The Parable of the Lost Son Part 1

This parable completes the trilogy of consecutive parables in Luke 15 that focus on particular kinds of “lostness.” I’ve already written about the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin; the Parable of the Lost Son (more commonly known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son) is not only the longest of the three but also the longest parable in the Gospels.

Because it’s so long, and because there is so much to say about it, this article will be in two parts.   

If you prefer to watch a talk version, it’s available on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIkFke20fs. 

Once again, it’s significant to note the setting—"the context”—that Luke provides at the outset in verses 1-2. This will be an important clue to the meaning we are to draw from all three parables and especially so concerning the Lost Son.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering round to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.’

We see here two distinct audiences listening to Jesus: one is a group of so-called “sinners” (including tax collectors, the worst of the worst) and the other is a group of Pharisees and teachers of the law.

We’ll speak of the first group as the “ordinary people” and the second as the “religious leaders.” To understand the significance of this context for what the parable would have been perceived to be saying, we need to know a little bit about each group.

Tax collectors were fellow-Jews, working for the occupying Roman forces, so they were seen as traitors and collaborators. They took advantage of the protection of the Roman soldiers to overcharge people, making themselves rich in the process. This is why it was so scandalous for Jesus to have dinner at the house of a tax collector; they were hated even more than the Romans.

The vast majority of the ordinary people lived below the poverty line—it was a struggle just to survive—so they weren’t always very good at keeping Torah, which infuriated the religious leaders (hence the derogatory term “sinners” that Luke uses here—he's reflecting how the religious leaders spoke of them).

The thing about being poor was that, however much you may love God, it was hard to offer sacrifices at the temple if you had no money to buy anything to sacrifice. If you had no food for your family, it was hard not to take work on the Sabbath, if that was the only day it was offered to you by a gentile employer. If you were poor—or a widow, or divorced, or a single woman with no husband or family—you would have to do what you had to do to survive. Living the kind of life the religious leaders expected was a luxury item.

There were several Jewish religious groups around at the time, but the one we hear most about is the Pharisees—the ones who seemed to clash with Jesus the most. They’re the ones that most Christians today think are “the bad guys” (legalistic hypocrites, etc.). But that is not how they were perceived at the time. They were the ones who were most passionate about their faith. Uncomfortable though this will sound, they were the “conservative evangelicals” of their day—the ones who were standing up for “biblical truth.” Who cared about holiness and sinfulness and slipping standards in society and worried about what the world was coming to. They were fighting their version of “culture wars.” The Pharisees were convinced that the reason that Messiah hadn’t yet come and the Roman Legions were occupying Israel was the sinfulness of the people—by which they meant the poor people, the ordinary people. The effect of all that was to heap condemnation onto people for whom life was tough enough already. Who also now had to live with the shame of being told that Israel’s troubles were “all their fault.”

That’s why Jesus clashed with the Pharisees so much, and why he was such good news for the ordinary people. He was saying, “God understands what life is like for you, he gets all that. He doesn’t blame you. He is for you, not against you.” The Pharisees’ mistake was their tunnel-visioned authoritarian application of the word of God (Torah)—as they interpreted and applied it—even when that was at the expense of the well-being of the people of God. The Pharisees saw “loving God” as defined by passionately loving his commandments; Jesus saw it as defined by passionately loving his people—specifically, the poor, the underprivileged, and the oppressed. 

In the first two parables, the meaning and application of what it means for people to be lost and found was by analogy—shepherd and sheep; woman and coin—but the third parable features people directly. Moreover, it’s a father and a son; the parallels between God the Father and the people of Israel as God’s son (Hosea 11:1) would have been obvious. In a twist at the end, the second, older son appears—begging the question: is he also a “lost” son?—but that’s for later.

I will assume basic familiarity with the parable and quote from it only selectively.

So the story begins with the younger son requesting (verse 12) "the share of the estate that falls to me” (meaning, when the father died). Assuming just the two sons, the younger son’s share would have been one-third of everything—all property and possessions. Notably, this would have included the family land (possibly comprising the major portion). The same word is used in verse 13: the son "squandered his estate in loose living.”    

The idea of giving your kids some of their inheritance before you die isn’t such a strange idea today—in fact, it’s good tax planning. Nor is it strange that kids should leave home and even, move abroad. Back then, it was very different. We’d have heard a sharp intake of breath from the crowd—both the ordinary people and the religious leaders—because everyone knew you would never abandon the family business, and especially you would never sell the family land. To be self-sufficient was the only way to guarantee you could feed yourselves. Only if a family got into debt and was forced to would they ever sell. As we say about capital that isn’t put to work to create earnings, “When it’s gone, it’s gone.” The younger son’s money was obviously going to run out, which of course it does. 

Selling the land in the story would be utterly shocking to everyone listening. Shameful that the son would request it—that was bad enough—but equally or more shameful that the father would agree to it. Both are acting shamefully.

If the start of the story wasn’t scandalous enough, it now gets even worse. Here he is, the son of a Jewish father, leaving the land of Israel—which symbolized leaving the God of Israel—and working for a gentile. Selfishly risking the family’s future and then taking the worst job imaginable for a Jew looking after “unclean” pigs. Utterly shameful.

The religious leaders are thinking, “This story illustrates everything wrong in Israel today. It’s just the kind of behaviour and slipping standards that someone needs to speak up against. “We can see where this story is going—it’s about people getting what they deserve. No one should treat a father like that and get away with it. And that father should be ashamed of himself as well, for being so weak.”

And the ordinary people are thinking . . . exactly the same! “We can see where this story is going. It’s about messed up people like us—the mess that we’ve made of our lives—and what we’ve got coming to us because of that.” Except, unlike the religious leaders, they’re also thinking: “We can see how someone could get themselves into that situation, when you have no food and no money, and you’re starving. We understand the shameful things you have to do sometimes just to survive. “We understand what it’s like”—as Jesus himself would say in the story—“when no one gives you anything.” 

And then the story takes a turn:

‘When he came to his senses, the younger son said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.” So he got up and went to his father.’

The religious leaders would have been loving the story to this point. They’ll be thinking, “And about time too. When he gets back, he’ll be humbled, humiliated, made to realize the consequences of what he’s done. He’ll be shamed and beaten, and that’s exactly what he deserves.” They’re thinking, “We like this parable—we see what Jesus is saying—and we can see how it’s all going to end. It proves what we’ve said all along: that sinners will get what’s coming to them.”

And the “sinners”—the ordinary people listening—would have assumed . . . exactly the same!  Because that’s what they’d been told, their whole lives. That they too were people who screw everything up and let everyone down.  They’re thinking the deeper meaning of the parable must be that they’re the object of God’s anger too, because the mess that the son is in feels a lot like the mess they are in.

So everyone listening is expecting the same ending when that son gets home. First of all, the father won’t be available. He’s been dishonoured and shamed by this rebellious son, so the whole village will have been mocking him and laughing at him behind his back, for allowing what happened. So he’ll make him wait. Make him sweat. Stand in the sun, maybe for hours. And when the father does eventually agree to see him, it will be a very frosty reception. The son will be expected to bow low and kiss the father’s feet. He’ll tell him what work he has to do as a slave, and for how many years—because becoming a slave was how you paid back your debts. Then he’ll be beaten and punished as he deserves.  And that is how everyone listening will be expecting the story to end.

Which isn’t quite how things work out, as we shall see in Part 2.