NRSLuke 15
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3So he told them this parable: 11b"There was a man who had two sons.12The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. 13afew days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!18I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands." ' 20So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' 22But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe — the best one — and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.23And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.
25Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' 28Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him.29 But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.30But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!'31Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.32But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"
The Gospel of the Lord …Praise to you, O Christ.
May the Lord keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and the love of God; for the sake of Jesus the Messiah.
Today’s Gospel would, in my humble opinion, read a lot easier and go down a whole lot smoother if it weren’t for the story of the elder brother. We typically refer to this parable as the tale of the prodigal, that is, the wasteful son, leaving out both loving father and resentful sibling. Most sermons on this text dwell on the younger son’s fall from grace, his sorrowful return, and gracious reception. But then we skip over the elder brother’s angry response, and no wonder.
If we stop at the prodigal son’s return, the parable reads and sounds like a made-for-TV movie, complete with conflict, fall from grace, and ultimate happy ending. It’s sort of like Pa Cartwright welcoming Little Joe back to the Ponderosa, with Adam, Hoss, and Hop Sing all smiles. In Luke’s version, though, the elder brother complicates what would otherwise be a simpler story of repentance and return. It gives the parable a kind of ragged edge. At the close of the parable, we don’t know whether big brother ever joins the party, or just remains sulking and sullen out on the front porch. Hollywood would definitely send this one back for a rewrite.
But the elder brother is more than a literary problem for this parable. The elder brother also poses an issue that’s much closer to our hearts and much harder to resolve. What angers the elder brother is not so much that dad has taken the little stinker back in. Toward even the most rebellious child, most parents can’t turn completely away. We have to do something. So it’s not hard to imagine the older brother accepting his father’s decision to save his own flesh and blood from starvation. But then to give him the best robe? To put a ring on his finger? And then have the fatted calf prepared for a feast, with music and dancing? After what this son has done? As Fred Craddock framed the question:
Yes, let the prodigal return, but to bread and water, not fatted calf; in sackcloth, not a new robe; wearing ashes, not a new ring; in tears, not in merriment; kneeling, not dancing. Has the party cancelled the seriousness of sin and repentance? (Fred Craddock, Luke, p.188)
If the father welcomes back the prodigal so extravagantly, then why don’t we all just go out and have a grand old time? If we’re all going to get a ring and a party in our honor, why don’t we just sell the farm, spend the kids’ inheritance, and take the next bus to Las Vegas? And you and I both know plenty of people who are doing just exactly that.
These are not abstract, theological questions we can discuss over coffee and cookies. When one of my aunts died a couple or three years ago, her daughters almost came to blows over how to divide that estate. Turns out, one of those daughters, unbeknownst to the others, had been “borrowing ” funds, now and again, from momma’s bank account. Of course, she was going to pay her back, but when mom died and the other two sisters found out about her “loans,” they insisted that those same “loans” needed to come out of her cut of the inheritance right there and then. They went to court, and after a very long chill, they’re finally starting to speak to one another again, but just barely.
Many of us have had similar experiences with prodigal brothers or sisters, sons or daughters or other deeply loved family members who have sometimes made big messes of their lives. They move from crisis to crisis. They beg for money. They promise that they’ll straighten themselves out, get clean, get sober, and get on their feet and on with their lives. In the meantime, they drain us of time, patience, and money, until our love wears thin and we begin to resent them. We resent their pleading and whining, but most of all, we resent the way they play our parents or grandparents, aunts or uncles, until finally we begin to resent them, too. Over time we begin to resent them for being such easy marks, for falling for the same old lines and giving into the same old manipulations. We want them to say, “No! No, you can’t have any more money. No, you can’t come back home to live. No, we won’t clean up after you any more. Be more like your big brother or your little sister or your cousin who’s got a job and has a new truck and is buying his own house, and maybe then we’ll talk.” And of course, that’s what we’d like God to say, too.
Whether we like it or not, or think that we could improve upon it, this is a parable about two sons, not just one. The prodigal son is the obvious sinner. He’s clearly the jerk. He cuts deeply into the family fortune, and then blows it all on the worst kinds of riotous, immoral living. And when he hits rock bottom and slinks back to dad with his tail between his legs, you can’t entirely rule out the possibility that he’s just running another scam on the old man to get his snout back in the trough. But the elder son is a sinner, too. He’s also running a number on his father, trying to bend the old man’s will to his purposes. In his book The Prodigal God, Timothy Keller describes this as the sin of self-righteousness. That’s when we try to make God beholden to us. We do good things to make God reward us, and then expect God to punish the people who don’t live up to our standards. And when God doesn’t play by the rules we try to impose on the Lord, we cry foul. We blame God. We refuse to join God’s party, like the parable’s pouty big brother.
The elder brother in today’s gospel reminds me of the prophet Jonah. You remember that God called Jonah to preach repentance to the great and wicked city of Nineveh. But Jonah, instead, hops the next boat to the end of the world, fearing that if Nineveh actually repents, God will then actually forgive them. In fact, Jonah would rather die than see those terrible, bloodthirsty, scummy Ninevites turn to God. God uses a big fish to get Jonah back on track, and wouldn’t you know, despite Jonah’s best efforts, the Ninevites repent. That’s when it gets to be all too much for Jonah and he heads into the desert to die. But when Jonah complains to God for taking away his shade tree, in the last words of the book God says to him, “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are than a hundred thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
Children often ask their parents, “Who do you love more? Do you love me more than sis? Or me more than brother? Or me more than dad, or mom, or grandma, or grandpa? Who do you love more?” We try to say, “I love you the same,” but of course, they don’t buy that, because it’s not true. We can’t love every child the same way, any more than we can love every person the same way. Every child, every person is different, and our love toward them has to take that difference into account. As children, of course, we can’t see that. All we see is that he got two nickels and I only got one dime. It’s not fair.
In today’s Gospel parable it’s obvious that the father loves both sons. He goes out to both sons, and he is generous to both sons. Though the elder son may doubt that generosity, the father insists to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (v. 31). The question, then, for this older child is this: Does he believe his father? Does he trust his father when he says, “All that is mine is yours?” Further, does he trust that his father knows what he’s doing, or does he believe that his father is just being duped – again, maybe—by his selfish younger brother?
I’m going to go out on a limb and make a broad, rash generalization (my specialty!); namely, that many of us here this morning share a certain sympathy for the elder brother in this morning’s parable. We may have had a time or two in our lives when we walked on the wild side, or sowed a few wild oats, or maybe even gotten ourselves into a bit of trouble. But whatever our gender or family position, as good, church-going, God-fearing folk we are likely to have a tendency to see the world from an elder brother perspective. And to the elder brother in each of us, God’s forgiveness seems not only extravagant, but also dangerous. Without fire and brimstone and plagues and pestilence and other terrors visited on the ungodly, can God’s love alone save us from our self-destructive ways? How can you make people behave if all you’re going to do is forgive them? Is love enough to remake the human heart? Or more specifically, is God’s love enough to remake our human hearts?
You can’t answer that question theoretically. You can only live the answer by accepting our Father’s invitation to stop sulking and join the party where there’s music and dancing and good food, “because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found" (v. 32)?
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
