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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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Learning to listen like Luke

First published in Sight Magazine, 22 October 2025

“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” – Luke 1:1-4 (NIV)

During a recent trip to my birthplace in north Lebanon, I distributed copies of my 144-page book on our family genealogy to 40 cousins.

The book was not a family tree of who ‘begot’ who as in Matthew 1:1-17. It was a narrative on the legacies of our ancestors, spanning three centuries.

My great-grandfather Sassine was repeatedly imprisoned for his armed resistance in the dying days of the Ottoman occupation. His fearless wife Sa’eeda once threw a rope to hoist him over the 12-metre prison wall. During other jailbreaks, Sassine survived with bullet holes in his ’aabayya (robe). In Arabic, both Sassine and Sa’eeda mean joyful or blessed

My great-grandmother Sa’eeda did it again during World War II when the pro-Nazi Vichy French Forces invaded Lebanon. When these troops approached our snow-capped village to pillage ‘free food’, Sa’eeda rode out on horseback, wielding a helmet, sword and shield: “Not one grain of wheat shall leave this village!” Behind her was an army of women ready to ‘break some bones’ with their canes. My father recalls the collaboration between the villagers and the ‘friendly’ Australian army, which expelled the Vichy Forces in 1941.

As Sa’eeda was about 50-years-old when she married Sassine, she was praying for a child. She made the 12-hour pilgrimage from Bekaakafra to the monk (Saint) Charbel at his hermitage in Annaya. She begged him for a sign, and he made the sign of the cross: she gave birth to her only child a year later.

Sa’eeda was aged 94 years and I was aged two when my family migrated to Australia.

Throughout my childhood, I kept hearing variations of these incredible stories from disparate sources in Australia and Lebanon. For decades, I recorded ‘interviews’ with illiterate elders who may have been eyewitnesses to these stories. I was struck by their acute memories and verbatim accounts. Their eyes lit up, they waved their fingers, re-enacted what Saeeda said, and ‘swore’ that their version was the truth. This enabled me to record this oral history for posterity (Luke 1:4).

The journey has been both emotional and spiritual.

Emotional because genealogy can be abruptly amputated or gradually dissolved with the passage of migration. As much as I was blessed with a safe and prosperous new homeland, I felt robbed of ancestral roots and identity; robbed of experiencing the warmth, wisdom and love of grandparents and great-grandparents.

When I handed them the book, my Lebanese cousins kept asking: Where did you dig this up from? They knew that written records were scarce and that ancestry websites were fruitless for people of the Levant.

Which leads me to the spiritual journey. The answer to my cousins’ question evoked a newfound awe of Luke 1:1-4. This Gospel writer was not an eyewitness, but he “carefully investigated” the accounts that were “handed down to us”, so he could “write an orderly account”.

Just when I thought that this journey was over, my family rediscovered a dusty box of reel-to-reel tapes from 60 years ago. We hit play: the four-track analogue tapes contained clear voices of yearning, poetry, songs and stories. The impossible happened: I finally heard the voice of my great-grandmother Sa’eeda! We wept as the ‘reel resurrection’ filled the room. There she was, telling her own story in her own accent.

This was a privilege not afforded to Luke when he documented the ‘certainty of things’, about 60 years after the ‘real Resurrection’.

We don’t choose our genes, but we may lose sight of our genes when we migrate. Sometimes, we need to dig deep, listen like Luke, and bottle them.

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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?