The Prodigal Son

Most of us are familiar with the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). It's one of my personal favorites and I've heard it many times in Kids Church and in the main service. My question is this: how many of us actually know what the word Prodigal means?

Dictionary.com says this:
Wastefully or recklessly extravagant,
Giving or yielding profusely,
Lavishly abundant.

I don't know about you but up until recently, I thought Prodigal meant returning. After all, that's how it's used today. That causes you to look at the story from a completely different perspective. The son was prodigal in the sense that he threw his inheritance away, wastefully extravagant, but the father was prodigal too. He gave profusely. So the question I've been asking is who is this story about? Who is the Prodigal? What is this story really about?

All of the parables in that chapter talks about the master. Jesus is trying to explain the joy of heaven, the extravagant love given to us that allows us to come to freely to God. What he saying is that God is the Prodigal, lavishing abundantly, of giving profusely, in the form of His son. Jesus is a result of prodigal.

"... My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and has been found." This is my favorite part of the story. Like that oldest son said, "it's not fair. This son pf yours goes and wastes all your money and you kill the fatted calf for him? How is that right?" In order for the father to be the good side of prodigal, the son had to be the bad side. He had to mess up or else the father wouldn't have been able to show his true love for his younger son. To the oldest, he said this: "My son, you are always with me and all I have is yours." (This touches on the subject of evil, something I will hopefully get to. I'll do my best to write a part 2 to this.) What the father is saying is really this: "I have always given to you, lavished on you, loved you in abundance. But your brother? He ran away from that love, from that place of prodigal so of course I am going to celebrate his return! To me, he had died, he had been lost but now I have the chance to love him again." This story is about the father.

The one thing to note about this story is that it's open ended. We don't know what the eldest son did. It's an invitation to come into a place of prodigal, a call to the salvation and hope found in the author of the story, Jesus. Each one of us are the eldest son and we have the opportunity to be loved with prodigal. We each have the opportunity to be loved by a prodigal God, our prodigal Father.

Do you accept the invitation?