Telling Stories

I am back from spending another wonderful week at Chautauqua Institution (summer camp for life-long learners, essentially) with my in-laws and assorted relatives on Jan's side of the family. Each year this one week leaves me with enough material to think about and continue studying for the entire year. It's a wonderful time.

The week's central theme was Creativity and Innovation, and in the department of religion this translated into a week's worth of looking specifically at Jesus' use of parables and the possible meanings of these enigmatic little stories. The main speaker was Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University, who is a Jewish scholar of the New Testament, and is a marvelous story teller herself. I was at first worried about a week of lectures from the same individual, but she was well worth the time and I only wish we could have heard more from her (see a sample of her lecture style here).

What Dr. Levine helped us to do was look at parables the way a first century Jewish audience might have looked at them; essentially stripping away all the pat Sunday-school interpretations that never really made sense but that you were told was the "meaning" and don't ask any more questions! In fact, she told us that a parable can have as many interpretations as readers, and that doesn't matter anyway, because what's important isn't what the parable "means" but what the parable "does." This is something I've been told before not just about parables but about all scripture, and about doctrine and other "religious" stuff. I've had a terrible time understanding the whole concept of what scripture "does" vs. what it "means." This week, I think I almost got it -- because what parables "do" is make us all uncomfortable; they make us ask questions; they make us wonder what came before or what comes next; they give us the opportunity to make up our own endings; they invite us into the story, first as one character then as another; they invite us to tell our own stories...

Dr. Levine took us through several "de-churchifyings" (my term, I don't want to blame her for that one) of a parable and then building up alternative perspectives. I would like to try to recapture some of what she said about one of them here, and then give it my own twist. [My interpretation of her interpretation is my own and may not accurately capture what she either said or meant! In other words; if you like it I probably got it right, but if you hate it don't blame her, blame me. I probably got it wrong.] Let's see how this goes...

The parable is from Luke 15 -- the one usually dubbed the parable of the prodigal son, but which she calls the parable of the missing moms. It's about a father and his two sons. As the story goes (read it here -- don't take my word for it), the younger son demands from his father his half of the father's estate. The father divides the property and the younger son takes his half and goes off to squander it in wild living. When he is destitute, and there is a famine in the land, the younger son "comes to himself" and decides to go back to his father and ask to be hired on as one of his servants, who fare far better than he had fallen. But, the father is filled with compassion for him and welcomes him home with a kiss, a ring, a robe, and a party. The older son is resentful of the welcome the younger son gets, and complains that his father never threw him a party although he'd served faithfully for all the time the younger had been wasting his inheritance. And that's pretty much where it ends.

The "Sunday-school" interpretation emphasizes the utter ruin that the younger son comes to and how great the father's love is to run to him and welcome him home -- using the allegory of the son representing sinful people who repent and turn to God, and the father representing God who welcomes home sinners who return to him. If the elder son is mentioned at all, he is the one who thinks he can be saved through depending on merit and reward and "the law" while God is really all about love, and compassion and grace. Although it's a reading that has "worked" for a lot of people, it's always left me a little cold and we heard this week that it doesn't have to be taken that way.

Instead, Dr. Levine asked us to look at a story as just a story and a family as just a family, and see where it leads. She doesn't like either of these son's much. The first is scandalous! Asking for your inheritance before your parents are even dead is the height of disrespect and selfishness -- that, I think, is the same today as it was then. This is truly bad behavior. But, look further at what he does. When he uses all his money up in "wild living" and there is a famine, no one will give him anything. He remembers that the servants in his father's house are better off than he is and he wants to improve his lot. His decision to return to his father's is way too mercenary to make Dr. Levine (or me) comfortable. He's not sorry, he's not worried that his father might be hurt by his actions, he's not concerned about how badly he acted, he just wants to eat again and decides this is the mostly likely way to get back on his feet. THIS is a repentant sinner?

Dr. Levine says the second son isn't so likable either. Initially the story tells us that the father divides his property between them. Yet later we see the eldest son still dependent on his father, complaining that his father has never given him anything. She sees him as one who fails to claim his inheritance -- his livelihood, his property, his power -- even after it has already been divided to him. And then he complains that his father still controls what he has neglected to own. AND he is resentful of a father's love and generosity, rather than compassionate himself over the sorry situation in which his brother comes home.

What impresses Dr. Levine in the story is the father's love. He does not wait until the younger son repents before running out and forgiving him and restoring him to his favor. When he hears that the elder son is resentful, he runs out to him as well and tries to persuade him to come in and also be glad. He is portrayed as reaching out to both and trying to effect reconciliation. He is doing all he can to bring the whole family into a right relationship, but everyone has choices -- the younger son could truly repent, but he could simply take advantage of the situation again. The elder son could extend compassion and look for reconciliation, or he could become fixated in his sense of fairness. We are forced to think about what is good, what is right, what is just, and what is fair as perhaps all different things, and ask which to choose -- what are the possible consequences of each one? How did they get in the situation anyway, was there some way that this could all have been avoided? (This is where the missing moms come in -- Dr. Levine guesses that they were sons of different mothers, and perhaps the situation was set up from the start for this kind of confrontation by the conflict of a favorite wife or the striving of one wife for advantages for her son over the other son? Do we, as parents, nurture a strong family or set-up our kids for future conflicts?)

Dr. Levine proposes that perhaps the meaning of the parable is in asking ourselves who are the family with whom God would have us reconcile and what power or which choices will draw us closer to that goal or perhaps push us further apart? What are we doing with the resources that are ours? Do we claim our power and our control over circumstances, or do we look for others to blame? Are we able to truly repent and seek reconciliation? Do we wait for others to reach that point or do we go further and create safe spaces where perhaps they will get there, but perhaps they won't? How extravagant is our love?

