The Prodigal Son

The story of the Prodigal Son is well known; it is perhaps the most familiar of all the parables of Jesus that have been with us since childhood. Yet that long-term familiarity with the story does not necessarily help us to understand it. Because we know it so well, as soon as we begin to read it, we know already that the father will give the younger son everything he asks for; we know that the younger son will go to a distant land and squander his wealth on 'riotous living'; we know that he will sink to the gutter, so hungry that he will envy the swine he herds their brock, that he will decide to go home to beg his father to hire him as a servant; that his father will see him from the roof-top, run to him, and gladly accept him back as his son, that his father will prepare a feast to celebrate his return, and that his elder brother will stubbornly refuse his father's pleading that he should come into the house and join the celebration.

If we hear the storyy beig read, we know the story so well that we may even permit our minds to wander as soon as it begins, knowing that we will miss nothing we not heard a dozen times or more already. Or perhaps we listen simply for the sake of hearing a good story, well told. But this story of the prodigal son is not one we should dismiss lightly simply because we have heard it all before. And although we might take pleasure in hearing it as a good story, we miss much of its meaning if it remains only that.

Parables are sometimes appreciated in general as a form of extended metaphor. In the parable we have a story of ordinary things, which mirror extraordinary things. The parable is an aesthetic whole that demands our close attention; it is open-ended — beyond its ordinary meaning we learn new things, and are shocked into a new awareness. A parable, such as the story of the prodigal son, ultimately speaks to us of God, even if it is told in the existential, worldly, and even sensual terms of human life.

If we were hearing the story for the first time, perhaps we would be astonished by the insight it displays concerning fatherly love. To be sure, any father might love his sons, and love them well; but for us the shock lies in the radical nature of the imagery and action. Although the story is brief and contains no wasted words, it surely grips us with its tension, and we are struck by the many sharp comparisons it makes. The comparisons are extreme; love, faith, and hope within this world are brought into question by these comparisons, and to some extent are restored by the outcome of the story (although not completely). Thus, behind the extraordinary love of the father, we glimpse something of God's extraordinary love. Yet if God’s love comes into view, it is not because the story tells us of ordinary life lived in a new context, the context of radical unmerited love. Such love – and even God himself – are nowhere mentioned directly in the story; the perception of divine love is achieved through the extremely contrastive imagery with which we are confronted here; hunger and feasting, rejection and acceptance, lost and found, death and life.

This pattern of extreme contrasts is deeply embedded into the structure of the parable. If we did not know the story so well, and if we did not expect these things to happen, surely we would be astonished by the father's willingness to divide his property without question, without precondition, by the son's decision to take 'all that he had' and go into a 'far country' where he 'squandered his property in loose living', and by the extravagant welcome of the son by his father on his return.

The imagery of life and death dominates the parable. In his request, the son treats his own father as if he were already dead; for a son has the right to dispose of his father's property only after he has died. In so doing, he sharply contravenes the commandment, ‘honour your father and mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God gives you.’ ‘Honour your father and mother’ says the command, yet this young man treats his father as worthless, as if already dead. The son's request, and his father's concession to it, are both extreme forms of behaviour indeed. And such extremism persists in the language that is used throughout the story. Listen again to some of the phrases that are used: 'He spent everything', 'a great famine arose', 'no one gave him anything'. His job of feeding swine is, of course, the worst he could possibly have since it brought him into direct contact with animals that were considered unclean by the culture addressed in the parable; even so, he is so hungry that he would have gladly eaten their food.

Verse 17, provides the turning point in the story. Once again there are no half measures here: 'he came to himself', and no sooner had he done so than he decided to go back home and cast himself upon his father's mercy. Even as a servant in his father's house, constantly reminded by his surroundings of what he had thrown away, he would be far better off than in his present misery.

At this point the scene depicted by the story becomes almost absurd. Verse 20 has the undignified image of the father spying his son from a distance, and we get the impression that it was not by chance that his father saw him, but that he spent all his time looking out for him. Then we have his father running to embrace him, when we know perfectly well that it is beyond the dignity of older middle eastern gentlemen ever to run. The father's compassion is expressed in the distinctive New Testament word which means 'love from the bowels'; we might say that his stomach churned with emotion. And when the boy begins to make his carefully rehearsed speech, when he begins to beg that he should be hired as a servant, his father cuts him short, and rather than a servant makes him a highly honoured guest.

The extraordinary love and graciousness of the father is not based on anything his son has said or done. It arises purely out of his fatherly feeling for this son he thought he had lost for ever. It remains there – indeed, it still burns within him – despite the way his son ha failed to honour him. Then, in quick succession, gift after gift is heaped upon the son. First there is the best robe, which in the Near East is a sign of high distinction. Then there is the ring, which is the sign of authority, then shoes – which are worn by free men and not by slaves. Finally there is the fatted calf, in a country where meat is only rarely eaten. All this happens because – and here the important contrast between life and death again emerges – the lost has been found and the dead has become alive.

In the party scene, which follows the father's lavish welcome, the feasting is to be contrasted to the hunger that the son had formerly experienced; the father's ready acceptance of his son is to be contrasted to the son's earlier rejection of his father as well as his own more recent rejection by his former companions when he had spent everything. His homecoming is to be contrasted to his departure – to his father it is as if he had returned from the dead. The father's extravagant love knows of no bounds, and as we reflect upon that, perhaps we are struck by the truth presented to us here in metaphor – God's love is like that too.

Of course, we should not imagine that God's love corresponds to any one of the extravagant actions of the father in the story. But somewhere deep behind the longing, the greeting, the acceptance, and the rejoicing, we see God. We do not see him clearly; we certainly cannot ever say that he is like this or like that detail of the story. But, even if ever so dimly, we become aware of him in the background of the story, and so also in the background of our own existence.

The parable gives us pause for thought. There is the wastrel son, there is the loving father; there is the far country and the riotous living, and the coming to his senses; there is the father's extravagant greeting, and there is lavish party given to honour his son's return. And there is one other thing of which we have not spoken until now; there is the older son, hesitating, perhaps finally refusing to join the feast. There is therefore a sense in which the ending of this story is incomplete; for it ends with the elder son still on the outside, stubbornly refusing his father's invitation to the feast. And that is tragic indeed. That is a most shocking end to the story. The story readly admits the glaring contrast beween the two sons, the one has been a wastrel who has squandered his father's property on prostitutes, while the other has been loyal and obedient, and at some cost to himself. Nevertheless, at the story's end it is the elder brother who is left standing on the outside. He calculates; he compares what he has earned to his reward. His father pleads with him to come in and join the feast. But the story ends without our knowing whether or not he decided to go in. Perhaps it is up to each of us to give the story the ending it requires. For this story, like so many of the parables is about the kingdom of God. All of us who hear it or read it have to decide whether we will stand outside, like the elder brother gazing in enviously, for ever calculating whether the reward is worth the effort, or whether we will indeed go in gladly, to enjoy the presence of God and the life of his Kingdom.