The Parable of the Concerned Father
We’re about to close out our series on everything you should have learned in Sunday school. Yes, I’m skipping over a lot of stuff. I drew attention to things I feel like are often neglected and the stuff that interests me personally and the rest we’ll just leave for another time and space. I assume that’s okay!
This week we’re going to talk about a few more parables that kind of play off each other. Most notably, we’ll talk about the Prodigal Son. Or, as I like to call it, the Parable of the Concerned Father. Despite what you may have been taught in Sunday school- this parable is about the father in the story, and not the son. This is because parables are intended to teach something about God (or about the kingdom of God). Not so much about people.
Before we do that- take a second to reflect on your relationship with your parents as you transitioned into adulthood. What was that like?
It’s not the same for everyone, obviously, but this tends to be a difficult transition for everyone. Parents have a difficult time learning to stop acting like parents and to become guides or facilitators or, dare I say, friends. A parents’ role stops being about teaching kids how to live and preparing them for life and, instead, to become co-learners about what adult life looks like (and maybe to share some wisdom and experience when called upon).
As for the kids- they want to assert themselves and their independence and they want to experiment with adult life. They want to try things for themselves and they want to learn from their own experiences. Life is not about merely avoiding bad outcomes. Parents often think their job is to make sure their children avoid bad outcomes (because parents love their children and do not want to see them in pain). This is not the role that kids want their parents to play. Kids don’t necessarily want to experience pain. But they do want to experience the freedom of making their own choices. If that causes pain from time to time, well, we’ll figure that out later. (Parents forget that this is exactly how they wanted to experience early adulthood).
Life in the New Testament areas was more different to ours than we could possibly imagine- but it seems like the story of the Concerned Father highlights some similarities to this experience of watching a child transition into adulthood.
Before we talk about The Concerned Father, let’s talk about Luke 15 in general. In the CEB, this chapter is titled “Occasions for Celebration.” That tells us something. It tells us that the focus of these stories is celebration (not judgment). Now, of course, these titles were added after the fact and are not part of scripture. In the first parable (where a shepherd finds a lost sheep) the point, according to Jesus, is to celebrate the return of the sheep. In the second parable, a woman finds a lost piece of silver, which Jesus also refers to as a cause for celebration. In the third parable, The Concerned Father teaches the son who did not run away that the prodigal’s return home is good news worth celebrating because it means that he is home, alive, and safe.
These stories are told as a response to the grumbling of the Pharisees and legal experts who believe that Jesus should not eat with sinners. For Jesus, the fact that sinners are willing to eat with him is a cause for celebration.
It is so easy to focus on the wrong detail or to put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. The Pharisees are focused on who Jesus’ dinner guests were. Jesus is focused on who his dinner guests are becoming.
The same could be said for parent-child relationships. Because time, in a way, passes so “quickly” it becomes hard for parents to distinguish between the 5 year old version of their kid and the 25 year old version of their kid. I don’t want Norah to grow up. I want her to be 5 forever. When she’s 25 I’m going to be awfully upset that she’s getting drunk with friends and staying out until all hours of the night and not calling me to check in and let me know how she’s doing. At that point, I’ll be way too focused on who she was and not who she is becoming.
So often when we tell the story of the Concerned Father we focus on who the prodigal son was. He asked for his inheritance early (disrespectful), ran away, spent the money, lived in danger. Look what a rotten son he was. But that isn’t what the Concerned Father sees. He doesn’t see a disrespectful youth. He doesn’t see a sinner. He doesn’t see a kid in need of guidance. He sees a beloved son, who returned home safe and sound. And that is cause for celebration.
Did your parents celebrate you as you were coming into your own?
Did you celebrate your children when they were coming into their own?
Probably not- and that’s okay. We’re all human beings and we have feelings and thoughts and opinions and we don’t always act exactly how we think we should. But, the reason these things might not have happened is because we focus on the wrong details. Like the Pharisees, we’re all too often focused on the past. It’s nice to sprinkle in the present, and some optimism about the future from time to time.
The Concerned Father, it’s almost too obvious to say, represents God. And in this way- we get a glimpse of how God views humans and what God considers to be worthy of a celebration. While we are lost in the past, and the details, and the disrespect, and the acting-out, and so on and so forth, God recognizes that a safe journey home is far more worthy of a celebration than a drunken night out is worth condemnation.
May we all learn something from this. May we learn the importance of celebrating a safe return home. May we learn the importance of both looking for, and recognizing, who a person is becoming (as opposed to only seeing the things they’ve done).
