THE parable of the “prodigal son”, or “lost son”, is thronged with meanings, too big to tackle as a whole. So, details must suffice. My first detail, though, is conspicuous by its absence. I have always considered Luke 15 to be about forgiveness. But, unlike the shepherd and the housewife, the father in the third parable does not search. And, unlike the sheep (15.4) and the coin (15.9), the son is not lost.
Perhaps we need to think, instead, of Luke 15 as the chapter of lost and found things. With that possibility in mind, I reassess. Now, what strikes me first is the “punchline” quality of the father’s final words: “This brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” Fact: the son did not die. So, the first part of verse 32 is metaphorical, not literal. Christians naturally latch on to its death/life antithesis. In the son’s return we find an example of what has been called “the joy of repentance”, and a beautiful foretaste of the resurrection.
As for the second statement in the father’s final words, it is echoed, centuries later, in the lyrics of a well-loved Christian song. “I once was lost but now I’m found” goes the song, inspired by this very Gospel. In 2022, I was at a Prom concert celebrating Aretha Franklin, in the Royal Albert Hall, when the artist Sheléa sang “Amazing grace”. Afterwards, my Welsh sister said to me, “I’ve never understood why people like that song so much. I do now” (Sheléa - Amazing Grace - A Tribute to the Queen of Soul (BBC)).
The right singer, the right venue, the right performance — all make a difference to how the song affects us, but only because the words (John Newton) and the notes (William Walker) are right first. I was lost. Now I have been found. The popularity of “Amazing grace” somehow proves that the father’s words are, indeed, a “punchline”. They contain the key to the parable of the father and his sons. They tie together all three parables in Luke 15. They are for ever telling us what we are.
A pair of verbs confirms that this is indeed the key message of chapter 15. “Losing” (apollumi) and “finding” (heurisko) are the antithesis that governs the chapter. They exemplify the life of faith at its most basic: we are lost until God finds us. How close this is to Augustine’s famous confession, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you, Lord.”
The sheep is lost and is found, likewise the coin, not so the son. The part that he plays is not purely passive (“was lost”). Students of Greek will know the verbal voice, part-way between active and passive, called (unimaginatively) the “middle”. It can refer to things people do for or to themselves. Nobody “lost” the son. He lost himself. But the final word, “found”, is a true passive. The son could not “find himself”. The father did the finding. This interpretation confirms that human free will gives us the power to refuse our Father.
The father’s final words carry this idea further. From his perspective as the loving but powerless parent, his son “was lost/lost himself” but “has been found”. The son seemed to be exercising human free will to make choices. But the father sees deeper, into the truth that the son has no power of himself to help himself.
This parable does not endorse the contrary behaviour of the older son; for he represents not superior moral choice, but only a calculating refusal to take risks. The impulsive folly of the younger sibling is far more appealing to most readers of this Gospel than the mean-spirited jealousy of the elder brother.
If I had been Luke’s editor, I would have urged him (knowing how painful it is for authors to rethink their cherished texts) to put the coin first, before the sheep. Start with what is inanimate. Work your way up, via what is sentient, to the “crown of all creation”, as a eucharistic prayer calls humankind. If Luke had good reason for putting the three parables in the order that he did, I cannot see it. What I can see, for absolutely certain, at the very end of the parable, is that the father’s words to his son are my Father’s words to me — active now, instead of passive: “I have found you.”
