In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
With
all due respect to Shakespeare, a rose by any other name would not be as sweet.
Names matter. The passage from Luke that I just read often goes by the name “The
Parable of the Prodigal Son.” Notice that that word, “prodigal,” is found
nowhere in the passage itself; but, nevertheless, that is the name by which
this story is known. And that name influences how we hear the parable and what
we take from it. The name changes our perspective. What if we called it “The
Parable of the Fatted Calf”? How about “The Parable of the Gullible Father”? Or
perhaps, “The Parable of the Self-Righteous Older Brother”? Just by changing
the name of the parable, which isn’t actually in the Bible, we can change the
entire meaning of Jesus’ words.
