The parable of the prodigal son is often touted as one of the greatest stories ever told not only for its extraordinarily artful narration, but more significantly for revealing the heart of God in a manner that totally baffles the listener. In the story, God is depicted as one whose love is extravagant to a degree that it is, humanly speaking, insane.
The story of the prodigal son is preceded by two other parables, that of the lost sheep and that of the lost coin. All three parables develop the same theme on the lavish behavior of God’s love which eludes reason to the point of making it seem foolish.
For what can be more foolish than to abandon the ninety-nine sheep in pursuit of a lost one? Or what sense is there in turning the whole house upside down to search for a small coin? And if it were not weird enough, each calls his/her friends and neighbors to a celebration for having found what was lost.
The parable of the prodigal son follows the same pattern and heightens such “foolishness” to an even more outrageous degree. The father loses a son who asks for his inheritance. Such request is not only premature but extremely callous and cruel. The inheritance is given only after a parent dies. In effect, the son tells his father, “As far as I am concerned, you are dead to me.”
He leaves the house and squanders his inheritance in dissolute living until he sinks in utter penury and experiences the ultimate humiliation. He survives by taking care of pigs (unimaginable for any Jew) and eating their food.
In his wretched state, he remembers how the servants in his father’s house are much better off. He then “comes to his senses” and decides to return to his father and beg to take him back, no longer as a son but as one of his servants.
From afar the father sees him (hinting that each day he watches for his return), and “filled with compassion, he [runs] to his son, embrace[s] him and kiss[es] him.” For a father to run in public and meet a son who has disgraced him and the family is culturally unacceptable and manifests a foolish demeanor in utmost degree.
As the son begins to recite his rehearsed speech of coming back as a servant, the father interrupts him and orders that the robe, ring and sandals be brought and put on him – all marks of his full reinstatement as son. Then he calls for a great celebration “because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.”
The parable of the prodigal son (more appropriately, the parable of the lost son) is the story of a father’s love which exceeds all human understanding and is seen as sheer madness. For indeed God’s ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts. (cf. Is 55:8)
Today’s gospel explicates last Sunday’s message wherein Jesus warns: Repent or Perish. To repent means to return to God and failure to do so means to perish. Biblical scholars have an interesting way of explaining this with today’s gospel. When the son received his inheritance, he set off to “a distant country” (cora macra), which is in Greek means “the great emptiness.” That is precisely what awaits us when we leave the Father’s house – the great emptiness and total loss. When we turn away from God, we turn away from life. For God is life and the source of all life.
The story is told of a Moslem scholar who was asked to translate the parable of the lost son into Arabic. When he read his final translation, he could not keep himself from crying for he had never imagined how God could have such tender love for his children.
While the story of the lost son may confound the human mind and make it believe that God is out of his mind, it never fails to move the human heart and make it convinced that God is madly in love with each of his children.*
