Shame and Honor in the Parable of the Prodigal

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

The opening verse of the Gospel passage for the Fourth Sunday of Lent sets the stage for the familiar parable we hear today. “Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

For the biblical Mediterranean world, sin was defined as an action that shames another person, whether human or divine. As you have heard me say over and over again, the Middle Eastern world is driven by the twin engines of avoiding shame and acquiring honor. Thus, it follows that a shamed person has a right and a duty to seek redress, to restore the honor that has been the result of sin. In the Hebrew Scriptures, we see this best stated in the familiar “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” mentality. However, as St. Paul reminds us and the community of Corinth today, “the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”

I doubt that we Westerners think of sin in this way. When we go to confession, we usually examine our consciences by going through the commandments and asking ourselves whether or not we have broken or kept them. We tend to think of sin as an infraction against the law. Very rarely, if at all, do we think of sin as an action that shames God. Today’s Gospel parable is a very good example of the conflicting struggle between shame and honor.

There are three main characters in this story: a father and two sons. This identifies the story with a number of other Biblical stories involving two sons: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, and Jacob and Esau. Each of these stories involves a conflict between brothers, and each is resolved with the younger son triumphing over the elder. Obviously, as Jesus told the story for the first time, the listeners (namely, the Pharisees) would expect that the younger man would again triumph.

The younger son upsets the natural family solidarity that is customary in Israel. Loyalty to family is crucial for survival. Individuals only understood themselves in relationship to their family, their kin, their village, and religious community. When the young man asks for his share of the inheritance before his father’s death, the request would be seen as tantamount to wishing his father dead and would have been heard as a shocking insult in the original telling. Even more shocking, the father agrees. A father who relinquishes his power and authority over his family is one who lets go of his honor and status as well. A father might, however, be moved to do such a thing for the sake of forestalling conflict among his sons after his death. One final detail that calls attention to this possibility is that the older son does not object or mediate in any way when his father divides the property. He is willing to go along with this shameful arrangement.

The shame and dishonor only continue to escalate after the father agrees to divide the inheritance as the young man obviously converts the inheritance to cash and squanders the money on a dissolute lifestyle. The shame is compounded because of the loss of land. Attachment to the land is intense for people who claim it as God’s promise and as people who have experienced exile from it. The situation of the younger son is exacerbated by a severe famine that breaks out. Having little recourse, he seeks out a patron who sends him to his fields to feed the pigs. This little detail tells us that the young man has fallen into even greater dishonor as he is obviously living with Gentiles who keep unclean animals. As his hunger mounts, he would be happy to fill up on the pigs’ fodder, but no one offers him even this.

Being a resourceful young man, the son devises a survival plan. He proposes that he return to his father and ask for a position as a hired hand, remembering how well-fed his father’s servants are. There is no repentance here; simply a plan to survive the famine. His little speech, which seems to be a prayer of repentance to our ears, is simply an echo of the words of the unrepentant Pharaoh of Egypt. Like the boy, Pharaoh was at his wit’s end with the plagues. He had endured water turned to blood, infestations of frogs, gnats, and flies, diseased livestock, boils, and thunder and hail. In desperation he mouths admission of sin, but in truth he does not repent. Likewise, the son in the Gospel is rehearsing a strategy by which he may emerge alive from his dire plight and eat again.

The next scene details more unexpected behavior on the part of the father. He is described as watching and waiting for his son’s return, as being filled with compassion at sight of him. All this from a man who has been grievously shamed by his son. The action of reconciliation is all done by the father. The son does nothing to effect it.

The story now turns to the older son. The encounter with the older son begins the shame all over again. The father has to go out to meet the older son while he should have been helping his father to host the feast. The jealousy and resentment of the older son heaps reproach upon the father. He refers to his brother as “that son of yours,” distancing himself from his family just as the younger son had done at the beginning of the story.

The parable ends abruptly. We are not told what the older son does, just as we are not told how the Pharisees react to the story which is obviously about them and their relationship to the sinners with whom Jesus is associating.

The second reading provides the right context for the interpretation of the parable of the prodigal son. This parable is often understood as a simple illustration of God’s readiness to forgive in response to repentance. There seems to be no place for Jesus in the parable of the prodigal son. But the Jesus of the parables is never promulgating timeless truths of religion and ethics; he is always commenting on what is happening concretely in his own ministry. The parable is a comment on Jesus’s action in eating with outcasts. He is not left out of the parable for the simple reason that the parable presupposes and interprets his action. When Jesus eats with outcasts, it is not just humanitarian broadmindedness. It is God breaking through the human understanding of sin and reminding us that God is constantly reaching out to save the lost.

There is cause for great joy in this story. It is an appropriate Gospel story for “Laetare Sunday.” Our joy today goes beyond the fact that Lent is half over. Today we are joyful as we recognize God’s mercy, compassion, and love for the repentant sinner. We are joyful because, once again, Jesus has chosen to eat with sinners at the table of the Eucharist.