Amy-Jill Levine, an Orthodox Jew and well-respected scholar, interacts with and lectures to both Christian and Jewish audiences. In her book, "Short Stories by Jesus," she reveals new depths to this story by explaining how Jesus' original audiences of Jews would have understood the characters and Jesus' message - for, after all, Jesus was a Jew. And Jesus was interested in the universal story of difficult family dynamics.
Levine asks us difficult questions:
- Was the younger son really "lost" because his father made a mistake?
-Which son is "more lost," the younger one who left, or the elder who stayed at home?
-Is this parable really about who is "lost" and who is "found" in our lives? About the mistakes we make - like the father - in our own human relationships, and how we can find ways to reconcile?
Let's take a new look at this fascinating parable through Levine's specialized glasses, - her intimate knowledge of Judaism.
A father has two sons. We begin by focusing on the younger one. The younger son asks for his share of the inheritance. Levine comments that this may be unwise, but it's not sinful, it was done then, and it happens now. He's not treating his father as if he's dead: "Jewish legal scholar Bernard Jackson trenchantly observes, 'Jewish legal sources give no support to (the idea) that the prodigal, in seeking the advance, wishes his father dead.'" (Levine).
In fact, it is the father who ignores conventional Jewish wisdom - as presented for example by Ben Sirach, author of "Sirach," also known as The Book of Ecclesiasticus: "In all that you do, retain control...When the days of your life reach their end, at the time of your death distribute your property." (33.23 - 24.) Also the father gives half his estate to his younger son. According to the Book of Deuteronomy, the eldest son should receive two-thirds of the estate, but by Jesus' time, fathers determined the amounts that they gave their children according to their own preferences. Yet perhaps, the youngest son is the favorite, as many younger sons in the Old Testament are. We wonder, - has he perhaps been spoiled, that he wants his inheritance - NOW? And should his father have indulged him?
We are not told at this point how the eldest son is feeling. "The older brother may have been busy exulting in having his own share of the estate, fuming over being given half rather than two-thirds, or feeling resentful that once again Dad had indulged Junior's ill-conceived request." (Levine)
The younger son proceeds to cut himself off from family, friends, neighbors, and homeland, going probably to a Gentile (non-Jewish) region since we're told that the people there raise pigs. However, this would not have been surprising or anathema to Jesus' Jewish audience. "Jews in the Diaspora welcomed gentiles into their synagogues, worked with gentiles in the marketplaces,talked to gentiles in the public baths. At the time of Jesus, there were probably more Jews living outside Judea and lower Galilee than there were in the Jewish homeland..." The son is also not guilty of apostasy, since he feeds the pigs, doesn't touch them by butchering them.
Here, away from everyone he knows, the younger son squanders his property in dissolute living. Then there is a strong famine in the region. We in the U.S. tend to not really comprehend the devastating results of a famine, or the fact that no one gives this stranger in a strange land anything to eat. Levine observes "Junior's yearning to be filled (Greek epithymein chortasthenai) is the same term used to describe the sick and destitute Lazarus in Luke 16.21.) Whether from personal, familial, natural, or cultural causes, the younger son is in trouble. He has encountered the perfect storm."
He decides to go home and say to his father "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; not still am I worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired laborers." Is this son really repenting? Or conniving? The Jury may be out on this one. In the Book of Exodus, Pharaoh says the same words to Moses to push him to stop the plagues: " I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you.'" Empty words - for later he sends his army after the Jewish slaves as they escape. Is the prodigal's strategy "I'll go to Daddy and sound religious"? (Homiletician David Buttrick)
His father, who had probably been looking for his return daily, runs out to welcome him, and kisses him with joy and compassion, as, Levine asserts, a Jewish patriarch would have done. He says to his slaves "Quickly carry out a robe, the first, and put it on him, and give the ring to his hand and sandals to the feet." He orders a banquet so everyone can rejoice.
"Whether the son is sincere or not, his father doesn't care...He is joyful, he wants to celebrate, and he wants everyone to share his joy." (Levine)
But who has NOT been invited to this party? The elder son is in the field, drawing near to the house, and he hears music. He asks one of the servants what is going on, and finds out that his brother has returned and his father has ordered the grain-fed calf to be slain and is holding a party. The elder son becomes angry and does not want to go in. No one had run out to tell him about the party; no one had noticed that he was missing. Perhaps in this family, an understandable sibling rivalry has been going on.
"As one commentator observes, the father indulges the one who slights him and slights the one who indulges him." (Levine) Right now, the elder brother is finding it hard to acknowledge these relationships of father and brother. How often do these feelings of anger and senses of isolation surface in families today? How often does one child feel - rightly or wrongly - that another sibling is the favorite, and that he or she is ignored?
The father, finding out what is happening, suddenly realizes that he has another lost son who needs to be returned to the family in order for his family to once again be complete. He goes out to meet his son in the fields and comforts him and urges him to come in. The elder son vents his resentment:
"Look, all these years I am slaving for you, and not one commandment of yours have I passed by, and for me not one young goat did you give so that with my friends I might rejoice. But when your son, this one, the one who ate up your life (the inheritance) with whores came, you sacrificed for him the grain-fed calf." (Luke 15: 29-30.)
Once again a familiar family dynamic is uncovered: "The son's fidelity has been overlooked. Once again the problem child receives more attention, or more love, than the prudent and faithful one." (Levine) What can the father do to reassure this lost son of his love?
"Child," he responds, "you are always with me, and everything that is mine is yours. But it remains necessary to cheer and to rejoice, because your brother, this one, was dead, and lived to life, and being lost, even was he found." (Luke 15: 31-32.)
In the Greek, instead of "son," the word used here is "teknon," better translated "child." It is the same word of endearment that Mary uses when she and Joseph, after desperately searching for Jesus, find him in the Temple. This father reminds his elder son that the younger one is his brother. The father is now working with everything he is to reassure this son of his love and to make his family whole again.
Yet the parable ends with both father and elder son still in the field. What will happen? Will the elder son go in to the party? Will this little family be restored to peace? How much this family reminds us of our own families, our own friendships, in which relationships are so complex, and we're constantly - or should be - about the business of working for wholeness!
Levine's final response to the parable is one we can all take to heart:
"When it comes to families, there are factors other than repentance and forgiveness that hold us together....Recognize that the one you have lost may be right in your own household. Do whatever it takes to find the lost and then celebrate with others, both so that you can share the joy and so that the others will help prevent the recovered from ever being lost again. Don't wait until you receive an apology; you may never get one. Don't wait until you can muster the ability to forgive; you may never find it. Don't stew in your sense of being ignored, for there is nothing that can be done to retrieve the past.
"Instead, go have lunch. Go celebrate, and invite others to join you. If the repenting and the forgiving come later, so much the better. And if not, you still will have done what is necessary. You will have begun a process that might lead to reconciliation. You will have opened a second chance for wholeness."
When we meditate on this family, fractured in an all-too-familiar way, we see the genius of Jesus, the Master of the human soul. He invites us to meditate on who in this family we identify with - the father, the younger son, or the elder son. Perhaps, at different times in our lives, we could identify with all three! Today we can ask ourselves, - Who in our lives is still lost? Whom have we made mistakes about? Whom have we unwittingly taken for granted or ignored? How can we work to show love, to bring about reconciliation?