Beeson Podcast, Episode 329
Kenneth Bailey
February 28, 2017

https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2017/The-Prodigal-Son-Rescuing-Truth-from-Familiarity

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School, on the campus of Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.

Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast, You know Dr. Smith, one of the great privileges we have of working at Beeson, is that we get to hear some of the great teachers, and scholars, and preachers of our day, who come as visiting lecturers, and one of them was Dr. Kenneth E Bailey. Dr. Bailey was an acclaimed author, and lecturer in Middle Eastern New Testament studies. The author of many, many books, "Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes,” “The Good Shepherd,” “Open Hearts in Bethlehem,” “The Cross and The Prodigal," on, and on.
	He spent 40 years himself teaching in seminaries, and institutes in the Middle East. One of the great figures I think in New Testament biblical studies of our time, and we had him here one time, because we lost him, he passed away last year, we miss him in this world, but we had him here one time, and guess what his text was? The prodigal son. Tell us about it.

Dr. Smith:	His title is very, very interesting, Rescuing Truth from Familiarity. He wants to look at this parable, Luke 15, which really is his theology of preaching. He sees the New Testament through the lens of Luke 15, and has been doing so for over 55 years. He wants to take this familiar parable, and show us that there is unfamiliarity in familiarity, and there is a sense of majesty in the mundane, and there is a sense of the uncommon in the common, and there is a sense of the stupendous in the simple.
	He uses identification as a key, because he wants us to see that the biblical characters in the prodigal son, mirrors who we are in terms of our own identity, lost sheep, lost coin, lost son. He does corrective surgery on our traditional misperceptions that revolve around this parable, an excellent, Dean George, excellent thorough exposition of Luke 15. Three stories within one story, does all the background that we try to do, but he does more. 
	He does corrective surgery, and so he shows us some fresh insights, the lost sheep in the wilderness is represented by the prodigal son in the far country. The lost coin in the house is represented by the elder who was lost in the house. It's corrective surgery, it's the father who is represented by Jesus, and the message of course, is highly Christological. He even says this coming to himself, that's not repentance, that's coming to our senses. He helps us to see this in a fresh way, so that we get ... The 15th chapter of Luke gets an overhearing.
	A key line for me, and for the hearer is this, the father reprocesses anger into grace, and gives a costly demonstration of love by transferring sole property into cash, and later on, after the cutting off ceremony, receives, and welcomes the son, and shows that's exactly what God has done for us. The challenge is, what are we going to do with Jesus? This is how he closes the sermon. What are we going to do with Jesus, who represents the father? That was the question then, that is our question now. It's a surprising abrupt ending, he asked that question, "What are you going to do with Jesus?" Then says amen.

Timothy George:	You know Dr. Smith, this is one of the most familiar texts in all of the Bible. I've tried to preach sermons on it, I've heard lots of sermons on it, I don't think I've ever heard a better sermon on the prodigal son, than the one we're going to listen to right now by the late Dr. Kenneth E Bailey, let's go to the chapel here at Beeson, and hear our late friend, the great Dr. Kenneth E Bailey.

Reader:	If you would turn your Bibles with me to the gospel of Luke, chapter 15, it can be found on page 874 of your pew Bible. We'll begin reading at verse 11, and he said, "There was a man who had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me,' and he divided his property between them. Now, many days later, the younger son gathered all he had, and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.
	When he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need, so he went, and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. He was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. When he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger? I will arise, and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father I have sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son, treat me as one of your hired servants.'
	He arose, and came to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion, and ran, and embraced him, and kissed him. The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son,' but the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring the fattened calf, and kill it, and let us eat, and celebrate, for this my son was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found,' and they began to celebrate." This is the word of the Lord. 

Congregation:	Thanks be to God. 

