A Prodigal World and a Loving God

The drama of the Prodigal Son is called the greatest short story in the world. Under Jewish law, the father was not free to leave his property as he liked. The elder son received two-thirds of the father’s property, and the younger son received one-third. It was by no means unusual for a father to distribute his estate before he died, if he wished to retire from the management of his affairs. 

There is a certain heartlessness about the request of the younger son. The younger son is in effect saying, “Give me now the part of the estate that I will get anyway when you die and let me get out of this place.” The father did not argue. He knew if the younger son was ever to learn, he must learn the hard way. He gave him his request. Without delay, the younger son got his share of the property and left home. He soon ran through the money and finished up feeding pigs, a job forbidden to a Jew because the law said, “Cursed be he who feeds swine.”

At this point, the son sees the error of his ways, and the biblical story says, “He came to himself.” This realization indicates that one who is estranged from his father is estranged from himself. He decides that his father’s hired servants have a better shake in the world than he has. He decides it is time to repent from the error of his ways, go back home and ask his father to give him a job as a servant. 

When he comes down the road, his father spots him and runs out to meet him. The prodigal son begins his planned speech, when the father breaks in before he gets out the first sentence. The father calls his servants to get his world-worn son some new clothes, put new shoes on his feet, put a ring on his finger, and prepare a great feast to welcome the son back to the family.

While the party is going on, the older brother returns from the field. He hears the music and the sound of festivities and suspects what is going on. He asks his servants “what goes”? They tell him his wayward brother has returned, and his father has thrown a big wingding for him. The older brother says: “Son of a gun father, you never gave me a party. This bum of a brother of mine returns and you throw him a big party.” When the father hears the elder brother’s complaint, he says to him: “Now don’t be silly. Everything I have is yours. But your brother was dead and is alive again. Isn’t that worth celebrating?”

Now this story has an obvious interpretation. The fifteenth chapter of Luke where this story appears begins in this way: One day when many tax collectors and other outcasts came to listen to Jesus, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law started grumbling. “This man welcomes outcasts and even eats with sinners.” It is in response to this grumbling and criticism that the Gospel writer Luke has, Jesus tell the three parable-stories of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Lost Son. 

The traditional interpretation of this story traditionally has the younger son dubbed the Prodigal. The story represents all of us who have strayed away from God. The Loving Father goes down to the mailbox every day looking for letter from his son and then peers down the road to see if he is perchance coming home. This loving Father is God. In this setting, the elder brother is the church member who becomes jealous when the Father makes a big fuss over the returning prodigal.

We can look at this story in a different setting. Luke is a Gentile. He is writing this letter to make the Gospel story respectable to the Gentile world. At the time he is writing the letter, there are many Gentiles who are coming into the church. In fact, they are coming in with such numbers they are gradually outnumbering the Jewish Christians. The balance of power is shifting to them the new members. The Jewish Christians are getting vary upset that these heathen Gentiles are coming into the Church and taking control. The older brother represents the Jewish Christian, who is angry at all the attention given to these prodigal Gentiles, who are getting all the rave notices from the Heavenly Father.

Recently, I attended the Earl Lectures at Berkeley. The main lecturer was Dr. James Breech, who has centered his whole life on the study of the parables and stories that Jesus told. He compared these stories with over five thousand stories told by others in the ancient world. He concluded that the stories Jesus told are different from those told by all others in the ancient world. Jesus does not interpret his stories and they are open ended, so they can fit many life situations. The reader is left to make his or her own interpretation of the story in their own life setting.

James Breech teaches at York University in Toronto, where was greatly influenced another Canadian, Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan was one of the “in” writers of the 1960’s, writing in his book “The Medium is the Message.” McLuhan asserts that all great literature is open-ended, and the writer leaves the reader to participate in the creation of the story by fleshing out the story and making his or her interpretation.

With this in mind, I would like to suggest another interpretation of this Prodigal story in another setting. Think of the characters as they if were portrayed by everyday people. Think first of the Father. Was he really “too good” to his younger son? Should he have given the son his inheritance, when he knew that the younger son could not handle so much power? Should we call this story the story of the Prodigal Father? Was he too good to his younger son? Did he create a spoiled brat who was totally selfish and totally ego-centered?

