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The Reckless, Dangerous, Wastefully Extravagant and Ridiculously Opulent Family

Luke 15:11-32

I am going to violate principles I’ve known about reading the Bible, in this case a parable, to render a different way of looking at what is typically known as the parable of the prodigal son. 

Back in my evangelical seminary days, we were taught the “right way” to read the parables. 

Don’t attach significance to nuanced details of the story and especially disregard the allegorizing tendencies of the early Christian fathers. The parable had one driving point to make, and it was up to the skilled exegete to hone in and articulate that central message. There certainly is validity to the see-the-forest-not-the-trees approach. In my experience, many Bible studies go woefully astray, emotionally running away with embellishing details. I certainly could be criticized here for doing exactly that. 

My “right way” to read the Bible training, however, produced in us young impressionable types a considerable amount of and hard to get rid of smugness. As I look back now, the “right way” approach was equally about control. In the ollie-ollie-oxen-free world of Protestant Bible interpretation, some kind of restraints or quasi-authoritarian arbitration had to come lest congregations endlessly divide themselves into warring interpretations, which they always do. 

Admittedly, as I am writing this, there is still a part of me that thinks I’m stretching things too far. The words “possibly” and “perhaps” will be used throughout. I am going to make a case for this reading while not insisting that it is the “right” one.

Even further in confession, the imagery of the parable has frequented my thought life for some time because of the COVID induced trauma that has been a part of my life three years running. As with countless others during the time, my thoughts, emotions, and experiences did not pop up out of nowhere. They had brewed and stewed for most of my adult life. COVID exacerbated them. 

In my case, the pandemic environment went further. To paraphrase a pop tune of the 90s (R.E.M): It’s the end of (my) world as (I) know it. As a theological writer and biblical theologian, I’ve written considerably about chaos, catastrophe, apocalypse, and final things (eschatology). The whole impetus for both the Old and New Testaments was the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple and the expulsion of its inhabitance from the land. I knew of these things from a studied distance. I thought that I was well prepared for the pandemic induced upheaval. 

I know more profoundly now from experience. No doubt, my biblical knowledge guided my ability to respond. As with anyone in a collapse of “world,” my crisis loomed large, disparate, and all consuming, but it certainly pales in comparison to the pain and death of so many others. In many ways, my crisis is not all that interesting or unusual. I mention it here simply to make clear the lens that pushed my speluncking of the parable in an unconventional direction. 

I can also point to the sinuous influence of Serge. It probably speaks of my anomalous personality that I found great solace in reading weighty theological treatises  rather than gorging on ice cream and Netflix or binging on beer and football.

With these important qualifiers exposed, I proceed to the parable. I will abandon any concern for brevity. I do understand that I will greatly diminish my “readership.” I accept that. I want to make a full case for this read of the parable. Perhaps reading it in stages might help.

As I see it, the post-pandemic environment all over the world and in every way is upending our worlds and institutional categories that have ordered our lives. Many double-down on social orders of yesteryear willing to cajole conformity violently and forcefully. Others mournfully reminisce in ballads of loss. Others, such as I, have found renewed vigor in pressing toward “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” Or it is as Davor Džalto advocates in another book that inspired me in my time of trial: I are looking for a new “mode of being” which is surely coming. 

No one does this.

The parable is presented every year in the 2nd Sunday of three Sundays before Lent (called the Triodion) in the Christian East as a model of repentance. Along with the parable of the publican and pharisee (Lk 18:9-14) and the parable of last judgment (Mt 25:31-46), these “pre-lenten” services are meant to warm us up to the need for and practice of repentance. In the parable, the referent seems obvious. We sinners are to look to the prodigal son as our inspiration or model of repentance. If I recall, it was that service that got me ruminating on this story. And the more I rehearsed the story, the more outrageously untrue it seems to be. 

No one does this. No one who severely breaks bonds of deep relationship returns. Humans don’t do this. I know some might protest with anecdotes, but really, they are superficial and unconvincing. Overwhelmingly, I stand by the fact. People do not return. This is standard operating procedure for people in churches regardless of what stripe. People leave churches all the time and they never come back. The same goes for families, marriages, or places of employment.

I did not physically die due to the pandemic, but I did relationally. Companions I have had my whole adult life, did exactly what the son did. In effect, they gathered all of their stuff and left, not even saying farewell. They did not come back, and if they did, they certainly would not return in humble culpability. Again, no one does this.

They did as the son did to his father. They declared me dead to them. In the ancient world as in most of the world today, to ask for your share of the inheritance before the death of your parents is tantamount to declaring, or at least wishing, that they were dead. You are dead to me. I only want the residual of your accumulated “living.” 

I am also among the crowd who abruptly kills a relationship. At times, I’ve imagined some kind of return to at least give an account and bring a more decent closure. But an all encompassing confession of violating “heaven” and the person does not remotely come to mind. 

I will dare to go uncomfortably further. The son did not just declare his father dead, he killed him. One should consult Jesus if my assertion seems exaggerated here (Mt 5:21). “Unfriending” someone or blocking their connection in her personal technology is an act of aggression with the intent of permanent separation. It is to remove oneself from that bond as far as possible, to a distant country. In employment terms it is called “termination.”

If you would ask my companions, they could give you a list of good reasons for “terminating” our relationship. I have no defense. I can only choose to counterattack or move on. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to resolve that there was nothing I could do about their decision. Nothing. If I chose against anger, retaliation, or self destruction, the father’s hesychasm (hesychasm is a spiritual discipline of the Christian East. It means stillness) was a dimly lit guide. 

And so, like the father, I could only relinquish what was theirs to take and watch their back fade until vanquished. Unfriended. Declared toxic and non-existent. One’s heart dies in that moment. It is like when a loved one physically dies. The permanent separation leaves the soul exposed and vulnerable. But the pain is compounded when the full power of intention is involved. The relational termination was not due to natural causes or an accident. It is not just a death, but a killing. 

The image of the father sitting on the front porch of his ranch pining for his son, hoping against a dark void of absence conjured in my head. The smallest of remembrances and wisps of reminiscence would resuscitate that image quite uninvited and frequently. 

