NOTES for Luk 15:1-32
Today’s reading offers us several more parables about the Kingdom, including the parable of the prodigal son, familiar to every reader of the Gospel (vv. 11–32). Their meaning becomes clear in the context of the traditional religious ideas characteristic of Pharisaic circles in Gospel times. This concerns the way devout Jews of that era viewed repentance and the possibility of forgiveness of sins. At that time, as in the preceding centuries, it was believed that one could be cleansed only of a sin committed involuntarily—for example, through weakness, ignorance or compulsion. If a sin was committed willingly and knowingly, however, it was thought impossible to be cleansed of it.
Of course, one could repent of any sin, but repentance alone was not enough: one also had to be cleansed of the defilement caused by sin, and this was impossible if the sin was deliberate and voluntary. The consequences of sin—what was usually associated with the notion of ‘defilement’—continued to weigh upon the sinner until the end of their days, and often even fell upon their family, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Jesus, however, said that now that the Kingdom had drawn near, anyone who repented of their sins could begin spiritual life with a clean slate, completely renewing their relationship with God and with other people.
This is the meaning of Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin (vv. 3–10). The possibility of a new beginning for everyone is expressed still more clearly in the parable of the prodigal son. Here we find everything that, by the standards of traditional ideas about sin, closes the sinner’s way back once and for all: fully deliberate disobedience to his father—and therefore a direct and open violation of the fifth commandment (v. 12)—and the ‘dissolute’ life, in the Evangelist’s words (v. 13), which evidently involved numerous other violations of the Torah, undoubtedly entirely conscious and hardly forced upon him. It is no wonder that, having repented of what he has done, the son prepares a penitential speech in advance, expressing his readiness to accept any consequences of his sins (vv. 17–19): as a man of his time, he understands perfectly well that he can now count on nothing and can never regain his former position in his father’s house. But when he returns home, something entirely unexpected happens: his father, without listening to his prepared penitential speech, receives him as though nothing had happened (vv. 20–24), much to the displeasure of the elder son, who evidently considered it unjust that his younger brother’s sins should have no consequences (vv. 25–32). Clearly, it is not easy for the religious mind to grasp that its familiar arithmetic of merits and transgressions does not work in the Kingdom. Yet this is precisely why the Kingdom becomes accessible to everyone—not to everyone who has earned it, but to everyone who seeks it.