The Prodigal Son

Every couple of months of so I get an invitation to explain Christianity to a class at a local art institute named “Myth, Magic and Ritual”. It’s an opportunity I always look forward to and am never disappointed. Many of the students have little positive experience or knowledge of Christianity so I always make a point of telling the story of the Prodigal Son (also known as the parable of the Lost Son) out of Luke 15. For some of these students it is the first time they’ve ever heard the story. At that point in my lecture they are usually riveted to what for many of us is common and familiar, this father sprinting down the path to embrace his lost so before the village elders can exclude him for crimes against the village. Our hearts long for this vision of a saving, loving, rescuing God.

The Younger Brother’s Speech Writer

Most Christians believe the son repents because of the misery of the far away pig pen. Kenneth Bailey who has spent a lifetime as a Bible scholar living in the Middle East believes this isn’t the case. He notes that the younger brother, the rebellious one, concocts the speech he’ll give to his father as a self-serving way of escaping the calamity of his previous self-service. Bailey looks at how the eastern church translated “he returned to himself” and it never implied “repented”.

The force of all three stories of Luke 15 (lost sheep, lost coin, lost son) is that a rescuer must come otherwise the sheep, the coin and the son will remain lost. The son’s monologue is in the son’s mind an attempt to improve his lot, now since his original plan to improve his lot has proven to be disastrous for all involved.

Before the son is able to finish the speech and ask to be made a servant, the father has his own speech to give. It is not manipulative, it is not a speech to convince, it isn’t even given to his son. He orders his servants to restore him and do so quickly.

The son’s speech as many fail to notice is not original to the younger son. This was the same speech that Pharaoh gives to Moses after the plague of locusts has destroyed his country. Pharaoh and the younger brother both anticipate a negotiation. Neither Yhwh, nor the father of Luke 15 will negotiate.

Two Speeches, Two Outcomes 

Putting these two stories side by side raises difficult questions. Why does the father of Luke 15 immediately and unconditionally receive his rebellious son, while Yhwh hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that the the world and future generations will know who he is? Was it because the younger son was sincere and Pharaoh insincere? Was it judgment for attempted genocide and slavery? Was Pharaoh destined for destruction and the younger son for glory? Was the OT Yhwh a bloodthirsty god while Jesus is a nice, loving one? Can we even answer this question? Is it a helpful question to ask?

Both of these stories are paradigmatic salvation stories. The Exodus story becomes the enduring paradigm that gets referenced back to again and again. Similar the Parable of the Lost Son in many ways is paradigmatic for Jesus’ mission and message. Can these two stories coexist?

Theological Options

I can brainstorm a lot of theological reasons why the two stories are contrastive:

• Jesus himself notes old covenant/new covenant contrasts in the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe this is like that.
• Yhwh in the OT often works with nations. This is clearly judgment against Egypt for what she’s done to Israel. The focus on individuals reflects our own cultural bias.
• Judgment against empire is a these of Old and New Testaments
• Pharaoh had multiple opportunities to repent but the force of empire kept him in rebellion while the younger brother had nothing left to lose besides his pride.
• Maybe the younger brother’s “conversion” didn’t hold.
• Exodus is the story of Israel’s rescue, Pharaoh’s perdition is beside the point.

We also have conflicting desires as readers of the story

• We love seeing the rebellious son restored.
• We want to see evil Pharaoh get what he deserves for genocide and slavery. (We are often such hypocrites on this front. We cheer at the movies when the evil gets vanquished, we justify war and prison and retribution, but if we don’t feel the evil ourselves we just another person’s demand for justice.)
• We want to believe Pharaoh can turn and his destruction can be avoided. Why? Because we do identify with him.
• We want to believe Yhwh can relent and forgive. Yhwh relents and forgives Nineveh, why not Egypt?

Saving A Son is Difficult

Why does the father of the lost son await his return? The father knows that his son’s attempt to make a life for himself will fail. Perhaps the father also knows that although his son is corrupt, he is not stupid. He will remember that his servants are well fed thanks to the wise provision and leadership of his father. Perhaps the father knows exactly what will happen, he just doesn’t quite know the day or the hour when that moment will arrive.

He knows his son needs to be rescued, but a son is a far more complex thing to rescue than a sheep or a coin. The sheep can be picked up and brought back to the fold. The coin can be placed in your pocket. The father knows the son needs to get out of the fold/pocket in order to be saved, deeply saved.

Images of Hell

Both stories are stories of perdition. The climax of the story of the lost son in fact is on the elder brother who stays off in the field. The father goes out to him to beg him to come to the party and that is where the story ends. Jesus tells more stories of perdition than anyone else. Many of his stories have parties and outer darkness and explore the choices that lead to both outcomes.

In Exodus 10 we have the locusts consuming Egypt and the servants of Pharaoh pleading with him to relent. The next plague is the one of darkness which is both an image of uncreation and will be picked up by Jesus in his images of hell. Darkness also comes over Jesus’ crucifixion. Darkness is a powerful Biblical image of abandonment by God.

In both stories, life and death hang in the balance. Will Israel be freed? Will Pharaoh triumph of be destroyed? Will the younger brother starve? Will the older brother be reconciled to is father and his brother? The outcomes are absolutely stark in both cases. God will flex greatly for redemption, but ultimately there is no compromise on shalom. The wedding must be glorious and the banquet must be filled with gowned guests.

