Kiaora koutou. Today I want to do something a little different. Some of you may be familiar with the phrase, inductive bible study. It was made popular by a guy called Walter Wink back in the day. Walter encouraged people, as others had, to put aside some of the historical-critical commentaries and approaches to the Bible, and instead read the Bible as stories and ask yourself where you fit in the story or how the story resonates with you, or the people you know, or your situation. It starts from where people are at rather than asking ‘did this really happen?’ and ‘what were the factors that led to this?’ and all that sort of thing.

So today the reading in the lectionary is the story of the prodigal son and for those of us who have been around churches most of our lives it's a very familiar story. There's essentially three characters. One could say well there's five with Jesus and the audience being characters as well. But the story comes across as we hear it in Sunday school, with three characters, younger son, dad, and older son.

Let's just think about these characters for a moment. Younger son. Well, he was born in privilege. He was the youngest son of the patriarch of the clan who owned the farm. He wasn't born poor. But something went wrong, didn't it? Though we are not sure what.

You know the story; he went off the rails. But ‘What?’ ‘How?’ ‘Could it have been prevented?’ are open questions. Was it jealousy of his older brother? Was it some bullying behaviour? Was it some abusive behaviour? Was it a falling out with his father? Maybe his father had said something that really got under his skin. And of course the silent mother in the story, what was it of falling out with his mother? Whatever, we don't know.

But what we do know is that kids fall out with their parents, with their family, with their siblings.

So he approached the dad - and here a bit of that historical critical stuff is important and that we know from 2nd Temple Judaism, which was the time the story was constructed and told, was that when a son asks for the inheritance before the dad dies, it's like wishing the dad dead. So there's a big cultural insult. Probably a bit of a barney between dad and younger son erupted.

At the conclusion of which dad sort of says, OK, you've got to go your way. Here's your inheritance. And in doing that, to all his neighbours, particularly to his eldest son, he looked like a complete loser. Why would somebody do that? Why risk the financial security of the farm by dividing it up at this stage?

We don't know what gave rise to this parting of the ways between the younger son and his family, but we do know again and again that parents and children fallout over money and possessions.

So the youngest son goes off and he squanders it. Maybe people take advantage of him, maybe he's ripped off, whatever. He goes to a really low place in his life. And feeding pigs is a symbol of that. In Jewish thought, a pig was an unclean animal. He was among the unclean. He was unclean himself, this youngest son. And then the text says, ‘he came to himself.’

What is it? How does that little click happen? Because some kids we know don't come to themselves. They get into the drugs. They get into the bad scenes. They get led away by influential peers. They go in a downward spiral and in some of those spirals they don't or can't and it seems impossible to come back from. Some take their own lives.

It's really tragic and we know about those spirals. But there is in his case, in this story's case, something clicks, he comes to himself, says, even the hired workers get better than this back at Dad's place. Why am I putting up with this shit? Literally.

And so he turns, that's the meaning of the word repentance, and he returns. But not that he or the father or the elder brother believes that you can actually turn the clock back and start again. That's not what it's about. It's not what repentance is about. It's not what turning is about.

But he goes back and then there's this scene where the father, who's got this wound in his heart, this barney they had, this falling out, this grievance, whatever, is wounded, the father. And parents know what it's like to be wounded. Some a lot worse than others of course. But this father, so he also hopes, he keeps on hoping.

And some commentators want to say the father is God in the story. I don’t think that’s very helpful. Like God's not a man, God’s not a patriarch. You know, like, get out of that anthropomorphizing thing and instead say some of the behaviour of the dad is really exemplary and really healing and we should emanate that. Yes, it's Goddish. Yes, it's of God. Yes, the spirit of God is in that behaviour, in that love in particular.

The father embraces the youngest son before the son can even apologise. Just the son coming home is enough. And, yes there's a feast, and everybody realizes this is like starting again, though it’s not.

It's all pretty fragile. So there's fragility here. There's the fragility of feelings of the youngest son. There's fragility of feelings of the eldest son too, who has been a spectator there all this. He's had a younger brother; he's seen him become discontent and whatever went on for him. He's sort of seen it as a bit of a spectator. He's sort of seen or heard of the barney with dad and the fallout and taking the inheritance which puts his inheritance, the eldest son's inheritance at risk. So you know, it gets personal, it starts in the pocketbook for the eldest son. And love for your brother gets complicated in all this money, inheritance, who's going to inherit the farm, who's the elder in a patriarchal society. It complicates love at times and it makes it messy and makes it painful.

And I think the elder brother, when I hear this story, I hear some pain in him. What I mean is when the father wants to throw this feast of welcome back to the son, the elder son insults the father, and again that's the historical critical stuff helping us out, the elder son insults the father by not coming, by going off. And then the father, again a bit like dividing his inheritance to the younger son, he leaves the feast and he goes out to this this elder son who's insulting him by not attending. And those at the feast who see the father leave wonder where is he going. He’s a patriarch, he doesn't go and grovel to his elder son to come and join.

But this is a father who's motivated by love, but love in the sense that he wants his sons, his kids, to get on with each other. And particularly when he pops off the earth and gone. Are his sons, are his kids, going to actually like each other, love each other, be loyal to each other, support each other? And it's a question that many parents have. How do you build sibling relationships, good sibling relationships, that endure?

The story also doesn't end with a saying at the end, and thus all sons should know that, you know, kind of like some wise words at the end. No, the story doesn't end there. The story just abruptly ends. And it's like, we've got to write the ending. Will we write the ending as an elder son, as a father, as a younger son? What will the ending be? Will the old man die of a heart attack and the eldest son say, I'm in charge, younger son can get lost. How will the ending end?

And what are the demands of love if they go on living together? What does love mean? This kind of difficult love, this love that gets into finances, that gets into who's got the power, gets into how we care for one another. What will love ask of us?

So this is an inductive way of doing Bible study.

I've asked a lot of questions as I've been talking, and the questions for us to go away and think about. Who am I in this world? Have I met someone who is like a younger son or an elder son or like a father in this story? And what's the pain and the hope that they have? And what's the pain and the hope that they have?

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