One of the greatest gifts in my spiritual journey/life/growth has been understanding and embracing my heritage. Judaism, for instance, plays a significant role in my story. I follow Christ and Jesus was a Jew. Further, Christianity came from Judaism; in fact, the early church, or the Way (as the early Christians called it), was inseparable from Judaism in the eyes of most people of that time. Paul, the author of half of the New Testament, was a Jew. The Old Testament, more than half the Bible, is Jewish. In short, Judaism and Christianity are closely related, if religions were a family, you could accurately say Judaism would be Christianity’s parents.
With that in mind, I’ve found it super helpful to understand and consider aspects, stories, traditions, etc. of Christianity within a Jewish context. Just last week, in fact, I had my mind blown by a Jewish reading of part of the New Testament. I heard Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish lady who is a Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, talk about Luke 15, which includes the parable of the Prodigal Son.
To set the context, Luke 15 contains three parables, which are understood to go together: The Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Parable of the Lost Coin, and the Parable of the Prodigal and His Brother. In the story of the Lost Sheep, a shepherd has 100 sheep, but loses one. So he goes out and finds the sheep, and then posts a pic of the found sheep on Facebook so his friends and neighbors can celebrate its rescue. Similarly, in the story of the Lost Coin, a woman has ten coins, but loses one. She then scours her house until she finds it, at which point she texts her friends and neighbors a pic of the found coin so they can celebrate with her (naturally the bits about Facebook and texting aren’t in the Bible :), but that’s basically what they did).
Then, in the story of the Prodigal and His Brother, there’s two sons and a father. The younger son asks for his inheritance, which he promptly blows on partying and wild living. At this point, he finds himself taking filthy, degrading, and generally sucky jobs just to feed himself. Then, one day he realizes how silly this is when his dad treats servants way better than his fate, so he determines to go home, apologize, and ask to be a servant. His dad sees him coming, runs to him, hugs him, and throws a party with the whole village to celebrate his return. A good while later, the older son hears about the party and talks to his dad. The older son is upset that the dad is throwing a huge party for the “loser” son, while he doesn’t feel he gets the same attention. The dad promises he loves the older son equally, invites him to the party … and there the story ends.
Now for the mind-blowing bit. 🙂 A pretty normal reading of these parables is to understand the shepherd, widow, and father to be God, which means they talk about how much God will do for us, chase after us, forgive us, and love us no matter what we do or where we go. This is a good and helpful interpretation of the stories and gives much life to many people … AND it’s probably not how the original, Jewish audience Jesus told the story to would have understood it.
First off, they probably wouldn’t have thought the shepherd, widow, and father were God … because our Creator doesn’t lose sheep, money, or people! These images can for sure be helpful our understanding the Divine’s mercy, grace, love, care, pursuit, and passion for us, and I also think it’s important to recognize the truth of this. God does NOT lose any of us, even when we think we wander away, God is actually with us in our wandering or lost’ness.
A second key aspect of hearing the parables the way the original, Jewish audience would have heard it is to consider what are parables for? A central aspect of parables is that they’re stories we’re invited to place ourselves in. We’re invited to imagine ourselves as characters in parables, so that we can be challenged and changed by them. Knowing this, Jesus does a very subversive thing; in telling a story about two sons, the Messiah knows a Jewish audience will automatically view the younger son as the “good” son, as the hero. Why? It’s all over the Jewish story in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. In Cain and Abel, it’s the younger Abel who does well by God. In Ishmael and Isaac, it’s the younger Isaac who becomes one of Israel’s patriarchs. In Esau and Jacob, it’s the younger Jacob who later wrestles God, is blessed by God, and is renamed Israel. The most beloved king in Jewish history is King David, who was the youngest son, and the list goes on.
So, when Jesus casts the younger son as the antagonist of sorts, the audience would have been quickly disoriented, which would have gotten them questioning and wondering about the other characters in the story. Along these lines, as Jesus’ initial audience imaginatively inhabited the story of the Prodigal, they would have wondered things like: Where is the mom? What’s the older son doing if he’s not the “bad” guy like in our stories? Jesus has clearly portrayed the younger son as unsavory, so should I put myself in the story as the older son?
And this leads to a central theme in all three stories that Dr. Levine’s Jewish reading of the parables uncovered, a question we can all ask ourselves: Who are we missing? What person, type of person, and/or group of people is missing from our community? The shepherd lost a sheep, it was missing from his flock. The woman lost a coin, it was missing from her purse. The father lost a son … and I think it was the older son more than the younger one.
Think about it, in antiquity it took many hours to prepare for a party, they had to kill and roast the animals, prepare and bake the bread from scratch, walk around the town to invite the neighbors, and more. This begs a question: Did the dad forget the older son? It seems so, as it had likely been the better part of a day since the younger son returned, but the dad still hadn’t invited the older son to the party. in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the older son is missing from the party, and had been for some time. He was forgotten. I think Jesus is challenging us with a related question: Who is missing from our community, family, gatherings, hang-outs, etc. And the invitation is for us to remember them and invite them. For instance, I’ve recently become aware how I’m missing both racially diverse and more conservative thinkers from my circle of friends. What do you think, is there any person, type of person, and/or group of people you’re missing? Who can we invite that we’ve forgotten or neglected?
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Grace and peace,
Lang
If Grace is an Ocean We're All Drowning 
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