Where does the money come from? It’s rather a tricky question, so let me narrow it down. What is the source of the money we can spend? The answer is: it depends on who you ask. Usually, it’s children that have the funniest ideas, like tooth fairies, Santa or ‘hole-in-the-wall’. The latter is the most convenient because – unlike the other two – you don’t have to lose your teeth nor wait one whole year while behaving well. ‘Hole-in-the-wall’ is a convenient and seemingly limitless source of money as long as you have a magic bit of plastic and know the secret sequence. When I was a child, the equivalent of a cash machine was my poor mother, who – in my childish eyes – used to so often unreasonably restrict my access to cash. Until I got my first summer job when I quickly learnt that the value of money wasn’t the one printed on the banknotes but measured by the long hours in the scorching sun or in a downpour and sweat running down my back. Another quick lesson of my intensive summer jobs was money management or budgeting. It meant planning ahead and saving up for whatever I desired, spending money wisely and asking for advice with purchases – my dear mother, a life-long shop manager, provided plenty of the latter when asked. Growing up in a household with tight budgets and limited resources turned out to provide many benefits in the long run. Squandering money is not one of the outcomes.
I think most of us share such an attitude. Overall, as a society, we are very generous: for example, Comic Relief over a week ago raised over £42 million; we remember the late Captain Sir Tom Moore who raised over £32 million for the NHS. Locally, the Emergency Ukraine Appeal in our parish recently proved it again, as it will – I’m sure – with today’s collection for the Wee Box Appeal. We give generously because we trust that the money raised will be spent well to benefit those who need it most. Such trust is backed and enforced by legal regulations and audits. We want to help but we don’t want our donations to be squandered. I think that’s why we are much more cautious when it comes to random individuals asking us for money. Generally, we don’t want to feed someone’s addictions or to be used as naive cash cows.
The well-known parable in today’s gospel touches on that topic, though our translation doesn’t reveal it. For that, we have to reach for the original Greek version. When the younger son asked for his “share of the estate that would come to [him]” the word used here meant wealth. In response, the father “divided the property between them”; the Greek word ton bion used here should be translated as means of life. In other words, the younger son’s attitude towards money was childish, immature; he neither understood the real value of his father’s wealth nor the meaning of it. His request was grossly disrespectful as he effectively wished his father were dead – that was the established way of getting the rightful share of the inheritance. Squandering the money that followed was simply a predictable consequence of his attitude towards life in general and money in particular. Only having frittered away the money did he get a chance to learn its true value and meaning as means of life. That realisation was the beginning of his journey towards maturity; his decision to return home was still self-centred but now he knew that he would have to work hard – no more freeloading, no more unlimited, unrestricted access to the bank of dad. Only having been embraced by his father did the younger son finally manage to understand what really mattered in life; in other words, he eventually reached his maturity. This was attested to by his father when he said to his servants and then repeated to his older son: “this son of mine was dead and has come back to life.” Incidentally, he was “dead” not on account of squandering the money but the other way round – he wasted his inheritance because he was already “dead.”
That leads us to the older son. Interestingly, in his argument with his father, he used the Greek term ton bion when referring to his brother’s waste. So, the older brother seemed to be the opposite of the younger one; he understood the real value and meaning of wealth as well as of hard work; he had remained faithfully at his father’s side. As is often the case, only when emotion had got the better of him did his own grudges and resentments surface. Although on the face of it, he raged against his prodigal brother, in fact, his anger was directed at his father: “Look, all these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends.” He even disowned the younger brother by calling him “this son of yours.” In a way, both brothers were “dead” in the sense that each was self-centred, self-absorbed. It showed in different ways but both squandered their lives. The difference between them was that the younger one realised that. The older brother got a chance to follow suit.
The central character of the parable is the father. Although somehow remaining in the background, overtaken by the dramatic downfall of each of his sons, he offers them their respective ways to redemption, to maturity, to life. Whether we identify with one or the other is immaterial. What does matter is whether each one of us realises that we need redemption – because that is the most crucial step towards being truly alive.
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