Scripture can be found here…
This one we know. This parable, even non-church-goers can recite, if not word for word, then, maybe, beat for beat. In fact, we know it so well, one writer suggests that our first task upon approaching should be to peel of the layers of interpretive certitude. What are we sure about, regarding this parable, that deserves a second look? What haven’t we wondered about at all? Let’s look again, and look closely, at this little gem that tugs at our hearts, sometimes, in unexpected ways.
I have three questions about the parable. They are completely unanswerable, but I’m going to ask them anyway.
First, why did the younger son leave? The story doesn’t begin with a fight, or a misunderstanding, or any word at all about relationships in the household… but then again, parables don’t usually give us these kinds of details. But I’m curious! Why did this young man need to leave a household that provided comfort, and safety, and decide he wanted “his share” of his father’s estate. What was going on inside his head and rattling around his heart? Was he angry about something? Was he hurt? Was he already lost, but lost-in-place? Did it seem better to leave than to say out loud why he couldn’t bear to stay?
Quick story. My mother told me of a family conversation that took place before I was born, shortly after both my father’s parents had died. One of his daughters-in-law said, “All I want is what’s coming to me.” And that infamous statement ricocheted around the family for decades, a crass declaration at the wrong moment in a room full of grieving people.
I wonder whether that’s how the father heard his son’s request. “All I want is what’s coming to me.”
That brings me to my second question: We have three main characters in the story: the younger son, his older brother, and their father. How did those last two react to the younger brother’s request to sell off a third of the estate so that he could get himself gone? (At this time, the tradition would have been for the oldest to receive a “double portion,” so the estate would be divided, two thirds to the brother who stayed home, and one third to the one who left). The parable offers no clues. They are silent. No one tries to talk him out of it or make him a deal to keep him there. No one cries and says, “We will miss you.” The father divides the estate, and little brother goes.
And then he spends every dime of his inheritance on what my translation calls “dissolute” living, but let’s go with the translation that calls it “wild.” Think drinking, think gambling, think women, but not the kind you’re going to find on e-Harmony. Think no effort to get a job until he is forced to do so by… whoops! No more money. And no indication of how long all this took. Just that, all at once, he has a job feeding pigs, and they’re eating better than he is. (The detail of the pigs feels relevant. Not only is he poor—he’s so poor he has to take care of non-kosher animals.)
And, my third question, which, maybe, should have been the first one. Where’s the mother of the family? I imagine she’s dead. It’s possible—likely, even—that she died in childbirth, a common occurrence in those days. It’s even possible she died when the younger son was born, which would mean…his birth would have been an occasion for a terrible loss for all three of them, his father, his brother, and himself. Is this a Secret Garden type of scenario, in which the younger brother is in the role of Colin, whose father can’t bear to look at him, because he has his dead mother’s eyes?
Unanswerable questions. But this is a family story, and aren’t all our family stories filled with questions we can’t answer, and maybe aren’t allowed to ask?
But this is also a lost-and-found story. Chapter 15 of the Gospel According to Luke contains three stories, each one a lost-and-found tale. The first story tells of a lost sheep: a sheep wanders from the flock, and the shepherd leaves ninety-nine in search of the one who wandered away. And when he finds the sheep, and brings it home, he throws a party, inviting his friends and neighbors to celebrate with him, because what was lost has been found.
The second is the story of the lost coin, in which a woman turns her house upside down for this precious object, until, at last, she finds it—and she too throws a party, inviting her friends and neighbors, saying “rejoice with me!” Because what was lost has been found.
And then we get to the parable of the one we call the prodigal son, but really, isn’t it the parable of the lost son? We have affixed that word, prodigal, to him, a word we take to mean “wasteful,” maybe “foolish.” But, what Luke is telling us, is that he is lost. Something inside him is broken. A lost person is not the same as a lost sheep (who’s just being a sheep), or a lost coin (that has no agency about its location whatsoever). This boy, this young man is lost, but at some point, he comes to himself again. What a beautiful phrase. In his lost state, he is the only one who can find him again, and he does—he comes to himself.
My favorite pastor-poet Steve Garnaas-Holmes reflects on this moment here:
Love,
you are not asking me to leave myself
and become someone strange.
You lead me to become myself.
To leave the far country of the things I desire,
to surrender the false ID all I pretend,
and return to the one you create me to be.
Even all my running away was running toward something,
toward a part of me I couldn't name,
a place where you knew I would be—
and you were there, waiting for me.
Even my leaving was approaching you.
Even my scattering of treasures
was a seeking of what I treasure the most.
By your grace, then, may I come to myself:
to name my desires and fears,
to face my wounds and shadows,
to own my life—
and to come home to the beloved I am,
to the me of me, the you of me,
to know where I belong,
to remember whose I am…[i]
So, the lost son makes a plan, one with a big apology, and he sets his sights on home.
[i] Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “Coming to myself,” Unfolding Light, March 22, 2022, https://unfoldinglight.net/2022/03/22/coming-to-myself/.
The father—we don’t know how long he has been waiting and looking to the horizon for the return of his lost boy, but we know, that he sees his son when he is still far off. And he runs. He runs to the boy, open-armed, open-hearted, welcoming him with a long embrace, and the apology speech starts, but he’s not listening, because he doesn’t need an apology, he has his boy back. And so he throws a party. Like the man who lost his sheep, and the woman who lost her coin, the father dresses his son up in signs that he’s one of the family again—that he never wasn’t, really—and invites everyone and anyone to come and eat, and the celebration begins.
The other two parables end with words about God’s joy, heaven’s joy when the lost are found again, but in the parable of the lost son there is more to the story. We hear the story of the one who doesn’t seem to want to celebrate. The son who stayed home, the good one, the responsible one, the one who didn’t leave. He has some feelings about all this. He is angry, and he does not want to go in to that party. When his father tries to persuade him to come to the celebration, he tells him exactly how he feels.
I’ve never left your side, and I’ve never broken your heart, and you’ve never thrown me a party, not even a little one. But now this son of yours is back, having thrown away every penny you worked so hard for, and you pull out all the stops for him?
“Son,” his father says, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
And that’s where the story ends. Not with the joyful singing of angels (though they are singing), or the gleeful grin of God (though God is definitely grinning), but outside, with the older brother, who just can’t seem to be happy that his little brother has come back home.
The story’s not over, so it’s up to us. What’s it gonna be? Are we going in to the party? The thing the older brother seems to miss here is that the party is very much for him… it is for everybody. That’s the point. No one is excluded, everyone is welcome. But there are always some who feel called to the role of gatekeepers, because we can’t quite comprehend that the real prodigal in this story is God, the one whose love and grace are so lavish, so unexpected, and so freely given, they make us shake our heads with wonder. We’re all in for a shock, because there’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea, and there are some of us who are made a little uneasy by the sheer expanse of it.
But there’s a party, and we are invited, and the only ones who suffer are the ones who refuse to rejoice. Our God is an awesome God of love and welcome, a prodigal God with effusive, immeasurable grace. And the party has started.
Thanks be to God. Amen.