When I was eight years old, Bantam Books came out with a new kind of children’s book: Choose Your Own Adventure. Over the next ten years, Bantam published a total of 184 of these books. Are any of you familiar with Choose Your Own Adventure? A person reading one of these books may look a little odd, as they skip pages and go backward and forwards in the book, and then start all over and skip different pages! The way it works is that the stories are told in the second person: “You approach what appears to be a haunted castle.” At the bottom of the page, the reader has to make a choice: “If you decide to enter the haunted castle, turn to page 32. If you decide to keep moving down the road, turn to page 40.” Choose Your Own Adventure books created a way for young readers to interact with the story and have agency over what was going to happen, to insert themselves into the story in a powerful way.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, the sixteenth-century Catholic priest in Spain who founded the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, also recommended a form of a choose-your-own-adventure story. In his book Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius invited readers of scripture (or those listening to gospel stories) to imaginatively place themselves in the story. If the priest was reading one of the gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Christ, the reader should imagine that he or she is present on the scene. Do you stay and watch with John and the women? Do you run away with the male disciples? Ignatius felt that entering into the stories of Jesus in this way would help bring Christians closer to the Lord.
I think that our gospel story for today from the fifteenth chapter of Luke makes for an excellent choose-your-own-adventure story. It follows on the heels of two very short parables, the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin, which are more Jesus’s speed: a couple of sentences to make a short, pithy, punchy point. Our story for today is much longer, with many details and several well-fleshed-out characters. One of the things that is powerful about this story is that Jesus told it to a mixed audience: the “sinners” that he was eating lunch with and the Pharisees who were standing around disapproving of his choice of a lunch date. And the characters in the story reflect these two different audiences, inviting each set of folks into the story from a different place.
In fact, the most usual title that we give this story in English: “The Prodigal Son” – might not even be the best title. Biblical scholar Mikael Parsons, of Baylor University in Texas, notes that the word “son” appears in this story eight times, and all but once it is in the nominative case – it is the subject of the sentence. But listeners in the ancient Near East and Greek-speaking world would have considered the subject of a story the noun that was inflected in the most different ways. The word “father” appears in this story twelve times, and in all five cases: nominative, genitive (possessive), accusative – the object of the sentence; dative – the object of a preposition; and vocative – the one being addressed by another. So Jesus’s original listeners would not have thought of this story as the story of the prodigal son, at all, but rather as the story of the generous father.
Not only that, as we shall see, there are two sons in this story, and in their particular ways, each of them is something of a lost child. The word “prodigal” in English means “reckless and extravagant,” and is applied to the younger son because he demanded his inheritance before his father had died, and then squandered it. But what about the elder son? Was he really the picture of righteousness and rectitude compared to his reckless brother? Or did he just manage to go astray in his own special way?
The church of Jesus Christ as a whole – the body of Jesus Christ – is comprised of both kinds of sons and daughters; the ones who “stayed home” and “did what was right” but didn’t necessarily always love their father or brothers and sisters with whole hearts, as well as the ones who careened far out of the orbit of God’s abiding love and have through the grace of God found their way back. And as we shall see, God calls each of these kinds of prodigal sons and daughters back to that love, not just in order to experience ourselves being so wholly and unconditionally loved, but so that we ourselves may learn to practice the abiding and unconditional love of the father in the story.
So, my friends, I invite you to sit back and choose your own adventure in this story today. Which one of the three main characters: the younger son, the elder son, or the father – really resonates with your own story? Or do you see yourself partly in each one of them? And what does their story have to teach each of us about our own stories?
Let’s start with the younger son, the one who usually gets top billing in English titles of this story. The story begins when this younger son goes to his father and asks for his share of the inheritance. This would not have been considered at all kosher in the ancient Near East; it would have been as though the son went to his father and said, “Dad, I wish you were dead.” But the father acquiesces to the son’s request, gives him the money, and the son packs up his belongings and heads out into the world.
