The Return of the Prodigal Son (1773) by Pompeo Batoni. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pompeo_Batoni_003.jpg
We are nearing the end of the Christianity portion of scriptural analysis. I am about to attempt a fairly complicated post concerning the Gospel of John and I anticipate at minimum a week’s worth of work will go into it. In the meantime, I am posting here the parable of the prodigal son. Use this one as a test, and see what you get for the seeker and unity versions of it. The parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard may help for the purposes of comparison.
Warning: The parable of the prodigal son makes for a very long post.
Luke 15: 11-32.
11-14. Jesus told them a story about a man who had two sons. The younger son said to his father, “Let me have the part of my inheritance from your estate now.” So the father divided his possessions between his sons and after a few days the younger son gathered up his share and traveled to a country far away. Once there he blew through his wealth living an extraordinarily dissolute lifestyle. At the point that he had spent everything there came a great famine in that country and the younger son found himself in dire circumstances.
15-19. In desperation he offered himself as an indentured servant to a man he had met in the city and was sent into the fields to tend to pigs. His hunger was so great that he was willing to root about in the sty and eat the carob husks that pigs had left behind – but there were none. Mired in absolute despair a thought came to him like a small flame in the darkness; his father had many servants at home and all of them had plenty to eat. That thought sustained him as he struggled to pull himself together and he resolved to return to his father. Once there he would say to his father, “I have failed completely before all of creation and have dishonored you. I am no longer worthy of being called your son; I beg you to let me be a servant of yours.”
20-24. Struggling to rise out of his despair, the younger son journeyed back to his father. His father saw him when he was still very far away and the father was overwhelmed by compassion and love. He ran to meet his son, he embraced and kissed him with great devotion. His son said to him, “Father, I have failed completely before all of creation and have dishonored you. I am no longer worthy of being called your son.” But his father said to the servants, “Bring the best clothes for my son, and put rings on his hands and shoes on his feet. Bring out and kill the fattest ox and we will celebrate! For this is my son that I thought was dead and yet he lives; he was lost and is now found.” And the party began.
25-32. The elder son had been out in the fields but as he returned to the house he could hear music and see people dancing. He called to one of the boys and asked him what was going on. The boy said, “Your brother has returned home and your father ordered the fattest ox killed to celebrate his return, as he is safe and sound. The older son became angry and refused to join the party. His father begged him to come but he said to his father, “Look how many years I have worked in your service and not once have I disobeyed you. In all that time you never so much as gave me a goat to roast, in appreciation of my work, so that I could have a party for my friends. But for my brother, who has pissed away his money on prostitutes and easy living, and has now come home with nothing, for him you offer up a fattened ox.” His father replied, “My son! You are with me at all times and everything I have is yours. But it is right for us to rejoice because we thought your brother was dead but instead he lives, and he was lost and is now found.”
I have reconstructed the above largely from Greek interlinears (mostly the Textus Receptus, see BLB Luke 15). The church, very interestingly, focuses on the misery of the prodigal and his relationship to his father. They really just skip a lot of this parable including the presence of the older son as “equal” in the measure of the father’s love. If you have nothing else to do with a huge chunk of your time there is always Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Dives in Misericordia for the Catholic Church’s take on this parable (see Part IV). I’m not recommending that you read it, but I like to offer up the alternatives. It largely focuses on the place of the son in the father’s house, and the aspect of the father as “mercy”:
“…the father sees so clearly the good which has been achieved thanks to a mysterious radiation of truth and love, that he seems to forget all the evil which the son had committed.”
This points out something else that is very important; in this parable the son never asks for forgiveness. The son goes through a recognition process concerning the reality of his condition and returns home humbled. The compassion of the father is all-encompassing and he does not “forget” about the actions of the son in the world, nor does he see a need to forgive him. The father accepts the son as he is and love is not dependent on conditions. Additionally, theologically, a “mysterious radiation of truth and love” comes from the Ground of Being as it desires to be reconciled to the individual.
