Pastor Patty was having a whapacino at the "Put Your Bean to the Grindstone Coffee House," trying to figure out how to preach on the Prodigal Son this Sunday, which is really the story of The Prodigal Father. It's a difficult preach, because everyone already knows the story and thinks they know what it means.
Real estate agent Vince Stengwel stopped by her table.
"Vince, in the story of the prodigal son, who do you identify with most, the father, the prodigal son, or the older brother?"
"Hades, Rev. Niebuhr, pardon my Hebrew, but I'm a real estate man. I'm the guy who rented the pig sty to him after he was already broke."
"Hmm," thought Pastor Patty, "there are more characters in that story than I really thought about before. What was it like from the pigs' POV, having to fight a foreign Jew boy for slop, knowing that he looked down on you as unclean even though he was right there in the swill with you? What about the servants who had to slay the fatted calf? Maybe some little servant girl thought that calf was her pet, fed it by hand, that's why it was so fat, even named it Calfie."
She brought that up to retired pastor Randall Niebuhr when he came in for a Hole-in-the-Wall grande'.
"Well, the story as Jesus told it is about his own people, the Jews, being the elder brother, and not wanting to let the Gentile prodigals into the family, since they associated with pigs and didn't do the hard work to keep all the purity laws."
"Right," said Pastor Patty. "Great exegesis. I think I'll start with Calfie, though, and we'll see where the sermon goes from there..."
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