Why did he choose to do this? Jesus doesn’t say, but we all know, or perhaps have been, the son or daughter who wanted to head into the world as quickly as possible and become full-fledged independent adults, whether we or the world were ready or not. Maybe the son was bored out of his mind in the one-horse town he’d grown up in, or maybe he felt like a misfit, with different interests and ideas from those of his peers, and he wanted to head to the big city and find some like-minded company and have some real fun for a change. Maybe he was full of fantastic ideas about how he could take the money from his inheritance, turn a quick buck and get rich quick, and live high on the hog for the rest of his days. At any rate, he left, and he spent the money pretty quickly: scripture tells us he squandered it in “dissolute living.”
And then there’s a famine in that country, and so the basic necessities of life get really expensive really fast. So the son needs to find a job, and he ends up working for a pig farmer. An audience of first-century Jews listening to Jesus’s story would’ve been pretty disgusted with the kid at this point: tells his dad he wishes his dad was dead, hightails it out of town with half his dad’s money, burns through it in short order, and then takes a job feeding unclean animals. Ugh. What a loser.
The pig farm job didn’t pay very well, and so the son got real hungry. So hungry he started looking at the pig’s food – probably the pods of the carob tree – with envy. And then it dawned on him that he’d left a pretty good life behind – boring, maybe, without a lot of likeminded friends or opportunities to try and get rich quick, but his friends had abandoned him and he had no money left to invest. Maybe his dad would let him come back. Maybe not to live in his house as his son anymore, but perhaps as a servant. Even his dad’s servants had enough to eat. So he gets up out of the pigpen and heads for home.
What can we say about this son, and how might his story resonate with us? It is said that “home” is the most beautiful word in the English language – each one of us longs to find a place that we can truly call home. Not just a dwelling place, but a circle of family, people who love us and will always take us in.
When the younger son “came to himself,” as the scripture puts it, was his conversion complete? Not really. We can see that the little speech he composes to give his father is kind of self-serving; he really just wants to have enough to fill his belly. And in asking to be made one of the hired servants, the son might also be saying he doesn’t want the responsibilities of a son; he’d rather be ordered around like the servants are, and not have to make any choices of his own. His inner life is as much a victim of famine conditions as his physical self.
Let’s turn to the father: Jesus doesn’t tell us how the father has spent his time or what his inner state has been while his younger son has been on the road. But he’s been waiting, and it seems, hoping, that the son would come to his senses and return home. Because he’s looking up the road. And while the younger son is “still far off,” the father runs to greet him, throwing his arms around his long lost beloved child. In the ancient Near East, this kind of gesture would have been considered beneath the dignity of the head of a household, but the father doesn’t care. He goes. His son gives his little speech, but the father acts as though he hasn’t even heard it, turning to the servants and saying, “Quick! Go get the best robe and put it on him, bring a ring and sandals, and go kill and cook the fatted calf so we can celebrate that this child has come home.”
The father has no intention of treating his son “like one of his hired hands.” Only slaves went barefoot; one of the father’s first commands is that a pair of shoes be brought to put on his ragged son’s feet. His son is his son, period, no matter how stupid and unloving he has been. The father feared his son was dead – and maybe, in a sense, he was, a death of the spirit, of the soul – and look, he’s alive. He’s back. We need to celebrate.
I want you to notice some things about the father. He places absolutely no conditions on his son but welcomes him with open and generous arms regardless of what the son has done. He doesn’t go looking for his son, grabbing him by the arm or the ear and dragging him out of a nightclub and bringing him home. Brethren founder Alexander Mack underscored “no force in religion,” and that is what the father is practicing. He throws his arms around his son and welcomes him back – and then it’s up to the son to let himself be held, to receive that forgiveness and unconditional love, something that’s often harder than giving love and forgiveness to others.
If the story of the prodigal son and the generous father were a Hollywood movie, it would end there. We’d get a glimpse of the music and dancing, and the music would reflect the sentimental moment of the father hugging his son tight. The scene would be calculated to bring a tear to our eyes, and then the credits would roll.