Now, in translating this text most versions simply do not follow the drama of the original Greek. And it is very dramatic. For instance, in the KJV, Luke 15:18: “I will arise and go to my father….” The Jesus Seminar gives it as “I’ll get up and go” (pg 356). The Greek word is anistemi and it has the most powerful meaning:
Strong’s Concordance #450, Thayer’s Lexicon:
- to cause to rise up, raise up
- raise up from laying down
- to raise up from the dead
- to raise up, cause to be born, to cause to appear, bring forward
Vine’s Bible Dictionary:
- resurrection from the dead
- of a spiritual awakening from lethargy
I’ve used “struggling to lift himself out of his despair.” There are many other words in verses 15-18 that convey just how desperate and completely destroyed this man feels. To work with pigs is something that would have horrified Jewish audiences of the time; this is one of the most unclean of animals. To herd pigs, let alone eat the food of pigs, is to do so in excrement and slops. The prodigal son doesn’t just go out to seek employment, he “joined himself” (kollao) to a stranger in the city which I think can only be interpreted as a form of indentured servitude; he has no control then over his own life. The word hunger (epithymeo) is literal in this parable, as it is linked to the extreme of “famine”, but the Greek word for it suggests a deep lust for something, an insatiable hunger.
The word generally translated as “sin” (hamartano) has several meanings, the least of which is sin:
Strong’s Concordance #264, Thayer’s Lexicon:
- to be without a share in something
- to miss the mark
- to err, be mistaken,
- to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honor, to do or go wrong
- to wander from the law of God, violate God’s law, sin
I point this out because it shows that even in the most straight forward of parables, religious translation misses the nuanced (and sometimes the overt) meaning in the passages. This problem, in turn, can affect the ability of someone to find the more complex messages in the work.
So now, we turn ourselves to the interpretation of this parable for seeker and unity levels of understanding. At this point, if you would like to, take a minute to reflect on the meaning of the parable of the prodigal son for yourself.
For the seeker:
The message that Jesus sends us has to do with choice. The prodigal son, as the seeker, chooses to leave his father. He isn’t sent out to find his own way; he chooses to go. And the father, who loves him, not only lets him go but gives him his inheritance – the father facilitates the choice of the son, he allows this. This touches on the nature of a fully engaged human agency in relationship to the divine. The choice to explore takes the prodigal to another country – a place in which he seems to be at a great distance from his father. This is the clamor and noise of the material world, beguiling and intriuging, in that at such a “distance” the son cannot hear his father, he cannot avail himself of a parent’s love and wisdom as guidance.
This seeming distance leads to more and more bad choices; impoverishment, servitude, starvation — the sheer darkness at the bottom of the pit of despair that he has created for himself through his choices. But just as one can choose negatively, one still has the individual ability to choose otherwise for himself. And here the prodigal seizes on a light in the darkness, a small flicker of memory of the warmth and safety of his father’s home. In a way this realization creates an even greater crisis for the prodigal; he is unworthy in his mind, base and degraded, he cannot return to his father as a son, but as a servant perhaps there will be a place for him. This is where the definition of “arise” truly approximates “a spiritual awakening from lethargy”, where the definition of sin should be one of “wandering from the path of uprightness” or even “missing the mark” of the right mind – one that works in concert with an Ultimate Concern. But as he reflects on his condition in the world, something still has the power to call out to him, to offer guidance.
So the prodigal son begins his arduous journey home; and his father sees him coming and even at a great distance runs out to meet him. The desire of the father, of god – or the ground of being – for reunion, is intense. Here the seeker realizes that the divine was always present in the self, always desiring reconciliation, always available. We see the righteous indignation of the older son, at home with the father toiling in the fields, and we hear again an echo of the parable of the laborers in the vineyard when those first in the field protest the pay being given to those newly hired. The father/master says all are included, all are with me, from first to last, oldest to youngest. The same is true here; the father takes time to reassure the oldest son (religious individual) that he is equally valued. Moreover, we feel the joy that is the love of the father in the realization of recognition — and all are drawn into this celebration.
So one can say it simply for the seeker:
The prodigal son represents the seeker in the process of realization; he chooses to leave the structure of authority, and begins a search for something else in the world. Having looked everywhere for that something he is driven to despair when he cannot find anything that satisfies him. In the darkness, he finally looks within himself and he realizes that the one thing he always had and could never lose was the Love that is the Ground of his Being.
In unity:
We celebrate the choices of humanity; we grow together. Love allows, Love is patient, Love’s desire to be found is unceasing.
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On The Path of the Adept 
