Rembrandt’s life was very colourful. He enjoyed a short period of success, popularity, and wealth. Then, he experienced a series of grief, misfortune, and disaster, which was quite overwhelming. He lost a son, Rumbartus in 1635, his daughter Cornelia in 1638, and his second daughter Cornelia in 1640. His beloved wife, Saskia, died in 1642. He was left behind with his nine-months old son, Titus. After he lost her whom he deeply loved and admired, he had a few unhappy relationships. His relationship with Titus’ nurse, Geertje Dircx ended in lawsuits and the confinement of Geertje in an asylum. He had a more stable union with Hendrickje Stoffels, who bore a son who died in 1652. She also bore a daughter, Cornelia, who would survive him. His financial woes got so deepened that he was declared insolvent in 1656. Eventually all of his possessions, his own and other painters’ works, his large collection of artifacts, his house in Amsterdam, and his furniture were sold in three auctions during 1657 and 1658. In his early fifties, he finally found a modicum of peace. The increasing warmth and interiority of his paintings during this period show that the many disillusionments did not embitter him. “On the contrary, they had a purifying effect on his way of seeing” (Nouwen, p. 39). Jakob Rosenberg wrote, “He began to regard man and nature with an even more penetrating eye, no longer distracted by outward splendour or theatrical display.” Hendrickje died in 1663, and his beloved son, Titus, died five years later. Then, Rembrandt himself died in 1669. By then he was a poor and lonely man. Only his daughter Cornelia, his daughter-in-law Magdalene van Loo, and his granddaughter Titia survived him. You could see how broken man he was by the end of his life. Probably, his own brokenness reminded him of the prodigal son and wanted to draw a painting of the parable, but not for the sake of the prodigal son, per se, but for himself.

There are many significant elements in the story of the prodigal son. I would say that one of them is “returning.” This returning means “coming back.” There was a “leaving” before “returning.” The welcoming father was so glad to receive him because “once he was dead but now is alive. He was once lost but is found now.” Before we could taste the father’s joy, we ought to taste the sorrow of leaving, first. Until we taste and understand the sorrows of the father clearly and thoroughly, we will fail to appreciate the joy and gladness the father experienced. It is something like the joy of salvation only after repentance of sins and forgiveness by the Lord. Only when we know the depth of our sins, we could taste the joy of forgiveness. Probably, it was the inner thoughts David had when he confessed in Psalm 51:12, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.” He could say it only after he said, “Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. ³ For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me” (51:2-3). The same thought is also found in Luke 7:47, in which Jesus said to a Pharisee, “Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many are forgiven; for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” The beauty of the story of the prodigal son lies in that he was broken and returned to the father. In fact, until we understand this story as our own, we do not fully appreciate it yet. 

We praise the father’s compassion, love, and mercy at the end of the parable. If we really desire to understand the depth and mystery of his love and mercy, we must know what evoked such a compassionate embrace from the father to the prodigal son. The reason is simple. There is no beauty in brokenness. The story of the prodigal son sounds beautiful, because the father’s compassion and love are beautiful surrounding his prodigal son’s brokenness. Can we imagine any beauty from this story, if the father’s love story is missing from it? Likewise, the reason that the love of God is so brightening and shining in our salvation story is because there is our indescribable brokenness, as mentioned in Romans 3:10-23. “There is none righteous, no, not one.” “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” No one is able to appreciate and understand the “love of God,” or “glory of God” until he understands that he is wearing only filthy rags just like the returned prodigal son. 

When we read the parable of the prodigal son, we cannot but notice some missing components from it, which makes the story not completed yet. I wonder if you could point them out. I may bring two such points absent from the story. One, the parable does not talk about the manner of the son shown in demanding his father’s inheritance and leaving him quickly after receiving his portion. Demanding a father’s inheritance implies that the son wished his father dead, because inheritance was expected to be distributed only when his father died. Kenneth Baily wrote, “For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same . . . the conversation runs as follows: ‘Has anyone ever made a request in your village? Never. Could anyone ever make such a request? Impossible! If anyone ever did, what would happen? His father would beat him, of course! Why? The request means – he wants his father to die’” (Nouwen, p. 43). Bailey continues to say, “After signing over his possessions to his son, the father still has the right to live off the proceeds . . . as long as he is alive. Here the younger son gets, and thus is assumed to have demanded, disposition to which, even more explicitly, he has no right until the death of his father. The implication of ‘Father, I cannot wait for you to die’ underlies both requests.’” Therefore, the prodigal son’s leaving with his portion of the father’s inheritance is much more offensive act than it looks like at a quick glance of the story. Basically, the son rejected everything from his home, upbringing, and even parents. His subsequent ways of conducts and living simply denounced his previous learning and values. He virtually wanted to cut off all ties with his loved ones, which was disrespectful. All of these are not included in the story but they are behind this story. Two, the parable does not talk about the father’s hurt feelings enough. What the prodigal son said to him was hurtful and offensive. The parable tells us about the father’s joy and gladness when the son had returned, but it does not say about his feelings when he had to see his son leave from him with wealth to a far country. If we want to have accurate understanding of the parable, probably we should consider all such hidden, not spoken components of the event. Only then, we should look inside of us to see our total alienation from God in the past, present lukewarmness, and possibilities in the future.

We need to see that the prodigal son preferred a far country to home. He preferred leaving home and family to going to a strange land for living a riotous living (15:13). “Riotous” in Greek also means “reckless” or “senseless.” Later, he had to come back to himself (senses). We find a warning against such life by Apostle John in 1 John 2:15-16, “¹⁵Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” If we have been indifferent to the things of God, disregardful of the fellowship with the saints, and slack in the service of God, we are none other than prodigal sons. To be continued….

More Lively Hope

© Hope Bible-Presbyterian Church
14 Bedford Square, Colonel Light Gardens, South Australia 5041