Kenneth Bailey:	I count it an extraordinary privilege to be with you this morning, and to have this chance to reflect with you. For the last 55 years, this story has been the center of my study of the New Testament, and so I am happy to try, and share a part of what I have tried to understand from this story. The story itself has been called the gospel within the gospel for more than a thousand years, and thereby it's important that we get the story right. Our task is to rescue truth from familiarity, because you see, we remember the opening verses of Luke 15, it says that the scribes and the Pharisees came challenging him saying, "This man receives sinners, and eats with them."
	The text then says that he replied, and he told them, “This parable,” —singular. We then have three stories. Clearly the three stories are meant to be a part of a whole, and notice the challenge, “this man receives sinners, and eats with them.” Jesus replies, and says, "Gentlemen, it's far worse than you imagine. I not only welcome sinners, and eat with them, I rush down the road, and I shower them with kisses, and I drag them in, in order that I might eat with them, much worse than you imagined."
	When this story is a reply to this challenge, and the challenge is this man Jesus, does such and such, and Jesus replies with this story, the central figure of the story, the father, must inevitably at some point in the story represent the person of Jesus. He's called father, fine, okay, but there must be a Christological point at which it becomes a symbol of Jesus, or this story would not be an answer to that challenge. What happens? The first story about the Good Shepherd, which we know, and the Good Shepherd, remember his sheep was in the far country, sorry, in the wilderness.
	The second story is about a woman who loses her coin, and Jesus does not tell the story about a woman who went to the marketplace, and somehow got home, and a coin was missing, and then she went back to the baker, and back to the candlestick maker, and finally she found her coin, no, we have a story about a coin that is lost in the house, fine, now there are two kinds of lostness, and one is lostness in the far country, and the other is lostness in the house. 
	Those two kinds of lostness with which we are all familiar are there ready for Jesus to use in his account in the third story. What happens? He starts off, we know the story, but we wish to notice the points particularly at which there needs to be some slight and important revision if we are to catch the impact of what Jesus is saying. He starts off, and he talks about a man who asks for his inheritance while his father is still alive. In Middle Eastern traditional culture, this means, "Dad, why don't you drop dead?"
	The father is supposed to take his left hand, which is worse than the right hand, and take the back of the hand, which is worse than the front of the hand, and strike the kid across the face, and drive him out of the house. For 40 years I tried to find a story like this across the Middle East in contemporary life, or in the literature of the Middle East. I never found it, until one of my students came and said, "Yes, well, actually this happened in our family. Our oldest brother asked our father, five brothers, for his share of the inheritance," and I said, "Adeep, what happened then?"
	He said, "Of course, my father struck him, and drove him out of the house." "Well what happened then?" "Well, we tried to negotiate getting the two of them back into the same room." "How long did that take?" "Five years." The father, at the beginning of the story, is obliged to reprocess anger into grace. If he is unable to reprocess anger into grace, there will be nothing given to the boy. After reprocessing his anger into grace, he extends a costly demonstration of unexpected love.
	The boy leaves town, as we know, and he journeys after few days having gathered together, better translated, turned into cash, he can't take property with him, he can only take money, he's got to sell. This is not going to be easy, because no one wants to buy. Why? They know now that there has been a breakdown of relationships in the family, this now becomes public when he starts to sell the South 40. What he's told is, "What? You are going to sell the orchard your grandfather planted? You're crazy, don't you understand you're selling your own soul, I will have nothing to do with this."
	He will find someone willing to buy, someone on the fringes of the community who really doesn't care about his relationship with the leading figures in town. He goes into the far country, and we know what happens. He then loses the money, and he loses the money we are told in expensive living. Quite often we've translated it in ways with hints of immorality, loose living, riotous living, things like this, no, this is the phenomena of spilling ideas from later on in the story, have spilled back into our perceptions of the earlier part of the story, and the cutting edge of what happens at the end of the story is dulled when we allow that to happen, he simply wastes it.