I really loved this overall interpretation and most of what Dr. Levine said about the characters in the parable, but there was one part that I disagreed with. In keeping with her major premise on parables, that we need to reinterpret and reinterpret as long as there are different readers and different "takes" that provide useful insights, here's where I try my own "take" on it -- and why I differ in some particulars with hers.

If I understood Dr. Levine correctly, she indicated that when the father divided the property between the sons the elder never actually "claimed his own" -- learned to believe and act as though his share of the property was actually his own. He was still deferring to the father long after he could have taken charge of his life and livelihood. That's an interesting thought, and I can see how there would be a lesson there. So many of us do, metaphorically and sometimes literally, spend our lives wishing and dreaming for things that are already our own and have been all along. But, still, I just don't think this idea fits this particular parable.

To me the more believable interpretation is that the father "divided his property between them," gave the younger his share as the younger was demanding, and told the older that "the rest will be yours when I die" (and by implication, not before I die -- unless I say so). Of course, we read first through our own lenses, and this seems more likely to me because it is my family history. My grandfather did much the same with my father and his brother, although for slightly different reasons and with very different results. But, when Dad's younger brother became a man and was married, it was clear that he was not going to stay on the farm like my father. My grandfather decided that it made more sense to split the property at that point, sell enough to give Dad's brother his share, and gave gun his inheritance early to help him get a start in another chosen career -- all with the understanding that my father would then, upon my grandfather's death, inherit the farm. But (with definite emphasis on the but), had he started to act like the owner while my grandfather still "had another 20 good years in him," Dad would have found, as country folk say, that he had "another think coming."

So, when I read the parable, the setup doesn't seem strange at all. That's just what father's sometimes choose to do with their property. However, beyond just not seeming strange to me, I think there are further clues in the story that this is the more likely interpretation. When the younger son decided to return home, he assumes that the father is still very much in charge. He doesn't even anticipate that the elder son will have anything to say about how he is received. They are his father's servants who have food to spare, not his brother's. It is his father that he will entreat to give him a job, if he cannot expect to be received as a son. I think when the elder son says to his father that "you have never given me a young goat so I can party" and his father says that "everything I have is yours," the father is thinking through the old "someday all of this will be yours" refrain. But I'm willing to bet that if the elder son had ever actually taken that goat and given himself a party, he would have incurred the father's wrath, and he might very well have been denied even if he had "asked very nicely." Sometimes people who hold the reins have a hard time letting them go, or even cutting a little slack. (Especially when they have done it before and seen that part of the inheritance squandered?) I don't see any reason not to take the elder at his word that he has been serving the farther all these years in the expectation of an inheritance he has yet to receive (and may be in a little fear that he might lose the inheritance entirely, if he doesn't toe the line better than his younger brother -- once burned, twice shy, and all that.)

Anyway, following through with my interpretation, the really strange part of the parable is in how all three parties act toward each other as members of the same family. Although the father does act with a great deal of love in the end toward both sons, to me there doesn't seem to have been a lot of love lost between the three of them up until that point. The father doesn't seem to have been motivated by love in the dividing the property; not so much thinking of what's best for the sons (as I believe actually was the case in my family) as just doing what the younger demands to get him off his back. We are never told that the younger son worries about having hurt his father, or even thinks that he can come home because his father loved him and will love him still. He thinks of what will be best for himself, but not at all about whether his father will be anxious to see him again, might be worried about him, etc. And most disturbing to me, as I identify the most with him, the elder son seems more anxious to ruin his father's joy in the younger's return than to preserve it. He seems to serve his father out of necessity rather than familial love. I can understand his resentment of his brother and his sense of being somehow treated unfairly in all this, but what shocks is that he shows no evidence of love for his father, nor does he seem sure at all of his father's love. It's almost as though he's begging to be reassured that his father loves him too. Had it been me, I would have fallen all over myself to try to hide my resentment, at least for a time, and make my father's joy as complete as possible for as long as possible. Life is hard and joy isn't all that easy to come by; you simply don't do anything to ruin it for those you love and who have loved you.

Neither son seems to love the father very much. They are concerned about themselves and their own interests solely, and that makes me wonder about the father. If he is so loving, and if he's characteristically been so loving, why didn't they too learn to love? (Maybe here's where we wonder where they mother's are and what THEY'VE been teaching the sons???) Yes, despite the best and most loving upbringing, some children do not grow up to be loving and responsible individuals -- but I believe more often than not they do. Love generally becomes reciprocal over time. I think maybe this particular father hasn't always been so loving. Maybe he's one of those who don't actually realize they love, or at least don't show it, until they already have lost or are about to lose that which they love. Only when the younger son is gone, does the father realize how much he misses him and loves him? Only when the elder is resentful, does the father realize how much he has taken him for granted rather than shown him love? If I am right and he has been an "absentee father" up to this point, is pouring out his love at this late date in each boy's life going to do any good? Might it be too late?

Whichever way we interpret the parable, what we are left with at the end is three people who should, in a Kingdom of Heaven world, be in a loving family relationship and are not. There are no guarantees that the relationship can be salvaged, but still choices that each one can make that can be directed either towards attempting to reconcile or choices that could break the family apart permanently. So, I think I agree with Dr. Levine that the point, or direction, of the story is not what has happened already but what happens next. Each person has choices and each person has some power to do the right thing or the wrong one -- no guarantees, as a full resolution would take all three to create but any one could derail, but plenty of potential and something to say to us no matter where we see ourselves in the story.