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The Prodigal Son – how grace trumped mercy

The Prodigal Son – how grace trumped mercy
First published in Open Bok, The Sight Magazine, 28 Nov 2025

The familiar Parable of the Prodigal Son is riddled with cultural questions about what did not happen. It epitomises the difference between earthly retribution and “as it is in heaven”.

Luke Chapter 15 starts by setting the scene with the cultural context: The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them”.

The law of Moses stipulates that the firstborn inherits a “double share” (Deuteronomy 21:17).

The father could have declined the disgraceful request and observed the Jewish wisdom to “wait until the last moment of your life, when you are breathing your last, and then divide your property among your heirs” as contained in the Jewish Book of Sirach (33:23). But he “waived” what was culturally right and “divided his property between them”, granting a third to his younger son.

Because the son had effectively treated his father as dead, the brother wrote off “this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes”.

If the brother knew about the son’s exploits, he probably heard murmurs that the son had fallen into desperate times, resorted to feeding “unclean” pigs (Leviticus 11:7) for a Gentile, and worked on the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11). Others may have arranged to eliminate this sin-soaked son before he further disgraced the family’s reputation.

When the son “came to his senses”, he rehearsed a three-part speech: “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 father saw him “still a long way off”, he was “filled with compassion” rather than wrath.

King David offers a lofty explanation for the father’s heart: “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me…you perceive my thoughts from afar…Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely…and you lay your hand upon me.” (Psalm 139:1-6).

Instead of shunning the son, waiting for the grovel or expecting the reverent hand-kissing, the opposite happens. It is the father who publicly disgraced himself by running out to the sinner – to give grace! It is the father who hastened to embrace and kiss his son. It is the father who gestured forgiveness before a word was spoken.

When the son delivers his three-part speech, the father refuses to hear part three about treatment as a servant. Again, the father waived that third of what was culturally right.

Again, the opposite happens. The father asks the servants not only to “bring the best robe” but to “put it on him”, as if to cover the scars of his sins. For the murmuring Pharisees and Scribes, this imagery would have evoked the angel replacing Joshua’s filthy clothes with fine garments (Zechariah 3:4), especially as royal robes were traditionally preserved for a noble prince (Esther 6:8-9).

By putting a ring on his son’s finger, the father is immediately and publicly restoring the son’s status in the family. The signet ring was traditionally engraved with a family crest for a wax seal, akin to a credit card! For the murmurers, this would have evoked the ceremony when Pharaoh promoted Joseph with a signet ring (Genesis 41:42).

As servants traditionally walked barefoot, the sandals reinforced the father’s rejection of part three.

At best, the son was hoping for mercy after sequential stages to redeem himself. Instead, he was greeted with immediate grace.

Instead of the father becoming angry and turning his back, it is the brother who “refused to go in”.

The brother cannot understand the hasty celebration, after all the shame and disgrace that the son has caused. Surely, the father has skipped a few stages – a process akin to our Western justice system.

Our justice system may entail a protracted process of charges (breaches of Mosaic law), prosecution, trial, plea bargaining, evidence, witnesses, cross-examination, victim impact statements, sentencing, proportional retribution, compensation of victims, public shaming and mandatory rehabilitation.

Similarly, Baptist minister Dr Gary Chapman co-authored The 5 Apology Languages which maps out the popular and progressive stages of regret, responsibility, restitution, repentance then forgiveness.

Perhaps the brother expected more grovelling and healing before he was ready for clemency.

But the father sprinted straight to forgiveness.

Given that the brother had already received his ‘double share’ of inheritance prematurely, perhaps he was ‘eyeing off’ the full share of his father’s remaining property. The regrafting of the son may jeopardise this.

Perhaps this is why the father explicitly placates him: “everything I have is yours.”

Is it a coincidence that the parable ends by circling back to the opening murmurs?

Indeed, the father embraced his son to erase the shame and so he “receives sinners”.

The father hosts a celebratory homecoming dinner for this ‘sinner’ and so he “eats with them” too.

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What birth teaches us about death

First published as This Life column in Sight Magazine, 12 November 2025

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be. – Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV)

I watched in awe at the acrobatic ripples of my grandchild ‘reaching out’ within my pregnant daughter. We were physically separated only by the womb wall, but we were dwelling in different worlds. I was profoundly curious about what this foetus could sense about life outside the womb.

