notes from thoughts on the prodigal son by barbara brown taylor
- barbara brown taylor on the prodigal son
- The problem with a really good parable is that i can become limp from too much handling. you now have a domestic pet as captive to you as you are to culture.
- what would this had sounded like in a middle eastern world to a middle eastern audience? it would have been largely agrarian. no courthouse to hold the papers on property. honesty was premium on who owned what. a premium on being neighbors was prime. if things worked out the way they were supposed too then your children married their children.
- todays parable becomes the story of a dysfunctional family. it is a reunion story, not a resurrection story. given the shape our churches are in we may need this story.
- the father does one of those things the patriarch does not do. he runs.. runs like a little girl, not like a father. "great men never run in public" aristole said. this reconciliation will cost him his honor in front of the village. a feast to restore the family honor. the reconciliation means more than being right or honorable. this salvation costs almost as much as what it cost the father when his son left. yet he asks or says nothing of it.
- reunion brings the dead back to life.
- the fathers party is for the reconcilable & anyone that will come.
