Later after I had completed my basic errands for the morning and went to get my wife at Virginia Tech where we teach, I sat in the parking lot outside her building and started to read. One devotion called “Deal or No Deal,” by Joe Stowell, caught my eye. The message was about the prodigal son. Now, I did not totally agree with the conclusion of the message but the writer introduced me to a concept of which I was not aware. The author noted that the prodigal decided that he would go back home and offer to be a hired servant in his father’s house. Stowell noted that there were three kinds of servants in Bible times. First, there was the day laborer then the hired servant and finally, there was the bond servant. The differences were interesting to note. Day laborers were paid on a day-to-day basis, Hired servants worked long hours but lived in town and were able to maintain their independence. Bond-servants were quite different. These servants, according to the author, lived on the estate and gave themselves completely to serving the family. Stowell believes that the prodigal proposed that he become a hired servant in his father’s home as a way of swinging a deal that would allow him to maintain his independence and get a paycheck after having been out on his own. Stowell then went on to note that we all try to swing deals with God. I think the concept of the three types of servants is a truly illuminating one but I want to rework the conclusion about deal-making. Stowell says that the prodigal’s decision was based on the idea that “I’ll serve you but you can’t take away my freedom!”
Let’s look at the deal from another perspective. Here was the prodigal in the pig pen. His fortune was lost and he was reduced to a slave on a farm where he tended pigs. Most likely, he was a bond servant because the Bible says in Luke 15:15 that he "joined himself to a citizen of that country." This was the worst plunge of his life. He grew up with servants waiting on him whenever he needed something. Perhaps, in his self-centered life back home he treated these poor slobs with contempt. But now, he found himself having to renounce his personal freedom and dignity to get food.Things were so bad that pig slop was starting to look like a possible menu choice. When you're nose to nose with a pig about to fight for a husk, it's time to rethink your life.The passage in Luke gives us a picture of a dependent relationship between the son and that citizen-farmer. Think of it: If you were a bond servant, you would have certain desires of the owner. You would hope to be fed and sheltered in exchange for the 24/7 service. In other words, you've given him your life in exchange for food and a place to call home. Nevertheless, none of that happened for the prodigal. His life was a mess in that pig pen and he was starving to death. The owner didn't care. Nobody cared. That's a painful state of affairs. Now, after going down, down, down, reality starts to sink in--real good!
At times like this when we are flat on our backs looking up from the slop and swill of life, often the light comes on--the epiphany: "The hired servants at my father’s house are well cared for compared to this bond-servant setup here. After what I have done, I know that I will never be welcomed back into my father’s home even as a slave, but what if I try to get hired as a servant? That way I can come in not as a family member but as the outcast that I am. I can get enough money to survive and won't expect to get the treatment of family. I can earn my way, keep my distance and show that I am truly sorry for all that I have done. Besides, dad would never take me as a bond-servant—How would that look?"
So here is the lesson that came to me about the deal. When our family relationship with God and the church is broken through either sin or discouragement or whatever, we feel that we must run away and stay away. We can’t imagine that we could ever come back home in any way. But that day suddenly arrives when we come to ourselves and realize that we are at rock-bottom. We recognize that what we left behind was really the best thing, after all. But how do you go back to what you rejected with such venom and flair? It would be hard; very hard to do. But there was no other choice for the prodigal. He wasn’t going to just die in the pig pen when he knew there was a place run by a fair, loving and just man.He didn't feel it when he lived there but all along he knew in his heart that this was true. The fairness and justness of his father cut across the desire for self and evil that ruled the son's heart. Now, the very attributes that repulsed him in the past were drawing him like a magnet when he compared the father's consistent record of love to the ways of his far-country friends and the citizen farmer.
It was time for bold, life saving action! Escape was plan one, but plan two: going home, required some creative work. So he had to think of some deal he could swing to get back on the homestead, but this deal was different from the one that Stowell presented.
In my view the issue wasn’t about protecting his freedoms, it was about recognizing that he had run out of choices and that he had to find a way to go home when there was no home he could claim as his own. He had burned all the bridges that led home (along with the water under them), and now he was in deep despair.Then the Spirit gave him a possibility: A hired servant; that’s the answer! I'll get some food for sure! But more than that, I’ll work my way back to respectability! I’ll make up for my past. I’ll show everyone that I am not so bad anymore and as a hired servant I will be able to keep my distance from them because my dad and brother are ashamed of me. I’ll pull my life together in town. Word will get back to dad that I’m a new man. Brother is a lost cause. He’ll never forgive me. But, at least the shame will be gone. My people won’t accept me as family but they’ll know that I’m serious. I will be known as a good guy in spite of my mistakes. Some day they’ll respect me even if they don’t love me.
Now, you may ask, why would the spirit guide a man to work his way home when the Spirit knows that would never work? Often, I think, God knows that in our despair we are not thinking clearly. And in our unconverted, or at times, immature spiritual state we have no pattern of righteous decision making in hand. So, taking us where we are, he prompts us to do the closest thing we can to "right" and that action leads us in the direction of home. If he can get us moving in that direction, he can take it from there. Look at the story of Rahab the harlot in the book of Joshua. God didn’t give her lectures on truth-telling or career choices. He used her willingness to serve the living God to save his people and he did not stop the story to edit her life or habits. Later, he rescued her and her family and she became an ancestor of Jesus. You see, Love, mercy, grace, and godliness are concepts that require a level of faith and understanding that prodigals may not possess yet. So God works with what we have on hand and unfolds the complex stuff as we can grasp it.
But just as Adam and Eve tried to work their way home by making fig leaf clothes to cover their nakedness and shame, the prodigal had his own idea for how to make that impossible trip back to the place he spurned.
When he arrived in the vicinity of home, God kicked his own homecoming plan into high gear, and it was a plan that the son could never have imagined. To the son, real sonship was impossible. By demanding the inheritance he had wished his father dead. He dissed his family and spit on his heritage. But the love of the father reached out beyond the front fence. That love reached all the way into the far country and drew the son back into the fold. What a love it was; a love that pushed beyond the slights and embarrassment and clung with tenacity to the hope of reunion and reconciliation. This is the love of the father: a father who wanted his son back; not a new servant. He was a father who saw infinitely more value in his son than was seen by those who only remembered his despicable behavior.
So now the father, looking expectantly in the distance for his boy, sees the dust cloud on the horizon then that familiar gait—no longer proud but unmistakable—hesitantly moving toward either renewal or rejection. For the son, rejection would be understandable. That’s why the hired servant deal was a source of hope. “He knows I know the place, I know the drill, I know the other servants, and, most important, I know him. I know what he wants and how he wants it. I may be a failure as a son, but he couldn’t find a better and more desperate servant than me.
The father launches himself in the direction of the dust cloud. As the son gazes on the familiar surroundings, and as his mind freezes with joy and fear, he spots a moving dust cloud himself. The gait is familiar. Dad was coming, running, yelling and laughing as though—as though family had arrived. The father had only thoughts of family, The son was given no time or space for servant deals. A son had come home and the feast of love cut loose!