But Jesus doesn’t end the story there. There is another son in this family, after all, and he hears the music and dancing too – and he doesn’t like it one little bit. He calls one of the slaves to tell him what’s going on, and the slave responds, “Well, your brother is back, so your father is throwing a party, fatted calf and all, to welcome him and celebrate.” And the elder son is not at all interested in attending such a party. If he were a teenager, he’d stomp up the stairs to his room and slam the door, making sure everyone in the house could hear every stomp as well as the slam.
The father isn’t happy about this. He goes to the older son and pleads with him. “Come on, it’s right that we celebrate! Please join us!” And the older son gives his father a little speech too – more like a piece of his mind. “Dude, I’ve been working like a slave for you for years. I’ve never disobeyed you. You’ve never even given me a young goat so I could throw a party for my friends.” The older brother is resentful, and also more than a little envious that his brother got to go off and have a good time and doesn’t even get punished for it.
But notice a few things about the older son’s little speech. He asserts that he’s been working for his father, but he never says anything about loving his father. He’s proud of his obedience, but on the inside, his heart has been rebelling, feeling like a slave rather than claiming the love offered to him as a son. And back at the beginning of the story, when his younger brother asks for his share of the inheritance, we are told that the father “divided his inheritance between them.” So there really isn’t any question of the father “giving” his older son a goat for a party – the goats already belong to the older son, and he could’ve thrown a party anytime he liked. The older son is all bound up in the legalism of serving his father like a faithful slave, and he resists the invitation to joy with all his resentful and envious being.
Notice also that the story doesn’t have an ending, really, at all. We are not told whether the older son relented and decided to join the party, or not. We are not told what becomes of the younger son, what kind of choices he made after he’d received this generous and celebratory welcome. We are not told what went on in the father’s mind after interacting with each of his sons in these ways.
Christian author James Breech says of this story, “When there is no ending, there is no final judgment.” Jesus leaves the judgment up to his listeners – the publicans and sinners who might’ve had a hard time believing in the unconditional, generous, and welcoming love of God, and the Pharisees and scribes who didn’t want to believe in it, because they would rather limit God’s mercy to those whom they felt had “earned” it. And so the judgment on the story is also left up to us. Where do we see ourselves in this story – the passionate but rebellious younger son, the “obedient” but resentful older son, or the unconditionally loving, generous, and welcoming father? And where are we being called to move to next in our own stories?
Because finding ourselves in the story certainly isn’t the end of the story. If we see ourselves in the rebellious younger son, we may understand that we need to accept and receive God’s unconditional forgiving love – and that’s not always easy. If we see ourselves in the resentful older son, we may understand that we are called to let go of our resentments and enter into God’s loving and welcoming family with joy. But regardless of which son’s story reflects our own most fully, each of us is called to become the welcoming, loving, forgiving father.
The Dutch Catholic priest Henri Nouwen said of this story that “All of the gospel is there.” Seeking and accepting God’s forgiveness, letting God change our resentful hearts and give us joy – but also the understanding the God welcomes us home so that we may become the home of God. That the father’s grief, forgiveness, and generosity are all qualities we are called on to experience and share with others.
So in choosing our own adventure this morning, let me ask you this: who do you need to come home to? And who are you waiting for, to come home to you?
Because ultimately, each character in this story is a reflection of Jesus. Like the younger son, Jesus left his father’s home and squandered his very life – for each one of us. Like the older son, Jesus is at home with the father and obedient to the father’s will. And most of all, as Jesus told Philip and the disciples, “If you have seen me, you have seen the father” – that unconditional, forgiving, welcoming, self-giving love that Jesus came to share and demonstrate is exactly how and who God is. And who we are called to be to one another.
Even more than who we are ourselves, who are the rebellious little brothers and the resentful big brothers in our community and world who need to know and experience the welcoming and forgiving love of the father? Who do we need to come home to? Who are we waiting to have come home to us?
Bobbi Dykema is currently serving as interim pastor at First Church of the Brethren in Springfield, Illinois. She is also on the pastoral team of the Living Stream online Church of the Brethren and serves on the steering committee of the Womaen’s Caucus. Bobbi is passionate about racial and gender justice, beauty and the arts, and reading scripture as a living document.