[Propertalk] Fwd: [Goodsermons] (Part 3) The Mother in the Prodigal Son Parable

[Joe Parrish]

Preaching the Lesson: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

This very familiar parable can be so intimidating to preach (again!). When I pause before reading the text, I find my own mind filling with all of the things I have heard over the years. My thoughts go from the discussion over what the title of this parable ought to be (The Parable of the Prodigal Son, or the Parable of the Two Brothers, or the Parable of the Loving Father, etc.) to my constant temptation to stand in the eldest brother’s place each time. In the beginning of the sermonic process with this text, it can be difficult to approach this parable in a way that opens space for God’s Spirit to breathe. 

One way to open space might be to preach your own parable within the contours of Luke’s parable. Preaching as parable is a strenuous homiletical task, but it can be life-giving. For example, as I read this parable, I cannot help but hear a story that I remember from my earlier preaching days. I watched as a family lived this parable out in living color. Their child waited for midnight to strike on his 18th birthday and then hit the road to live life for himself. They had no way to communicate with him. They had a clue as towhom he was keeping company, and it was not the company they hoped he would keep. They had to make the very difficult decision to change the locks on the car and the house because they knew he had to "come to himself" in his time. They had to learn how to love him from afar. As the mother said to me, "I never understood the parable of the prodigal son in this way before. Before this happened, I never thought about how hard it was to be the father and mother who were left behind." It would be an interesting approach to preach as parable, using a story like the example I gave above to fill in the contours that Jesus paints with his story.

But my parishoner’s comment also opens up another possibility for preaching this text. Like the "preaching as parable" approach, this possibility also requires an imaginative leap. Tell the story and include the mother. I know that she is invisible in the story. She does not have a voice. You wouldn’t even know she was there. But I think that she was there, and we could give her a voice. 

What might the mother say when her baby, her youngest son, ran off with half of his inheritance? What might she say when she thought about how he was out there, all on his own, with no one to call and no promise of protection? What would happen with her heart as she waited day after day in the background, her own eyes scanning the horizon every few hours? What might she have done when she heard her husband shout with joy and take off running like a junior high boy? How would she have handled her eldest son refusing to come to the party because he could not stand that they were seemingly celebrating his youngest brother’s selfishness? 

All of these questions require one’s imagination and prayerful deliberation. But I believe that giving the prodigal son’s mother a voice could be a powerful way to preach this story. For perhaps she might have been the one who reminded the overjoyed father that they had another son, too, who had not yet come in from the fields. Perhaps she is our representative of the Divine, silently waiting and watching.

Regardless of what approach you take with this parable, my hope is that we, as preachers, can open up space in the story for God’s Spirit to work freely and to reshape our souls.

Shannon Johnson Kershner

We have over 60 exegetical, theological, and homiletical articles (like the ones above) on all the texts this week at GoodPreacher.com.

Be sure to go to GoodPreacher  and check out James Howell's Preaching Journal. It is like a weekly preaching seminar by one of America's most insightful preachers. Read how he dances with the text(s), his homiletical discoveries and frustrations, and how the sermon comes together. Then go to his website ( http://www.mpumc.org/ ) and watch him deliver the sermon. You will learn something every time you read his Preaching Journal.
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