I found great solace in that image. I know what that feels like. I too would sit on my front porch or by the fireplace in quiet ponderance. Like David of the Psalms, I would lie awake on my bed in the middle of the night questioning God’s seemingly lethargic disposition. Even so, it was a power beyond myself that enabled me to inaudibly chant: “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.” I died because our relationship did, and yet I still lived. I know what that fictional father felt. 

The younger of them said to his father, Father give me the share of the property falling to me. (Lk 15:12)

To remind and critically to pay attention to, the son was intensionally severing the relationship. With clear and unexplained resolve, he calls out his urgent request in a legal sounding tone. It is a summons expecting immediate and unquestioned action. The son completely subordinates and humiliates the father. The father is nearly, completely surrendered to the son, even if it kills him.

“Relinquish the assets apportioned to me.” He provides no rationale to the father. The father asks for none. The household members watched the exchange of death in eery, baffled horror. The son declares the death of his father, and the father acquiesces. The son is now also dead to the father.

Before we explore the meaning of prodigal, we need reminding of a fundamental assumption behind the whole story. Like Job of old, this elite was stupid rich. He had wealth and abundance. He had more than enough to survive. He could thrive, enjoy, partake and throw parties! All the family members of this story assume a bottomless well of wealth, and they bask in it. 

There are Greek words for wealth and riches, but they are not used in the parable. Instead, the son chooses a word rarely used in the New Testament or in Greek antiquity in reference to business or economic transactions, ousia.

Those familiar with early Christian theology or Greek philosophy are quite familiar with ousia. In its mundane sense, ousia refers to goods or essentials, all the things needed to live. Livelihood would be a good synonym and this sense is clearly used here. The father had to divide his ousia and the son had to collect it. Several translations call it “property” while others use “estate” or “goods.” I would add assets.

In a bottomline way, however, ousia is very much connected with wealth. As I am reminded every year when I meet with my financial advisor, wealth is the sum or measure of all that you have in order to live. It is the total of your assets minus your liabilities. Everyone has wealth in some measure, even homeless people. My wealth includes my possessions (and to remind, in those days, possessions included animals and people as well as real estate) as well as money reserves. Health and wealth come from the same root word. In an uncomfortable sense, my wealth assessment does measure my worth. Although we don’t think about it, my wealth is a measure of my being able to live.

The more theological or philosophical denotations still come into play only in the background though. In those circles, ousia explores the nature, essence, or substance of something or someone. Within the opening verses of this story, ousia is connected to and indeed synonomous with bios—life (Lk 15:12). 

The father, it is said, was eerily silent about the request. There was no discussion, retort, threat, or pleading. His behavior is in stark contrast to the father’s approach to his older son . He divides or distributes his “life (bios).” Even in this command of the son, the son still must acknowledge the source of his wealth. He cannot simply take it. He must request that the father “hand over” that which has “fallen upon him.”

Assuredly (we know because the story tells us so) a raft of conspiring criticisms grumble. The father should disown the son, not give him what the son insists is his share. The father should boot him out, that spoiled, petulant brat! He’s been nothing but trouble for the father. And yet like Jacob, he loved his son and favored him above all the household, even though he was the youngest. 

Many people came to me in my trial with consolation and comfort. All were helpful. Most of them avoided amplifying the character flaws or personality disfunction of those who left me. Even so, it bled into conversations. At times, it was helpful to remind me that I cannot nor should not bear the entire burden of the relational breach. 

We must take note, however, that that kind of assessment of the son, never even remotely comes out of the father’s mouth. It comes from both of his sons, but not from him. Indulgent parents are quite prone to spoiling their children. 

He departed for a far country.

There are many odd ponderings of the story that can detract us and equally not resolve themselves, and here is one. Couldn’t the son squander his money from the convenience of his home. After all, how many countless children of the wealthy suffer from affluenza. Why was he so compelled to take all that the father had and leave, not across town or to his girlfriend’s house, but to a distant country. He went far, far away, as far from the father as one could possibly get. He was not leaving for better business opportunities, for military service, or marriage, at least not that we are told.

The son’s motive is shrouded from our vantage point. Did he hate the father? As is often the case with affluenza, the opulent father unrestrainedly spoiled the son, more to assuage his own guilt for not properly raising his son. The son resents the father’s absence and lashes back by oddly and lavishly imitating his father’s indulgences.  

We can’t tell whether what he did with “his share” was the motive or simply the consequence. It doesn’t tell us what he wanted. It just tells us what he did. He traveled to a distant country to surround himself with strangers. He collected all the “life”, “goods,” “substance” “essentials” of his father that had “fallen on him” and he went far away from his father. In that foreign land, he scattered the father’s “life.” 

And dissipated his property (V13)

If the son had a plan, he didn’t do it. The action (diakarpizo) indicates more random or haphazard scattering. He squandered, broke up, wasted the father’s “goods.” Like panicking soldiers fleeing from a battlefield in retreat, the mission was abandoned. Like an entrepreneur tanking a business in reckless miscalculation congealed with ego, he bankrupted the investment. Like scattering seed, the action is deliberate, but still random. Doing what? Dissolute living one translation states it. And to what extent? Freely, gratuitously, imprudently, exhaustingly. “Drinks are on me!” He paid for all of it and “no one would give him anything.” It was a give and take time for the son in that land far, far away from his father’s estate. The son gave everything and all those foreigners took him for all he was worth.

by living prodigally. (v13)

It is here where we can begin questioning the conventional title given the parable, the prodigal son, which appeared in Latin somewhere in the 17th century. This is about a family and a wealthy one at that. True, the younger son is more central, but the father and older son are considerably developed in the narrative as well. It seems intentionally so. 

The problem with the younger son, at least by the conventional title of the parable is that he was prodigal, or more accurately, he acted prodigally, a word not on our most frequent vocabulary list. It sounds bad though, or at least we are very conditioned to think so. A lot of us who have been conditioned by its association with repentance tend to associate it with being wayward or going astray. This is not accurate within the wording of the story. First, he went away (astray), then he scattered his portion of the father’s life in a prodigal way. 

Prodigal comes from the Latin pro—forward or toward—and agere—set in motion, drive or perform. It does denote a negative drive toward waste or excess, but it also points to something we all admire and desire, abundance. A prodigy is a monstrously gifted person, someone who has an excessive, according to most humans, amount of talent or giftedness. 

