Maybe the Younger Son was Forced Out of Home

All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders… but when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him! - Luke 15:29-30

Those are the words of the older son in Jesus’s most famous parable, the Prodigal Son. Christians often moralize about the younger son, about how he made poor choices and became worldly. But what if his disconnection from his family home started somewhere else?

Invoking the spirit of Womanist Midrash, Brenna Rubio on Sunday asked us to imagine what life must have been like in the home growing up with an older brother like that. Besides being bigger than you and having the natural authority of the eldest, he was gifted at blaming and shaming, not to mention that he viewed himself as a hard working martyr and morally beyond reproach. What must it have been like to grow up in that home?

Now, perhaps for the first time, you can empathize with the younger son wanting to leave home, right? Perhaps he was pushed out, after all. And, sure, he made some choices that wounded his soul even more. But just maybe the heartbreak and isolation and disconnection didn’t start with him.

What about you - have you felt pushed out of community before by those more ‘righteous’ than you? Have you left some form of home, only to have your leaving be yet another cause for condemnation? (even though that’s what you were trying to escape in the first place?)

Talk with Jesus about these things. He told that story in the first place and would be very interested in your experience with it - so share with him what’s on your heart and mind.