My favorite parable

In a “testament” of sorts that I’ve prepared for my family at the time of my passing I have asked, if it’s possible, that the Gospel that we hear this Sunday be read at my funeral Mass, or during the recitation of the rosary. My next favorite Gospel passage is Jesus’ promise to the “good” thief, Dismas—but that’s a story for another blog.

This particular Gospel is a wonderful parable open to all kinds of questions, answers, and self-reflections. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have reflected on this parable and put myself in the “roles” of each character at different points in my life.

The context or setting of Jesus’ relating this last of three parables about losing and finding, is central to the importance of all three parables which make up this whole chapter. The Pharisees and scribes began to complain, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So it is exactly and directly to them that Jesus tells this story about two sons.

One son, the younger, in a sense, the newer to the family, is a selfish, greedy, rebellious fellow. The elder son, one who came first, has done all things well: “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders.” The Pharisees certainly knew with whom Jesus was comparing them. As the father welcomed back the disobedient son, so the “sinners” are welcomed by Jesus and eats with them as do the father and his household in the parable eat with the welcomed-back son.

The elder son does not want to have anything to do with the household, the younger son nor the celebration. The Pharisees, who hear in the parable whom they represent, stand at a distance and judge the entire gathering of Jesus and His company of sinners. The father recalls to his elder son that they have always been together and in love have shared in everything. “You were never lost,” the father tells him, “but your brother was dead and gone, but now he has returned.” There is always the welcome back of God. Jesus is expressing that God never separates from even the worst sinner. The father had gone out each day to see if the younger son had come to his senses, and the son had done just that. Sitting with the pigs and their messiness, the son looks around, smells around and wakes up. Remember, pigs, to the Jewish religious sensitivities were the worst things with which to associate. He talks himself back to his truest identity, that he is a son of a loving father. He makes the very natural statement that he no longer should be any more regarded as who he once was, the son. He rises and prepares to talk his way back into, not the loving father-son relationship he once had, but one who will work for his bread by the sweat of his brow.

The rest of the story is Jesus-wise predictable. The theme of course is that Jesus is the Redeemer and not the Approver or Excluder. The Pharisees are the disapprovers and excluders and Jesus is putting Himself in direct opposition to them and their ways.

One can interpret this parable that each of us combines both sons in our one self. The elder part of us is ordered, strict, obedient, logical, exact, dutiful, and pleased with our own good works. We have the proper tickets. The younger part of us is inconsistent, envious, wanderlust, self-satisfying, independent, and stubborn. We are quite a war within. Our elder-side would like to tie down tightly the younger-side. Our self-righteousness does not want that looser side to be seen by anybody. It wants to appear better than it knows itself to be. The elder-side judges everything it does or thinks and is quite unhappy with the internal tensions.

The younger-side does eventually come to its senses. The emptiness of trying to build himself up, achieve himself, indulge himself, renders him senseless about his true self. The emptiness of whatever pigpen he lands in moves him up and out and back to his true home. We live in that tension then between the self-righteous and the self-redeemed-by-Christ. Those who live severely judging others are victimized by their own self-centered severity. Those who are forgiven, tend to be forgiving of others.

So we have to ask ourselves—are we in or are we out? We are welcomed, invited, embraced, but both sons had to respond freely. It is not easy to be welcomed in when we are a bit outside ourselves. It is truly humbling to want to be perfect and yet in order to be admitted into the welcome-home banquet, we have to admit ourselves back into our true, fragmented selves.

Can you imagine how the tax collectors and other sinners, sitting with Jesus and actually eating with Him, heard this parable and called to the Pharisees, who were also intently listening to the parable, to get real and “Come and have something good to eat with us, you don’t need tickets, and if you have to, go ahead and wash your hands.”