	Fine, having wasted it, why doesn't he just go home? The simple answer, is that as we know from early Jewish sources, the community, the Jewish community living in the land had a ceremony that was called the Kezazah ceremony, in Hebrew this word means, "The cutting off ceremony." Any young man who married an immoral woman, or who lost the family inheritance among the Gentiles, if they ever dared show their face back in the village, the village will gather, take a large earthenware pot, fill it full of burned nuts, and burned corn, break it in front of him, and the whole community cries out, "So and so is cut off from his people."
	After that, no one will have anything to do with him. Jesus manages with the briefest of strokes, to give us an enormous amount of information. If the young man in the far country was herding sheep, or cows, they could be Jews, but if he's herding pigs, then they aren't Jews, that means that the family wealth has been lost among the Gentiles, and that means that the Kezazah ceremony is threatening. Now what's he going to do? We have a soliloquy. Soliloquies in drama of any kind anywhere in the world, Shakespeare and all of that, when the soliloquy comes, and there's no one around, this means that you, the listener-reader are given insights into the heart of what's really going on in the soul of the person who is making the soliloquy.
	This kid does not say, "I broke my father's heart," he doesn't say, "I'm sorry I lost the money." He doesn't say, "I shamed the family before the village," he doesn't say, "That the economic lifeblood of the community, of my family, is badly damaged by my irresponsibility," he says, "I'd like to eat, how can I get back on the gravy train?" Now this doesn't sound like repentance to me. Aha, you can say, but his speech, he says that, "I have sinned before heaven, and in your sight," yes, he does say that. 
	Then what's he going to say? He's going to ask for job training. Unless he gets some job training, he can get a job, and why does he have to get a job? He could go back as one of the slaves of the house, they have slaves, but that won't work, because he won't have any money. The Kezazah ceremony is going to be enacted, and he has to have a paying job, but no one will trust him without his father's support, so he's got to eat humble pie. 
	Now the scribes and Pharisees are listening to the story, and they know that the phrase, which he is preparing to say, "I have sinned before heaven, and in your sight," is a quotation, and it's a quotation from the mouth of Pharaoh when Pharaoh, after the eighth plague, finally brings in Moses to talk to him, and what Pharaoh says is, "I have sinned before heaven, and in your sight." Now is Pharaoh repenting? I don't think so. He is trying to manipulate Moses into doing what he, Pharaoh wants.
	It works, Moses lifts the ... God lifts the plague thanks to Moses, and then of course Pharaoh grabs the people again. The audience knows this. It's a manipulation, the phrase, "He came to himself," we have traditionally understood to mean, he repented, but the trouble, is that, that phrase occurs only once in the New Testament again, and that's the time when we have in the book of Acts that Peter is in prison, and then the angel comes and releases him, and he thinks it's all a dream, and so then suddenly in the middle of Jerusalem the angel disappears, and Peter realizes it's not a dream, and Peter, the text says, "He came to himself," meaning he came to his senses.
	It has nothing to do with repentance. Our medieval Arabic versions have translated, "He got smart," he figured out “I've got one more card I can play,” and why is he playing that card? It's because it's the only card he has. When they butcher in the far country, they will give the entrails to the herders of the pigs—he’s a Jew. There's nothing else to eat, there's a famine. This is his best option, soften up the old man with a good speech, ask for job training, of course he can't live in the village, they will enact the Kezazah ceremony, he can go off to the next village, wait til he's trained, start to save his money, and finally 25 years later, he can walk in, and say, "There may be flies on some of you guys, but there are no flies on me. I've lost the money, so what, everybody makes mistakes, here's the money," he's going to say to himself.
	Now the three stories create for us traditional reading of it, a problem. The shepherd knows the sheep isn't going to make it home. He doesn't go back to the village, and a couple of hours later there's bleating outside the sheepfold, "Oh, you made it back, great, come on in." No, the shepherd has got to go out into the wilderness, find the sheep, and pick it up, because the sheep is so frightened, my shepherd friends in the Middle East tell me, that when the sheep is lost, it's get scared, it gets under a bush, Baa, it starts making a lot of noise. 
	When you catch it, all you can do is pick it up, and carry it home, and that sheep, that shepherd carrying a sheep over its shoulders, for 300 years, was the primary image for the Middle Eastern churches for the cross. They saw in it the atonement. The woman doesn't sit there, and say, "Gee, I wonder what happened to that coin?" All of a sudden click, it flips up out of the floor, and lands on the table. No, she's got to get down on her hands and knees, light a lamp, search diligently, and find it.
