Luke15chapter 15

Luke 15:1-2

All the publicans and sinners drew near to hear him, and the Pharisees and scribes murmured: This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. The murmur is the chapter's occasion and its unintended gospel, for the bench observes that the accusation is simply true, and the three parables that follow are one defense of it. Table fellowship in that world declared acceptance, which is exactly what offended; Jesus answers not by denying the charge but by revealing the heart of God it expresses. Every reading of the chapter must keep both audiences in view, the sinners listening and the critics murmuring, for the last parable will end aimed at the critics.

Luke 15:3-7

And he spake this parable unto them: what man of you, having an hundred sheep, does not leave the ninety and nine for the one lost, a question expecting the answer of every working shepherd, the parable's scandal hiding in its arithmetic, one percent justifying the search. The shepherd seeks until he find it, lays it on his shoulders rejoicing, and calls the neighbourhood to share the joy; the seeking is all his, the sheep contributing nothing but its lostness. The application names heaven's own emotion, joy over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance, and the bench hears the edge in that last clause, spoken to men who believed themselves the ninety and nine. The shepherd thread of the whole Bible stands behind the figure, Ezekiel 34's seeking shepherd now speaking in person.

Luke 15:8-10

Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one, does not light a candle and sweep the house and seek diligently: the second parable moves the scene indoors and the seeker becomes a woman, the coin a drachma, roughly a day's wage and a tenth of what she has. The old suggestion that the ten coins were her marriage headdress is tradition, worth naming as such; what the text itself gives is the diligence, candle, broom, and search until finding. The refrain returns exactly, Rejoice with me, and the application deepens by a word: joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, the courts of heaven watching each recovery. A sheep strays by wandering, a coin by mere gravity; the bench reads the pair as lostness in its passive and helpless forms before the third parable gives it a will.

Luke 15:11-13

A certain man had two sons, and the parable the church calls the prodigal's is announced from its first line as a story of two. The younger demands the portion of goods that falleth to me, an inheritance claimed while the father lives, which the commentators read at its full offense, wishing the father dead in effect while taking his substance. The father divided unto them his living, and the bench pauses on the granting: the God this father figures does not chain his children to the house. Not many days after, the son turns everything portable and leaves for a far country, and wasted his substance with riotous living, the word prodigal living in that clause.

Luke 15:14-16

A mighty famine arises when he had spent all, providence and consequence arriving together, and he begins to be in want. He joins himself to a citizen of that country and is sent into the fields to feed swine, for a Jewish hearer the floor of degradation, hired to the unclean animals of a Gentile master. He would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, the carob pods of the poorest, and no man gave unto him: the far country's hospitality runs out precisely when the money does. The bench reads the famine as mercy in disguise, the first messenger the father's house sends him.

Luke 15:17-19

When he came to himself: the commentators build the theology of repentance on that phrase, for sin is here a madness and the first step home is sanity, remembering the father's house as it actually is, where hired servants have bread enough and to spare. His rehearsed speech has three clauses: I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, the confession first Godward then homeward; no more worthy to be called thy son, the honest verdict; make me as one of thy hired servants, the plan to earn what can only be given. I will arise and go to my father is resolve turned to motion, and the bench notes that repentance in this parable is not the finished road but the turning of the face.

Luke 15:20-24

When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, which means the father was watching the road; had compassion is splanchnizomai, the verb Luke reserves for the deepest mercy; and ran, which the commentators note no dignified eastern householder did, the father taking the shame of haste on himself. The son gets out his confession through the embrace but never reaches the hired-servant clause; the father is already speaking over him: the best robe, a ring for the hand, shoes for the feet, the fatted calf, each gift reversing a mark of the far country, and the bench reads them as standing, authority, sonship, and feast. The verdict is stated as resurrection: this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. Grace in this parable does not negotiate the son's terms down, it refuses them and gives sonship whole.

Luke 15:25-28

Now his elder son was in the field, and the parable's second movement begins where sermons often stop. He hears music and dancing, asks a servant what these things mean, and is angry and would not go in; the feast he refuses is his brother's restoration. Therefore came his father out, and intreated him: the same father who ran to one son now leaves the feast for the other, and the bench weighs the symmetry, both sons outside the house in their turn, both sought. The murmurers of verse 2 are meant to see themselves in the doorway, and the entreaty is the parable's word to them, not its condemnation.

Luke 15:29-30

Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: the elder brother's self-account is a servant's ledger, serve and never transgressed, kept in the house on hired-man's terms, which is exactly the standing the younger son had planned to request. Thou never gavest me a kid exposes the famine of his own devising, joyless obedience nursing a grievance, and this thy son, refusing the word brother, with the harlots added beyond anything the narrative reported, completes the portrait. The bench reads him as the parable's mirror for the Pharisees of verse 2, the righteousness that has never left home and never known the father's heart.

Luke 15:31-32

Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine: the father's answer denies the elder brother nothing except his accounting, tenderness first, the standing he never lost stated plainly. It was meet that we should make merry: the feast is defended as necessity, not indulgence, and the refrain returns a third time, this thy brother, the father giving back the word the elder son refused, was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. The parable ends with the elder brother's answer unrecorded, and the commentators agree the openness is the point: the door stands ajar toward the murmuring scribes of verse 2, and toward every reader standing where they stood. Heaven's joy has had the first and last word of the chapter.