Lent 4, Year C | Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
March 27, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Having spent my whole life in the Church, it just feels overused to me. Here we have yet another illustration of how God loves us no matter what we might do. While that’s true, the sentiment isn’t remotely surprising and, after who knows how many times hearing it, not necessarily even all that inspiring.
So I didn’t plan to give a whole lot of thought to our Gospel reading this week. But with our Hebrew Bible passage being so short and uneventful, and after a lot of busywork with Paul and almost no progress to show for it, I eventually realized I’d have to give the Prodigal Son another chance. And I’m glad I did. There’s a lot more going on in this story than my presumptions allowed me to see.
One of the first things to note is that neither Jesus nor Luke ever named this parable. In fact, no matter how familiar a parable might be, none of them have original titles. Just like chapter and verse divisions, the story headers we know are ones that other people came up with later. And when we strip away their longstanding names, we sometimes start to see new details—ones that might reawaken the story for our own context. Modern scholars suggest a lot of options for this one, like “The Parable of the Loving Father” or “The Story of the Two Sons.” Maybe one most relevant to our national situation today would be “The Parable of the Polarized Family.” Each title change tends to redefine our focus, allowing us to approach the story in different ways. One commentator related this tale to the honor culture she experienced growing up as a Palestinian Christian in the Middle East[1]—one that likely reflects society in Jesus’ time as well. She calls this “The Parable of the Father’s Prodigal Love.” According to Pastor Niveen Sarras, placed within its cultural context, this story would have been absurd to Jesus’ listeners. No one in the tale behaves honorably or as expected—except maybe the elder son.
It’s pretty easy to guess that it would have been inappropriate for the younger son to ask for his inheritance early. We might think it was a jerk move, but he could’ve had good reasons for it: maybe he found a really good investment opportunity or something. However, in context, his behavior was horribly offensive, essentially denouncing his family and telling his parents that he would be better off if they would just go ahead and die. The typical—and appropriate—response of a father in that situation would have been to disown the child, exiling them for bringing public shame on the family through such unforgivable behavior. So when the father in the story quietly gives the younger son the money, that concept alone would have been nearly unthinkable to Jesus’ listeners. But the oddities—and our potential misreadings—don’t stop there.
The younger son goes on to bring even more shame to his family—not simply by “squander[ing] his property in dissolute living” but more so by the actions he takes after the money is gone. This man, obviously from a well-off family, completely abandons his station and hires himself out as a common laborer. And he isn’t just any laborer: he becomes a servant to one of Judaism’s most famously offensive and unclean animals. Falling from his aristocratic standing to becoming a slave to pigs would have been so humiliating that he would never have been able to return home, even if he had left on the best of terms.
Yet for some reason, the son decides that bearing those layers of public shame—and bringing all of the trauma and embarrassment back onto his family—is his most reasonable choice. He rehearses his apology and begins to head home, where we turn our attention again to his disgraced father.
Wealthy or not, the father’s community standing would have been precarious not simply because his son behaved so dishonorably in leaving—that would have been bad enough. Giving his child the money he’d demanded further revealed the father’s lack of character. And now, to top off his already cringeworthy behavior, the father doesn’t even wait for an apology. He doesn’t maintain his seat as this most shameful of sons approaches. Instead, he practically trips over himself, running to welcome back his infamous vagrant.
The surprise at this point of Jesus’ story probably didn’t lie where we think it does. It isn’t just that the father embraces and kisses his shameful, destitute, unclean child. The shock is that the father runs. In his culture, dignified people didn’t run. Children ran. Messengers and slaves ran. But a wealthy person would never run. This man abandons what little dignity he has left to roll out the red carpet for a son who had irreparably harmed his family in the eyes of everyone who knew them.
So instead of the model of nobility and forgiveness we’ve come to expect, Jesus has presented his listeners with a thoroughly shameful household. The son has brought nothing but disgrace to the family. The father became a joke in the eyes of the community. The only person left with hope for any sense of standing at all would be the elder son, who’s left to carry an undeserved burden. There’s no way to excuse—or forget—his younger brother’s behavior. The surrounding community probably thinks his father is mentally unwell. In the midst of this chaotic family, he stands alone in trying to retain any sort of respect or social standing. And all his hard work is met with…nothing.
Nobody cares.
A community scandal is unfolding in his own front yard, and no one even thinks to tell him. He’s out providing for this completely dysfunctional family, and they can’t even remember to invite him to the party. Everyone has ignored him. It’s like they don’t care if he even exists. Heading home from his daily efforts to rebuild what little honor the family has left, he eventually has to bear the indignity of asking a neighborhood kid what’s going on. It’s no wonder he gets mad. He has a right to be mad! The last upstanding member of a continually self-degrading clan—he gets why the town might ignore him, but now even his sham of a family doesn’t find him worthy of their attention! Treated as an outcast among even the most shameless of society, it isn’t that the elder brother simply won’t join the party—he can’t. His tattered sense of honor and self-esteem depends on it! And in this moment of inner turmoil, his father plays the fool one last time, leaving the banquet to try to convince his forgotten son to abandon his final shred of dignity and embrace the family’s misbehavior.
Way back at the beginning of the chapter, we hear that this parable is Jesus’ response to some people grumbling about the company he was keeping, how he “welcomes [tax collectors and] sinners and eats with them.” When we hear the word “sinners” we generally think of bad people—or at least people who do bad things. But that isn’t necessarily the case, and the parable helps us see that a little more clearly.
The word we see translated as “sin” in the New Testament doesn’t necessarily hold the same association we give that word. We hear “sin” and think of things we mentioned in the Decalogue earlier, like lying, stealing, adultery, and murder, but that isn’t quite the right angle. Those things would certainly fall under the category of “sin,” but this word is a lot broader than that. “Sin” here is related to archery with the idea of “missing the mark.” Your aim is slightly off. You didn’t pull the string back quite far enough. Maybe the feathers on the shaft aren’t quite set right or there’s a rogue gust of wind. There are a variety of reasons someone might miss their target, but none of them need to be what we think of as “sinful.” They’re just mistakes or errors. Something went wrong, and you have to live with the consequences. A New Testament “sin” is simply a failure.
And that’s what we see in Jesus’ parable. In our society, we get that the younger son is a sinner—a repentant one, but still not a great person. What’s harder to see is that the father is a failure, too. He doesn’t live up to society’s expectation any more than his profligate child. That doesn’t make him a bad guy, though. He’s clearly the kindest and most generous person in the story. He’s been a role model for centuries—a misguided one, but a role model nonetheless. However, in the eyes of his society, he would also be a “sinner”—a failure.
The older son is in a miserable position. He can pretend his family still has some dignity, but it’s clear to everyone that isn’t the case—and it hasn’t been for quite some time. He himself might not be a “sinner,” but he’ll never get free of that association. So what should he do—try to maintain a façade of propriety or accept his family’s disorder and join in the celebration?
The fact is, all of us “sin.” All of us make mistakes, commit blunders, and miss the mark in a variety of areas. Some of us are just luckier than others in that our consequences haven’t been as severe. So who do we look down upon? Who do we think of as society’s failures? Who do we assume to be inferior, even if we recognize that someone hasn’t necessarily “sinned?” How do we respond to, think about, or treat them? Do we distance ourselves and try to keep up appearances, or are we willing to embrace the chaos and shame that comes with our connection to the rest of God’s family?
[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-luke-151-3-11b-32-5