March 18, 2007

Three Faces of Us

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 15: 11-32

The story of the father and his two sons is a “parable.” Parables are closely related to Talmudic stories which are told to challenge conventional and unexamined perceptions, assumptions and beliefs. One is not obliged to take a parable the same way each time one hears it or reads it. It may mean one thing one time, and another the next.

The source of this parable is commonly thought to have been Jesus. That, by the way, is one of those conventional and unexamined assumptions. It’s a tremendously memorable story, but appears only in the Gospel according to Luke and nowhere else. Meaning what? Meaning that somehow between the time Jesus would have lived as an adult (25-35 C.E.) and the composition of Luke (90-95 C.E.), the story was somehow kept under wraps? Not likely. Either the author or authors of Luke wrote the story or picked it up along the way out of some folk lore. Parallels to the story have been uncovered in the literature of several ancient cultures.

Because it appears in a document of the Bible, however, the story is generally assumed to be religious in nature, a commentary on the imagined divine-human relationship. And maybe the author or authors of Luke appropriated it for that very purpose.

The father-figure of the parable seems pretty indulgent at the beginning and at the end. His younger son, who in First Century Palestinian tradition was entitled not to a half but to a third of his patrimony and that only upon the death of the father, demands half anyway – telling his father, in essence, to drop dead. If you didn’t know the story, you’d think the next scene would be of the father erupting in anger and dressing down his uppity, ill-mannered son in no uncertain terms.

Exactly the opposite is depicted. The father gives it up and the son goes on his way – not to start a business of his own or wisely to invest the patrimony but to spend it on wine, women and song in some First Century Mediterranean version of Gay Paree. The Greek word is diaskorpidzo – meaning “to scatter” as one would his wild oats. Next scene: it is said that he came to himself. We would merely say “came to.” When he “came to,” that is out of the soured euphoria of freedom without responsibility and disaster without evident means of recovery, the first thing he thinks of is how it was back on the farm: boring as anything but secure. He confects an apologia worthy of an Oscar-winning scenery chewer and crawls back to Daddy.

Daddy is not only still alive but ready, willing and able to take him back – not as the hired servant the son agrees in advance to become but as fully a son and heir as he was before his abrupt leave-taking. This is not what you might expect. So the grand reunion commences with the finest of robes brought out and the fatted calf impaled upon the barbeque spit. – Enter the elder son, fresh from toil in the fields. Every one of us identifies with his injured surprise that his wastrel brother’s return is being celebrated with a feast instead of a court of inquiry.

Each of these characters is present in every self. We are by turns indulgent with those we love, wanting to believe the best of them and giving all they ask and sometimes more, perhaps fearful of the repercussions of saying “No.” Each of us is the manipulator and will occasionally demand more than we have coming to us. And each of us is betimes attendant upon the routine of our duties and bitterly resent those who live, as we say, off the fat of the land and make no discernable contribution to the good of the cause. Three faces of us.

Yet we cannot always be the indulgent and forgiving parent-type, just as we are more likely to be tempted to grab and run and live the high life than actually do it. And because most of us don’t have access to the kind of patrimony imagined for the younger son, we pretty much stick to our duties – though we sometimes grumble about their unrelenting demands and are critical of others we believe to be more undeservedly privileged than ourselves.

Life at all its levels would be the more congenial and productive and the less unpleasant and frustrating if we would see and check in ourselves what we find deplorable in others. Fewer of us would be fearful of not being liked and thus indulge the manipulator; fewer of us would be tempted to manipulate for selfish ends; more of us would be likely to trust others’ repentance and recovery. All of us would be more likely to see that tending to our work, whatever it may be, is what we’re supposed to be doing regardless of what anybody else does or doesn’t do.

Okay, so such a strategy might not be exactly the kingdom of god come in, but it would make us all healthier and our fellowship more rewarding. And given that life does not go on forever, making insofar as possible the days we have ones of wisdom and grace seems an intelligent choice.

More broadly, I think we are supposed to see in this parable the possibility of a general reconciliation as the father’s indulgence of a selfish son turns out, perhaps as an unintended consequence, to be the agency of their joint redemption, and as that same father’s arm around the elder son’s shoulder assures him that, as the hymn says, Love that matters is broader than the measure of the mind.[1] It really doesn’t add up, yet there it is. And if the vegetarian will recoil at the mention of a fatted calf, then roast a big squash. But celebrate, because in such love the lost is found.

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[1] “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy”, Frederick William Faber (1814-1863)

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.