Lessons in Relationships: The Prodigal Son

The “Prodigal Son” is a well known, although perhaps poorly named, parable.¹ Sometimes we treat parables as if they have only one “lesson” because many of us were taught to treat the Bible as a book of specific instructions to us. While we might treat them as isolated, timeless truths, there are better and more engaging ways to read parables. One, is to think of them as short stories designed to make us think- to poke and prod our assumptions about how the world is, and how we should live in it. Parables, when we let them, can cause us to ponder how we live as faithful disciples in the world as we find it. Secondly, it helps to consider how our interpretation of any parable fits in with and informs our understanding of the rest of the gospel.

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So he told them this parable:

“There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father,’ Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that regions, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that regions, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my Father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.'” So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then he said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe–the best one–and put it on him, put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. HIs father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. BUt when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, 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.'” Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 NRSVUE

Often people treat this parable like metaphor or an allegory ². The father is God, the younger son stands for sinners. The older son (if we remember to include him- often he gets left out.) is the rigid, unwelcoming church. Or some suggest that the father is God, the younger son is exiled Israel and the older son is the non exiled people remaining on the land. You may have heard of others. None of these are wrong. That’s part of the way parables work. They have multiple layers of meaning. What if we add another layer?

What if we look at this parable through the lens of relationship?³ It’s clear that the father loves both his sons. And at the same time, he doesn’t seem to know them well. Both sons are estranged in their own way. They are disconnected and distant from the father and each other.

Often in a story we import assign motives to people’s actions that aren’t in the story. The common assumption is that the youngest son disrespects his father and runs off to fritter away his inheritance on immoral living. But we actually don’t know why the youngest son leaves. At the end of the parable the older son accuses their brother of wasting his inheritance on prostitutes. But how does he know?

Young adults leave home for a variety of reasons. What if he felt he had to leave. What if there was conflict in the family. We don’t know. It seems he had some sort of plan. He probably had to sell some assets, land or livestock or other material items to have the money to leave. His father didn’t cash out part of his 401K and hand him a check. We also don’t know if he made his poor decisions intentionally or if they were due to inexperience. We do know he left and then because of a famine, ends up hungry. Here is another failure of community and relationships. No one helped him. No one cared for him. And so he “comes to his senses”. Does he actually repent or does it suddenly occur to him that what he can do to survive is go home? Does whatever compelled him to leave, pale in comparison to his life in a famine? We don’t know the contours and the content of his repentance. And we might ask ourselves, does our knowing that matter?

The father is overjoyed to see him. People couldn’t call or text in those days. It is likely the father had no idea about his son’s whereabouts or wellbeing, or even if he was alive. So they have a party, but oddly, no one tells the older brother. It took some time and some effort to throw that party. It’s a process to slaughter a calf and cook it. It takes time to gather the other food. It takes time to invite people and to find the musicians so they can dance. All this happens and not one person tells the older son. What sort of family does that?

The older brother is mad. Which seems fair. He assumes the worst about his brother. And he is mad at his father, who from his point of view has never appreciated him and his dutiful obedience. The father tries to make the older son feel better. And the parable ends.

We don’t know if the older son went to the party. We don’t know how the two brothers greeted each other- if they did. We certainly don’t know how the next weeks and months played out. Is the younger son resentful that he had to come home and work for his father. What are people in the community saying about him? Does the older son remain angry? How do the brothers treat each other. What does the father do? Where is the mother? Is she dead? Or is she ignored in this household?

This family is physically back together. We can wonder if they are emotionally reunited. It appears they have a lot of healing to do. It is hard work to mend broken relationships. Whether this is a parable about Israel and exile, or about individual sinners repenting or something else, the parable leaves us with questions about how relationships are mended and repaired.

The two parables before this, the lost sheep and the lost coin are presented as parables of return and reconciliation. But sheep and coins are not human beings. This parable of the broken family points out how hard return and reconciliation can be. At the end of this parable we want to know- what happened next?

This parable about a broken family that is now trying to put itself back together resonates on many levels these days. Families and communities can suffer from damaged relationships and mistrust in so many ways. I don’t need to offer a list, you know what they are. Life together as a family or community is difficult. It takes continual effort, including repentance and forgiveness. The current divides in our nation and our families over values is deep and for some seems impossible to repair. I intentionally named the divides values and not politics. While politics are how we work out how we will live together in society, the label of politics can be used to trivialize serious differences. “You’re going to let politics divide your family?” “Why can’t you set politics aside and get along?” You’ve heard what people say. But our current divisions are really about values. What kind of family, what kind of nation are we going to be? How will we treat each other? How do we treat the immigrant, the poor, the disabled, the elderly? How do we treat LGBTQ+ people? How do care for people without health care? The unhoused? We could go on and on.

At least in part, in these middle chapters in Luke, Jesus is telling us what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. It has to do with what we understand God’ intentions and hope for this world. Life in the kin dom God is about relationships. The relationships between God and us- as individuals and as communities. The relationships between people- as individuals and communities. Jesus comes to us with his ministry of reconciliation, restoration, and justice- the way of salvation. Salvation which flows out of God’s boundless love for us. Jesus shows us how to live as disciples in this ministry of reconciliation, restoration, and justice. Are we willing to do the long, slow and often difficult work of reconciliation, restoration and justice in our lives and in our communities?

1. Remember that the names of parables and Biblical stories in general are our shorthand titles given so we can quickly reference them with each other. ↩︎
2. Just FYI,
   An allegory:  the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence.
   A metaphor:  a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money)
   An analogy:  a comparison of two otherwise unlike things based on resemblance of a particular aspect Merriam Webster Dictionary ↩︎
3. Reading AJ Levine has been very instructive in helping me look at different aspects of the parables. And she is invaluable in pointing out the Christian traditions’ intentional and unintentional anti semitism that we read into the text. I highly recommend her, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi: HarperOne: 2015 ↩︎