I spend a lot of my time learning about trauma, and
considering ways that the church might be part of trauma healing.  If
I had a guess as to why this catches my attention so deeply, it would
be this: as I grew up and realized how broken things are, I started
wondering “why!?”  Until I heard about the Adverse Childhood
Experiences study, and started reading about trauma, very little
seemed to adequately answer my question.

So it may not be surprising that when I read Joshua, and
hear “today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt, “
I find myself wondering about trauma healing.  The story says that
the people had been enslaved for hundreds of years, and then spent 40
years wandering in the desert, as a means of leaving behind that
trauma and preparing for the new life they were going to live.  This
passage, today, is the moment of transition.

In life,  there isn’t an end to healing as a gradual
lessening of the grasp trauma holds on a life.  But, also, 40 years
sounds like a good time frame.  It is not instantaneous, by any
stretch, and it represented multiple generational changes.  It takes
seriously the long tail of healing, and the impact on generations.

I don’t really think the story means that the trauma of
slavery is over for the ancient people of God.  But, I think this is
another step in that process.  To be told, “your disgrace is rolled
away” is a really important piece, and I rather respect it taking
40 years for the people to be ready to hear it.

I also love that there is this intersection of healing
and relationship.  So for those 40 years, the people were said to be
fed directly by God.  The manna on the floor of the desert provided
for them, along with occasional quail.  Or, perhaps we might say,
they were hunter-gatherers and aware in that process of their
dependence on God.  This passage represents a shift to being farmers,
who are still rather dependent on God, but take more of the
responsibility for active food production (especially in a desert).

While healing, the people needed to be cared for.  They
also needed to be able to move freely.  They needed space.  They
needed time.  They needed a dependable caregiver to keep on teaching
them that they could trust.  

When they had healed enough, and when they were ready to
hear “your disgrace has been rolled away” which I think means
“you are no longer defined by what others did to you,” they were
ready to bring that time of healing to an end, and begin caring for
themselves and each other.  

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate that this
timeline isn’t more aggressive?   I love, also that this happened at
Passover.  The first Passover was when the journey began, and it came
full circle, to the remembrance of that journey and to eating the
food in a new land as a new people, before the journey ended.

I don’t know where exactly the family trauma in the
parable starts, but I can see its fingerprints.  This is, sadly, not
a healthy family.  On the upside, it looks familiar enough to enough
of us that we can at least know that the Bible knows how REAL
families work.  We can see that God sees and knows families as they
are, and still works within them.  This family may or may not have
MAJOR trauma, but it is definitely struggling with at least a pile of
minor ones.

Before I delve into the parable, it seems worth taking
the time for a little reminder of what a parable is and is not,
because truthfully a lot of preachers get this wrong, and you may
have been misled along the way.  Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, New Testament
professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, has done amazing work with
her book “Short Stories by Jesus”  and my reflections are guided
by her.

Parables are stories, sometimes quite short, that resist
easy interpretation, and understandings.  Dr. Levine says, “What
makes the parables mysterious, or difficult, is that they challenge
us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own
lives.”¹
Or, to be more direct: a parable is not an allegory.  Each character
doesn’t “stand in” for someone else, where it appears to be one
thing but is actually about God.  Or to be EVEN MORE DIRECT: please
don’t take the father in this story as God.  It won’t go well for
God, and it will deny us the chance to hear the story as it actually
is.

Luke is the only gospel writer to tell this story, and
it puts it after two other stories about things getting lost.  First
there are 100 sheep, and one gets lost.  The shepherd finds it and
rejoices.  Then there are 10 coins, and one gets lost.  The woman
finds it and rejoices.  So we’re well set up here.  A man has two
sons, one gets lost.

Hmmm, “There was a man who had two sons…”  That
should actually get our brains lighting up with memories.  Or, at
least, it would have for the first listeners.  “Two sons?  Oh yeah?
I’ve heard that one.  Cain and Able – older one was more than a
little bit of a problem, and God preferred the gift of younger.
Ishmael and Issac, older one had to be sent away entirely, younger
one got the blessings.  Esau and Jacob – yeah, OK, there is a
pattern here, I get it.  So, tell me about how the younger son is
better than the older and how God inverses my expectations, I’m
ready.”

