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Perhaps the single most startling thing about "the Parable of the Prodigal Son", is there is actually no such parable; at least not the way that Jesus tells the story.

To be sure, it mentions a son who lives prodigally, and who plays a major part in the whole drama, but Jesus' emphasis throughout was never on this son but on the father, who, in the full account represents God.

It is in fact, the culmination of three narrative accounts given by Jesus in Luke 15, in response to the accusation by some Pharisees that he spent too much time in the company of tax collectors and sinners. Indeed, to the Pharisees, any time Jesus spent ministering to those they regarded as unrighteous, was too much time. And that was Jesus' point.

First, he delivers the parable of a shepherd who has a hundred sheep, but loses one and goes off in search of it. When the shepherd finds the lost sheep, he rejoices with his friends and neighbours.

Next, Jesus tells of a woman who possesses ten silver coins. She loses one and immediately searches diligently until it is found, whereupon she responds with public rejoicing.

In each instance, the lost sheep and the silver coin are the objects of the story, while the actual subjects are the shepherd (symbolising Jesus in the world) and the woman (the Holy Spirit in the Church), typifying a God whose heart yearns for the lost.

Thus, does Jesus build his hearers up to his main parable in verse 11, which begins thus: "A certain man had two sons".

Both sons are indeed very much ancillary to the plot; without them there would be no parable, but neither son is the focus of Jesus' main point which is the loving Father, representing his own Father in heaven.

We all know the next part, which would have truly shocked and scandalised Jesus' immediate hearers, as he describes the younger son's callous insult to his father, demanding his inheritance, in a manner that those of that culture would have unmistakably recognised as tantamount to telling his father to "Drop dead!"

One can only imagine the rage and indignation it must have elicited in Jesus' Pharisaic audience. And how they must have crowed at Jesus' account of how the profligate son's licentious lifestyle eventually led to his downfall, placing him at the mercy of his father's undoubted and well-deserved wrath.

Suddenly, however, Jesus turns the whole story around, inverting what must have seemed at first to his hearers to be an altogether predictable morality tale: a tale of a black sheep son's horrible familial

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