How Prodigal Are We?

March 30, 2025, First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. 

Have you ever found it awkward that Jesus eats and drinks with the type of folks your mother told you avoid?

Actually, it makes sense. There’s no way you or I could tell a Ponzi fraudster or a sex worker that their sins are forgiven, go and sin no more. Only Jesus can do that.

But I think it is good news for all of us that Jesus “welcomes sinners and eats with them,” because he’s making it clear he will turn his back on no one.

No one. Not an adulterous woman. Not a thieving tax collector. Not an officer of a brutal army of occupation. Not a pompous Pharisee. No one.

Jesus is making his very lifestyle a lens through which to understand the parable of the lost coin or the parable of the lost sheep, or even the parable of the Prodigal son.

Jesus will drink, eat, and commiserate with anyone, regardless of how sinful and unsavory they may be. To Jesus, every sinner he meets, every blind person, every soldier, every centurion, every leper, every thief, every prostitute, every rich man seeking salvation while keeping his fortune, is a lost sheep to be rescued, a lost coin to be found.

And the same goes for you and me.

We Lutherans savor this reality as God’s grace. And that grace comes with rejoicing in heaven for every sinner who repents.

The story of the Prodigal son is perhaps the best known parable in the New Testament. I remember hearing it cited repeatedly in the late1960’s when many families were torn apart by the Vietnam War and lifestyle issues. Some “hippies” preferred to form their own communes rather than live with Mom and Dad, and they chose cannabis and LSD over Dad’s bourbon and Utica Club. But inevitably it became clear there was little future in that lifestyle and many returned home: prodigals all. If they were lucky, their parents celebrated their return.

In case you’re wondering, there is a modicum of autobiography in these memories. I was not a quintessential hippie. I did grow my hair past my shoulders but I never inhaled. And I was never estranged from my patient and loving parents. Instead of seeking a life of riotous living and a diet of pig pods, I opted for the Air Force and, later, college. But I ate and drank with hippies and I remember many with affection. 

The story of a prodigal son is a classic story of a family in crisis. We know the characters as well as we know our own families.

Across two millennia, perhaps millions of sermons have sought to clarify who these characters are meant to represent.

Each of us could sense what Jesus wants his listeners to understand.

The father, of course, is God. God whose love is constant and unconditional. God the patient parent who will always welcome back those who have strayed. God the father who rejoices dramatically and unreservedly when the lost return.

The younger son. This poor lad is a stand-in for all who turn their backs on God, squander the gifts and blessings God has given them, and quickly fall into squalor and degradation. When they realize their stupidity, they return to God begging forgiveness.

The older son. Some preachers believe the older son represents the just. Others say he represents self-righteous people who take God’s love for granted and resent it when obviously inferior people receive God’s grace.

To put a finer point on it, Stephen Arthur Noel DSouza, a Catholic scholar, sees the father as representing the Holy Trinity, God the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit.

The elder son represents the Pharisees, teachers of the law, who are repelled by God’s grace toward sinners.

And the younger son represents the Gentiles who ignore God and celebrate life with the decadent world. Only when it’s too late, when they have lost much, do they repent and bathe in the forgiving grace of God. (per Dsouza)

Like all of Jesus’ parables, the story is rich with meaning and the characters play many roles.

To get a closer look at these characters, let’s employ the Ignatian bible study approach and imagine ourselves inside the parable.

Which role would you choose?

If we look carefully, I think we’d conclude that we can easily fill each of the three characters in the parable.

Whether we are parents or not, most of us can identify with the father in the story.

We have all known persons we have loved unconditionally, whether sons or daughters or parents or siblings or friends.

We have all felt disappointed when someone we love drifts away from us, or ghosts us, or slams the door in our face. Many parents have felt estranged from their children when their hormones flow turbulently and they pull away from parental authority. No, they don’t want to get a job. No, they don’t want to go to college. No, they won’t stop dating the person who makes you cringe. 

These are times that call for parental patience. Parents will not stop loving their children, even when they are hurtful and disappointing. And when children or any age return to the nest, it is a matter for celebration.

Who is the father in the story? Could it be you?

What about the younger son?

Has there ever been a time in your life when you were so bored and oppressed by the status quo that you would do anything to escape? Did your parents put you on a strict curfew and ground you when you broke it? Did they refuse to allow you to date the older person you do desperately loved because they had an unsavory reputation? Did they refuse to allow you to get a driver’s license because you were too immature to drive?

Perhaps you didn’t run away to pursue a dissolute life. Maybe you stayed home but hid in your room, stopped talking to anyone, hating your parents, looking forward to your liberation. But soon you began to realize there was little you could do without the emotional, physical, and financial support of your parents. So you came out of your room and started speaking to them again. And how happy they were to have you back.

What about the older son?

I have no hesitation about this one. I was the eldest of five, three brothers and a baby sister. I was not the easiest son in the world. Instead of studying in school, I read many books articles about my boyhood idol, John F. Kennedy. While my brothers were out working with Dad in the garden, I was upstairs in my room, typing essays and short stories, and drawing amateur comic strips about Superman and the Lone Ranger.

While I was doing this, my siblings graduated with honors and, in two cases, as valedictorian and salutatorian of their classes. I graduated by the skin of my teeth.

But that didn’t stop me from feeling angry and resentful toward my younger siblings. I was angry when my parents bought a car for my younger brother so he could drive to college. I was annoyed by the honors my sibs were receiving. I couldn’t wait until I joined the Air Force the week after my 18th birthday. When I returned home four years later, I was welcomed with love and joy by my parents.

And having said all that, I realize I was an amalgamation of the younger and older brothers.

Do you see yourself in any of these roles? “All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare said, all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”

Regardless of whose role we might play in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we know that it doesn’t matter to Jesus.

Jesus will drink, eat, and commiserate with anyone, regardless of how good or how sinful they may be. To Jesus, every sinner he meets, every blind person, every soldier, every centurion, every leper, every thief, every prostitute, every rich man seeking salvation while keeping his fortune, is a lost sheep to be rescued, a lost coin to be found.

That is the good news of God’s grace. No matter who we are, we are simultaneously saints and sinners, Luther said.

And the God of Grace loves us and welcomes us all into God’s eternal realm.

Amen.