PREACH IT?

Maybe I have just missed it, but I don't recall ever hearing a Calvinist preach on Luke 15, the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

And that makes sense since it seems like the most counter-Calvin parable of them all:

• One son strays but the other never does.
• The straying son "comes to his senses" and takes the initiative to return to his Father. He's not dragged home irresistibly by his Father.
• The Father declares that this son was "once dead but is now alive". But how? The son simply returned to his Father. The Father was certainly full of grace, but there is no work of the Holy Spirit even hinted at here. And no regeneration preceding faith.

I think the last point should be the most troubling for the Calvinist. They are the ones who say, "Dead means dead, and a dead man can do nothing" - as a proof for total depravity requiring unconditional election. 

But here the Father uses the deadness metaphor with a single clear meaning: 

Deadness and Lostness = Separation from the Father.

The son becomes "alive" and "found" by returning to the Father.

There is one aspect of this parable, though, I would think a Calvinist preacher could relate to:

The older son.