The Family Parable

The Family Parable

Mar 27, 2022

Luke 15: 1 1 - 32

The Parable of the Prodigal Son:  we all know the story.  The younger of two sons asks his father for “his half” of his father’s wealth – without waiting for his dad to die.  And his father gives it to him, probably selling land and livestock to do so.  Then instead of investing his small fortune, the younger son goes out and lives it up.  He spends it in riotous living the text says – with prostitutes his older brother says.  In time the money runs out and he is left desolate, hired out to feed and watch pigs – of all things, wishing that he could eat the food that the pigs get.

          That sounds incredible, but it’s not.  We hear far too many reports of the lives of people who win the lottery for one or two million dollars, spend all of their fortunes in riotous living, and become desolate.  Money that comes easily tends to go very easily, too.  So the younger son’s story life is quite believable.

          Should the father have given this young man half of his net worth?  That leaves the father living on the older son’s resources, because everything else, it seems, should be his part of the father’s estate. 

          What would their mother say?  We hear nothing from her, maybe she was not permitted to respond to the younger son’s request.  At lease, we are left to wonder about her silence.

          The text implies that this is a parable; that means that it has one basic point or lesson.  The early church – any many of us later interpreters – like to allegorize it, giving it several levels of meaning.  Frequently the father is thought to represent God, the older son to represent the Judeans or Jews, and the younger son represents the gentiles.   That would suggest that God welcomes the gentiles – the non-Jews – into the Church even though they have lived questionable lives all of those many centuries.  That way of thinking about this story helped St. Paul’s adherents argue that the Christian movement should welcome Greek cultured people into the Church even without requiring them to keep all of the Jewish religious and cultural laws.  But that is making this parable into an allegory which is not typical of Jesus’ teachings.

          If this is a parable spoken by Jesus, as it is believed to be, it would hardly address the situation of thirty or forty or even fifty years after Jesus’ active ministry when the question of including the Greek cultured people into the then developing Christian Church was a real thorny question.  St. Paul can be understood as building a kind of universal religious program that included the very Jewish Jesus and his Jewish religion and culture with elements of the Greek religious movements.  But the allegorized interpretation of the story is probably not very appropriate for Jesus’ meaning during his ministry.

          A parable, we remember, is about one issue, one concern; it makes one point.  So, what is the point or focus of this parable?  Even without the mother’s participation, is this not a story about a family breaking apart and then reuniting?  That is what is going on, isn’t it?

          As Jesus tells the story, we are not sure that the older brother will join the party welcoming his brother back home.  Rather typical of Jesus’ teachings, we must engage ourselves in this parable’s ending; we must think through this situation – in relation to our own lives – to decide what the older brother should do and hence, what we should do in our lives.

          Or, maybe we are in the situation of the younger brother; how should we receive the father’s welcome – embrace, robe, ring, sandals, fatted calf, and party.  We need to recognize the older brother’s faithful service to his father.  How do we go from here?

          Maybe you are the parent of these two brothers; how does the parent love them equally, but differently?  What might we do differently?  What else might we do now?  If we could go back a few months or years, what else might we have done?  And, of course, should we have given that younger brother all of his inheritance while we are yet living?

          Since we did give the younger brother all of his half of the family wealth, now we are living on the older brother’s half.  That means that we gave the returning son the best robe, the ring, the sandals, the fatted calf, and the party all at the older brother’s expense.  Ouch.

          With whom do you identify in this story?  Are you the prodigal, younger son?  Or are you the older brother who has stayed home and supported your parents, doing all that needed to be done?  Maybe you are the parent, having accepted back the wayward son who may fall off the wagon again.

          Typical of Jesus’ teachings, this parable does not tell us exactly what to do; it gives directions but pushes the decision making to us.  So how do we learn from this parable about the dynamics of our own families.  Perhaps, more importantly, especially for our Mt. Salem Church programming, how do we apply this parable to our neighborhood?  How do we get and then keep our neighborhood family together and functioning well?

          Our Mission statement says that it is our task to show and teach our neighborhood about God’s love, God’s peace, God’s forgiveness, God’s grace, and God’s presence.  That is what this father was doing for his prodigal younger son.  But he did so at his older brother’s expense and offense.  So, how will we lead our neighbors in welcoming back from prison the drug dealer and the sex offender after their sentences and hopefully treatments are completed?  Is that not what God’s forgiveness and God’s grace provide? 

How do we love and support and instruct the neighbor who doesn’t maintain his house and yard well enough?  What about God’s grace, and God’s love?

Or, that troubled child who bullies all of our children – how do we love him, forgive him, teach him, and show him God’s love for him and for the rest of the children?

What about God’s peace in all of the dynamics of your block and then of our Highlands community and of our City of Wilmington.

That is what this parable is about.  As Jesus typically does, the parable makes us think through our thoughts and impulses and reactions to seek out ways to bring our families together and our community together in love and peace and justice – that’s social justice, not criminal justice.