One of the best mandolin players in the world is Chris Thele. With apparent effortless skill, he can ooze out breathless bluegrass riffs or Bach sonatas. I watched a video of him just “messing” around solo at a festival. I wagged my head in astonishment, saying to my daughter: “there is Chris Thele, and then there are the rest of us mere mortals.”

I used the adjective monstrous because it is also associated with our word. The extraordinary phenomenon in a person or environment can be “out of this world” and thus “creepy.” It can be an omen. Alien. In my musician days, we often would speak of “monster” players. They are so talented it’s scary. 

The verbose title I gave to this article conjures a litany of ways to express “prodigal.” All of which speak to some powerful drive, impulse, addiction or obsession. Reckless, dangerous, wastefully extravagant and ridiculously opulent.

Whether Greek, Latin, or English, all suggest an irresistible drive or tendency toward excess. I can see in my own etymological inquiry how a certain bias of negativity clings to “the meaning” by more prudent interpreters. But as our words prodigious or prodigy remind, prodigal equally points to an excess, an unwarranted, unjustified, or unreasonable amount of gift, beauty, or goodness. 

Ah, we finally arrive at the Greek equivalent to prodigal, asotos (v13). Our Greek lexicographers assign positive and negative meanings to the word. The more prudent ones push towards something like debauchery. The son lived in extreme indulgence, in riotous living, licentiousness. And of course, the prudent spin is that it always includes sex, lots of sex. There is no compelling reason why the Greek word should push in only this direction. But certainly the older brother went there immediately and exclusively. The prodigal son dissipated the father’s “life” on “porne” (precisely the Greek word used in verse 30. It appears the prudentials are taking their etymological clues from the older brother. After all, he is the responsible one of the family.

Others offer synonyms less morally weighted, but still crimes against prudent, decent living. He especially violates good finance disciplines. He was a profligate, recklessly squandered his use of resources. He was a business moran, unscrupulously gambling with capital. Of course, there is a plethora of scammers, tax cheats, pyramid schemers, and grifters who do this today. It is only bad if one gets caught, and even if you do, there is a good chance you can still be the president of the United Stated of America. 

I like one lexicographer’s insistence that the young lad was incorrigible. What annoys us about incorrigibles is not so much what they do, but that they refuse to be counseled, reformed or corrected. At least incorrigible pushes in the right direction as prodigal. They are unrelenting, driven, obsessed, headstrong. They cannot help themselves. 

The positive use of asotos pushes the action toward others and not one’s self. It is other-indulgent rather than self-indulgent. It lavishes gifts, goods, assets, and wealth on others. It provides substance and sustenance to those lacking, to those in distant lands.

In the case of Chris Thele, his gift does not just unrestrainedly gush from his instrument. Unlike other prodigy, he doesn’t present his gift in order to draw attention to himself or his talent. His delight in performing is not just that he enjoys music, but even more so, he delights in presenting that to his audience. His gift spills over, indiscriminately scattered to the listeners. 

At this point, I now question the conventional title. If anything, and first and foremost, it should be called the prodigal dad. If any one should be called profligate, recklessly extravagant and audaciously wasteful in his use of resources, it was daddio. And if anything, the son’s “sin” is that “he traveled to a distant land.” It should be retitled the parable of the traveling son. We might ask who in the story is focused the most on the father’s resources? The older son?

There is no doubt about it. The son came from a very wealthy family. They reeked of seemingly endless riches. I shouldn’t have to remind anyone from the ancient world to today that asoto and all the words mentioned above are synonymous with the rich and wickedness. No shame here. The wealthy do what all rich people do. They party hardy, extravagantly, lavishly, audaciously, obsequiously, opulently. Without any regard for the hardship of the poor or the desperation of their slaves.

In one of many rebukes to the rich by Jesus, he surprisingly doesn’t chastise their extravagant parties for the wasteful indulgence. Indeed, he images his Father doing the same. But unlike his Father, he excoriates the rich for excluding others from the festivities not only depriving them of a little cheer, but also dilapidating their own well-being in gorging orgies of gross self-indulgence. Do we require a list of the diseases of over-indulgence leading to addiction and death: gout, obesity, diabetes, depression, addiction, etc. In one sense, Jesus seems to endorse lavish indulgence as long as it gets spread around in a way that leaves no one out. When done exclusively for the sake of others, this kind of “prodigalness” probably will lead to the rich not being rich anymore. Jesus clearly points in that direction. Follow me, Jesus says, and prodigally expend you “living” on the poor. 

Perhaps the miracle feedings of Jesus provide an ample picture. “You feed them.” He says this because he has compassion on them. And when it was done, everyone was satiated and there were leftovers! Jesus does not speak of his father in prudent terms. The father likes throwing parties. In some sense, it seems like that is all here cares about. And he gets quite irate when people who are invited don’t come. How rude!

As bad as acquiring wealth by exploiting others is, hoarding it almost seems worse from Jesus point of view. After all, hoarding is the primary means of becoming wealthy in the first place. Private property (ousia) by its very nature excludes others. 

So, this is the story of a prodigal family, or at least the story of a prodigal father and son. 

The rich son becomes poor

The son spent freely. He paid for everything. He, like the apostle Paul, gladly spent and was spent (2 Cor. 12:15). The son exhausted all of the father’s “life” that the he had granted to the son in a land far, far away on people the family didn’t even know. 

We know what the prudent son thought the younger son had spent it on, but neither the prodigal son nor the prodigal father ever state that. The younger son says that he had sinned. We’ll get to that in a bit. 

The distant land that the son was obsessed with going to was not a destination sight. It was or at least became while he was there a severely deprived place. Did the son spend all of the father’s “living” to help those in need? The story doesn’t say. On the other hand, why should we assume what the older son said he did? At any rate, after exhausting all of his resources in a land deprived of them, the son became poor. He went from being served to serving. 

Whatever self-determination he had was relinquished. He was now an indentured servant, a slave. His well-being, his ousia, was irreversibly stuck to the destiny of the citizens of that impoverished land far from the father’s house. He was now destined to be obedient until death. 