	Our third story traditionally read, says the prodigal in the far country gets home on his own, and he doesn't need any help, thank you very much, and he doesn't need any grace, and he doesn't need any Savior, and there is no Son, Word of God that becomes flesh, and there is no suffering, and there is no death, and there is no resurrection, and all of that junk is quite unnecessary, because Jesus actually, as Islam has pointed out, is a good Muslim, and you've tried to make a Christian out of him.
	The first two stories are Augustinian, and the third one is Pelagian. The first two stories say we need grace, and the third story says we don't. Conclusion? Well Jesus is totally confused, theologically he doesn't know what he believes, and he doesn't know what repentance is all about. I can't go there, it's impossible. What is happening to the prodigal? He is there in the far country, and he knows what's ahead of him, and he is steeling his nerves for the rather brutal reception that he's going to have when he hits the edge of that village.
	Middle Easterners who immigrate anyplace else in the world, never go back to their home village until they have enough money to buy presents for all of the extended family. If you've failed in the far country, you don't go home, and especially if you insulted the community, and demonstrated a huge breach between you, and the rest of the family before you left. You definitely don't go home, starve in the far country, it's too humiliating to go back. Steeling his nerves to enter the village, what happens when he gets to the edge of the village?
	At the edge of the village he is still lost like the coin. In the far country, he was lost like the sheep, now he's lost like the coin. How do we know he's lost? He thinks the issue is the money. I'm gonna work, and get the money back, but we the listeners to the story, know it's not the money, it's the agony of rejected love. It's his father's broken heart, and the agony of rejected love is the deepest pain known to the human spirit, and how big is the check going to be to make up for it?
	The very fact that he thinks it's the money, means he understands himself as a servant before a master who has broken the law. He doesn't understand that he's a son before a compassionate father, and the issue is not the law, the issue is the broken relationship, and that he can't heal that. He doesn't understand that. All right, so what happens as he approaches the village? His father has been watching the road, knowing he's going to fail. When he fails, he's going to come back in bad shape, and when he comes back in bad shape, the community is gonna beat up on him. 
	What does the father decide to do? He decides that he is going to, having reprocessed his anger into grace, is going to extend again a costly demonstration of unexpected love. Please notice that the father ran, fell upon his neck, and kissed him, then the boy replies, and gives his speech. Poor Rembrandt got it mixed up, he thought the boy was repenting in the far country, and so he comes back in total abject surrender, and after his abject surrender, the father accepts the abject surrender, and just take a look at the cover of your bulletin, this is patterned after Rembrandt.
	You look at that boy, and you know that he is total abject surrender. He drops his staff, and he drops his hat, and he falls on his knees, and then his father accepts his total abject surrender. It's backwards, the first thing that happens, is the costly demonstration of unexpected love. Now the boy has to decide, is he going to accept. Jesus has just defined repentance in the story of the Good Shepherd by acceptance of being found. The lost sheep is a symbol of repentance.
	He could say, "No, dad I used to be conceited, but now I'm a nice guy, can't you see how good I am? I'm going to make it up to you. I'll work, I'll shovel the manure, I'll repair the terraces, I'll herd the sheep, and I'll keep my money, and finally I'll pay it back, it's going to be okay." If he accepts to be found, then he has to surrender his own bright ideas about how he is going to solve the problem.
	All he's able to say is, "I have sinned before heaven, and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son." He does not say, "Fashion out of me a craftsman." Western commentators have said, "He interrupted him, he said the speech later." No. Middle Eastern commentators, for the last thousand years, have said, "He changed his mind, he accepted to be found like the sheep. He gave up any hope that he might solve the problem." The father, when he leaves the house, becomes a symbol of God in Christ, a symbol of the suffering servant, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
	This is now being enacted before our eyes in this story. He suddenly finds that he is a son with a compassionate father, and that compassionate father, in this point in the story, is acting like a compassionate mother. Dad is supposed to sit in the house, and say, “Humph! What do you have to say for yourself young man?" Mom is allowed to run down the road, and shower the boy with kisses, not dad, but the creator must be the Redeemer. The father is the one who has to make that run.
	He is the one who is the head of the house, and he is the one who must act like with the tender compassion of a mother, as he runs down the road. We know that the son accepts, because the father turns to the crowd, there's a crowd around him, including his servants, and he says to them, "We are gonna have a party." The party is not a celebration of the return of the prodigal, the word return, four times we expect to find it in the text, but it's not there. Return is a theological word.
