Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
Luke 15:11-32
I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So his father went out and pleaded with him. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. All rights reserved worldwide. You'll get this book and many others when you join Bible Gateway Plus.
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What the Prodigal Son story doesn't mean
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Father, I have sinned. In his thoughts, the prodigal also puts himself in the company of the self-absorbed figures in other parables. His conclusion is to build more barns, not to distribute his food to the poor. His conclusion is to draw others into his dishonesty.
All four parables use the device of interior monologue to let listeners know what the characters are thinking, and in all cases what they are thinking leads to at best morally ambiguous action. Before the prodigal gets to his rehearsed speech, his dad runs to welcome him. His compassion need not be taken as a surprising reaction; there is no reason to expect the father to be a detached patriarch who would show neither care nor compassion. Rather, his compassion should remind us of the Samaritan, who saw a wounded man and reacted with compassion; it is the same reaction Jesus himself has when he sees the funeral procession of the only son of a widow.
The term indicates recognition that one who might be considered dead could become alive. He has left his honor behind, his position, his community standing. From these already overstated observations, the comments, not unexpectedly, descend into a negative picture of Judaism over and against which Jesus shines ever more brightly. Our parable offers no hint of it. Jewish fathers of the first century were not, at least according to the sources we have which should be the sources that inform our history , distant or wrathful.
Thus, children ask fathers for bread, and the dads provide. We find numerous fathers seeking healing for their children: In the same way, God too. One major problem with such fieldwork approaches is that the questioners sometimes forget to ask the women. Biblical scholar Carol Schersten LaHurd, reading the parable with Yemenite women, posed the question: Some commentators today, still regarding the father in the parable as the Father in heaven, want to credit Jesus with inventing a new theology that rejects the supposed Jewish or Old Testament God of wrath in favor of the Christian or New Testament God of love, a view popularly espoused by the second-century heretic Marcion.
Residual Marcionism, the view that God had a personality transplant somewhere between the pages of Malachi and Matthew, is still alive and well in churches today; it is also still a heresy. The covenant is still in place; God still loves the wayward, from David to Ephraim to Israel. It is like the son of a king who took to evil ways. I am ashamed to come before you. And is it not to your father that you will be returning? A king had a son who had gone astray from his father on a journey of a hundred days.
What the Prodigal Son story doesn't mean | The Christian Century
The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. As has been the case more than once in the past, I have had to begin to understand Jesus and the Gospels in a new light after reading Amy-Jill Levine. Well, here I go again. I always enjoy Amy-Jill Levine's insights. This one is also quite good.
However, as a Christian pastor I have never viewed or preached the negative Judaism she critiques. I do not think I am alone. She found so many bad interpretations from Christians, but I know of several others who would essentially agree with her.
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I think that more recent Christian scholarship on the parables and other teaching of Jesus takes the Jewish context and the simple fact that Jesus was a Jew always a good place to start much more seriously. In fact, several of my United Methodist colleagues see Jesus as not trying to correct Judaism as much as correct and reform the way it was lived out in His own time - much like the prophets before Him.
While not bad people, that wonderful duo of the scribes and Pharisees had become entangled with and influenced by the politics and rich of that day - not unlike far too many in the Christian church today. Going into details about neither writer, Levine nor Steiner, I did myself go into the archives to re-read Sue Clemmer Steiner's two articles on parables and their prismatic applications. The parable shimmers as it catches the light first from one angle and then from another, dependent not only on its placement in the text but also on our own location and receptivity as those who encounter it.
I would also commend the work of Dr. He is fluent in Arabic and a student of Aramaic and Syriac and has uncovered Arabic-language commentaries of more than a millennium.