Foetuses cannot ‘know’ that their vital placenta will expire and they will eventually exit their familiar ocean within the amniotic sac. Their life of warm water, muffled sounds and faint lights will end when they suddenly come face to face with the real human causes: loud and clear.

In the ‘new life’, limbs will stretch out into thin air, not into some cosy cocoon, and that may be scary! But newborn babies are hard-wired to ‘sniff’ out the new comforter – mother’s vital breast milk.

After all, God has “created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother’s womb” and His eyes “saw my unformed body” (Psalm 139:13, 16). No matter how many scientific explanations I read, this ‘knit’ is too perfect to be anything but miraculous.

Scientific research verifies that foetuses respond to external lights and voices. In utero, the foetus learns, identifies and remembers the sound of the mother’s voice, evidenced by an increased heart rate. During the third trimester, sonograms show that foetuses will turn their heads when responding to sounds they hear outside the womb.

Do they intrinsically sense that there may be life outside the womb walls?

Similarly, do we intrinsically sense that there may be life outside of this mortal sphere? When we encounter so many ‘God moments’, do we keep writing them off as mere coincidences?

While we are blessed if we have believed without seeing (John 20:29), sometimes the divine signs may turn our heads and increase our heart rates: a vivid dream, a sudden appearance, a street sign, a message ‘out of the blue’. Perhaps these are the faint lights and muffled voices that remind us that something ‘out there’ awaits us.

Like a newborn baby, we will come face-to-face with the loving light of ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’.

As her mortal candle was flickering, my late wife had a sudden surge of lucidity and asked her grandmother to sit down. Her grandmother had passed away long ago, but my wife could see her standing at the foot of the hospital bed. During that burst of energy, my ailing wife sat up smiling and reached forward to…something or someone.

In the lead-up to our final ‘delivery’, we ponder and perceive loving arms waiting to embrace us.

In a beautiful parallel, the ‘hour of our death’ may be ushered in by a welcoming party of angels and midwives, just like the hour of our birth.

Having held hands in birthing units and palliative care units – the similarities are chilling: the waiting room, feelings of helplessness, monitoring the breaths, the wrinkled skin, the tears.

Dr Wayne Dyer articulated this comparison between birth and death in a parable titled Your Sacred Self where a foetus questions life after delivery: “no-one has ever come back from there, it’s just the end of everything”.

Perhaps we are already hearing echoes, seeing glimmers and feeling ripples of the next life – the heavenly kingdom that is the eternal home of those who have gone before us.

Perhaps fear of death may be placated by the reminder that our souls have all been through something similar – at birth.

Perhaps these similarities are a reminder that death is not a full stop, but a comma.

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Do we need sarcasm emojis to grasp the parable of the shrewd manager?

Do we need sarcasm emojis to grasp the parable of the shrewd manager?

First published in Sught Magazine, 10 October 2025
https://sightmagazine.com.au/open-book/open-book-do-we-need-sarcasm-emojis-to-grasp-the-parable-of-the-shrewd-manager/

Read Luke 16:1-15 (NIV)

The ‘paradoxical’ Parable of the Shrewd Manager has always confounded and divided Christians. Why would the master “commend the dishonest manager”? How are “people of this world” shrewder than “people of the light”? Why would Jesus encourage us to “use worldly wealth to gain friends” so we are “welcomed into eternal dwellings”?

A cultural torch may help crack open this nut: the Levant languages are renowned for their colourful lexicon and hyperbole. I know that from my Lebanese upbringing, when my relatives sought to sharpen their point. If I visited my aunt after a long absence, she responded sarcastically: “So you remembered where we live!”

When our angry Lord spoke “out of a storm” to Job and his friends, He sarcastically quizzed them about his mysterious creation: “Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!” (Job 38:21).

Jesus was a master of rich language: “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away” (Matthew 5:29).

When His opponents plotted to stone him for blasphemy, He deployed sarcasm: “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” (John 10:32).

But there were no sarcasm emojis and exclamation marks 2000 years ago when Luke recorded this parable!

Within this cultural context, a re-reading of the shrewd manager parable does not contradict the surrounding parables about the prodigal son and Lazarus in the “bosom of Abraham“. Both of these parables juxtapose the ‘way of the world’ (rich man; selfish son) with the way of the ‘light’ (Lazarus; repentant son).

