We've just heard one of the best known parables told by Jesus, the Prodigal Son. We probably know it very well. I assumed I knew what this story is all about, but I saw many new things in it when I read a fascinating book about the parables by a scholar called Kenneth Bailey (Poet and Peasant & Through Peasant Eyes).
Bailey made the simple but important assumption that the people today who can best understand the human interactions in Jesus' stories are the traditional peasant communities of the Middle East, because their views about life remain broadly similar to those of the people Jesus originally addressed. So Bailey travelled in the Middle East discussing the parables with peasant communities, and often gained very illuminating new insights. I will mention some of these as we reflect on this very familiar story, hoping that we may all see new things in it.
The story begins with the younger son asking his father for his share of the inheritance now, ahead of time. In different cultures people may regard this request in different ways, but listen to what Bailey found. He writes: 'For over 15 years I have been asking people ... 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 almost always been emphatically the same. . . . The conversation runs as follows: - Has anyone ever made such 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? - This request means that he wants his father to die!'
So the story begins with the son in effect telling his father that he wishes he was dead, out of the way, so that he could get on with enjoying life without him. A huge insult in a culture where respect for one's father is so emphasized.
What comes next is therefore all the more surprising. 'In the Middle East the father is expected to explode [with anger] and discipline the boy ...' But this father doesn't. He doesn't do what any normal, self-respecting Middle Eastern father would do. Instead, he gives his son what he asks for; he suffers the humiliation of this rejection by his son, and allows him to have his way. The son's unbelievable insult is met with the father's even more unbelievable act of generous love, or, possibly, foolish weakness.
Soon the son leaves for a distant country, where he has a wild time, with his father forgotten, until the money runs out. Then he hits rock bottom; he has absolutely nothing, and takes whatever work he can. He is reduced to feeding pigs, and even feels jealous of them because of their food. Nobody gives him anything.
This desperate experience prompts a re-think. The son thinks of home, and realises that even though he burnt his boats with his father, even though he has no reason to expect anything from him, he might as well try. So he sets off home with an apology-speech in his head, going over it again and again, wondering if it will work. He won't ask to be received back as a son – that's unthinkable - but only to be taken on as a hired man on the farm, living apart from the family. Perhaps one day he'll be able to pay his father back. It's a face-saving plan, a plan which will let him keep a little pride intact. The son has only limited expectations of his father; he won't ask for too much.
But as he nears home he must be nervous. There isn't just the family's reaction to think about. What he did cut him off from his family; but it also made him a disgrace in the eyes of the whole village. He can expect a rough reception; he could well get beaten up even before he gets to his father's house.
As the son comes within sight of the village, fortunately his father is the first to see him. (Has he been waiting, looking out for him?) And the father runs down the road towards his son, hugs him and kisses him. The son starts his prepared apology, but the father brushes it aside. He is welcome home, not as a servant but as a beloved son.
We may think it's quite natural for the father to run down the road towards his son, but the Middle Eastern view is again quite distinctive. Bailey writes 'An Oriental nobleman with flowing robes never runs anywhere. To do so is humiliating.' The father's behaviour is again very unusual, very undignified; this father is behaving inappropriately for a man of his standing.
The reason for the father's behaviour is not just excitement on seeing his son, but also his wish to protect him. The father knows his disgraced son is in danger of being beaten up, so he gets to him first and reinstates him at once into his family and into the wider community. He kills a calf, much more than his family could possibly eat, and holds a party for the whole village to show that the son is fully accepted.
This leads to the story's last episode. The focus shifts from the music and dancing of the party to a tired figure walking home – the older son. He is furious when he discovers what has happened; he refuses to have anything to do with this ridiculous display of weakness by his soft-headed father. We may feel sympathy for this older son and his indignation at the lenient treatment shown to his brother. Does their father not care about the appalling behaviour of this waster? Does he not get how unvalued it makes the older brother feel to see the father treat the younger brother like this?
But from a traditional Middle Eastern perspective the older son's behaviour is not justifiable and is in fact outrageous. If your father gives a banquet you simply go to it; whatever you might feel, you behave properly. You cannot refuse to go, or disagree with your father in public. So the father again faces a shocking insult, now from his older son. The father would be 'expected to ignore the boy and proceed with the banquet, or in some way punish him for public insolence, or at least demonstrate extreme displeasure. But for the second time in one day the father goes down and out of the house'; again he shows unexpected patience and gentleness with a wayward, disrespectful son. The story ends with the father pleading with the older son to come in and join the party. But how the older son will react is left as an open question . . .
Although this story is traditionally called the parable of the prodigal son, it is really a story of two lost sons, since in his heart the older brother, even if he never left home, was as far away from his father as his younger brother. But I hope we can see that what is really striking in this story is the eccentric behaviour of the father. An Arab Christian scholar notes that 'the actions the father takes are unique, marvelous, divine actions which have not been done by any father in the past'.
So who is this strange father, and what does he mean for us? This father is Jesus' picture of God. By telling this story, Jesus is telling us that this is what God is like. God is like this father who comes running down the road to meet us when we are lost and ashamed, showing us that our expectations of his love were far too limited. This father consistently humbles and humiliates himself rather than deny the love that he has for us; he is prepared to look very foolish, weak and undignified if that is what love requires.
But how do we know God is like this? Not just because Jesus tells us so in this story, but because his life and his death show us that this is what God is like. Jesus says: 'If you have seen me, you have seen the Father'. In Jesus we see God humbling himself, doing what an exalted and glorious God surely shouldn't do but which he does do, because God is driven in the end by love, and the costly demands of love ultimately lead God to the supreme foolishness, weakness and indignity of the cross. But the resurrection of Jesus shows us that God's foolishness is really wisdom; God's weakness is God's power to find us and save us; and God's indignity is truly God's glory.
And where do we find ourselves in Jesus' great story? At different times we might identify with any of the three main characters.
Sometimes we are like the Father, called to love and keep loving, even when there is no grateful loving response, sometimes feeling humiliated and questioning whether there is any point going on, any point in patient love. Jesus' story tells us that at such times we are sharing in his way of loving, that he is loving through us and is with us in the pain of loving. As we share in his cross-shaped loving, so we will also know the power and the glory of his risen life.
But in this life there will always be something in us of one or other of the two sons.
Like the younger son, we want God out of the way so that we can do our own thing. We chase after what we think will bring happiness, but we get lost in a far country; we get very hungry, very dissatisfied. If that is where you are, know that the God who loves you is waiting for you and will come running down the road to meet you.
At other times we may be like the older son, stuck in confusion, anger and self-righteousness. If that is where you are, know that the God who loves you is waiting patiently for you, too. He wants you too at the banquet.
Both sons failed to understand the fullness of their father's love. We are like them. Jesus tells us that God wants us as his beloved children, not far away in a distant country ignoring him, not consumed by self-righteous anger, but near to the Father, embraced by him, glad to be at his banquet, inviting others to come in.
David Marshall