Scripture Daily

Context No. 1441 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 15:8-19: in context

8“Or what woman, if she had ten drachma coins, if she lost one drachma coin, wouldn’t light a lamp, sweep the house, and seek diligently until she found it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the drachma which I had lost!’ 10Even so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner repenting.” 11He said, “A certain man had two sons. 12The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of your property.’ So he divided his livelihood between them. 13Not many days after, the younger son gathered all of this together and traveled into a far country. There he wasted his property with riotous living. 14When he had spent all of it, there arose a severe famine in that country, and he began to be in need. 15He went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16He wanted to fill his belly with the pods that the pigs ate, but no one gave him any. 17But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough to spare, and I’m dying with hunger! 18I will get up and go to my father, and will tell him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. 19I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.”’

Jesus tells of a woman who loses one of her ten coins and lights a lamp, sweeps the whole house, and searches diligently until she finds it, then calls her friends to rejoice with her; so, he says, there is joy among the angels over one sinner who repents. Then he begins the parable of the prodigal son: a younger son demands his inheritance, goes to a far country, and squanders it in reckless living. When a famine comes and he is destitute, feeding pigs and longing to eat their food, he comes to himself, remembering that his father's hired servants have bread to spare, and resolves to go home and say, Father, I have sinned; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

The turning point of the prodigal's story is captured in a single phrase: he came to himself. Down among the pigs, starving, having spent everything, he comes to his senses, as if waking from a long delusion, and sees his situation clearly for the first time. That is what repentance is, at its root: a coming to oneself, a return to reality after the fog of sin, in which we finally see where we actually are, and remember what we have left. And notice the two things his coming to himself contained. First, an honest look at his condition, dying of hunger in a pigsty, no longer able to pretend the far country had given him what it promised. Second, and this is what drew him home, a memory of the father: even my father's hired servants have bread to spare. It was the remembered goodness of the father, the abundance of the home he had left, that made return thinkable. Repentance is not only seeing how bad things have become; it is remembering how good the father is, and letting that memory draw us back. The prodigal resolved to return even willing to be a servant, in genuine humility, not presuming on his sonship. But he had rightly grasped the one thing that matters: there is bread in the father's house, and the father is worth returning to. The road home begins the moment we come to ourselves, see where we are, and remember the father we left.

Have I come to myself, seeing clearly where I actually am and remembering the goodness of the Father I may have wandered from, and will I get up, as the prodigal did, and go home to the one in whose house there is bread enough to spare?

Sources