The son’s situation reminds me of the consumer world I live in. Most service providers can relate. One gives all often under grueling conditions and harsh schedules and in return only receives complaints, anger, and sometimes even assault. It can become a world where many give all and some take all presuming that offering a gift is a sucker ready to be taken to the house. 

The narrative lays out a very stark contrast. The son exhausted his ousia. But once he became poor, he was completely abandoned. “No one gave him anything.” “He was dying of hunger.” Nothing speaks well of this distant land far from the father’s house. One wonders what the son saw in it. Why was he so incorrigibly set on going there?

and coming to himself (v17)

The parable does not use the usual Greek word for repentance here. That word is metanaeo as in Jesus inaugural words, “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 4:17). It combines meta, over or across, and naeo, to think or consider. In the gospel pronouncements, it is always connected to a time reference, “the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come (in)” and to a course of action, “repent and believe.” It strongly implies a directional and decisive change of course due to a dramatic change of circumstances. “The times demand decisive action.” “Change your hearts” is the way David Bentley Hart translates it. “Change” aptly condenses both the temporal and the temperamental sense.

The phrase used here carries a similar sense. The change of circumstances demanded a change of mind. But this story certainly pivots on the son’s self-talk. The son went to a foreign land and there he came to himself. Some kind of reciprocal revelation occurred. The journeyman reintroduced the homebody. 

I think all of us possess a strong intuitive sense of what it means to “come to oneself” but would struggle as I am here with how to articulate that. We often use the variation “to come to one’s senses” implying that the full array of the “senses” had been muted, handicapped, lost, or incarcerated. 

It certainly entails a reminisce or resuscitation of somewhere one has been before or of one’s lost identity. A previous state of being still lingers in the shadows. It means that there truly was a life and a home that one still viscerally senses. 

I return to the observation I made above about the use of the word repentance (metanaeo) in the New Testament. It always has a time referent. 

The older son describes the arrival of the younger son in more mundane terms. “He came back.” But “the wasteful one” only puts it in terms of relationship with his father. He sets his changed mind on the future. “I will get up and go to my father, and say to him, father. 

The turning point came right there. The slave is someone’s son. He belongs to his father. 

He rehearses his rentrée, still coming to himself I suppose. Still imagining an event to come. His conception now driving towards fulfillment. His self-reasoning begins with the economic and the practical. Even slaves on the father’s estate partake of the father’s “life.” No hunger there. He proposes in his mind a renunciation of his sonship as an acceptable sacrifice to appease the anger and judgment that he presumes will be coming. 

Most significantly, however, he got up and went back to his father. The prudent son had that right. 

I will say to him (v18)

By now, you may have a feel for where I’m going in my reading of the parable, and this is where the conventional understanding seems to be obvious. The younger son sinned. Full stop. He knows it, came to his senses, and is rehearsing his way back into the father’s good graces. The voice of objection is valid—the younger son can in no way be a referent to Jesus. Admittedly, this is where I will bend the reading in a certain direction for reasons stated in my introduction. 

I have done numerous word studies on “sin”, but they always seem unsatisfying. In our day, “sin” is exclusively a religious term. When one breaks the law, he is not charged and put on trial for a sin. Nor, when someone “unfriends” another on social media is there a claim that the unfriend “sinned”.  

Sin in the time of Jesus was also god-related. We just have to remember that then, all things human were god-related: war, fertility, business, politics, and finance. There was no “secular” part of society, but people, especially pious types, used the word “sinner” to refer to those violating ritual procedures.

The gist of the word in both Hebrew and Greek (amartolas) sounds rather benign—to be off the mark, to miss the target or goal. It is failure, but we should notice that it implies a pursuit of something worthy, admirable or desirable. A sinner fails to get to the good. If we stick close to this basic picture of sin, we may suppose that the son had some goal, mission, or venture other than wasting away in Margaritaville. The extravagant expenditure of resources was aimed at accomplishing something in that distant land. It was a venture, and the son could not be deterred. Incorrigible he was. 

Etymologically and historically, the notion of sin has much stronger associations with usury and debt than criminal or moral failure. We Christians have conveniently ignored this ever since we saddled up with empire and cleverly found ways to defang the strong injunctions against usury and unjust wealth acquisition. Sin is a debt. Its early development comes from the “eye for an eye and tooth for tooth” notion of compensation for personal injury. Instead of an actual eye or tooth or cow or whatever, a payment equal in value to the loss was required. Sin, in this regard, is an obligation to pay or restore. Unfortunately, for a very long time now, this has been reversed. Instead of “sin” being a compensation for an injury, now debt is the sin.  

I have advocated for some time now that believers need to read more of the Bible with an economic lens than they have in the past. Try reading the Psalms from the perspective of “the wicked” trying to bankrupt “the righteous” for instance. Think about the recurring motif in the Psalms of “they” conspiring to “devour me,” to “swallow me” whole and alive.

What would it mean for the parable here, if we paraphrased the son’s words as: “Father, I have bankrupted your corporation’s investment in me. I have disqualified myself from the enterprise and so resign.” 

The son’s rehearsal includes sinning against heaven. This is a referent to God, but it has a secondary referent to the community of heaven. It was a public trust that was broken. Sin denotes a falling short or stumbling of a communal, moral responsibility. It is putting that failure in the communal deficit column—debt or default. 

In ancient times,, the highest of all commodities was loyalty, a covenantal and unbreakable relationship. Oath-taking was the supreme value in imperial or entrepreneurial enterprises.  The consequence of disloyalty and betrayal was immediate in royal courts as it also is today in gangs or mobs—execution. The son clearly defines his actions along these lines. The son admits that his venture broke a covenantal bond, a sacred trust, against heaven (God and community) but most importantly with his father. 

“Father, I violated the cosmic order by breaking relationship with you and uniting myself to citizens of a distant country. I exhausted all of your “life” in that country and the only thing it seemed to do was create a severe famine and destroy my life.

The whole confession is encased in the first words of the son’s confession—father. He will not go back to his father’s estate. He will go back to his father, and he will speak directly to his father. 