Surely, Jesus was sarcastic when He suggested that using worldly wealth to gain friends would lead to eternal dwellings. There is only one eternal dwelling: “in my Father’s house” (John 14:2). Moreover, Jesus tells us “do not store up for yourselves treasures on Earth” (Matthew 5:19).

At the end of His parable, Jesus pivots His focus to the sneering Pharisees: “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts”. He knew that they “loved money” and became “people of this world” when they should have been “people of the light”.

Jesus concludes: “no-one can serve two masters”. The shrewd manager knew exactly how to navigate the way of the world so that “people would welcome me in their houses”. Like the shrewd manager, the Pharisees knew the rule book when “dealing with their own kind”.

After the sarcasm has landed on the sneering Pharisees, Jesus leaves us with a serious challenge: do we who ostensibly serve the true master know the rule book of ‘our own kind’ to shrewdly navigate our way to eternal life?

The shrewd manager knew the way to the heart of the master he serves. He hastily concocted a win-win-win situation for “people of this world”. The debtors received an instant discount and closure. The master would be hailed a hero for his unwitting charity. The manager set up a contingency plan to be welcomed among these debtors “when I lose my job here”.

In the honour-shame culture of this world, the manager spared himself from the public shame of begging, and bestowed public honour on his master.

As ‘people of the light’, how well do we know the way to the heart of the master we serve?

What is unspoken by Jesus in this short parable may have been culturally odd to his Levant audience.

The master declares, “you cannot be manager any longer”, but does not ask the manager to balance the books first.

The master does not reveal who informed him of the mismanagement.

The master does not send the manager to prison or slavery for “wasting his possessions”.

The manager, meanwhile, does not defend himself, demand witnesses or plead by hand-kissing.

Unlike the prodigal son, he does not offer himself as a “hired servant” (Luke 15:19).

The wasteful manager does not know what each debtor owes, so he asks them.

He does not call for an urgent group meeting with debtors, perhaps because ‘people of this world’ (unlike people of the light) protect themselves by scheming privately, behind closed doors.

He does not evoke a long (family) history and loyalty of working for the master.

The debtors do not know that the manager has already been fired.

The manager’s eye was set on his earthly prize: retaining ‘my job.’

As people of the light, we have a different set of rules to reach the eternal dwelling place in the heavenly kingdom.

When we understand the sarcastic speech and the cultural context, this parable is not paradoxical. It is consistent with all that Jesus teaches: we are people in this world, but not of this world (John 17:16-18).

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How the dandelion inspired an epiphany

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.” – Matthew 13:24-29 (NIV)

I used to banter with my neighbours when I caught them “wasting time” on weekends: head down on bended knees, weeding their garden. “What a sight! Get a life!”

I recently heard those words boomerang back to me when I was caught red-handed uprooting dandelions from my garden after a downpour.

For those obsessed with a lush green lawn, dandelions are an invasive and uninvited weed. During winter, their rosette bases camouflage as grass, anchored by a deep taproot. In spring, their yellow daisy-like flowers morph into a white ‘puffball’ of wind-blown seeds to expand their invasion of my hallowed lawn.

The uprooting of weeds from moist soil may have looked like laborious repetition, but it felt like spring cleaning. There was something simple yet miraculous about working hand-in-hand with the seasonal rhythms and cycles of Creation.

The dandelion’s jagged leaves ostensibly resemble a lion’s teeth, hence its name stems from the French dent-de-lion. Their ‘teeth’ looked more like defence battlements of a fortress. Indeed, extracting these foot-long tap roots from my ‘fortress’ was like extracting a lion’s tooth – a very exacting art!

One passing neighbour tried to correct my (mis)classification: “At least I was weeding! Dandelions aren’t weeds! They’re good for the lawn!” He proceeded to enlighten me on their pollen that feeds bees, their leaves that boil into herbal medicine, and their tap roots that brew into ‘coffee.’ I did some fact-checking and he was right! These weeds contain antioxidants and are highly nutritious.

Children love to blow the seed heads to make wishes: another insidious ploy that these self-germinating opportunists deploy to tempt my grandchildren in my ‘Eden’!

As I toiled in the soil, it evoked the etymological ‘roots’ of humility, from the Latin word humus meaning (down to) earth. Digging even deeper, a Rabbi recently told me that the name Adam derives from the Hebrew word Adamah, which also means earth. This makes perfect sense as the “Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground’” (Genesis 2:7).

