With no words exchanged, the Father runs down the road to greet his son. This means the Father has been watching, waiting, hoping that at some point the son who declared him dead would return and the relationship could be mended.

Now it would be normal to ask, why didn't the Father go looking for the Son? Honestly, we don't know that he didn't, other than it's not mentioned as part of the story. Culturally, though, it is not what would have been expected. It's not what Jesus' listeners would have thought the Father should do. If the Son was ever going to return, he was going to have to make the choice himself.

This is a departure from the pattern of the previous two stories, where the shepherd and the woman go looking for what has been lost. That doesn't mean God doesn't search for those who are lost. We know he does, and his grace is extended to all. But it shows that we are free to choose how we respond to God's grace. Do we turn to God or do we continue in our own way?

For the Son, the choice was made to return. Surrender won, madness lost. And what we then see in the Father tells us much. First, the Father runs. This was something not done by older adult men in that day. It was considered unseemly, undignified. And yet the Father chooses to do it.

Kenneth Bailey, in talking about this parable, argues that the Father runs in order to prevent the community from passing judgment on the Son. He says there was a ritual ceremony called kezazah where the community would fill a large earthen pot with burnt grain and smash it at a person's feet. This ritual showed that in the eyes of the community, the person was dead. And one of the reasons this could be done was losing your money to Gentiles.

We need to recognize, though, that at this point in the story, only the younger son knows exactly what has happened. Only he knows he spent everything he had. But remember, he essentially declared his father dead. And then when his father did as he wished, he proceeded to act as though his father were dead, selling all that he had received in order to go and find his freedom. So yes, the community very well could have acted out this kezazah ritual just on those grounds.

As a result of his actions, the younger son would not have been welcome within the larger community around the family. And as Bailey argues, by waiting, watching, and then running, the father is hoping to spare his son from being cast out.

This father's action then becomes the embodiment of Hebrews 2:14. There we're told that because of what he has suffered, Jesus is able to offer aid to those in need. The Greek word used here for aid has the idea, though, not just of helping, but of running to help someone. So this is an extravagant move by the father, spurred by compassion.

It's the same gut-wrenching compassion we talked about a few weeks ago in Episode 2. And even though the words used here and in Romans 12:1 are different, the idea is still the same — mercy and compassion felt so deeply that it causes your insides to twist up in knots. If you've not heard that episode, go listen to it after you finish this one and get the perspective of that dive into compassion and mercy.

Now, we don't know what the father expected to find when he got to the son. He may well have expected his son to come home with his inheritance intact, or he may have expected just what he found — a broken young man in desperate need. A father knows his children, though, and so I think he knew exactly what he was going to find and what it would take for his son to finally return home.

Regardless, we see a father who grabs his son and embraces him. The Greek word here literally means to throw oneself on or to fall upon. This isn't just a casual embrace or hug like you would see in an ordinary greeting. An embrace and a kiss, even now, are standard parts of a greeting in many places in the Middle East. I saw this for myself years ago when I had the opportunity to spend time in Turkey as a teenager.

What we see in the parable, though, is different. It's not the normal greeting. This is the desperate taking hold of someone you never thought you would see again.

And it's at this point the Son begins his confession. But he doesn't get any further than confessing he had sinned and is not worthy to be called a son. We don't know if he's overwhelmed at this point and simply can't say any more. Some commentators suggest that to be the case.

The other alternative is that the Father interrupts his speech, cuts him off before he can ask to merely be a hired worker, not even a household servant. And just as before, there indeed are commentators who suggest this is the case. It really doesn't matter. In either case, the extravagant love of the Father is what is being displayed, and it is overwhelming enough to leave us speechless. And it interrupts us in our darkest moments, reminding us that relationship with the Father is not a transaction we can make. We can't buy our way into the relationship, and we can't pay back what is owed.

When the Father finally speaks, it's to the servants. He tells them to bring a robe, a ring, and shoes. Now this isn't just any robe — it's the best robe. It's the Father's robe. And the newly returned son is to be clothed in the Father's righteousness. The old is stripped away and the best, the new, is put on.

The ring is a representation of authority and right. It is a declaration that the one who wears it is a son of the house. Where the Son declares he is not worthy of being called a son, the Father, by putting the ring on his hand, gives the young man the right to be called a son.

