Hog Slop
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

March 21, 2004

The weight of too much familiarity is heavy today, but we can cast it off and participate in the parable of the Prodigal Son as if for the first time, or perhaps see in the story how you and I have grown. The parable never happened, of course. There are no historical figures to whom Jesus was referring. We are the ones who have collected an array of historical and personal portrayers of the prodigal.

If you have come within earshot of a church, you have heard this parable many times. People have mulled it over in innumerable ways, but it is a story that always seems to come out the same comfortable way. Jesus is telling us that God will forgive you no matter what you have done, for God is unnerved until the one sheep out of one hundred is found, and the lost coin is swept out of its hiding corner. OK, but realize that Jesus’ stories are not that rational and logical; they don’t always make sense by our standards. God, therefore, doesn’t always make sense, but then again, God makes all things have sense.

“There was a man who had two sons.” We should pay attention to such details, for while it sounds like the beginning of one more bad joke the Bible is loaded with stories of two sons. Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his eleven brothers -- be warned that the older son never comes out on top, and that in a culture that always rewards the eldest son.

No time is wasted, for the tale starts with the younger son who approached his father with a legal proposition. “Give me the share of the property that will belong to me,” and the father divided his property among the two of them.

That sounds fair, and I’m sure a few of our lawyers could fix that one up rather easily. The only thing is that it’s much easier if the father is dead. In a way that’s what the younger son intended, that the life of his father was for all intents and purposes over. The younger son humiliated and shamed his father, and most likely impoverished him. Not right away, but a few days later the son gathered all he possessed and went off to a far away land.

Now Jesus wouldn’t be telling any kind of story that didn’t involve Jews. There would be no sense to it. So when the younger son traveled off to a far away country, it had to be a non-Jewish nation since Palestine was kind of small.

He blew it all on wild and reckless living - maybe there were a few women involved - and then the far away country went into a deep depression. It was so bad that our younger guy had to take any job he could to survive, and he got hogs. That means he had to work for a Gentile, and pigs are the last thing a Jew should work with. Things were so bad that he was not even allowed to eat the hog slop he was giving to his clients. Pigs were more important to the economy than he was. This younger son was ritually unclean to the hilt and literally starving. Many hearing this story would assume that he was incurring the judgment of God for his behaviour.

Necessity and desperation are the mothers of invention. He “came to himself,” realizing that his father’s servants had it better than him in the worst of times. He would go home and renounce his sonship and become a servant. Then at least he could eat and live. Sometimes when we feel the judgment of God, it is not so much a punishing blow as the revelation of insight into who and what we are. Some readers want to make this plan of the younger son simply a conniving strategy. No, I believe he did see who he was, and it wasn’t pretty. Yet, he was willing to accept no longer being a son and would now accept being a slave.

This all still sounds pretty logical and sensible. The father, however, does not want to play by the rules of decorum and justice. He runs to meet his long lost son, and hugs and kisses him. I never saw my father run and do that kind of thing; that would throw all dignity out the window. That would be more like the mother, but the mother is nowhere to be found in the story.

The son must have been surprised and even embarrassed, but his new-found honesty forces him to go through with his confession: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; don’t think of me as your son anymore.” The prodigal father, a man who didn’t know how to behave as a proper father in society, wouldn’t let him complete his lines. Bring the best robe -- maybe even the father’s only good one; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet -- he would be no slave. Throw a big party with gourmet food, and celebrate. This is nothing less than a resurrection: my son has returned from the dead and he is different.

There were two sons, and the older boy was enraged. He refused to come in to the party. The father was distressed and tried to assuage his anger. But the elder son accurately describes his situation and feelings. I’ve worked all these years for you and you’ve never thrown me a party, and now you give one to your son [notice, not Ômy brother’] who has humiliated and impoverished you and disgraced us all by throwing away our money on prostitutes.

The elder son had abandoned his brother and his father as well. It has been popular recently to understand the older brother’s pain by talking about how we too have cheated and abused by siblings and family members. I have not been sure what the point of this interpretation is supposed to be. It clearly does not accept the loving grace of God easily.

The father knows who he is and does not give ground. You are always with me and all I have is yours. The father now has divided up the last of his property. He has nothing left except joy in his sons, the one always there and the one lost, but now found. “We had to celebrate.” Not a choice, but a compulsion for joy.

Jesus had ended his parable in which the younger son, a scoundrel no doubt like so many other younger sons, becomes the blessed one. Despite the facts that he has dishonoured his father, committed the most vile of un-Jewish acts, and not even be allowed to make the necessary amends to be honourable, he is restored to love by his doting father who seemingly has no shame, nor little honour. The elder son who has followed the law and done all things right, except have compassion, becomes the one who has left the family in his heart.

This can only make sense when the shameful God and the shameful prodigal son are the ones who achieve real honour. You and I have not really been prodigal enough. Jesus knows the prodigal God is the God who sits at the table with sinners and the ungodly and considers them family.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan