A further problem for us beyond that of what we call it is its familiarity. Rather like the Good Samaritan we feel we know this one. Yes we have heard it many times. What’s new? The remarkable thing is that as so often with scriptural passages we keep discovering new depths even in that which is most familiar.

So let us look afresh at the text of this familiar and beloved parable. The first thing to which I have already drawn attention is that this is a parable with three characters, a father and two sons. The parable is about all three. From a human point of view we may recognize a little of each of us in all three: the younger brother’s selfishness and recklessness; the father’s tolerance, acceptance, his prodigal generosity and his amazing patience; and the older brother’s resentment and unwillingness to join in the celebration.

First the younger son: there is something callous and unfeeling about the younger son’s request. In the normal circumstances he would have received a portion of his father’s estate on his father’s death. That was his due. Here he is demanding it immediately as if his father were dead. He seems not to care for the relationship or how his father feels about it. Not only does the younger son take his share but he leaves home and goes away as far as he can, “to a distant country.” The younger son comes across as an unfeeling, self-centered and unpleasant guy. But it also needs to be said that the father does give in to his son’s demands rather too easily. There is something overly lenient and tolerant by the father of the son’s selfish behavior. Maybe the father was thinking “anything for a quiet life”. Or maybe he felt that it was better the son find out about life for himself away from the security and protection of home.

Nevertheless the younger son headed off as far away from home as he could and there he had a good time. The King James version here is unbeatable: “he wasted his substance with riotous living.” It does not take much imagination to fill in the picture. If we have not quite been there I suspect most of us have fantasized about it. Well it all cost him as we say and he was left with nothing. He really was an unfeeling fool. To add insult to injury he finishes up feeding pigs which is hardly the job of choice for an observant Jew. The story really lays it on thick at this point. Not only is he reduced to feeding pigs but he is tempted to share their food because “no one gave him anything.”

It is precisely at this point, when he is at lowest ebb, that the Greek text simply says, “when he came to himself.” Even this foolish, stupid youth, who has rejected his father, his family and his home, and has wasted his wealth and made a total mess of his life, even he has a moment of insight, when he sees himself as he really is. I find this one of the most telling moments of scripture, that moment when you can see as if for the first time who you really are, where you life, your marriage, your relationships, or your career are in clear perspective. It is the sort of moment when it is as if you wake up for the first time and say “Aha, that is how it is”. It suddenly dawns on the young man that he has made a mess of his relationship with his father and a complete mess of his life. So he decides to return: “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” In other words he decides to return while recognizing that it will not be as before: he cannot reclaim his sonship which he has forfeited but is prepared to return as a servant.

At this point the focus turns to the father who sees him coming. Like a mother watching and waiting for the son to return from the battlefield or the lover watching out for the beloved to return home the father is watching despite all that has happened. Like the shepherd in the earlier parable the one lost sheep always has a special place in his heart alongside his love for the 99 others. It is at this point that the father acts totally out of character. A Middle Eastern patriarch would never act like the father in the parable. To leave the house to meet one of lower state; to run rather than walk; to make such an emotional outburst in public; these were not the expected behaviors of a dignified man of affairs in the Palestinian cultural world. Furthermore the father does not listen to the son’s prepared speech but cuts him off before mid-sentence and orders robe, ring and sandals to be brought each symbolizing full reinstatement to the family. And then he orders a full communal celebration with a fatted calf. Why? “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

The father is at one and the same time overly accepting, far too tolerant, and both prodigal and extravagant in his loving, generous behavior to the returning son. And yet for us who believe this is one of the most moving moments in the scriptures. For here we glimpse something of the Father’s heart. Each time I hear that passage “While he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him, and kissed him” I think of Jesus with his arms stretched out on the cross in love for us and the whole world. For me this is a beautiful image of the passion of Jesus which we are preparing to celebrate. He who was dead is alive: “Christ has died; Christ has risen” we say in Rite 2. We (each of us) who feel from time to time lost or alienated or unloved have been found and hugged and kissed by the God of love whose love is poured out for us on the Cross of Jesus.

But that is not the end of the story. There is the other brother, the elder son. There is that other part of ourselves that says “yes, but;”that cynical, doubting side to our character. And there he is standing outside, refusing to join in the party, seething with resentments, forgetting who he is and all that he has. Again the father acts out of character for one of his status. He leaves the celebration of which he is the host and goes to plead with his elder son. And the elder like the younger quickly forgets the relationships that matter most. He refers to working for the father “like a slave”, that is a hired servant on a contract, and to his brother as “this son of yours” (no relation to me, thank God) and in so doing denies his family relationships in one fell swoop. And the resentments continue to pour out. “You have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.” This is all so familiar on so many levels. Can’t we see ourselves in there somewhere? In our families; in our parishes and communities or at work? It is always difficult when others seem to be preferred, honored, rewarded or recognized over us. And especially if they are relative newcomers! Maybe there is a Gentile/Jewish context to this parable. But at whatever level we are thinking I suspect we will hear familiar echoes in our own experience.

And yet the father’s attitude is consistent with the resentful elder brother as he was with the reckless and foolish younger brother. “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” He could not be more generous than that in face of the elder son’s outburst. God’s love for us is utterly consistent: there are no favorites with God. God shows no partiality. And once again the father reiterates what is fundamental to the three chapter 15 parables: “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.”

So says St Paul in a different but no less striking way in describing the Resurrection of Jesus from the Dead: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” Thanks be to God for his great and abiding love for each one of us, his children and for his call to us to participate in that mission of love to the world.   Amen

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