While preparing to preach on the Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 31, 2019) when the Gospel is the uber-familiar “Prodigal Son” parable, I re-read the first chapter of Prof. Amy-Jill Levine’s Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (2014: HarperOne). A-J, as she likes to be called, spoke to an enthusiastic group of Michigan clergy and laity last year, sharing her unique insights on preaching, as a Jewish Professor of the New Testament. Prof Levine was already a hero of mine, from attending her summer lectures at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York; and she never fails to shake up my understandings of Jesus and his first-century listeners. This excellent book on his parables is no exception!
While my Lent 4 sermon ultimately focused on the day’s passage from 2 Corinthians (you can listen to the sermon from my Sermons page), A-J’s insights shaped how things went. Her take on the Prodigal or “Lost Son(s)” is that this whole family is in need of reconciliation! The father would make a poor God (so don’t assume that’s his identity), ignoring his older son’s bitterness and indulging the younger wastrel. At the end of the parable, we’re left wondering whether the trio will ever manage to forgive one another. But at least they are all back in the same place, if not actually celebrating together… yet. Will they? It’s far from a tidy reunion, and that’s how Jesus would want it left. No one fully blamed, no one truly innocent, in this dysfunctional family.
Getting to the concluding image of worried father and angry brother of “Junior,” the prodigal, Levine takes her readers verse-by-verse through the parable and challenges the interpretations that most Christians have heard or read. Her book is a wise and humor-filled warning against making assumptions about another culture. Inquire, yes; diagnose, please don’t. And that’s a lesson that applies to nearly all aspects of ministry, and politics, and social situations, and other people’s marriages, and…. you get the idea. Understanding comes from the inside, gently and respectfully listening to the whole, messy story. I suppose that’s why Interims need to stick around for a while, listening twice as much as speaking.
Thanks, A-J, for teaching me again.