The Fourth Sunday of Lent Year C

The Fourth Sunday of Lent

Joshua 5.9–12
2 Corinthians 5.16–21
Luke 15.1–3, 11b–32

Luke, the expert writer, puts the prodigal son as the third of a set of stories about losing and finding. All of the stories emphasize God’s joy at finding what had been lost, but the story of the prodigal subtly changes the emphasis. The centre of the first two stories is the action of God. God seeks, God finds, God rejoices and calls others to rejoice. But in the prodigal son, the focus of the story is the response of the two sons. The younger son, the prodigal, has to learn the value of what he once took for granted. He sees his father chiefly as a provider, not a person. The father is there to give the son what he wants and then stand back. Even when the son returns in great need, there is a sort of calculation in his rehearsal of what he will say to his father. He does not say, ‘I know my father loves me and will forgive me.’ Instead, he is thinking about his own need for food, and how best to get it...