The Parable of the Prodigal Son
The Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor
Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy
Piedmont College
Demorest, Georgia

One reason the parable of the prodigal son remains lively after some two thousand years of interpretation is because it is so amoral. 1) The son’s return home has nothing to do with loving or missing his family. He comes home because he is dying of hunger. 2) His father forgives him before he ever gets a word of repentance out of his mouth. 3) The older brother is made out to be the villain when the fact is that his baby brother has come to live on his—the elder brother’s—share of what’s left of the family fortune.

If this Biblical ethic had been applied in the case of the President, then there would have been no impeachment trial. Once the affair is over and the prodigal comes home, the roast goes straight into the oven. All is forgiven, before any apology is offered. The wages of sin is a lavish party for the sinner. Is this really a story you want your children to learn in Sunday school?

It has been an offensive story all its life. Tertullian, an early defender of the faith, insisted that the parable of the prodigal son must never apply to Christians. If it did, he said, then not only “adulterers and fornicators” but also “idolaters, blasphemers, and renegades” would use the parable to pardon their sin. “Who will worry about losing what can so easily be regained?” he asked, and others agreed with him—especially those who had to decide what to do with Christians who had knuckled under to the Romans.

If you were an early Christian living in the Roman Empire, chances were good that you would sooner or later find yourself standing in front of an altar to Caesar, with several scary looking soldiers in metal hats inviting you to put a pinch of incense on the coals of that altar. If you said no thank you, you would rather not do that, they would let you know that you either did it or you died—and not only you, but also every member of your household, whom they just happened to have in custody.

Under such circumstances quite a few Christians worshipped Caesar (at least for that one day of their lives), and when they tried to return to the fellowship of Christians they often found their ways barred. Novatian, a near contemporary of Tertullian, allowed that while God certainly had the power to forgive such apostasy, the church should not—indeed, could not—re-admit them to the body of Christ without a long and public period of humiliation. If the church really was Christ’s body, Novatian reasoned, then it was supposed to be without sin. To welcome a tainted person back into fellowship was to defile the whole body. They might as well put a little hepatitis B in the communion cup the next Sunday as do something like that.

Tertullian and Novatian were not unopposed in their views. Interestingly enough, the people who argued the other side were mostly pastors and bishops (did I mention that Tertullian was a lawyer?). Ambrose, bishop of Milan in the fourth century, said that to deny anyone—Christian or not—the hope of forgiveness was to make them wanderers and exiles on the earth. Why should anyone ever repent of anything, he said, if they knew they could never go home again?

Gregory of Nazianus, also a bishop in the fourth century, went straight for the purists’ shriveled hearts. “Do you not accept repentance?” he asked them. “Do you not shed a tear of mercy? I hope you may not encounter such a judge as yourself!” He took special exception to Novatian’s teaching that there was a hierarchy of sins, whereby material greed, for instance, was forgivable, but sexual transgression was not. You sound as if you yourself were not made of flesh and blood, Gregory said in reply. “Come on, stand here on our side, on the side of human beings.”

Gregory has zeroed in on something very important here. Where we stand has everything to do with how we hear the parable of the prodigal son. Those of us who have done unforgivable things in our lives—who have broken solemn vows, betrayed sacred trusts, who have hurt the people we love so badly that we have knocked the wind right out of them—we know what it is like to watch those people struggle for breath, while we wait for the words we so richly deserve: “Damn you to hell forever.” When those words do not come, however, when the people who have suffered because of us rise up on one elbow and say, “I’m forgiving you for that”—well, that is when true repentance usually begins—not before the pardon but after it—which is why we will defend this story to the death.

The people who find it offensive tend to be those who, through heroic discipline or complete lack of imagination, have never broken any of the ten commandments. They have never left home. They have never squandered their inheritance. They have never abandoned their responsibilities, and not all of them are insufferable about it, either. Some of them sound genuinely sad about what they have missed. They wish they could do what other people do—just go for the gusto and deal with the wreckage later--sin boldly that grace may abound—only they cannot seem to do that. Faith has to count for something, they explain. It has to be more than talk. If Jesus did not mean for people to live more virtuous lives, then why did he keep calling them to follow him? Someone has to give it a try.

