Luke 15:25-32
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look, all these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours, who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”
“ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
O.K., so the older brother is prideful and convinced of his own goodness. He looks down on his younger brother and resents the party being thrown by his father just because the good-for-nothing little brother dragged himself home because he was out of money. But Jesus wants us to look even a little deeper into the older brother’s heart. He wants us to see that the pride and the self-righteousness are just symptoms of a much deeper issue – and that is, that he older brother despises his father more than the younger brother ever did!
Notice first that he forces his father to come out of the house to plead with him to come in. This is a blatant act of disrespect. Second, notice the accusation embedded in his complaint, “Look, all these years I have been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends…” He insults his father by accusing him of being a slave-driver and cheap-skate. Finally, he accuses the father of both favoritism and foolishness when he says, “But when this son of yours, who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fatted calf for him.”
What the older brother reveals at this point in the story – is that he believes himself to be superior not only to his wayward younger brother – but also to his own father. He doesn’t respect his father. He doesn’t love his father. He resents his father and serves him only in order to get what he so desperately believes he has coming to him.
Again, it is impossible to receive grace when you are demanding justice! The tragedy of the older brother is that he has been invited to join the celebration of his father because his younger brother was “lost and now is found” – yet, he insists on remaining lost himself.
Brian Coffey
Posts
2 comments:
I wish I knew how to spell the sound "Hmph" - as in, "Well, that's interesting!" I get it... I get it. The older brother is doing more than just a little whining here - it's blatant disrespect, and working for his father for the wrong reasons. My take-away from today: "It is impossible to receive grace when you are demanding justice." Hmmm. In a world of great injustice, and a Kingdom that doesn't operate by "fair" rules either, that's a lot to chew on...
It's been touching for me to read these bolgs this week. Mainly because I don't see myself as an older brother but more of an "older brother wannna-be".
It's like that line from "Sense and Sensability"- The older sister asks if the younger sister compares her behavior with the scoundrel that has broken her heart, the younger replies, "no, I compare it with what it aught to have been. I compare it with yours". That's me from about 16 until about 33, when I saw my need to turn to God and not people.
I think I have misunderstood my "older brother and sisters" in a sense. And I'm not really talking about birth order. I saw these people as having arrived so-to-speak and wished I'd had the families and christian walks they'd been blessed with.
I felt insecure and inadequate around them and avoided deeper relationships with them. As much as I wished I could be like them.
I think I see more clearly now how much we all need God. I have more compassion for this older brother in the story, and I see some ways that I am like him. Especially when I think about how I would feel to see God bless and accept some of the people who have wounded me so deeply in the past.
I apppreciate the comments and blogs. It has been really thought provoking.
Post a Comment