As I uprooted the ubiquitous invaders from deep in the dirt, I bundled them for removal. If ‘they’re good for the lawn’, perhaps they’re even better for my compost heap. In time, these rejects would decompose into the rich dark organic matter (humus) that improves soil fertility and plant fruitfulness.

Right under our noses, the garden is rich with echoes of Eden and Gospel parables. For example, my compost heap consists of rejects and broken parts: peels, leaves, clippings, eggshells, packaging and scraps. Yet the Creator miraculously enables this dead debris to breathe new life into old soil. Perhaps in God’s time, and in subsequent chapters of our lives, none of our brokenness goes to waste either.

When I returned to the lawn wearing my ‘Gospel’ lens, I had a dandelion-inspired epiphany about the parable of the weeds. When the weeds sprouted with the wheat, the servants asked the owner “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” In his wisdom, the owner declined because “you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.”

Indeed, my weeds disguised themselves as green grass until their yellow flowers shot up. Only then could I distinguish them from the good seed that I had sown. Only after the rain could I uproot them from softer soil. Only in that ripe moment could I avoid damaging the lawn.

Next time my neighbours catch me ‘wasting time’ and tell me to “get a life!”, I will respond with: “This keeps me grounded and reminds me to stay humble.”

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Was Jesus woke? Why this is the wrong question

Was Jesus woke? Why this is the wrong question
First published in Sight Magazine, 16 September 2025

“Woke folk hate us Christians,” my friend insisted. “They hate being judged but they’re hypocrites because they’re the first to brand us as X-phobic.”

So I rhetorically evoked “what would Jesus do?” – a phrase first coined by Rev Charles Sheldon’s 1896 book In His Steps.

This question took me on a journey that kept leading me to a provocative question: ‘was Jesus woke?’

Every time I asked this question of my Christian friends, it was like waving a red rag to a bull!

Imagine the irony if those Christians who had argued most fiercely against Jesus being ‘woke’ were forced to concede the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of woke – “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” – was, indeed part of the character of Christ.

My journey took me back to 1938 when black American folk singer Lead Belly coined the phrase ‘stay woke’ in his song Scottsboro Boys about nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women.

But woke has recently been weaponised by the political right as a slur to silence the political left.

I remember the pre-election campaign earlier this year, labelling the Australian Prime Minister as “weak, woke and sending us broke”. It reinforced the stereotype of pathetic empaths who capitulate to noisy minorities.

Beneath the din of name-calling is a serious question that some Christians are wrestling with: if the Gospel stories took place here and now, would Jesus be labelled woke?

For certain Christians, Jesus’ outreach to the marginalised and his compassion for the outcasts (lepers, adulterers, sinners, criminals, poor, Gentiles, blind, crippled) epitomised the inclusivity of wokeness. Jesus rebuked the religious elite for their exclusivity (Matthew 22:23).

Others offer a light-hearted parody of ‘Woke Jesus’, which mocks this revisionist labelling. Jesus was no stranger to false accusations such as blasphemy, sedition, subversion and tax evasion (Luke 23:2).

Then I saw the sign: ‘Wrong way – go back!’ Throughout this curious journey, I was asking the wrong question.

Who are we to act as a jury, handing down a verdict on whether Jesus was woke? Are we daring to put Jesus in a (witness) box, and judge the ultimate judge? Are we reducing the Son of God to fit our temporary political lens?

Are we weaponising selective Scripture, quoted out of context, to peddle our agenda? For example, “whatever you did for one of the least of these…” (Matthew 25:40) is not a rally for a social uprising but a personal calling to see Jesus in each individual encounter. Even Satan could misappropriate quotes from the Bible! (Matthew 4:5-6).

When we think we have awakened a political prism, we fall asleep to the Gospel in its full cultural, historical and spiritual context.

In the Gospels, I cannot see Jesus ever galvanising and mobilising minority groups to mass political movements: #LepersLivesMatter or #TurnTheTables or #PhariseesAreHypocrites.

His messages and miracles were public. But the spiritual journey to the Kingdom of God was always personal: ‘sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven’ (Matthew 19:21). Again, this must not be misconstrued as a social(ist) revolution, but a specific answer to a personal question: ‘what good thing must I do to get eternal life?’

Jesus did not ask His followers to #RiseUp against the Roman oppression or the religious hypocrisy. He asked them to repent from the real enemy: sin.