Which means, of course, that Jesus inverses THAT
expectation.  This younger son isn’t a pillar of anything.  I believe
you know this part.  The younger son asks for his inheritance,
receives it, and an unexpectedly generous portion at that, sells it,
leaves, wastes it, there is a famine, and he gets hungry.  He then
realizes that he doesn’t have to live like that – he can go home.

Dr. Levine doesn’t entirely believe his contrition, and
she makes some good points about that.  While he claims to be going
home to just be a laborer, the word “father” keeps being
repeated, which actually keeps him in his position as son.  Also, the
line, “I have sinned against heaven and before you” is the exact
phrase Pharaoh mouths in order to stop the plague, which isn’t a
flattering repetition.  It has been said that his words could be
summarized as “I’ll go to Daddy and sound religious.”²
 He has a rather good idea that this may be sufficient, this is a
father who already gave him his inheritance, already have him a
larger portion than he should have, and may well have offered him a
safe place to land if ever he needed it.  The father is a bit
indulgent.

The father is, of course, thrilled his son has come
home.  The son has been gone for quite some time, and has been
functionally dead to him, and possibly dead.  (I know you don’t need
this reminder, but they weren’t’ face-timing while he was away.)  The
father’s rejoicing mirrors the shepherd who found the sheep, and the
woman who found the coin.  YAY!  

This also fits human nature, right?  Most parents would
welcome home the wanderer, no matter where they’d been or what they’d
done.  That said, Dr. Levine concludes “I still have a picture of a
manipulative, pampered, and perhaps relieved kid at the fatted calf
buffet.”  

Which is important.  Because at this point the younger
son disappears from the story, and it becomes clear that this is the
SET UP for the real story.  The father thought he’d lost his younger
son, but in truth it looks like he’d lost them both.  The younger
came back, but the elder is still lost.  

No one told the elder brother about his brother’s return
nor the party.  

What the hey?

They didn’t notice he wasn’t there?  They didn’t think
to tell him?  This sounds – sadly- like a story I’ve heard from
lots of people.  The pain of being forgotten in their own family.
The so called “little” slights that add up over time to people
feeling like they don’t matter to the ones they love.  Furthermore,
based on all the other stories in the Bible with 2 sons, it is
reasonable to guess there were some issues between the brothers, and
the father’s rather extreme generosity to the younger one likely
didn’t help the relationship between them.

Now, the father does seem to suddenly get that there is
a larger family dynamic issue, and he does rush out to greet his
elder son.  Good!    However, as Dr. Levine says:

Years of resentment have finally boiled over and found
expression.  The son’s fidelity has been overlooked.  Once again the
problem child receives more attention, or more love, than the prudent
and faithful one.  By announcing that ‘there is more joy in heaven’
for the one who repents than for the ninety-nine who need no
repentance, Luke reinforces this preference.  We might think of the
older son as speaking for those ninety-nine who have no need of
repentance but who appear to bring less joy.³

Right, so this sounds like families I know.  It sounds
like my own family at times.  It sounds really familiar.  And I think
that’s part of the genius of the parable. This as come around to
dealing with responsibility and irresponsibility, enabling,
resentment, and the huge question: how to respond to it all?  This
sounds like life.  It is difficult and imperfect, and requires a lot
from us just to get through things – even the things that are
supposed to be good.  His brother is alive!  He came home!  And it is
COMPLICATED.

The father does well here.  The first word of his
response is best translated as an endearment “Child.”  Perhaps we
might hear it as “child of mine.”  The father acknowledges this
older son who has also been lost.  And the father acknowledges a
literal truth:  having given his property to his sons, all that he
had is now the property of his older son.   AND,  he needs to
rejoice.  He is a father who has had his son restored.

Now, this is where I think the parable is most
brilliant.  After the father’s speech it just… ends.  Does the
elder brother go into the party?  Would you?  

This family has all been lost to each other.  What will
it take to bring it back together?  Do they have the ability?  Do
they have the commitment and desire to fix things?  Will they?  

Would you?  Amen

1Amy-Jill
Levine, Short Stories by Jesus (USA:
HarperOne, 2014), page 3.

2Ibid,
Dr. Levine however is quoting David Buttrick ,54.

3Ibid,
64.