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The central parable of Luke 15, the "Gospel within the Gospel," has been called the "Parable of the Prodigal Son" for so long that many of us think that "prodigal" means something like "repentant" or "the black sheep of the family." "Prodigal," in fact, means "lavish to a fault, spending without thinking."
Scripture scholar Kenneth Bailey, in his cultural-critical exegesis of the Lucan parables entitled Poet and Peasant and Through Peasants' Eyes, calls this remarkable story "The Father and the Two Lost Sons." In this work he shows the genius of Jesus as storyteller, and the relationship of the story to the life of the orientals (the peoples of the Middle East are, in fact, orientals) on whose ears it first fell. He suggests the place rabbinical parables of this period might have occupied in the world of folk art and music. The title "The Father and the Two Lost Sons" surely carries the true significance of this story better than its traditional title, because its intention, in the context of Jesus's life and ministry, was to demonstrate the relationship between God, those who try to follow his way in traditional modes, and those who are considered "outside" of those traditional modes. The parable shows Jesus's truly revolutionary attitude toward those "sinners" considered outside the world of God's mercy. Indeed, as Luke 15: 1-3 points out, this story and the two which introduce it are the center of his defense of his behavior in welcoming "sinners" to his table, an unheard-of breach of tribal etiquette.
In Lost and Found, we have attempted to preserve the open-ended nature of parabolic teaching, which invites the hearer into a new world of possibilities. Like other arts, parables try to teach us by seduction, by luring us with their premises into new conclusions, new ways of thinking.
It is the father who is prodigal in this story: prodigal with love beyond reason. Both sons are truly lost, and, as Sharon points out, there is a little of them in all of us. All are lost, but all are found, and the many walls and stumbling stones we have "set in spite" between us have to come down. It is the gospel of the new age: either we live together, or we die alone.
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