Sin is often translated as guilt which does carry a more legal and psychological association. As genuine as the son’s confession sounds, it still infuses a transactional, business-like negotiation. Essentially, “I will pay you back.” “I’ll work for you and you will pay me a wage.” Again, the son clearly has the notion of debt in mind here. Even here, the son proposes imperatives for the father to do in a similar way to when he first requested a settlement of his portion of the estate. This is usually not a part of a contrite confession. “Don’t treat me like a son. Hire me as a servant,” he instructs. Sounds more propositional than confessional, as are often our own confessions. “Hey God, let’s make a deal.”

The son’s appeal before his father does not seem to be heavily weighted in the shame or guilt category. He was destitute and devised a plan to reverse his plight. His confession to his father offers no reflection on his time in that distant land.

Perhaps to the ancient listeners of this story, the “sin” is more obvious, but I ponder. What was the sin? That he squandered his wealth? Over-consumption? An ill-conceived business plan? Porn? Demanding his share of dad’s estate while dad is still living? If we lean that direction, we are anachronistically sounding very capitalistic here. 

Or is the sin that he pleaded for his father’s ousia, his father’s life and left his father for a far away place?

And while he was yet far away, his father saw him and was inwardly moved with pity, and ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him fervently. (V20)

Once again, I suggest that if we want to insist on someone being prodigal, no one steals the show like Daddio (Hey, that rhymes). Talk about unrestrained and foolish mush! A bleeding heart liberal. 

When the son summoned his right to the father’s livelihood, the father subordinated himself to his son (humiliated is probably the stronger word), he quietly and immediately acted on the son’s request. But when the son returned and once again told the father what to do, the father spit it out like unfermented beer. He will have none of it. For all the planning the son did to come back, it was a complete waste of time. The father didn’t listen to a word of it. 

Certainly, the father’s response is shock and awe to us. And once again, radically not true in our world. No one does this. No one gushes such exuberance after being left for dead by his child. No one. 

I’ve always imagined the father standing on the front porch of his ranch watching his child disappear in agonizing silence. I see him still on the front poach, perhaps sitting now, but still squinting in vain hope while the sun sets. The father’s family and household watch from a calculated distance the father’s agony. They are not sure whether they should console or council.

And the way Jesus tells us the story, it seems like the father never left the front porch, neglecting all of his patriarchal duties. Now, he watches in despondent hope, never giving up. The distance motif plays on itself. The son goes far, far away, but the father sees him even when he is far, far away. He sees the son even when the son cannot see him, cannot sense him. “Father, where are you?”, he cries out. “Will I ever get there?” “Of all the foolish things I’ve done, the dumbest was thinking I could go back to my father, that I could find my way back.

But we now get a sense of the father’s prodigalness. Of all the mass of resources, of wealth, of riches, of lavish displays, and compulsive, wasteful opulence, it was all made through the father’s venture capital in compassion. He was full of compassion. Mercy oozed from his ousia. Love gushed from his life (v20). 

The word for mercy or pity here is most often found as a precursor to when Jesus performed miracles, especially the feeding miracles. He had compassion on them because “they were like sheep without a shepherd.” It is a response to helplessness. The word is a cognate form of the Greek word for “guts” or “heart,” which in both Hebrew and Greek refer to the seat of our most visceral emotions. The master forgives a servant’s debt because he had pity on a servant (Mt 18:27). “Gut” responses supersedes reason.

The father has compassion on the son because he knows in his gut the helplessness of a terminated, covenantal relationship. How can love stop loving just because of death?

The father did not wait for his son to come near. Instead, he charged to him, put his arms around him and kissed him, fervently. He fell upon him his neck, a prodigal gesture for sure. The Greek connotations here congeal humility and excitement with unbecoming and even ruinous behavior. The son recited his rehearsed confession, but the father not only doesn’t hear it, he negates it. 

I am no longer worthy to be called your son. (V21)

The father ignores the confession and immediately proceeds to extravagantly, obsequiously, prodigally lavish “sonship” on him. “O yes you are worthy of being called my son.” “This ring I place on your finger grants you authority to rule as my son.” He places a robe on him which not only looks nice, but confers authority over the household. For sure, jealousy, envy and disgust would secretly seethe from those in the household, although they surely did not mind the meat, music, and booze. 

And of course, the father throws another one of his endless, prodigious, incorrigibly lavish parties! “Let us eat and celebrate! “Fire up the grill.” “Turn the music up!” “Let’s dance!”

At some point, we may perhaps ponder whether the father and the son had some scheme going on the whole time. Nobody does what the son or the father do. No one. This story is truly unbelievable. Certainly, the prudent son thought so.

It shouldn’t be too hard to imagine into the contagion being lit up on social media over the father’s prodigious propensities. He is dissipating his “life” just like his venturing son. The algorithm engine is revving up as eyes roll and heads subtly nod from side to side. No self-respecting oligarch behaves like this. None. 

Because this son of mine (v24)

The father attempts an early intervention in order to minimize collateral damage. He begins in a similar way as his son’s rehearsed appeal. There, the son prioritizes the appeal. “My father.” Everything else is secondary. The father follows suit, “my son.” At least those two get it. I’m not sure the father’s household, the older son, or we get it. (This is, by the way, why Jesus tells us parables: to help us get it.) We, like the older son, are laser focused on the father’s wealth, losing sight of the father’s primary source of capital—mercy and communion.

He was dead. 

Stop for a moment here. The son wasn’t physically dead, but Jesus had it right. Killing and dying are more about relationship severed, covenants chattered, identity stolen, partnerships reneged, trust betrayed, home destroyed, life wasted, and love spurned. Death is eternal separation of that which was never meant to be or designed for loneliness. 

And is alive again. 

But now, he has sprung back to life. He is alive, animated, and vibrant. Why? What made it so, the journey back, the ring, the robe, the party, the confession? No, it was the father’s incorrigible embrace. It was union with the father and reception into his father’s house. The son was dead until that moment. A slathering, near chokehold around the neck jettisoned the son from nether regions to paradise. 

He was lost. 

It is tempting to assume a geographical quality to the son being lost. As mentioned before, we tend to associate prodigal with waywardness. But the story doesn’t allow us to presume the son was directionally challenged. He deliberately went to a distant land and just as deliberately came back. He didn’t stop to sightsee on the way. He wasn’t a tourist. The son didn’t get lost; he was lost. He perished as if in a shipwreck. His stock plummeted emptying his fortunes. He didn’t lose direction; he relinquished his ousia, his meaning, his purpose, his value. And of course, all value is determined by its relationship to something else. 

