The Prodigal So by Henri Nouwen
Week 5: Part Two — The Elder Son (II)
Read the remainder of Part Two (chapters on the father's compassion toward the elder son and Nouwen's personal reckoning). Primary Scripture: Luke 15:31–32.
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The parable ends with the father outside the feast, pleading with the elder son — a detail that Nouwen finds as theologically rich as the more celebrated embrace of the younger son.
Discussion Questions
8 questions1.The father leaves the feast to come out to the elder son — just as he had run to the younger son. Nouwen emphasizes that the father's compassion is not exhausted by one child's return; it flows equally toward the son who is lost in a different way. What does it mean to you that God pursues the religiously lost with the same urgency as the morally lost?
2.The father says to the elder son: "Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours." Nouwen calls these among the most important words in the parable. Why does the elder son fail to hear them as gift? What prevents us from receiving the truth that we already possess what we are straining and aching for?
3.Nouwen suggests that the elder son's lostness is, in some ways, more difficult to heal than the younger son's — because the elder son does not experience himself as lost. He is convinced he is the righteous one. Why is self-righteousness more resistant to grace than prodigality? What does it take to be broken open from the inside rather than the outside?
a.The younger son's lostness became visible in a famine. What are the "famines" that reveal the elder son's hidden poverty?
b.What would the elder son's "return" need to look like?
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