The greatest story ever told
There are at least four levels of meaning in the story of the Prodigal
Son, and there may be many others. It is the story of the entire cosmos.
One of the Pentecostals expounded it to me as follows, not realising that I had considered it deeply forty years earlier. The robe which the father gives the son is the righteousness of Jesus which is imputed to the son because he accepts the sacrifice of blood made on his behalf.
So I might scrape into heaven like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. How would I behave in heaven? Would my wolfishness surface and result in my worrying the sheep? Would I be ejected from heaven if it did? I was not impressed by this. And what would I look like to God without the robe? Apparently disgust and anger would fight for first place in his expression, and my state would be precarious indeed. How should I love the Lord my God? Would I have any time to love him in even if I could, before being thrown into the eternal fire? It was useless my telling him that the father ran to meet the son when he was still a long way off, and unrobed.
How these old thoughts come back to memory. I had another image of the righteousness of Christ as a wall behind which I and my unfortunate fellows were cowering, hoping for all we were worth that God would see the righteousness and not us. Faint hope. We could not think that Omniscience could be unaware of our presence, so we could predict that we would be summoned and expelled.
I asked my fellows, for in those days I had fellowship, whether the righteousness was mine, having been given to me. I thought there might be a chance it would work if it flooded all my being like a transfusion. No, they said, it is Christ’s and is not given but imputed. So there remained a disjunction between me and the righteousness, and I could not see this failing to come unstuck in the long reaches of Eternity. Let us say that the righteousness is immaculate. I am rotten, so there is no reliable surface for the glue to stick to.
“Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
And only look on us as found in him.” (1)
But really, how can anything unholy hope to survive in heaven? Imputed righteousness fails utterly. You need knowledge of your holiness. You can’t acquire it. You realise that you have it.
Look, Father, look on My anointed face,
And look upon your Self as found in Me.
What I call the outer meaning of the story is that sin is a confidence trick. It does not deliver. All you get is husks. It is true. But see if the father is perturbed. Not at all. He allowed the whole thing, by giving the inheritance to the son when he asked for it, knowing well what he might do with it. So there is nothing that could take the father by surprise, and nothing to offend him. How can you offend God?
Marion Keyes writes movingly about alcoholism in “Further Under the Duvet”.
“Despite being brought up in an ordinary, loving middle-class family, all my life I sensed I was missing a piece of myself. It knocked me off balance; I was forever out of step with the rest of the world and I never felt ‘normal’…So when in my teens, I had my first drink, the world shifted on its axis and I fell in love. Giddy, soaring with relief, I loved the way alcohol made me feel and suddenly I felt how I thought everyone else felt all of the time. Now I get it, I thought. This is the missing piece of me, my saviour.”
Good for her. She felt the inward cross with uncommon vividness. And then many husks later she saw it. “Looking back over my life, it was clear that everything bad in it had been a result of alcohol abuse and every time I had a drink it had lit an inferno which had annihilated all in its path.”
The older brother might feel superior, and complain about the behaviour of his brother, completely unaware that he had development of his own to do which he was neglecting, and slandering the son of the father. How would he come by the certain knowledge that what had seemed a saviour was killing her? She found it by experience. And the father knew this.
I sometimes wondered whether the older brother had a grievance because the younger brother having spent all his inheritance, and it was all, the father would be unwilling for him to scrape by in poverty and would divide the inheritance again, thus reducing the elder brother’s share. I think not. What is half of infinity, or a quarter?
In the inner meaning, the husks are the shreds of consciousness available to the separate self, and the return is to consciousness of the unity, homecoming. The son is as rich as the elder brother, for all that the father has is his. The elder brother is in the same state of bliss, and at this level he is not jealous, but he is unaware of his bliss, not having experienced anything else. You know this yourself. Do you know the bliss of being in health, having had a meal, free of prison, with almost enough to live on, not in pain, with all the beauty of the world to see, and all the infinity of the inner world to feel? Probably you take it for granted, and don’t feel it as bliss.
Ultimately, this is the father’s predicament. So he asks his son to experience the husks for him and as him and report back, so that they will know.
“…I sawe two persons in bodely liknesse, that is to sey, a lorde and a servant, and therewith God gave me gostly understanding. The lorde sitteth solempnely in rest and in pees. The servant stondeth before his lorde reverently, redy to do his lordes wille. The lorde looketh upon his servant full lovely and swetly, and mekely he sendeth him into a certaine place to do his will. The servant not onely he goeth, but sodenly he sterteth and runneth in gret hast for love to do his lordes wille. And anon he falleth in a slade, and taketh ful gret sore. And than he groneth and moneth and walloweth and writheth. But he may not rise nor helpe himselfe by no manner of weye…
I merveyled how this servant might thus mekely suffer all this wo. And I behelde with avisement, to wit if I culde perceive in him any defaute, or if the lorde shuld assigne in him ony maner of blame. And sothly there was none seen. For only his good will and his gret desyer was cause of his falling. And he was as unlothful and as good inwardly as he was when he stode before his lorde, redy to do his wille…
Than saide this curteyse lorde in his mening: ‘Lo, my beloved servant, what harme and disses he hath had and taken in my servis for my love – yea, and for his good wille! Is it not skille that I reward him his frey and his drede, his hurt and his maime, and all his wo? And not only this, but falleth it not to me to geve him a gifte that be better to him and more wurshipful than his owne hele shuld have bene? And els me thinketh I did him no grace.’” (2)
We are going to have a party!
1. Hymn: And now, O Father, mindful of the love: William Bright
2. Julian of Norwich: A revelation of love, chapter 51 in The writings of Julian of Norwich, ed Watson and Jenkins, Penn State Press.