The lost and found motif is a hit with Jesus. There is a strong sense of belonging in Jesus’ parables. The lost coin belongs in the widows purse. The lost sheep belong under the protective care of the shepherd. The five hundred year diaspora of the Jewish people belong with their God and his messiah (Christ).

A slave sums up the lost-and-found and dead-now-alive motifs this way (v27); he has been received back and in good health. He has not just physically and geographically come. More importantly, the father has received him as his own—this son of mine—and healthy, whole, sound, restored, enlivened. 

Of course, the only one who found the son was the father seeing him from a far distance because he was the only one longing for him. The son was enlivened and found the moment the father “fell upon” his neck. 

But the older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near the house…(v25)

We should not blow off the amount of development the story gives to the older son. The father speaks very highly of him. If there is incrimination, it can only be inferred from the elder son’s own words. 

The father takes very seriously the concerns of his older son. He has compassion on him. Things are not right if the older son refuses to join the party. The father goes out to him in a similar way as he did with the younger son. 

The two sons are woven from the same cloth in some ways. They both tend to view their relationship with their father as one of economic exchange. I work for you; you pay me. I invest in your enterprise, and at some point, I take over the business. I slave for you, and I have food and shelter. They can be quite demanding of their father as well. 

There are a few oddities about how the father interacts with the older son. Unlike the father’s acquiescence when his younger son left, he goes out to him in a similar way as he did to his returning son. The father zealously acted to equally receive “this son of mine.” Unlike the younger son who “came to himself” and was determined to go to his father, the elder son “became angry and refused” to go to his father. And unlike the story of the younger son that was shrouded in quiet mystery, the father pleads with the older son. Essentially, the father calls for his older son to come alongside. He pleads, consoles, comforts, and maybe even apologizes for his prodigious inclinations. He verbalizes what remained silent with the behavior of his younger son. “Come back.” “Belong.” “Be of good cheer.” “Nothing of yours has been lost.” The older soon has all that the father has as long as he understands the communal nature of the father’s life. “All that I have is yours,” the father affirms, but that cannot be held in private bank accounts. It is held in public trusts. 

Here in the prudent son’s response is where the biggest difference lie between the sons can be found. The prudent son demands that he be understood. His relationship with his father is couched more in slave/master terms than familial. “You have never given to me,” the elder son insists. Not true, the father replies. 

The prudent one continues to distance himself from his father. First, he wanted a portion of the father’s possession to go party with his friends, away from the father in a similar way as the younger in a distant land. 

But even mores so, he distances himself from being in relationship with the father, of being related to the father. “This son of yours,” he demands the father hear. But the father has already affirmed the sonship of the younger. It is the very basis of reception—“this son of mine.”

As mentioned earlier, the prudent son presumes to know exactly in what way the younger son expended “all he had” in that distant land. He devoured it in self-indulgence. We don’t know how the younger son dissipated the father’s life, but the older son makes his intentions clear. He desired to party apart from dad with his “friends.” The prudent son goes further, accusing the younger of partying with whores. Sexual impropriety always seems to be the default assumption of the prudent types. The prudent son certainly presumes what the story does not tell. 

Child, you are always with me, and my things are yours. (31)

The prudent son’s anger and defiant isolation emerge not so much from the presumed behavior of his younger brother, but from the presumed disposition of the father. The prudent one projects on his father that which better applies to the prudent son. The prudent one views his dad as prudent, not prodigal. The father offers his apology: “You are incorrect to assert that I have been stingy toward you.” You are incorrect to presume that you are not a family member. “I am your father, and he is your brother.” “All that I have, my life and my ousia, are freely yours.” 

The older son ended up being as distant or perhaps even more distant to his father. He too traveled to a distant land even while being physically present on the ranch. 

If there is to be a model “sinner” in the story, who would it be? The indulgent, prodigal son who emulates his prodigal dad? Or the indignant, prudent son who viewed his dad more as a taskmaster than a father and viewed himself more as a slave to a stingy landlord than an endeared child?

If there is to be a model of repentance, where does that come out. With the younger son who “comes to himself?” Or with the appeal of the father to the prudent son: come celebrate and rejoice. All that I have is yours as well. 

(Continued in part 2)

We had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and came to life, and was lost and has been found. (V32)

The story ends with the reckless, dangerous, wastefully extravagant and ridiculously opulent father’s bold insistence on his incorrigible nature. No where in the story is the father is as insistent and near commanding as in his final statement. First off, it is a plural injunction—we. It is the whole household (including the poor dead calf) that is enjoined. The Greek word dei, which is repeated, puts added oomph to the father’s compulsion. Dei denotes destiny, obligation, compulsion, or urgency. It is incorrigibly right, the father persists, to have a good time, be joyful, and be glad. And it is completely necessary to be filled with hope and cheer. 

There a lots of people who weekly try to conjure up such good feelings through all kinds of venues. But in this story, just throwing a party does not inspire them. The father repeats the impetus not just for the party, but from the life and ousia of the father in his fullness. To remind, it is repeated for the prudent son’s sake. He appeals to him to embrace the younger son and in so doing be received as a beloved child just as the father received the younger. 

The father insists on unbreakable family ties. “This is your brother as well as my son.” He has returned alive and whole because he belongs here with us. The prodigious father’s unending wealth generated by mercy and love finds its fullest expression not in possessions or money, but in belonging and communion. 

The historical/literary lens of the parable.

As I was writing this commentary on the parable, the more conventional interpretation of it readily came to mind. Luke plainly sets the context. The pious are having a problem (being scandalized really) with Jesus’ mode of operation. 

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Lk 15:1-2).

I’ll add here to my earlier discussion of sin. Sin is god-related, but all aspects of life on planet earth were considered god-related back then. Ritual purity was symbiotically connected to all aspects of life. This was serious business. Look to Job for example (Job 1:4-5). Sinner, especially in the context of Luke chapter 15, is nearly equated with heathen, godless, or impious. As for many still today, secular means atheist and atheist means immoral. And as the case of a woman having sex outside the controlling patriarchal world, sin gets equated with criminal activity and deserving capital punishment. There was for many, and still is, a strong sense that ritual degradation leads straight to societal collapse and chaos leading to violent death. 