By clothing the Son as he has, the Father has redeemed and restored him. The Son was hoping for a new beginning simply as a hired worker. The Father has transformed him and given him a new beginning as a true Son. And so God does with each one of us who openly turn to him in repentance, seeking his mercy.

Then the Father instructs the servants to kill the fatted calf and prepare a feast. This is the same response we see in the two previous parables when what had been lost was found. Joyous celebration is called for in both instances, and Jesus comments that such is the joy of heaven when a single sinner repents. In those parables, both the shepherd and the woman call their friends and neighbors. We can likewise argue that the Father does the same.

This isn't just meant to be a family celebration. It is a community feast that celebrates the restoration of one who was dead in their eyes. And this is exactly what the father tells his servants: "This son of mine was dead, but now he is alive again." The wording is explicit — the father, by his own choice, can restore to life that which is dead. And the one who breathed life into us at the beginning can breathe life into us again and make us sons, lost but now found. This is resurrection, not rehabilitation.

But while Jesus says heaven celebrates the return of one, not everyone is happy. And if you're familiar with this parable, you know what comes next.

"Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, 'Your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.' But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, 'Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!' And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.'"

The older brother has been working in the fields all day and is completely unaware of what's happened. He comes home at the evening and only then hears the music and the party.

And one quick detail I noticed while preparing this — it seems no one went out to tell the older brother about the celebration. We aren't told why. And it's tempting to simply dismiss it as unimportant. In fact, that was my first thought, was just to dismiss it. But I couldn't. So let's pause on it for just a moment and understand — anything we say here is speculation.

Narratively, this absence of detail heightens the drama and forces us to focus on the older brother's heart. On a human level, it makes his anger feel understandable. He's left out of the loop in his own family. Maybe the servants, knowing how he felt about his younger brother, simply didn't want to risk his wrath — you know, the classic "I'm not telling him. You go tell him."

J.J. van Oosterzee captured it well when he wrote that the elder son "is not in the house, but has spent the day in hard, self-chosen, slavish service." He's deeply involved in the work of the house, but he's not plugged in to the heart of the Father. Now that's not victim blaming. It actually points to the same issue we saw in the younger son — a transactional relationship with the Father.

This is made clear when we see the brother's response to the father in verses 29 and 30. It's essentially, "I've always been here and done as I should, but you never gave me anything. Yet this disobedient lowlife shows up and you treat him like a king."

And ultimately that is the point Jesus is trying to make. This story and the ones preceding it are aimed at the Pharisees. They are told in response to the accusation that Jesus was receiving and eating with sinners. They are the older brother. And the quiet part, the unstated part in their accusation, is that they feel they are the ones who deserve Jesus' attention. They feel passed over. They are the ones who've been diligently working and doing all the right things. And yet they are not plugged in to the Father's heart.

Ironically, the Pharisees and the older brother both can be seen in Ecclesiastes, just like the younger brother. Where he sought satisfaction through pleasure, they're seeking it through striving. Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 4:4, "Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind." Everything was fine, you see, until the younger brother returned. And now there is envy for what has been done.

And then ironically, Ecclesiastes 6:7 applies not just to the younger brother, but to the older as well: "All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied." The brother's words sound almost identical to this — I've worked and slaved and never received anything. And now he stands outside the banquet, still unsatisfied.

And notice the Father in the story responds to the older brother exactly the same way he does to the younger brother. When told the older brother won't come in, the father goes out to him and begs him to come in. This action is just as undignified as running. Fathers didn't go out to a resistant child and they certainly didn't beg. And yet that is the father's level of extravagant love.

This extravagant love displayed by the Father in the story is exactly the kind of love we see in God. And it is the basis for grace. This is, as we talked about last week, Isaiah's new thing in a new context. Paul says we see this love displayed because while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He pursued us — whether it was running down a road to bring us home as sons or going out of the banquet to bring us inside.

And it is this very action by him that reminds us relationships aren't transactions. There is no ledger to show us what we've earned or how much we owe. We're simply invited to be a part of a celebration we don't deserve.

Jesus left the story open ended because the Pharisees had the opportunity to write the ending for themselves. That opportunity still stands. Let me ask you two questions. Which son are you? And how has this ending been written for you?

Thank you for joining me again today. And don't forget, you can find me on Facebook at The Deep Waters Way. Now it's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters.

The Deep Waters Way. Where scripture, theology and transformation meet.