The younger son acts as if his father were dead by claiming his share of his father’s property. He goes to a distant country, cutting his family ties. He squanders his money. He is lost, but unlike the sheep whose shepherd leaves the 99 to find the one or the lost coin that the homemaker sweeps to find, the father doesn’t seek him out.
The young man is entirely wrong about which relationships are most sustaining in his life. He chooses a lifestyle that gathers party people around him. The consequences become clear to the young man when he finds himself a starving servant at a hog trough, forbidden to eat the sweet pods he feeds the pigs.
Pigs are unclean animals, according to the law of Moses. The younger son has sunk to depths unimaginably distant from the traditions and experience of law-keeping Jews.
Only when the younger son bottoms out at the pig trough does he change his mind and heart about what he wants. In the contemporary 12-step language of Alcoholics Anonymous, the younger son turns himself over to a higher power. His self-centered lifestyle has starved him into recognizing he needs a sustaining relationship.
The pig trough turns out to be a holy place. The younger son confesses he has sinned against God and his father. To sin is to miss the mark, to break relationships.
Jewish scripture scholar Amy Jill Levine suggests the younger son is spoiled. His father has given him what he wanted. At the pig tough the son rehearses a speech that will get him back in his father’s favor.
Luke, however, holds up the younger son as a model of conversion, an example of the sinners Jesus comes to forgive and embrace. The repentant sinner is Luke’s ideal Christian.
Nelson Mandela offers a similar model. He refused to be called a saint unless by a saint people meant “a sinner who keeps on trying.”
- Where have the pig troughs in your life been — the holy places where consequences have made the emptiness of a job or a relationship clear?
- Who do you regard as the ideal Christian? How like or unlike the prodigal son is your ideal?
Although the father does not go to the far off country to seek his lost younger son, he does run to meet him as soon as he sees him coming. He embraces and kisses him. He is a merciful, forgiving father. He doesn’t allow the son to finish the confession he has planned, which ends in asking to be only a hired hand.
The son’s act of coming home acknowledges his desire to reconnect as much as any words can say. The father restores him as a son with robe, ring, and sandals and sets a homecoming table for him.
- What does the father in the parable tell us about God?
Which son is lost? The older son is the one the father has to seek out and beg to come in to the party. The parable is unfinished. Inside the house the younger son’s homecoming party is in full swing. Outside the father confronts his other son, who is stuck in anger that his brother gets more for repenting than he gets for obeying diligently.
The father isn’t fair; he’s merciful. Perhaps he recognizes the partying lifestyle has been its own punishment. The younger son has lost everything. The father rejoices the son has found his way home and belongs again in the family.
But the younger son doesn’t get the punishment the older son thinks he deserves for “devouring his father’s property.” The father’s mercy angers the older son. It reminds us we can’t earn or deserve God’s love. It’s a gift that reveals who God is.
In this parable Jesus is addressing the scribes and Pharisees who criticize him for welcoming and eating with sinners. The parable invites them to the law-breaker’s homecoming dinner. Will they come? Will the older son? Will we?
- When have you been the repentant, prodigal son?
- When have you been the forgiving father?
- When have you been the resentful son?