From this vantage point, sin not only equates with criminal activity, but equally with being outside the community and far away from favor with the community’s God. They are guilty by a lack of association. 

The scandal is not just that Jesus is associating with them. Even worse, He welcomes them. He embraces them and like the father in the parable, he parties with them. Oh yes, and like the son who takes the father’s ousia to a distant land, he indiscriminately scatters all his dad’s life even if they are ungrateful and abandon him once the father’s wealth is spent.

In the tense moment of scandal and accusation, Jesus tells three parables all centered on the joy of recovering that which had been considered dead and lost. It equally focuses on a character who relentlessly and with the power of intent searches for the lost one and goes out of his/her way (even far, far away) to get it!

In this interpretive lens, we naturally see Jesus as the shepherd or the woman with the silver coins. But wait, who is Jesus in the last parable? The father going out to receive his lost son? Or the son going out to a distant land to dissipate his dad’s wealth? There is a critical element missing from the other “lost” parables. The sheep and coin are not acting volitionally. 

It also seems clear from the conventional lens that the “sinners and tax collectors” are represented by the younger son, and the “pharisees and scribes” seem to represent the angry indignant older brother. 

Let us be reminded of how the story unfolds. Only the younger son says he has sinned, and this seems to be the avenue for his “being found.” But this is not correct. The father does not acknowledge that self-description. He ignores it. Completely. Not only does the father go out to receive his son, but the son determinately gets up and goes back to the father. He lets himself be found. 

There is more to this parable than what is addressed in the other two parables, and it has to do with who Jesus is, his own self-understanding. Jesus was, and is, a hard person to get, and I suggest that neither the tax collectors and sinners nor the pharisees and the scribes were getting it. Jesus sheds light on what is going on in a broader context than the historical or literary. 

And this is where I’ll turn to Serge. I suggest that much of what Serge describes of the self-renouncing, self-giving love within the Trinity has striking characteristics with the parable. 

On top of or perhaps woven into the historical/literary context is the mystical context. Something of ultimate reality (hypostasis) is bleeding into the scene. 

Yes, I am saying that perhaps we would do well to not see ourselves in the image of the younger son, at least not primarily. After all, when did we ever leave the father’s house with his ousia? (‘I’ll get to that below). Who among us has had such wealth and then “scattered” it on foreigners? No we are much more prudent than that. 

If anything, we should see ourselves in the story as the people of that far, far away place where the younger son obsequiously squandered the father’s wealth. We are the type that would gladly suck the life out of God and obstinately refuse to give the son a damn thing in return, enslaving him and not even sharing pig food with him. As the story goes, no one in the far, far country ever “repented.”

Perhaps, in a mystical sense, we should see Jesus as the primary referent in the younger son. Even more so, we should soak in the prodigious relationship and exchange between the younger son and his father and in the emotional appeal of the father to the elder son as pointing to the “all-unity” and “integral wisdom”of God not just in his nature, but in His goal (Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, 103). 

It is as my title suggests. This is the story of a prodigious family and their struggle to stay together.

Serge

In the introduction, I explained my experiences that led me to ponder the parable. It was Serge (Sergius Bulgakov), however, who pushed me to see the parable through another lens, what in Orthodox circles is often called mystical. 

I’ve shared in other places, my reluctance to go down the allegory path so prominent in much of Orthodox writing and hymnody. Had Serge not have stuck to me, I would conclude my article here. Unfortunately, Serge got me thinking. 

Bulgakov’s book, the Lamb of God, attempts to move the lengthy historical discussion of who was/is Jesus forward a bit. He follows the logic of the early formulators of that pursuit. It is a slow and tedious read because the question pushes to the extreme the very boundaries of logic and reason, all the while not abandoning them. How could Jesus be both fully God and fully human?

Orthodoxy is many things, but it is one thing for sure. It is an aspect that I’m not sure many orthodox grasp very well. It is a relentless pursuit of the fathomless depths of how a human can be fully God and fully human without one of those “natures” somehow devouring or distorting the other. It refuses to leave things undone and corners unexplored. 

I of course in the space of this article cannot give justice to Bulgakov’s exploration. The critical thing for me here is Bulgakov’s insistence on some kind of exchange that must have taken place in eternity. Somehow, Jesus is related to God. Somehow, God is connected to his creation. Somehow, we humans are connected to God both through creation and through Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. Bulgakov mines the depths of that by meticulously sorting through the early formulations of the Trinity and refining them. 

Although we rarely think about, Christians should affirm that G-O-D is ultimate reality or the true underlying substance to all things. Hypostasis is the favored word in Christian theology for God’s essence or nature, and it is welded to the sense of personhood. The huge chasm between our human sense of person and God’s is that God’s personhood is actualized and dynamic. “It is the eternal act of trinitarian self-positing in another…each going out from itself into the others in the ardor of self-renouncing personal love” (95). 

Our human quest to formulate our personhood moves toward a closed system of self-affirmation and egotism. It is rigid and inflexible. God’s tri-personal nature is ever-actualized and renewed in self-giving, transparent, and self-renouncing love “that totally vanquishes personal isolation.” For Bulgakov, an essential aspect of God’s nature is the total transparency of the three persons of the Trinity towards one another and towards creation and humanity. 

If I was at all convincing in my unconventional reading of the parable, we can perhaps see that transparency in the father and the younger son. 

The personhood of God is forever placed and defined by and for the other. If we are to know anything about God and enter into a relationship with God, God must reveal himself (sorry for the male pronoun; our language is limited here). We humans are trained to hide our true selves by the multitude of hurt caused by human interaction. It is difficult and even shocking to contemplate a personal entity of total self-giving, of absolute transparency, of one who hides nothing and gives everything. It is an entity of prodigious and incorrigible compassion. 

We are trained (or perhaps indoctrinated) to believe that self-discovery and identification is a completely introspective venture. The more we shut out external voices, the better our chances are of “finding our true self.”

Serge would assert the opposite is true of God. God’s nature as person (hypostasis) can only be acquired for Himself by proceeding out of Himself. God/love can only be defined and revealed through loving another. 

