Sunday, 7 April Luke 15:11-31
Written by Dr Graham Leo. ©2019.
I acknowledge my debt to Kenneth Bailey’s book, Poet and Peasant for my understanding of this parable. I read it years ago, and it utterly changed my approach to reading the Gospels.
This story is so well-known, we have to be extra careful with it. We may have taken too much for granted, and no longer be able to read it well through over-familiarity. If you didn't read yesterday’s reflection, you really should before you start this one. The two are inseparable. I'm going to assume that what I wrote yesterday is in your minds now.
This son is guilty of a terrible sin. In a Middle Eastern setting, to ask for your inheritance before your father has died is effectively to wish him dead. There could not be a greater insult. Given the code of honour with which that culture, to this day, regards such things, the son has not only dishonoured his father, he has dishonoured his village. He is a scoundrel and he is not safe. Honour killings in Middle Eastern settings are nothing new.
Furthermore, Jesus is careful to say that the son ‘got together all that he had’ and squandered his wealth ‘in a distant country’. His hearers understood what is not immediately obvious to us.
This boorish lad sold up his share of the family farm in a fire sale. He got the best price he could in a short time. As we’ve seen in an earlier reflection, selling land is a very big thing in this era and this place. Land is family inheritance. To sell it at all is a shameful thing. To sell it cheaply is a deep disgrace. A local may not have even been willing to purchase it, out of respect for the father. He may have had to sell it to a foreigner. Jesus’ audience understood all of this implicitly.
But it gets worse! The money that he made, he spent in a foreign country. Not only was the land sold, but now the capital that was realised from the land sale has also been squandered outside of Israel! He has insulted his home, his family, his village, his entire nation. This is not just some thoughtless teenager insulting his father with careless talk; this man is a scoundrel betraying his people, and his God who inhabits this land.
Kenneth Bailey in his monumental research on Middle Eastern customs and Jesus’ parables points out that this man’s betrayal of father and community would have most likely resulted in him undergoing what was known as a kezazah ceremony. This involved the public breaking of a pottery jar in his name, declaring that if he ever returned to his village, his body would be broken as the jar was.
We know the story. The son comes to his senses when his money is gone. He determines to come home. He is often described as being repentant and seeking reconciliation at this point. But Jesus makes it clear that he is not so. We must read the words carefully.
The son does not say that he is seeking his father’s forgiveness. He will apologise, but then he will ask to be made a hired hand. He wants a job! He is holding onto a vague hope that he might be able to work and save his way out of his problems if only the old man will give him a paid job. This is not repentance. This is desperation, seeking help from the only source of love and generosity available to him. He hopes to raid the treasure chest of his father’s goodness yet again in paid employment, not love.
And now comes the real climax. Remember to whom this parable is being told!
The father sees him while he is still a long way off, and runs to him. The father is a wealthy man and no doubt when he ‘sees his son still a long way off’, it is only because he has placed informers, lookouts, on all the approaching roads with a promise of reward if they alert the father that they have sighted the son walking towards the village.
Both of these actions – looking out for the son and running to him – are for one reason. The father knows that if his son approaches the village, he will face a village mob who will gather rapidly together and make the son run a gauntlet as one by one the villagers greet him with sticks and stones, punishing him for the shame he inflicted on them all.
The only hope the father has, is to reach his son before the son reaches the village. So he runs. In the Syrian Christian culture, this story is called the Parable of the Running Father. For a village elder to run is unheard of. The older and more important you are, the slower you walk. So the father hitches up his robes, displays his legs (more shame!) and runs to his son. He must protect his son from the kezazah violence.
The son starts to give his prepared talk, but the father cuts him off before he can say the words that will condemn him. Note the dialogue carefully! Luke has written it carefully. The father prevents the son from saying the fatal words of self-condemnation, that he had planned, ‘Make me as one of your hired men’. Instead he tells his servants to put one of the father’s robes on him, a family signet ring on his finger, and sandals on his bare and bloodied feet. Now he is safe from the baying mob. They will not attack him now, not wearing his father’s clothes and his father’s signet ring.
C. S. Lewis describes his unwilling conversion to faith in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy. He says that he was dragged unwillingly by his own logical reasoning about truth to a prayer of repentance. ‘I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.’
But then, Lewis adds the really important words: ‘I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on those terms. The Prodigal Son at least came home on his own two feet.’
The story ends (more accurately, it doesn't end at all – it just hangs in the air) with the older son refusing to join in with the celebration. He took no joy in his brother’s return. He took no joy in the Father’s generous and gracious love that would accept a son who had rebelled against him and brought shame on all his family. He shamed the Father again in the eyes of the village by his public refusal to accept his Father’s invitation to joy.
Luke doesn't add any more words. The story is left hanging in the air as the Pharisees sit, surrounded by the ‘sinners’ whom the Father has chosen to love and has come to rescue.
The Pharisees know that they are the real focus of this story, not the rescued ones. The God about whom they love to declare that they are experts, has come amongst them and loved selflessly, rescuing the very people whom they love to despise. And they do not recognise him.
Their failure is a thousand times worse than the son’s or the poor sheep’s or even the inanimate coin who could not even know it was lost. They should know and they refuse the knowledge. They choose to kill the father and not join the feast.
Prayer: Thank you, my Father, for your love. You rescued me, even though I was not even looking for you. Your love is my hope. Amen.