My journey started with labels of us versus them, which is a futile prism that refracts away from the one true light. Rather than asking whether Jesus is woke, we should remove these spectacles and ask whether we are obeying his new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34).

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The immediate forgiveness of Zacchaeus shows Yahweh, not our way

The immediate and scandalous forgiveness of Zacchaeus flips the table on man-made ‘justice’.

Luke’s choice of words is revealing: this chief tax collector “ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree” to “see who Jesus was”. His short stature may have driven his haste ahead of the ‘Palm Sunday’ procession.

Zacchaeus may have run for cover because of his reputation: a traitor who betrayed the children of Abraham by collecting taxes for their enemy – the Roman occupiers. It is easy to satirise this chief tax collector as someone who is metaphorically familiar with climbing tall trees. But among the swelling crowd, he may have been trampled on. Zacchaeus was a despised man whose heart sought to see Jesus “passing through”, but not be seen by anyone.

Imagine the scandal when Jesus stops the crowd, looks up and publicly calls this notorious ‘cheat’ by his name: ‘Come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.’

Among all the Jericho followers who would have been honoured if Jesus would ‘pick me!’, why would Jesus choose Zacchaeus to host his last stopover pre-Jerusalem?

The mutterers in the crowd could only see Zacchaeus as a ‘sinner’ – a permanent noun, not a temporary verb. But Jesus may have ‘seen’ the broken heart of a broken man who sought to ‘see’ Jesus.

Rather than hiding deeper within the tree to remain unseen, Zacchaeus felt safe enough to come down ‘at once.’

The supernatural act of grace by Jesus unleashed an act of restitution, with Zacchaeus addressing Jesus “Look, Lord”, rather than Master, Rabbi or Teacher. Now the invisible short man ‘stood up’, seeking to be seen and heard.

Zacchaeus makes amends ‘here and now’, rather than a future pledge.

He could have embarrassed Jesus and vindicated the muttering crowd by stopping short of any repentance. But he vindicated Jesus for this graceful gesture.

When Zacchaeus pledges to ‘pay back four times the amount’ that he had cheated anyone, this is 20 times more than Mosaic law requires: ‘They must make full restitution for the wrong they have done, add a fifth of the value to it and give it all to the person they have wronged’ (Numbers 5:7; Leviticus 5:16).

In response, Jesus continues the theme of immediacy and urgency: “Today salvation has come to this house.” This is prescient of what Jesus later tells the penitent Dismas on the cross: “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Next, Jesus promptly redeems and regrafts Zacchaeus to the Jewish family tree as a “son of Abraham”.

Finally, Jesus responds to the muttering about dining with sinners: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Just as Zacchaeus was seeking Jesus, perhaps the reverse was also true. How can Jesus save the lost if they are not both going out of their way to find each other?

This muttering is nothing new. The Pharisees asked the same question when Jesus first dined at Matthew’s house alongside other “tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 9:11). On both occasions, Jesus reiterates his misunderstood mission: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:13).

So why does Luke’s narrative on Zacchaeus highlight the theme of “immediately…at once…here and now…today…”?

This heavenly grace flies in the face of our earthly notions of justice and restitution. As a contemporary barometer, ‘The Five Languages of Forgiveness’ maps out the five sequential stages that ultimately lead to forgiveness: say sorry, accept responsibility, make restitution, from now on, seek forgiveness. It is a slow, protracted process of healing that sometimes escalates into litigation, compensation, investigation, adjournment, appeals, public shame, psychological assessments and victim impact statements.

This secular ‘solution’ may have been what was sought by the disgruntled brother in The Prodigal Son parable, whose graceful father ran to his disgraceful son with a familiar urgency: ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him’ (Luke 15:22).

Yet the Zacchaeus narrative virtually works in reverse: Jesus immediately shows grace and forgiveness that may not have been earned or requested. The restitution and ‘from now on’ happen later.

Perhaps this Zacchaeus narrative exemplifies the Lord’s prayer, “Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Instead of publicly persecuting and prosecuting Zacchaeus, perhaps Jesus could see what we cannot see: this tormented soul persecuting himself, imprisoned in self-hatred. Instead of muttering about his past sins and baying for justice our way, Jesus may have been showing us a new way to the heart of Yahweh, as it is in heaven!

This was foreshadowed in the Old Testament: “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways” (Isaiah 55:9). Do we still question and mutter about God’s grace?