	The text merely says, "He showed up," and the word return is very carefully avoided. The father announces what the party is all about. We're going to have a party, because this my son was lost, and is found, passive, divine passive. What it's all about, is he was lost, and I found him, which is the way, in the fourth century, the Coptic Orthodox Church translated the text. He was dead, and is alive, not he was dead in the far country. He was dead at the edge of the village, and he was lost at the edge of the village, because he still thought it was money, and he thought he was going to make up for it, and he can't.
	I brought him back from death to life. I brought him back from lostness to foundness in that dramatic encounter at the edge of the village, in which the father's love, costly love is first, and second, is the boy's acceptance of it. All right? Then we know how the story continues, and the older son is out in the field, and the older son, as he approaches the village, the villages are usually about 5 acres, and the drumbeat says there's a party, and so he starts through the narrow streets, which are just wide enough for a loaded camel, and he's getting more, and more excited, and he gets to the house, and, "Wow, the party's at our house," and he rushes in to enjoy the party, no.
	He stands aloof, and calls one of the young boys, the word παῖς here properly means young boy. The young boy is the Greek chorus. He tells the listener, reader what's really going on, and the older son says, "What's going on?" The little kid says, "Your brother is here," a rare Greek word. He does not say your brother returned, your brother showed up, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because, ah, now we have the second interpretation as to what the banquet is all about.
	Because your father received him ὑγιαίνω. All right, that Greek word, ὑγιαίνω, does come across in English with the word hygiene. However, that Greek word is the Greek word in the Greek Old Testament, that without exception, translates the Hebrew word shalom, which includes good health, but it includes also reconciliation. Now we know why the older son is angry. If it had been a health report, the younger son would've said, "Aha, dad has not decided what he's going to do with Junior. I have to rush in there, and pretend like I'm happy, greet my father's guests, and when the party is all over, we will have the family shouting match, and I will be there to represent my point of view, which is throw the bum out until he pays."
	If the party is in celebration of shalom, it's too late. The father is already reconciled to my brother, and my point of view has lost. What happens next? He decides that he's getting to get mad. What does he do with his anger? He refuses to enter the banquet hall where all the leading members of his own family, and members of the clans of the village are reclining, waiting for the meal to start. This is a deeper insult to his father than what the younger son did when he requested his inheritance, because it is in public.
	This is a young boy who is ... His sister is getting married, and at the wedding banquet, he stands up in public to have a shouting match with his father. You want a shouting match with your father? That's fine, don't do it at a banquet, where you're celebrating your sister's wedding. This would be the equivalent. The father is supposed to ignore him, and proceed with the banquet, he doesn't. For the second time in the same day, the father is obliged to reprocess his anger into grace, and to offer an even more costly demonstration of unexpected love, the first time for the one who breaks the law, and the second time for the one who keeps the law, and now the issue is not the law, which is important, but more than that, it is the issue of the relationship.
	The father with the entire village listening, and watching, humiliates himself in public, and goes out to the older son. Is the older son impressed, broken by the cost of the love that is offered to him? No, he starts shouting. This is favoritism, you love him, you don't love me. The younger son in the far country said the problem is more food for me. Now his older brother gives a soliloquy, and the heart of the soliloquy is more food for me.
	The older son shouts, and says, "He wasted your living with harlots." Peasants from Spain to Afghanistan killed each other over these kinds of public accusations. This is extremely serious. He is shouting out of control, and the father is expected to reply, and say, "Enough, I don't have to put up with this. Lock him up, I'll deal with him later." He doesn't. He pleads for joy, and the curtain falls. Why? Jesus is on stage in the person of the father. The audience is on stage in the person of the older son.
	The audience now in participation theater must decide, what are they going to do with Jesus? We are on stage, and we have to answer the same question. Amen.

Announcer:	You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity school is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid, and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.

https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2017/The-Prodigal-Son-Rescuing-Truth-from-Familiarity

		

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