What the Prodigal Son story doesn't mean

When it comes to parables and to ancient texts in general, our listening skills are not as developed as they should be. Not only do we frequently miss the original provocation, and not only do we frequently default to simplistic interpretations, we also often import ahistorical and anachronistic readings that deform the good news of the gospel into something Jesus would neither recognize nor condone. If the interpreter knows nothing about Jesus’ Jewish context other than the stereotype of “Jesus came to fix Judaism, so therefore Judaism—whatever it was—must have been bad,” then the parables will be interpreted in a deformed way.

One common way that parables are interpreted is by drawing a contrast between what Jesus taught and what “the Jews” generally understood. Thus, the Prodigal Son teaches that God loves sinners, whereas the Jews thought God loved only the righteous and didn’t give a damn about sinners.

But such a reading should make no sense to anyone who has read in the scriptures about Adam and Eve, Cain and David, and indeed the nation of Israel. God does not give up on sinners; to the contrary, God is always waiting for us to repent and return. Humanity may violate God’s covenant, but God remains faithful. Jews knew that God cared about the sinful; were that not the case, there’d be no reason to send prophets to Israel, or Jonah to Nineveh.