I'm confused, once again, by my morning devotional scripture. This isn't unusual. In fact if I'm not confused by the scripture passage for the day I'm confused by lots of other things. But this one verse raises a question for me. It comes in Luke's account (15:11-31) of Jesus' teaching about the lost son. In this parable the younger of two brothers pesters his father for his share of the estate while the father is still alive, and the father "divided his property between them." The boy fritters it all away and then comes crawling home, broke and hungry, whereupon the father throws a big party.
The older son has his nose out of joint: "Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!"
Certainly the point of the parable is that God's love is forgiving and inclusive, regardless of the offense. The teaching comes on the heals of the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin; in both cases there is heavenly rejoicing because a repentant sinner has been saved. It's a concern to some that the confession of the younger son doesn't flow so much from a sense of sorrow for what he's done wrong as from the fact he's starving to death and there is food to spare back at home. And it's also a matter of how we interpret parables that determines how much meaning is packed into them.
So as Vernon Doerksen states, "It is well, at this point, to distinguish between parable, allegory, simile, and metaphor. A metaphor equates one object or person with the other. For instance, John's Gospel contains no parables, in the usual sense, but it gives many metaphors of our Lord, such as, "I am the good shepherd” (10:11) and "I am the true vine" (15:1).
"A simile does not equate the two, but it does draw out a comparison. ... The simile and parable are very close together in a parable such as, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took…” (Matt. 13:33).
"One further form is the allegory. An allegory is a story where every point is important. The classical illustration is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. A Biblical example is allegory in Galatians (4:22-31).... Thus in an allegory every detail of the story has its counter-part; whereas, in a parable there is usually but one central truth." (1)
So back to the malcontented brothers in Luke 15. The one central truth is, again, God forgives and embraces, regardless. Even whole-hearted repentance isn't required. But there is a strange (to me) follow-on to the story. The father says to the older brother, "My son, you are with me always, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."
And my question is, did Jesus see himself in the parable he told? I know I tend to teach and preach in the context of my own learnings and challenges; the questions I struggle with wiggle their way into my lessons and sermons., Was the awareness of God's insistence on forgiveness part of Jesus' own growth in wisdom and stature and in favor with God? Was it a revelation of maturity, not unlike the times of temptation in the wilderness or the retreats in prayer from the crowds? How human was our Lord?
(1) Doerksen, Vernon D. The Interpretation of the Parables. Grace Theological Journal 11.2 (1970) 3-20 Copyright © 1970 by Grace Theological Seminary.
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