The most famous story Jesus told begins with a dramatic shock. The first hearers of this tale must have had eyebrows arch and jaws drop into the dust. The horror of it would have been almost unimaginable for them. "Father," the youngest son said, "give me the share of property that falls to me."

Kenneth Bailey, a professor in the Near Eastern School of Theology in Beirut once said: "For over 15 years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son's request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has almost always been emphastically the same .... the conversation runs as follows:

'Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?'

'Never!'

'Could anyone ever make such a request?'

'Impossible!'

'If anyone ever did, what would happen?'

'His father would beat him, of course!'

'Why?'

'The request means -- he wants his father to die'!"1

The only way a son could claim his inheritance was on the death of his father. "Dad," the younger son said in effect, "I wish you were dead; I wish you were out of the way so I could start a new life on my own."

Ken Bailey comments on the startling fact that "in all of Middle Eastern literature ... from ancient times to the present, there is no case of any son, older or younger, asking for his inheritance from a father who is still in good health" -- except in this parable. Jesus knew how to grab the attention of His listeners!

And if they were surprised at the cruel implications of this selfish demand, they would have been blown out of their sandals by the response of the father. Any Israelite would have expected the father to explode in anger and discipline. Instead, they heard Jesus tell of a father who loved in an astonishing way, who loved enough to grant his son the freedom to reject that love, the freedom to make wrong choices, the freedom even to hurt himself in order maybe to find himself.

So the lawyers were called in, the papers were signed, and the boy immediately set about to cash in one-third of his father's property (the portion coming to him as the youngest son). It wasn't easy. Going from one prospective buyer to another, the intensity of community hatred and disgust mounted. At every turn he was greeted with amazement, horror, and rejection. It had become more than a family-affair; insulting a father was a community affair. The boy had made himself an outcast. He was treated as though he were a leper .... or as though were dead.

Eventually someone was found greedy enough to take advantage of the situation, and before the banks closed that day, the son, who knew he had no future left in the village, converted his cash into traveller's checks and hit the road for the far country.

The far country! It had seduced his imagination by day and ravished his dreams by night. His heart had long ago left home, of course, and emigrated to the land of restless longing. But now he would catch up with his heart; now he would not awaken from his dream to face another dull day of drudgery in his father's fields; now he would actually live his dream.