Luke 15

Luke carefully constructs the frame for all three parables: the tax collectors and sinners are gathering to hear Jesus, and the Pharisees and scribes grumble that this man receives sinners and eats with them. The complaint is the occasion for the three parables, which together constitute the most celebrated parabolic cluster in any of the gospels. The first two are brief: the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine in open country to find one lost sheep and calls neighbors to celebrate the finding; the woman who lights a lamp and sweeps her entire house to find one lost coin and calls neighbors to celebrate. Both parables close with the same formula — just so I tell you there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents — but the phrasing modulates: the second says joy before the angels of God, slightly more indirect. The pattern is established: the found thing is what matters; the celebration is appropriate; the comparison to heavenly joy is the frame.

The parable of the prodigal son — more accurately the parable of the father, since the father is its central figure — is the longest and most structurally sophisticated of the three. The younger son's request for his portion of the estate amounts, in the cultural context, to wishing his father dead; the father grants it. The son leaves, dissipates the money in a far country, is reduced to feeding pigs during a famine, comes to himself and calculates that his father's hired servants have more than enough bread while he perishes with hunger, and decides to return and ask to be treated as a hired servant. The father sees him from a distance, is moved with compassion, runs to him, embraces and kisses him before the son can finish his prepared speech, and calls for the best robe, the ring, the sandals, and the fatted calf. The celebration begins. The older son, returning from the field, refuses to enter when he hears music and dancing. The father goes out to him. The older son protests that he has never disobeyed and has never received even a young goat for celebration, while his brother who wasted the estate is given a fatted calf. The father's answer — son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours; but we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life, was lost and has been found — is the last line of the parable. Whether the older son comes in is left to the hearer.