I offer here a few quotes from Serge that seem to strongly affirm the active images in the parable (98)

He divided the share of the ousia (Lk 15:12)

“Fatherhood is precisely the form of love in which the loving one desires to have himself not in Himself but outside himself”

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…this son of mine.” (Lk 15:20-24)

“The Father lives in begetting, that is, in proceeding out of Himself, in revealing Himself. The Father’s Love is ecstatic, fiery, causitive, active. Unfathomable for the creaturely spirit is the begetting of the Son by the Father, of the Person by the Person.”

Let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found! (Lk 15:24).

“For the Father, begetting is self-emptying, the giving of Himself and of His own to the Other; it is the sacrificial ecstasy of all-consuming, jealous love for the Other: “love is strong as death.”

Father, give me the share of the inheritance that belongs to me…he went to a distant country and there he scattered his living prodigally. (Lk 15:12-13)

"The Son, as the Son, has Himself and His own not as Himself and His own but as the Father’s, in the image of the Father. Spiritual sonhood consists precisely in the Son’s depleting Himself in the name of the Father."

He had spent everything…no one gave him anything. (Lk 15:14, 16).

“Sonhood is already eternal kenosis.”

Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to become your son. (Lk 15:19)

Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. (Lk 3:21-22)

“The sacrifice of the Son’s love consists in self-depletion…the mutual sacrifice of generation, the self-emptyinhg and self-depletion.”

An eternal (now and ever and unto the ages of ages) exchange of mutual self-renunciation, self-emptying, self-giving, self-offing defines the nature of the true God. 

Serge repeatedly conjures the image of an ever churning flame to help our deprived souls perceive divine mystery. The love between the father and son is a never-ending transaction of love. 

This ever-churning flame of self-offering and self-revealing exchange of the Trinity is the Divine nature. It is “Divine bliss”, the joy and ever actualized sacrificial love. 

What, if any, does this have to do with repentance?

Repentance must fundamentally start with our picture of God. Is it begging for mercy before a judge who has found us guilty of a crime or of neglect of ritual procedure? Or Is it about returning to a situation or a home that seems like we’ve never been to before. How can this story be a model of repentence for us? Was it meant to be? We never knew the hearth of the father’s house. How could we be “coming to our senses” and returning to a place we’ve never been?

Repentance is accurately depicted in the parable when the younger son “comes to himself,” when he rediscovers his true self. 

Repentance also involves an embrace of the truth about ourselves that jettisons our desire to “go to my father” in a perpetually progressive and futuristic posture. 

I’ll turn one more time to defining sin. Some variation of the word sin is found in nearly all European languages, and they cover the same ground as my discussion of sin above. Although the debt aspect tends to fade while the idea of a crime, violation, guilt, and punishment become more pronounced. All of them are premised on the same notion expressed by the younger son—“I have sinned against heaven.” Nearly all human cultures embrace a sense of divine or cosmic order that humans can and regularly do violate. Sin runs the gamut of offense, to not participating in cultural norms, to broken economic arrangements, to violent crimes. 

All the European variations of sin probably derive from a proto-indo-european notion of truth, reality, or essence as in “truly you are the one” or “it is true” about a person. All point to a revealing of something that was hidden or not clear before. In this regard, our word sin is closely related to the Greek word in the parable for “living” (ousia) and “life” (bios).

Repentance is the “coming to ourselves” or “coming to our (full) senses.” It is coming to awareness of our origins, our home.

Ironically, repentance did not mean for the younger son going back to the pig pen, but going forward to his father. It did not reflect on the recent past, but on a remote past. It was the distant past that promoted his future. From then on, repentance would be future orientated. 

Once the younger son “came to himself” he set out straightaway to return to his home and most importantly to his father. It was a determination shrouded in uncertainty. He had known the hearth of his father’s home and the kiss of his father’s devotion before, but he was not counting on that again. In his rehearsed confession, he imaged his former relationship with his father to be dead. He would now face a taskmaster and judge. He thought a labor of appeasement could at least afford him food and shelter. Even then, however, he imagined an economic arrangement: I do this for you, and you pay me.

Our journey to dad is the reverse of the younger son. We live out an image of God as taskmaster and judge and busy ourselves with a multitude of appeasement strategies in order to negotiate a “deal” with God.

In his book You Are Gods; on Nature and Supernature, David Bentley Hart presents a much fuller and adequate picture of how we humans have some notion of home and the Father from our inception. 

He for one, he finds inspiration from Bulgakov who affirms that the human spirit is “uncreated” and proceeds from God as an outpouring from his essence” (123). I can only allude to the extended presentation of Hart. We have an origin already in God when God breathed His spirit into humanity. We are merely called to forever ascend to our “share of the inheritance that has ‘fallen’ to us.” 

“All Trinitarian theology depends upon the belief that Christ’s kenosis is not a moment of separation, a descent from some otherworldly pleroma into a condition of estrangement, but a manifestation of the one eternal act by which God is God…The story of the Son’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection is not the story of a divine masquerade, of a king who goes forth in self-divestment simply to return to the estate he has abandoned, losing himself in the far country and then finding his true self again only in his return to his distant demesne. The Son goes forth because going forth is always already who he is as the one who reveals God, because all wealth and all poverty are already encompassed in his eternal life of receiving and pouring out, his infinitely accomplished bliss and love: he is the God. He is in his very divestment and in his glory, both at once, as the same thing, inseparably.”

“ The resurrection shows that the Son traverses the infinite as the infinite gift, never ceasing to be the true form of God: the “excess” of his infinity remains beauty, even as it spills over and erases all boundaries. The greater the freedom of the Son’s journey in this world, the more profound the difference spanned and the farther the distance traversed, the more surely is God is God. The Father’s power is manifest most profoundly in the Son’s kenosis because that power is the infinite peace of eternal venture of love, the divine ecstasy whose23 fullness is the joy of eternal self-outpouring” (You are Gods, 47).

There is a part of each human spirit that holds a vestigial essence of the divine creaturely nature. The more we allow ourselves to be caught up in God’s eternal motion of self-positing, self-giving, and self-revealing exchange within the mystery of the Trinity, the more we say Yes to our own participation in the Divine life and with renewed determination say, “I will go to my father.”