Lent 4, Year C
Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Growing up as an only child, I’ve always felt that I missed out on some of the nuances of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I’ve never had a younger sibling reliant on me for peer support or mentoring, or with whom I’d have to compete for a parent’s affection. I’ve never had an older sibling take on some blended role of peer and parent, annoyed that my care is partly in their hands. I know the stereotypes, from depictions in popular culture to our Gospel reading from Luke today, but stereotypes oversimplify.
For instance, one stereotype about only children is that they tend to be spoiled. The reasoning goes that without having a parent or parents who must divide their time—often unequally—among their children, an only child becomes the sole focus for parental doting. Maybe they are coddled by parents who recognize through some innate imperative that this kid is the only one we’ve got, so we must protect them at all costs. Only children often become the primary focus of their parents’ lives, but the stereotype fails to recognize that they often become the focus of the bad as well as the good. Many only children who grow up in hardship are forced into a role that requires them to grow up very quickly, much like the kind of responsibility that might be expected of an older sibling.
For this reason, I’ve always identified more with the older brother in this parable. I grew up with that weight of being dutiful and responsible from a young age, raised by a mother who poured herself into the job of providing for us. I tried my best to help lessen her load, to be a support rather than a burden. I didn’t always succeed, but I always tried. For this reason, the father’s treatment of the elder son versus the prodigal son has always vexed me somewhat.
You’ll notice that there is an eight-verse jump in our excerpt of Luke today. This is because after encountering the Pharisees who scold him for his dinner company, Jesus tells two parables before he tells the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We will eventually come back to this omitted portion of Luke late in Ordinary Time, but the first two parables Jesus tells are the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin. These parables are much shorter and more straightforward. They both involve the protagonist actively seeking out something that has been lost and rejoicing when it is found.
But there are few key differences between these two parables and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The first concerns the agency of what is lost. A coin cannot choose to be lost. Even a sheep does not have the capacity to grasp when it is lost, and least in our human understanding of what that means. The Prodigal Son chooses to become lost and does so in a way that is gravely insulting to his father. In the cultural context of Christ’s time, the son demanding his share of inheritance from his still-living father is him effectively saying that he wishes his father were dead.
The second difference is that unlike the shepherd or the woman, the prodigal son’s father never sets out looking for him. Instead, we can only suppose he waits patiently and hopefully for his wayward son to eventually make his way back home. Notably though, he doesn’t wait for his son to appear groveling on his doorstep. Instead, when the father spots the prodigal son still far off, he closes the last distance of the journey. He runs to him, an act that would have been unthinkable for a distinguished head of household.
The third difference is how it ends. Perhaps Jesus’ audience rationalized that this parable would end the same way as the previous two, with the celebration of a joyous reconciliation. “’This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.” The end, right? Happily ever after? Not so fast. Here comes the elder brother to kill the party mood.
“’Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”
He makes a pretty good point, doesn’t he? Throughout this story, this father seems like a uniquely gullible figure, taking his son back in with no mention of the nature of his departure, and no questions about where the balance of the son’s inheritance has gone. Since Jesus casts the Pharisees in the older brother role, their rigid adherence to Torah law is also paralleled in the older brother’s intransigence. Why should the Jesus spend his dinner among the sinners, the outcasts, and the unclean, they wonder? It’s quite simple, really. They accepted Jesus’ invitation to be there. This parable doesn’t end with the father scolding his uncharitable older son, but rather with reassurance and explanation. “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
Jesus is not scolding the Pharisees here either. The father’s concluding words are an invitation to each of them. Christ honors and respects their devotion to the law of God, but also reminds the Pharisees that if they should choose to dine with him, they would not be the ones selecting the guest list. Every new guest seated at the table is a victory for the kingdom of God, no matter where they come from, or what their background is, or if they’ve left the table and come back once or a hundred times. There is space for everyone. Amen.