Sept. 15, 2013 - 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time [Cycle C]
(This reflection originally appeared in September 2010 as part of the weekly Scripture-based Small Church Community program at the University of Michigan.)
Nearly every Christian can recite the Parable of the Prodigal Son from memory; its message is as potent and pertinent for contemporary audiences as it would have been for Jesus’ original listeners. But exploring who those listeners would have been—and what sort of predispositions would have been operant in their worldview as they heard these stories—can help us even better understand the core truths of Jesus’ message.
It is important to note at the outset that Jesus was in the presence of both Pharisees and “sinners.” In ancient Jewish society, sin was considered to be a contagious phenomenon—one could become unclean and infected simply by associating too closely with the wrong sorts of people. For this reason, lepers, cripples, and the mentally ill were all forced to live outside the main walls of a given town for fear that their disease—and all diseases were thought to originate in a moral failing of some sort, whether one’s own or of one’s family—might make the larger community unclean. Thus, Jesus’ willingness not only to interact with “sinners” and lepers and the unclean, but actually to dine with them (sharing a meal with someone being the chief external symbol of unity among individuals) was to make a public statement that would have shocked the sensibilities of His contemporaries. It is no wonder the Pharisees are complaining about Jesus’ habits—imagine what people would say if they saw the local Bishop hanging out by a brothel on weekends!
The Pharisees, for their part, often get a bad rap, but Jesus here demonstrates that His ministry was not only to those OUTSIDE the community, i.e. the sinners, but to those who considered themselves well within the graces of God. The Pharisees were pious to an extreme—their knowledge of the Law was unparalleled, and many were upright, holy individuals. But it was this same intimacy with the rules of the religion that led many to develop an exaggerated sense of self-righteousness, as though their knowledge of the Law made them somehow ethically superior or morally unimpeachable. They began to use the Law not to bring people closer to God, as it was intended, but as a way of condemning and drawing lines of division between who was holy and who was not. It is this latter behavior that Jesus repeatedly points to as being singularly problematic and antithetical to the true essence of the Law—i.e. helping people cultivate a deeper relationship with God and live in closer relationship with one another.
Shepherds were manual laborers who lived out in the fields with their flocks; they were often quite dirty and poorly educated. So when Jesus holds up the shepherd in pursuing his lost sheep, He is offering a surprising paradigm of virtue. It would be akin to a modern day preacher holding up the diligence of a janitor in staying after-hours to ensure every single grease stain were cleaned up off a kitchen floor—even if he weren’t getting paid.
The audience might have expected Jesus to hold up a well-educated Scribe or a devout Pharisee as an exemplar, but instead Jesus chooses two of the lowest classes of individuals in His society—a manual laborer and a woman. (Recall that women were not allowed to own property, to vote, or to testify in court.) This would have stunned His listeners!
All of which was to set up the Parable of the Prodigal Son, in which He deftly crafts His message to have maximum impact among both of these groups, the sinners AND the Pharisees. To the sinner, the persons literally living on the outside who probably felt as though there were no way for them ever to become part of the community again, Jesus is articulating a message that there is absolutely nothing so horrible that they could ever do that God would not forgive them for. The sin of the son would have been horrific to Jesus’ audience—asking for one’s share of the inheritance was equivalent to saying (and meaning), “I wish you were dead,” as he would only have received his inheritance once his father had passed away.
Jesus deliberately chooses one of the most extreme sins conceivable and goes on to say that the mercy and love of God is so great that not even that could prevent forgiveness and full reconciliation. Moreover, the Father is depicted as having run out to greet his son—in terms of honor and social protocol, this would be equivalent to the CEO of a corporation fetching coffee for the interns on the way into work in the morning right after the interns had made a decision that cost the company to lose billions of dollars. God is shown as not only forgiving us, but eagerly awaiting our return so that He can run out to embrace us with open arms and a loving heart. How much consolation this should give the sinner in us!
...And how much it should challenge the Pharisee in us. Most of us are relatively holy people, knowledgeable of the tenets of the faith and righteous in our attempt to live it. But we are likely also guilty at times of feeling morally superior and judging those who live in some form of sin. This parable challenges that part of us to be as unconditionally loving and forgiving as the father. It reminds us there is no room for resentment or bitterness in the community of faith, and that we are called to be part of the celebration any time someone among us is brought back into relationship with God. It has been said that the Church’s mission is to bring comfort to the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Insofar as we are sinners, afflicted by our failings and believing ourselves unworthy to be called children of God, this story should bring us comfort. And inasmuch as we are comfortable, self-satisfied that we are morally upright persons who would never commit the sort of sin being described, this same parable should afflict us, discomfort us, and challenge us to be more like the father who rejoices, and less like the older brother who complains.
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