The Prodigal Son

Level 4

the Prodigal Son, Compassionate Father, and the Hindered Elder Brother

Luke 15:11-32

by Rev. Norman Prenger

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STATEMENT FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

No one parable is intended to build a complete theology. Instead, parables are but facets to a brilliant diamond in which one after another angle catches fire from in Jesus kingdom vision.  The late Henri Nouwen’s personal reflections on the parable of the Prodigal Son is a memorable meditation but critics keep trying to fault it for being “too man-centered” or “imagining God as weak.”  This is the nature of a parable. As much as they give us deep insights into the mind of Christ, there are limitations to being “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.”    

One of these limitations is that most of Jesus parables contain very human fictional characters. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, there are three of them. They are given realistic flesh and blood characteristics. But that is the limitation to such a story. The compassionate father who allows his son to take his inheritance and squander it cannot also be the divine Father who turns His son’s heart by the Holy Spirit to compel him homeward, in true Calvinist fashion. Whenever I read this parable, I can easily fill in the blanks about irresistible grace taught elsewhere in the Bible. 

But Jesus is not interested in illustrating God’s almighty power to overwhelm all resistance to grace. Instead, Jesus is concerned to show how the weak overcomes the strong in the kingdom, how the seed becomes a bush or a harvest, how an invitation to celebrate can be the test for who is moral and who is not.  In the case of this parable, it is the compassion of a father which serves as a foil to his profligate son and his love-stunted brother, both of whom fail to exhibit the moral perfection of their father. The moral imperfections of these sons are the subject of Jesus’ fictional story.  Their father’s compassion is an axle on which these two imperfect wheels move toward perfection.   

The immoralities of the younger son are summarized in the first portion, beginning with the son’s disrespectful demand of his inheritance.  After that, it’s travel to exotic locations, lavish spending, sex, booze and rock and roll. Due to circumstances partly due to his own choices, the son ends up in poverty tending someone’s pigs, a most horrific situation for a Jew.  In humility he comes to his senses and remembers his father’s goodness. He risks rejection and mockery if he returns home, but he has nothing left to lose.  Hitting rock bottom is not a moral virtue.  

Compare the coming home treatment that the son fears will be his future:  The father sees him coming “from far off” and runs to his youngest, falling over him with complete joy, despite the odor of pig shit and sweat, kissing him as if he is already forgiven, as if his son had never left his heart.  This very vivid description of a father’s homecoming joy is activated by compassion. The word in verse 20 is once again, as we have seen in the first two parables, ἐσπλαγχνίσθη, that deep sympathy which moves the heart to embrace an object of mercy and to assist them in their suffering. Every benefit to the prodigal son flows from compassion – the father hushes the son’s plea for a harsher consequence, quickly there is a clean warm robe, the ring, the fatted calf, the banquet, a celebration of a beloved son’s homecoming.  

The oldest son isn’t moved by his father’s compassion, however. After all, it has all happened so quickly.  What about his brother’s covetous demand for a share in the inheritance and the dishonoring of his father as is prohibited in the Torah?  What about all the squandering and wild living with prostitutes, as this elder son imagined?  He hasn’t even listened to his brother’s story yet. Wasn’t this brother breaking pretty much all the commandments?  Yet here his immorality is celebrated with a fattened calf.  It might as well be a golden calf. 

How Jesus injects a consistent compassion is evident in how the father responds to the older brother’s jealousy which is stunting his son’s love. This retort is patient and loving, evenly tempered.  ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” 

Once again, the Teacher shows us how compassion trumps our legalistic expectations for morality in the kingdom of God.  Both sons need to grow to moral maturity:  one to graduate from carnality, greed, impatience, and self-loathing; the other to graduate from envy, insensitivity, workaholism, and pride. The key to their maturity as true sons is being conformed to the image of their father. 

Compassion is the image of the father and the emblem of all our homecomings.  

Certainly, it is a shocking thing to welcome homosexuals to the bonds of marriage. For many it seems to be a golden calf kind of celebration. Aren’t there Levitical codes which forbid men lying with men, just as there are clear Levitical codes for lying prostitutes and pigs?  And the code also calls for stoning for adulterers and premarital sex and extramarital sex.  Isn’t this why Moses smashed the first tablets as he came down from the top of Mount Sinai?  Yet my brothers and sisters are so much of the mind of elder brother, they can’t even bear the Levitical stench of their homosexual siblings in Christ.

Why are my brothers and sisters so stuck in the Apostle’s illustration in his letter to Roman condemning homosexual activity when his gospel humbles us all as sin-infected hearts desperately in need of grace?  It seems their own secret shame cannot abide that sort of indictment and prefers it to be projected on some scapegoat, as was projected on the younger brother in the parable. The Apostle’s gospel is clear. Consciousness of sin and its obvious consequences was intended to be the first word, not a last word on homosexuality, just as it is the first word in any sort of sexuality outside of marriage.  And the Apostles were not ashamed of his gospel. 

But maturity says, there can be no condemnation in Christ. Listen to our older brother Paul who wrote this. And listen carefully to our elder brother Jesus, whose parable shows us the moral perfection of compassion, reflecting our Father’s love for us all.  

We all need to grow up. 

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RESPONSE

The response given below is the same as that given for the paper on The Servant Who Was Shown Compassion.

The church must certainly show compassion toward those who deal with same-sex attraction. The Christian message is one of patience, mercy, caring, and long-suffering. This has long been manifested e.g., by a number of hospitals that have been founded by churches. There are accounts of parents kicking their teenage son out of the home because he is same-sex attracted. How can that be a good thing to do? The current report to the CRC Synod of 2021 has a good number of references to the compassion Christians must show. In keeping a balance, the church must also know what God’s will is with respect to acts that people commit.

The purpose of these webpages, and this paper as well, is to determine if same-sex erotic acts are in some cases pleasing to God. In striving to determine whether an act is moral or immoral, how can it be beneficial to turn to peoples’ reactions to that act? I dare say it is true that some in the church respond to those attracted to members of the same sex the wrong way. Some respond in a very wrong way. But what light does that shed on same-sex erotic acts? It is not possible for the matter of compassion to ultimately shed light on the question of whether or not the Bible prohibits all same-sex erotic acts.

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