Saturday, March 23
Readings: MI 7:14-15, 18-20; LK 15:1-3, 11-32
If you had to pick one reading that summarized Jesus’ teachings, today’s gospel reading might be a great one to pick. It’s the story of the “prodigal son” and is one of his most famous stories.
Because most of us have heard this story so often and we can’t help but read it from a North American context, it may be important to review some of the key elements of the story in their original context.
In Jesus’ time, two of the most important values were HONOR and FAMILY. What the young son does to his dad in the parable is pretty much unthinkable and might have caused an audible gasp when his audience heard it. For the young son to leave home was a big insult. For the young son to ask for his inheritance BEFORE his dad was dead…well, it just didn’t get much worse than that. And no doubt word spread like wildfire in the village. The father’s reputation was ruined. The family name was mud.
The story would end so much differently if the son came home 5 years later driving a Porsche as a successful CEO – returning to take care of his mom and dad. But the son has blown his money feeding his addictions in a foreign land. Yet ANOTHER insult. And when the party’s over and he’s hungry and destitute, the son decides to return home – not because he’s sorry so much as he’s got nowhere else to go.
It’s likely that the father got word of the son’s return by another villager. By religious custom, the other villagers had a right to approach the son and effectively “banish” him from the village because of what he’s done. The father gets up and runs to his son before anyone can do this. Two things here. First, fathers NEVER run in public. Children run. Secondly, the father is saving his son from being humiliated after the father has been humiliated many times over. And then to top it all off, the dad puts a ring on his son’s finger, gives him a cloak and has a feast in his honor. In essence, he restores the son’s place in the family as if nothing happened. Is this father out of his right mind?
If this drama were not enough, then there’s the whole drama with the eldest son who comes in from the field, hears of the party thrown for his brother’s return and refuses to enter. He then berates the father for a poor decision (remember the values of honor and family…) and gets stuck in his own righteousness. The father is still left with no family unity. And the story ends there with no resolution.
What are we to make of all this?
As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, we need to pay attention to the difference between an allegory and a parable. An allegory would suggest that the father is God, the younger son represents sinners and the older son represents the Pharisees. This interpretation holds up pretty well and teaches us something – wherever we place ourselves in the story. But we’re told it’s a parable, and parables are not so easily resolved.
Jesus is trying to make a point by telling this story, and the story is told because the Pharisees are upset because Jesus is hanging out with sinners and unclean folk.
The bottom line of this parable, according to Barbara Brown Taylor is that working for peace and reconciliation “always involves a profound crisis of identity. You can’t have peace and stay exactly who you are or even who you want to be. Sometimes you have to make huge concessions, sacrificing things as concrete as fields that have been in the family forever, along with things as intangible as honor, greatness, rightness, and self-respect. Sometimes you have to run like a girl to protect your kin, even those who have done you irreparable harm. It’s all a matter of priorities, and for this father, reunion is all that matters. Reunion finds the lost and brings them home. Reunion brings the dead back to life.”
We can’t stay who we are (or where we are) if we’re going to make relationships right – and each character in the story learns about this in different ways. So many of us are always asking the “other” to change their ways or to come towards us. But Jesus knows that EVERYONE has to change and sacrifice something. And maybe even more importantly, those with the greatest power have the greatest responsibility in the reconciliation. Thus we see the father, not the sons, going to the extreme to heal things. This could be why the Pharisees were all miffed here!
We as a culture love reconciliation stories. The movie industry knows this, and I think down deep we all want to see what was once united re-united. Yet it requires hard work – soul work.
Today’s story is a profound one – especially when we think of what it meant for the father to do what he did in that context. We’re called to do the same – as the parent or the brothers in this story – to be willing to make concessions and sacrifices for healing to take place.