However, as you look at the story, we must conclude that the younger son was not as stupid as he seemed to be. When he hit bottom, he had enough sense to analyze his situation, face the alternatives and make the right decision for his future. It is self-evident from the story that he made the right decision and he read his father well.

It is easy to overlook the older brother. He had a right to be teed off. His father had made such a fuss over his vagrant brother, when he returned after squandering all his inheritance. Was the father justified saying his son was dead and is alive again? From the story, it looks like the younger son was very much alive and very much in control of the situation all along. He seems to have called all the shots along the way.

Here is another interpretation of this story that fits our modern time. Look at the scenario where the Father is God the Creator. Think of the family farm the father owned, as the world that God gave to us. Think of the two sons as those who inherit the earth — that is “us” as its inhabitants. Looking at the attitude of the two boys, there are two different attitudes towards our world of things.

The older brother’s attitude is that the family farm is his inheritance to hold for himself. His greatest pride is to produce and make a profit, and to use the goods the father has entrusted to him for his own ends and aggrandizement. Today, he would be looked at as the successful businessperson, who keeps his or her nose to the grindstone, works hard and is very successful. He is completely teed off at both his father for giving his younger brother his inheritance and for his young brother for squandering his inheritance. The younger brother represents so much of our world that uses their inheritance given by God to their own ends and for their own pleasure. The younger son represents so many in our world who live by the old Epicurean adage: “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

Let’s look at another story in our New Testament lesson, the story of the Lost Sheep. The shepherd has brought his or her sheep to the fold for the evening. I learned while in the Sinai Desert that the shepherd knows each of the sheep by name. He normally stands at the gate of the sheepfold and holds his staff across the gate about eighteen inches from the ground. In this way, each sheep must jump over the stick to enter the fold. This enables the shepherd to discover the lame or the sick lamb or sheep. When all the sheep are in, the shepherd notices one of the sheep is missing. The shepherd locks the door of the sheepfold with the ninety-nine safely inside.

The shepherd goes out into the night in the dangerous desert seeking the lost sheep. He hears the tragic call of the lost sheep. He follows the sound, until he finds the sheep, perhaps hurt or imprisoned in a crevasse in the mountainous desert. He puts the sheep on his shoulder and comes home rejoicing.

Now, think of this story in the same netting as that of the story about the Prodigal Son. Here the lost sheep is the person or persons in our society who have fallen between the cracks. They are the ones who are injured or lost and left in the empty desert world to die.

Now, look at these two stories as parables for our time. We are living in a time when we have been entrusted by God with a family farm, whose resources have never been equaled in all the history of humankind. We have been part of a generation that has unlocked many of the secrets of our world for our own enrichment and aggrandizement. We are probably the wealthiest generation the world has ever known. Our father has handed us a farm, whose production capabilities that are almost beyond comprehension. 

In a real sense, the bulk of the farm has fallen into the hands of the elder brother. The elder brother represents the highly competitive entrepreneur who kept his nose to the grindstone and is a great success. He has done everything our society has demanded of him or her. However, by being a success, the elder brother has used up much more of the world’s goods than his rightful lot. We can liken our nation to the elder brother. We have been the most industrious nation the world has ever known. We have amassed more wealth and power than any other nation. In fact, we have become drunk with power and feel we should be the power brokers for the world.

There is also a part of us that is prodigal. We have spent much of our inheritance on riotous living. At times, there seems to be no middle road between the industrial tycoon, the successful businessman or woman, or the worker who is all work and no play, who smugly sits in judgment on the rest of the world and looks at it as a prodigal brother. Then, there are those who spend their inheritance in riotous living — the “play-people” who live totally for pleasure. We see this in the entertainment industry that has become the greatest industry in our nation.

Then, there are the lost sheep — those who fall between the cracks and got lost. I have been very aware of this, since reading Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She tells how as a three-year-old, her father and mother split up. The father took her and her four-year-old brother to the train station and shipped them off to his mother, herself a single mother in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya’s only identification on the train was a wristband that had on it “To whom it may concern?” She was raised by the grandmother in a tragic setting of rejection that was almost slavery. She called the grandmother “mother”. The grandmother cared but was too poor and too busy to do much about it. Maya was continually put down by those around her and called the ugly duckling. She had her ego and self-image constantly crushed. She became pregnant as a girl. It was only after her child was born and she looked at the beautiful baby that was her flesh and bones she really realized she was somebody.

These stories are the parables of our time.