One of the Pentecostals expounded it to me as follows, not realising that I had considered it deeply forty years earlier. The robe which the father gives the son is the righteousness of Jesus which is imputed to the son because he accepts the sacrifice of blood made on his behalf.
So I might scrape into heaven like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. How would I behave in heaven? Would my wolfishness surface and result in my worrying the sheep? Would I be ejected from heaven if it did? I was not impressed by this. And what would I look like to God without the robe? Apparently disgust and anger would fight for first place in his expression, and my state would be precarious indeed. How should I love the Lord my God? Would I have any time to love him in even if I could, before being thrown into the eternal fire? It was useless my telling him that the father ran to meet the son when he was still a long way off, and unrobed.
How these old thoughts come back to memory. I had another image of the righteousness of Christ as a wall behind which I and my unfortunate fellows were cowering, hoping for all we were worth that God would see the righteousness and not us. Faint hope. We could not think that Omniscience could be unaware of our presence, so we could predict that we would be summoned and expelled.
I asked my fellows, for in those days I had fellowship, whether the righteousness was mine, having been given to me. I thought there might be a chance it would work if it flooded all my being like a transfusion. No, they said, it is Christ’s and is not given but imputed. So there remained a disjunction between me and the righteousness, and I could not see this failing to come unstuck in the long reaches of Eternity. Let us say that the righteousness is immaculate. I am rotten, so there is no reliable surface for the glue to stick to.
“Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
And only look on us as found in him.” (1)
But really, how can anything unholy hope to survive in heaven? Imputed righteousness fails utterly. You need knowledge of your holiness. You can’t acquire it. You realise that you have it.
Look, Father, look on My anointed face,
And look upon your Self as found in Me.
What I call the outer meaning of the story is that sin is a confidence trick. It does not deliver. All you get is husks. It is true. But see if the father is perturbed. Not at all. He allowed the whole thing, by giving the inheritance to the son when he asked for it, knowing well what he might do with it. So there is nothing that could take the father by surprise, and nothing to offend him. How can you offend God?
Marion Keyes writes movingly about alcoholism in “Further Under the Duvet”.
“Despite being brought up in an ordinary, loving middle-class family, all my life I sensed I was missing a piece of myself. It knocked me off balance; I was forever out of step with the rest of the world and I never felt ‘normal’…So when in my teens, I had my first drink, the world shifted on its axis and I fell in love. Giddy, soaring with relief, I loved the way alcohol made me feel and suddenly I felt how I thought everyone else felt all of the time. Now I get it, I thought. This is the missing piece of me, my saviour.”
Good for her. She felt the inward cross with uncommon vividness. And then many husks later she saw it. “Looking back over my life, it was clear that everything bad in it had been a result of alcohol abuse and every time I had a drink it had lit an inferno which had annihilated all in its path.”
The older brother might feel superior, and complain about the behaviour of his brother, completely unaware that he had development of his own to do which he was neglecting, and slandering the son of the father. How would he come by the certain knowledge that what had seemed a saviour was killing her? She found it by experience. And the father knew this.
I sometimes wondered whether the older brother had a grievance because the younger brother having spent all his inheritance, and it was all, the father would be unwilling for him to scrape by in poverty and would divide the inheritance again, thus reducing the elder brother’s share. I think not. What is half of infinity, or a quarter?
In the inner meaning, the husks are the shreds of consciousness available to the separate self, and the return is to consciousness of the unity, homecoming. The son is as rich as the elder brother, for all that the father has is his. The elder brother is in the same state of bliss, and at this level he is not jealous, but he is unaware of his bliss, not having experienced anything else. You know this yourself. Do you know the bliss of being in health, having had a meal, free of prison, with almost enough to live on, not in pain, with all the beauty of the world to see, and all the infinity of the inner world to feel? Probably you take it for granted, and don’t feel it as bliss.
Ultimately, this is the father’s predicament. So he asks his son to experience the husks for him and as him and report back, so that they will know.
“…I sawe two persons in bodely liknesse, that is to sey, a lorde and a servant, and therewith God gave me gostly understanding. The lorde sitteth solempnely in rest and in pees. The servant stondeth before his lorde reverently, redy to do his lordes wille. The lorde looketh upon his servant full lovely and swetly, and mekely he sendeth him into a certaine place to do his will. The servant not onely he goeth, but sodenly he sterteth and runneth in gret hast for love to do his lordes wille. And anon he falleth in a slade, and taketh ful gret sore. And than he groneth and moneth and walloweth and writheth. But he may not rise nor helpe himselfe by no manner of weye…
I merveyled how this servant might thus mekely suffer all this wo. And I behelde with avisement, to wit if I culde perceive in him any defaute, or if the lorde shuld assigne in him ony maner of blame. And sothly there was none seen. For only his good will and his gret desyer was cause of his falling. And he was as unlothful and as good inwardly as he was when he stode before his lorde, redy to do his wille…
Than saide this curteyse lorde in his mening: ‘Lo, my beloved servant, what harme and disses he hath had and taken in my servis for my love – yea, and for his good wille! Is it not skille that I reward him his frey and his drede, his hurt and his maime, and all his wo? And not only this, but falleth it not to me to geve him a gifte that be better to him and more wurshipful than his owne hele shuld have bene? And els me thinketh I did him no grace.’” (2)
We are going to have a party!
1. Hymn: And now, O Father, mindful of the love: William Bright
2. Julian of Norwich: A revelation of love, chapter 51 in The writings of Julian of Norwich, ed Watson and Jenkins, Penn State Press.