If we can resist the temptation to reduce either of the two brothers in this story to stereotypes—the fun-loving younger brother who finally learns his lesson versus the sour older brother who has never taken a risk—then we may be able to recognize that we need them both as much as they need each other. Each of them embodies at least half of what the gospel is all about. As long as they remain estranged, neither of them can live whole lives.

The younger brother lives entirely by grace. Having dishonored his father, emptied his trust fund, and all but starved to death, he has weighed his options and discovered only two: stay where he is and finish starving to death or go home and beg his father to take him back. When the old man surprises him by running to meet him—a dishonored father, running to meet the boy who did him wrong?—there is no doubt what forgiveness looks like, nor how much it costs. The younger brother lives entirely by his father’s grace. Will anyone tell him he is wrong?

The older brother, meanwhile, lives entirely by obedience to his father. The theological word is righteousness—or, if that is too musty for you—rightness. The older brother has devoted his entire life to being the very best—the most right—son he can be. He has never left his father’s side. He has never gone against his father’s wishes. He has been loyal, respectful, hardworking and honest. Will anyone tell him he is wrong?

Unfortunately, the way this parable is usually handled, you would think his father did, but that is not so. The father has nothing but words of love for either of his sons. In the face of his younger son’s remorse, he orders his servants to dress the boy like a prince. In the face of his older son’s despair, he says, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

This man refuses to choose between his children. All of his energy is focused on getting them back together again, since each of them has something the other badly needs. If the younger son is going to survive, he badly needs some of his older brother’s discipline and devotion. If the older son is going to survive, he badly needs some of his younger brother’s brokenness and humility.

There are no heroes or villains here, just two brothers who have grown up as mirror images of each other. All their lives they have defined themselves by their difference from one another. (Who am I? Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not like him!) While this polarity has provided the family with a perverse kind of balance, the father knows it is time to break the glass. He does this by tipping the balance toward the younger son—the sinner—not because the boy is better in any way but simply because he has come home. “We had to celebrate and rejoice,” the father explains to his stung elder son, “because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

This puts the burden of a happy ending squarely on the shoulders of the older son. No one even remembered to invite him to the party, mind you. He did not know one thing about it until he came home from a full day in the field to the sound of music and dancing. According to his father, however, the party is not really about the younger son. It is really a family reunion--or at least the possibility of a family reunion—if only the elder brother will come inside the house.

In order to do that, of course, he will have to make a choice—between being right and being in relationship with his family—which, as you know if you have ever tried it, can be a wrenching choice to make. Do you dismiss your own airtight case and go inside, just so you will have someone to eat Thanksgiving dinner with for the rest of your life? Or do you stay outside in the yard, where the air is cool and clear, while everyone else is hugging and kissing inside the house?

Remember that the family crime in this story is not addiction, sexual or physical abuse. It is undue forgiveness. It is undeserved love. That is what the elder brother will condone if he walks through the door of that house—not his brother’s behavior but his father’s love. In order to remain part of the family, he will have to make peace with the amorality of that love—either that or leave home himself, in which case he becomes the new prodigal son.

I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but there is something about having only two choices that can absolutely paralyze you. Often, when a third choice materializes, it comes as a gift straight from God. The elder brother’s third choice, I think, is to redefine righteousness--to abandon the lower righteousness (of being right all alone in the yard) for the higher righteousness (of embracing the wrongdoer)—not because it makes sense, or serves justice, or sends a proper message to anyone about facing the consequences of their actions—but simply because it is what the father does. The father embraces wrongdoers. The father welcomes sinners home, even at risk of losing obedient sons and daughters who cannot or will not do the same.

“Come on,” the father says to his elder son, “stand here on our side, on the side of human beings.”

As I said at the start, this piece of the Gospel has not always gone down well with the church. We have argued about it for two thousand years and I expect we will continue to argue about it for two thousand more. We are so afraid of letting people off the hook. We are so resentful of unearned love. Unless we happen to be the ones toward whom the father is running, with his arms wide open and tears wetting his beard. Amen.

Copyright 1999 The Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor

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