how did the youngest son feel when he got his inheritance?
Answers
The younger son didn’t want to wait until the death of his father to get his inheritance, so he asked for it early. Now. His Father, for some unknown reason, gave it to him. And not just the small amount usually given to younger sons, but exactly half.
While the father settled his accounts to give his youngest son his premature inheritance, what would have been the dynamic between the older and younger son? Did they speak? Were their words loud and harsh? Or were there no words at all, the tension between them breeding a silence as thick and as deep as the ocean. One thing is clear: the father indulged his younger son and gave him what he asked. I wonder how many times that had happened previously?
After matters had been settled, and the younger son took possession of his inheritance, he set off for a distant country where he squandered his wealth on drinking, partying, sex and who knows what else. This is the moment where we brand him a prodigal. Ancient Jewish tradition would call someone who lived their lives entirely unto themselves a prodigal. It wasn’t so much about individual sins. A prodigal was someone who scattered and wasted rather then was generous and inclusive. It was about selfishness.
So maybe something else is going on here.
Have you ever wanted to start over? Go somewhere new? Search for something that you felt was lost? We can judge the prodigal, but maybe empathy would be the most useful here. In my own life, a lot of my testing and rebelliousness has come from restlessness. I’ve started fights and said certain things (more in my younger years, apparently I’m mature now…) to gain a response from those around me. From that response, I could gauge the level of care or love that person had for me. Maybe the son wanted the father to resist? Or to chase him?
When you put yourself in the shoes of the younger son, his quest is not an unfamiliar one. Even though the origins of it, and his behaviour during it, were rebellious, his search for meaning was deep and heartfelt. Angsty. It cost him all he had. Maybe he was too messed up or immature to know where to look to find the meaning he sought.
While he was spending all his money on wild living (I love that line), a severe famine cloaked the land, and he found himself in a perfect storm.
(Ever felt like that?)
His life went from excessive and wasteful, to desperate and destitute. His question changed from “what can I get out of my dad”, to “what do I have to do to survive?” And he ended up living with pigs and eating their scraps for food.
Luke 15:17-19, “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.“
When the younger son returned to his senses, what did he return to? This was the guy who was bold enough to ask for his inheritance early and then wasted it on wild living. Did he automatically become a saint at that moment? Or was he just hungry and figured he could get something to eat as a servant at his dad's place?
Jesus listeners would have recognised a statement in the son's speech… “I have sinned against heaven and against you!” Pharaoh declared the same thing – word for word, read it – to Moses in the hopes that the plagues would stop, so deep was his desperation and loss after his son's death. But the very next day, Pharaoh amassed his army and chased Moses and the Israelites through the desert to the shores of a sea in which he met his death.
Who knows what was going through this son's mind. But one thing we know, in his desperation, the prodigal returned home.
Go to Part 5 – The Father Had Two Sons »
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