the role of the lukan parables in terms of the purpose of luke's gospel

years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid
that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came who has devoured
your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf.’ The key point in his list of
grievances is the partiality of his father’s behaviour, that is, his excessive generosity towards
his younger son, and his excessive stinginess towards his elder son, seen from the son’s point
of view. In this regard, this part of the parable is reminiscent of the attitude of the labourers in
the vineyard (Mt. 20:11-12). The younger son, to be sure, has devoured the father’s living,
but the phrase seems most likely to be the elder son’s imagination, as I have
pointed out above, since there is no evidence to indicate that the elder son has received any
report about his brother’s life abroad. 125
At any rate, here he humiliates his father by refusing
to enter into the celebration, describing his father as stingy and partial, and by speaking of his
brother as “this son of yours” which intimates that his father is responsible for
his brother’s iniquity.
His words here betray a problem in his relationship with his father. He has the spirit of a
slave rather than a son, the mind of merit and reward, rather than love and graciousness from
his father. It seems not to hush up raising an analogy between the elder son and the Pharisees
and scribes.
But the father does not get angry in his response, nor does he rebuke his son, instead he
shows the same generosity and love that he displayed to his younger son: “Son, you are
always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for
this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” In his response, the father
desires to show that he has identical love for both sons, and is not partial, and that it is
reasonable enough for the whole family to celebrate the younger’s return. If there are
audiences who expect the younger son to remain the favorite, the parable subverts such a
126
thought. Likewise, even though the younger son’s life is filled with iniquity, the father
makes the elder son aware of the fact that he still is his brother in the phrase
125. Bailey comments that the Eastern versions and commentaries never carry a concept of immorality in
relation to . Bailey, Poet and Peasant, 122-24. Metzger notes that during the first century such an
expression is at least a stereotyped way that Jews stereotype Gentiles as sexually depraved, as in Romans 1:18-
32. Metzger, Consumption and Wealth in Luke’s Travel Narrative, 103-104. For the stereotypical
characterizations of Gentile behaviour, see Brendan Byrne, Romans (Sacra Pagina 6; Collegeville, MN: The
Liturgical Press, 1996), 65, 76-77.
126. Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 122-25; A. Troost, “Reading for the Author’s Signature: Genesis 21:1-21 and
Luke 15:11-32 as Intertexts,” in ed., Athalya Brenner, A Feminist Companion to Genesis (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1993), 251-72.
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