The Prodigal Son

We can say without exaggeration that the parable of the prodigal son is the most famous of all Jesus’ parables.  It represents one of the most powerful witnesses to the mercy of God in the Gospels and in all of world literature. 

Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching, Vol.4 - The Parables of Jesus, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev

This one is going to take at least two posts….

It may be the most important parable regarding repentance and the love of God.  There is the merciful father, and the suffering, lost son.  The details are many and touching.  This parable inspired ballets, operas, paintings, and it even inspired the plot in two of Shakespeare’s plays.

I am not going to include the text of the parable in this post, although I will include relevant passages for context.  The parable can be found in Luke 15: 11 – 32 (here in its entirety).  It is the longest of Jesus’s parables, and Metropolitan Hilarion divides it into several parts: the prologue, the story of the younger son, the reconciliation of the father and son, and the elder son.

In some sense, the parable of the prodigal son is a summary of the entire Gospel.  If one had to choose a single parable of all the ones Jesus told that would most completely encapsulate the general thrust of his good news to mankind, then this would be the parable to choose.

If one had to choose a single image in the New Testament that best corresponds to what Jesus says about his Father, that would be the image of the father from the parable of the prodigal son.  If one had to find a single symbol that best reflects Christianity’s vision of man’s relationship with God, that would be the prodigal son.

Metropolitan Hilarion is not really managing expectations here.  But I find it difficult to disagree with him.

The parable reflects fundamental aspects of human life: one’s place within the family and within the larger society.  How to act and react: in the family, with the village, etc.  And here we see the first step: the son did not merely desire to begin to live physically independent from his father’s home, as one might if he was getting married; he intended to completely break all ties – to his father, to his brother, to the community at large.

From the earliest Church, the Fathers gave what amounted to a universal meaning to the parable.  For Ireneus, the elder son was the angels, the younger was man after the fall; Tertullian saw in the elder son Israel, and in the younger the Gentiles; for Theophylact, the elder son was righteous, and the younger the sinner who repented and returned.  Both modern and ancient theologians see the fall of Adam in the younger son. 

But the most direct context, the one in which Jesus lived and taught: publicans and sinners on the one hand, and the “righteous” Pharisees and scribes on the other.

Metropolitan Hilarion takes a brief side journey into the practice of leaving an inheritance in ancient times.  Usually, the entire inheritance was left to the oldest son, such that the wealth was not continually divided into ever smaller amounts.  Another practice was that two-thirds would be left to the first son, one-third to the second.

Further, and quite relevant for the father in the parable, what of giving the inheritance before the father dies?  Here, Metropolitan Hilarion quotes from Jesus ben Sirach, who suggests that a father does no such thing:

“As long as thou livest and hast breath in thee, give not thyself over to any.  For better it is that thy children should seek to thee, than that thou shouldest stand to their courtesy. … At the time when thou shalt end thy days, and finish thy life, distribute thine inheritance.”

The father, of course, ignores any such advice.  He gave the son the portion he would have received at the father’s death.  This transgressed all Israelite law and custom of the time.  By the standards of the time, it was an expression of weakness. 

In the distant country, the son lived beyond his means, wastefully or riotously.  Toward the end of the parable, we find that this included wasting his fortune on prostitutes.  When he ran out of money, at the same time a famine came to the land.  He took work in the most despised and underpaid jobs, yet this still left him hungry.

The story takes a sharp turn when the son comes to himself.  He suddenly remembers his father’s house…

He remembered how much better the servants lived there than he is living with the pigs.  His memory is initially stirred by pragmatism, not a longing for his father.  He realized the depth of his fall, and looked to his father as his only hope for salvation.  In other words, his return was not prompted by a love of or longing for his father, but because he had reached bottom and had nowhere else to turn.

We do read of some sign of repentance:

Luke 15: 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”

The son recognizes that by all of the rules of family life, he is worthy of condemnation, not mercy.  He is not wishing to be returned to his former station as a son; he is only looking for bread. 

Upon his return, and while very far off, the father rushes out to meet him; it is as if the father was looking out daily for the son, hoping for his return.  This is something completely unexpected and unorthodox for the scribes and Pharisees and others listening to this parable.

Instead of punishing the son, condemning him, and at the very least teaching him a harsh lesson, the father runs to him, embraces him and does not even let him finish the speech he prepared….

The son hears no words of rebuke or condemnation.  The father only turns to the servants, telling them to return all of the visible signs of sonship, including a ring. 

The parable could have ended here.  The Pharisees and scribes would be riled (as often was an outcome of Jesus’s teaching) and the idea of a loving father was fully presented.  Yet, there is the final section: the older son, the one who stayed faithful throughout.  He is angry and upset.  The father replies:

Luke 15: 31(b) ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. 32 It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’

This older son loses nothing, while at the same time the father has love sufficient for both sons.

Conclusion

In the parable, the father symbolizes God, for whom all people are sons and daughters.  Every one of his children receives an inheritance….

Metropolitan Hilarion offers that this inheritance is the talents and gifts we receive – talents and gifts that can be used in the service of God, or that can be squandered.  The parable depicts one who squandered those gifts, yet, when recognizing his sin, was welcomed back by the father – God.

This interpretation raises a couple of thoughts for me: first of all, when the idea of one being a son of God is written of in Scripture, it doesn’t relate to every human being (in other words, because every human being has received some talents, or gifts, from God), but only to those who have received Christ.

The prodigal son was the son of the father – God.  Which comes to a second, related, thought: he was a son of God, yet he abandoned God, eventually returning when he saw the wastefulness and futility of a life absent from the father.

Christianity is split on this idea of the possibility that one can lose his faith, his salvation.  This parable seems to be addressing this issue directly, yet I think can still be understood in a manner that supports either side in this disagreement.

Each side of this disagreement has found a way to describe that which is visibly evident: that person has either fallen away, or that person was never saved in the first place.  In reality, we need not know what is “true” regarding this dispute; to our senses, the reality is the same either way.

In my next post on this parable, I will review the various interpretations and understandings offered by Metropolitan Hilarion.  I may have further of my own thoughts to add at that time.