The story of the prodigal son is probably the best known of all the parables of Christ. We have heard it so often that most of us take it for granted. And so we just might miss the details, and one detail you might have missed is the crafty and cunning man who offered the son the job of tending the swine.The unnamed man can plainly see that before him stands a Hebrew lad. He can also see what this young man is up against: no money, no friends, no place to call his own. This young man is obviously someone who is down and out, a stranger in a strange land. You can almost see the man smiling and rubbing his hands as he says, “OK, Hebrew boy it’s the pigs or nothing!”
In short, this wicked man took advantage of the son’s plight and vulnerability to alienate him from his people, his culture, his tradition, his family, his religion, and his sense of decency. Do we have people like that in our society?
In every city, you will have smiling people stalking the prodigal adolescents who get off the buses, knowing that very soon these teenagers will be desperate for food, clothing and shelter. And these smiling stalking predators, will say: “OK boys and girls: sell your body and we’ll give you something to eat. Give us your heritage, your culture, your religion, your values, all that you have been taught.” This is just one example of the pigsty solicitation that goes on everyday in our own time an, our own culture.
This predator mentality occurs on the Internet as the moral values of honesty, decency and chastity are sold down the river to sensationalism, the quick deal, violence and freewheeling sex. It happens when the athletic scout tempts high schoolers to forsake academics and share in the million sports market. It happens whenever anyone gives our young people a drink or a snort of cocaine or solicits them over the Internet.
Sadly, there are lots of people waiting too take advantage of our vulnerabilities, which ask for our heritage in exchange for momentary high. The pigsty owner in today’s parable is very much alive.
The younger son represents all the people who want no father, no one to answer to, no limits, no restraint, no relationship, no responsibility, no judgment. They wish their father—God—dead. They want to be free to do their own destructive thing.
However, let me point out one final detail. Have this image in your mind. The son is returning home, still a long way off, the father—God—does what no parent in that time would ever consider doing: the father runs to greet his son. No father in that culture would do such a thing: he would wait for the boy to come up to him, sniveling and falling at the father’s feet. But here, in a most undignified manner, the father lifts up his tunic and runs, not walks, to his son.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends parents, grandparents, extended family members who strive daily to be a good example to their children. God will be God, and we must try to do likewise. And what is the bottom line to this story, this homily? God is in the details.
