Rev. David Boyd

Scripture Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

One of the current tests of how well a bible passage is known in today's world is to ask people outside of the church whether they have heard of it or not. In today's world, I would venture to guess that there are few bible passages that are familiar outside of the Church. Today's parable of the prodigal son may be one such passage that is known. Preachers speak of this passage as one of the most preached passages of the Bible. I would suggest it ranks up there with the Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and some of the ancient stories like Jonah, Daniel and Moses. The bible used to be required reading if you wanted to understand literature, poetry; that's still true for classic literature, but not true anymore for modern literature.

What to say about the prodigal son story that hasn't bee said before? The word prodigal is a gift from this parable story. But the story can also be called the parable of the loving father or the parable of the older brother. It really is a parable about a father and his two sons and their seemingly dysfunctional relationship. The usual interpretation of this story is that the young son wants his inheritance and goes to his father and asks for it; the father gives him the inheritance, and his older brother also—a common detail that is often overlooked. Both brothers get their inheritance; it's just that the younger brother goes off and blows it all whereas the older brother stays home with his father. The younger brother engages in prodigal behaviour; he squanders his inheritance in wasteful and decadent living until he has none. He's eating the slop reserved for pigs when he comes to his senses, realizing that his father's hired hands live on better terms than he. He realizes the error of his ways and returns to his home; his father, realizing that his young son has come home, runs to meet him. There is a great feast to which the whole village is invited; grace abounds, forgiveness abounds and acceptance is in the air. Except for the older brother, who grumbles about the deal made of his brother's return. And all of this gives rise to the father's words at the end, which are part of many hymns, Amazing Grace included... he once was lost, but now is found.

One of the challenges of this familiar story is that it is so well known. It's about grace and the wonder of forgiveness and welcome home. That's all well and good. Let me just add some details about what the world was like in Jesus' day and age and place that help to open this story in new ways.

Firstly, at the beginning of this story, we hear about the younger son asking for his inheritance. This was absolutely unheard of, and in the honour-shame society of Jesus' day, this would have been a dishonouring action. The son dishonoured his father, his family, his village and his older brother! And to further add to the dishonouring action, the father agrees. The village elders would have been beside themselves because this family, the foolish brothers, both of whom received their inheritance, and their foolish father who gave in to his sons' wishes, had dishonoured their society and village way of life. To ask for one's inheritance while the father was still alive was tantamount to saying that you have no status in my eyes and you are dead to me. The older son's acquiescence to getting his inheritance, instead of a cry of outrage, would have furthered the village's understanding of this family as without honour!

Secondly, the younger son, while away, blows his inheritance entirely. He ends up doing things that no child of Israel would do; he further dishonours himself and his family and his village as well as his religion of Judaism. It is astonishing how quickly he went through his inheritance. And further to this squandering of the inheritance, there was the issue of losing land; the land was important to hold on to, for it was for the whole of the family and to the benefit of the village.

Thirdly, because the young man had no money, he was reduced to eating the pods that were fed to the pigs. Anthropologists think that this pod was the carob pod and had a sweet "meaty" interior that humans could eat. But eating these carob pods meant that he was a mere day-worker and had no status on the farm. Day workers were often unemployed, landless peasants who were thought to have no honour and were at the bottom of the ladder of honour status.

Fourthly, when we hear of the young son's return, we're told that his father ran out to meet him while he was still some distance off. Richard Rohrbaugh and Bruce Malina, who have researched the social world in which Jesus lived, have discovered that a father never runs. They believe that the father, who still had wealth and honour status in the village —even though diminished—ran out to meet his son to protect him from the village, who would have had the right to kill him because he had violated almost all of the honour taboos of the village and family life. A father never ran because it showed a lack of honour and especially he never ran with his robes hitched up so that his feet had freedom of movement; to show one's legs was taboo. Kissing his son showed that the father was saying that my son has returned and is under my protection.

Fifthly, while I could go on, the party was to restore the family in the good graces of the village and to indicate that the son had returned and was now a part of the family again. The fact that the fatted calf was killed is an indication that this was a big party and that the village came. The older son's unwillingness to participate, however, raises the last issue of honour-shame; his unwillingness to have his younger brother back in the family leads the father begging his son to see the light. A father never begs of his children!

So, interesting as all of this might be, what should we make of this story? I think that one of the important things that Jesus was trying to do was to show that God honoured people differently from the world. God honoured the lowly and the least; God reversed the sense of who was honoured and who was not, who had lost honour and who had gained it. The Commonwealth of God was full of people who'd been dishonoured by the political and religious structures around them. It still is a story of grace, God's unmerited and abundant gift given and the understanding that comes with honour/shame points to the power of this grace. The father, against all convention, gives his sons their inheritance, welcomes his youngest son back and restores him to the family and then begs the older son to go along with the plan. All of the characters in this story bring dishonour on themselves and the people listening to Jesus tell this story would have agreed that it was more than dysfunctional; the whole family should have been shunned from normal society. And yet Jesus tells the story to make the point that sinners are welcome at God's table. That's how this parable was introduced: Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners.

The Pharisees were worried about honour and about perception. But God, so Jesus taught, is concerned with what is in the heart and is concerned with reversing the honour status of the world. All are honoured in God's sight. Those words from Isaiah, "you are honoured and I love you," speak volumes!

Because God, as Paul wrote, honours us and counts us as new creations. The gift of grace is available to us as the gift of life that lifts us above our human foibles and rests us in love. God's love is so far-reaching that even before we do things that might bring us shame or a sense of guilt, God's grace has re-created us in love. Our calling is to catch up to this grace and live out of this gift rather than out of a sense of our shame or guilt. Our calling, as Jesus taught, is to live out of the radical love that leads us to do outrageous things in the name of love and to encounter the world as new creations. Every day if need be. Every moment. This is counter-intuitive to the world around us, of course, but this is the way of God. Because we are rooted in grace, we sin boldly and know the power of beginning again.

We live into the grace that is ours—that is gift to the world. And we know a new beginning. This is the power of God's love and grace, present since the beginning of time and ever lush, ever rich, ever fertile, ever inviting, ever welcoming us home, blind though we may be, arrogant though we may be, fearful though we may be, we ARE a new creation! Amen.