What Learning Costs

Why can’t the father rescue his son without the son trashing the village economy and going to the far off land? Why can’t Yhwh rescue Israel without trashing Egypt? Why does reconciling with the younger brother seem to endanger the relationship of the father with the elder brother?

These questions lead us into the well tread awkward spaces of freedom, responsibility, justice and mercy.

On one level Pharaoh and the brothers are on an educational track.

• Pharaoh doesn’t know Yhwh but he thinks he knows the world.
• When he gets to know Yhwh he begins to learn how much he doesn’t know about the world.
• The younger brother and the elder brother think they knows the father and think they know the world.
• The younger brother, like Pharoah, will learn the limits of their smarts and their ability to manage the world.
• The elder brother and Pharaoh will learn the limits of their ability to manage Yhwh and the father.

In the end the fruitfulness of this learning doesn’t seem guaranteed. We can never see our selves as well as others.

• The servants of Pharaoh plead with him to end this stupidity.
• The younger brother “comes to himself”, makes a rational calculation that at least the context of his father’s home is preferable to the far off land.
• The elder brother probably made that calculation multiple times, but all three remain reluctant to embrace the heart of Yhwh or the father.
• All are asked to surrender what is unthinkable to them, their definition of entitlement and justice.

Pharaoh believes he owns Egypt. His role in Egypt is his identity. If he is not Pharaoh he is nothing. Better to to be dead than not Pharaoh. Better Egypt dead than it not be his. Pharaoh is the jealous husband who if he can’t control his wife would rather she be dead. Better the king of hell than a prince of heaven. Satan made the same calculation.

The younger brother is a toddler that must do it himself. His identity is his self-sufficiency. He may have miscalculated his ability to make it in the far off country, but he figures he knows how to make it at home. He may not have been able to manipulate the master of the pigs, but he believes he can still manipulate the master of the pen he grew up in. Didn’t he talk him out of his inheritance early?

The son’s failure to know himself is seen by the rest of us. It was not by cleverness that his fortune was received early, it was the love, mercy and wisdom of the father, who would eagerly sacrifice his wealth for a chance to secure the deeper sanity of his son.

The older brother is the principled one. He will leave father and brother for his vision of justice, a vision that majors in retribution and undervalues mercy and forgiveness. Better to be righteous in a world of sinners than to compromise.

Seeing the Rescuer

Jesus’ story would have been different if the pig owner had been enslaving the father’s younger son. We might easily imagine the father paying a large price to free his son. Imagine Jean Valjean paying handsomely to free Cosette. We might imagine the father arming his servants, hiring mercenaries to secure the freedom of his son by force. This is the story of Israel in Egypt. Yhwh, however, gives Pharaoh multiple chances to relent and free his people. If we want to bring the stories together, this brings them closer for us.

If the father did free the son by payment or by force, the son might in fact not become free from the inside out. In fact, given the limits of Jesus’ parable we don’t really know whether the embrace of the lost son freed his heart. It was freed enough apparently to enjoy the fattened calf but that is where the story ends.

The point of the story of the lost son, given to the Pharisees and the experts of the law was to explain Jesus’ association with Roman collaborators. Remember, the sin of the prostitutes and tax collectors was not merely sexual liberty and the government’s appropriation of personal property but for the Pharisees was an issue of being in bed (literally and economically) with the enemy of Israel. Jesus was soft on Pharaoh/Egypt/Rome in the eyes of the ardent culture warriors. Jesus wanted to re-calibrate the matrix of rescue. Romans needed rescue too.

What Jesus does in Luke 15 in a subtle and quiet way was invite Pharaoh into the New Testament and the grander liberation of the people of God. John will of course not miss the tension when he deals with Egypt/Rome/Babylon in the context of Asia minor.

Jumbling the Lines of Tribalism

Our longing for Pharaoh’s redemption is because Jesus helped us imagine that Romans could be rescued too. The punchline of the story of the Lost Son is that Romans can come into the kingdom while religious sons of Israel excuse themselves from the party and opt for locusts and darkness.

In this story there is both opportunity and warning. Genocidal dictators and rebellious, homewrecking sons can be restored. Dutiful, industrious, ethical sons may be jeopardy. What is line?

Yhwh wants the whole family to assemble in the desert. Not just men, but men, women and children. Not just the people, but the flocks and herds as well.

Israel herself will be the younger brother, rescued and invited into the feast in the wilderness where Yhwh himself provides the bread and the meat. Pharaoh and the elder brother will refuse to go. They wish to be the kings of their own forms of righteousness rather than to fellowship with slaves and sinners.

Because we’ve read the rest of the Old Testament we know that the renovation of the younger brother will not go smoothly, even after the fattened calf is offered, even after the passover lamb is offered. Sons are harder to rescue than sheep or coins. Perhaps Pharaohs are harder still.

Jesus makes it all strange when he makes the opposite move from what we would expect. He embraces darkness, accepts shame, wears the torture of his enemies in order to rescue them. Yhwh continues to invite even if he knows Pharaoh won’t relent. Jesus continues to offer, even when the elder brothers believe themselves more righteous than he.