The older brother is right to be angry, of course. When he finds out that his father’s “other child” has returned, and that his father has shockingly killed the fatted calf and thrown a party for the little swindler, he is furious.
"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. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”
“Who does that?” the older brother questions. What kind of father allows his son to take his inheritance before he has even died? That is essentially saying that you wish your father was dead. Who does that? What kind of father, after being so utterly rejected by his son, embraces the kid with open arms?
Further, what kind of father shares the best of what is remaining with a little brat who already took half of the estate and squandered it as if he were some sort of playboy with an infinite amount of wealth at his disposal.
The little twerp deserved to be eating with the hogs. The little twerp deserved to be served a slice of humble pie. How about he learns what it means to work hard and earn his way in life?
Is the older brother wrong here? You know that the little runt is just going to come back and take advantage of the father again. It is already started with the party, the robe, the ring, and the fatted calf! Now he is going to waste the rest of the inheritance intended for the older brother.
People like the younger son do not change. They need to learn the hard way. They need to learn how to fend for themselves. “That son does not deserve the kind of welcome that he is getting,” the older brother fumes.
Can you fault the older brother for reacting this way? History is littered with wasteful people being given a second chance only to waste some more. Where do you stop with the chances. The third time? The fourth time? The eighteenth time? Where do you stop? How many times must you forgive?
Let us just face the facts here: the lost son is exactly that, lost. He is lost in life. He is lost in his ways. He is lost in his sin. He is lost, period.
Hearing his elder son’s words and looking into his eyes, the father notices something about the older brother that saddens him greatly, he has two lost children.
It was the phrase, “But when this son of yours came back…” that caused his heart to fall. How does it happen that someone you have grown up with, played with, schemed with, and laughed with is somehow allowed to become a stranger? It was as if the older brother had built a stone wall between his brother and himself; a wall tall and thick enough that any recognition of someone on the other side would be completely wiped away.
The saying goes, “Good walls make good neighbors,” but the truth is that good walls create strangers. A good, tall, thick wall will not allow you to hear or see either a joyful party, or a devastating rape.
Walls protect us from the outside world, and, so too, the outside world is cut off from our availability to help.
The brother had a nice, thick, tall wall that would not allow him to even conceive of caring about his brother. His wall had effectively blocked any possibility of love. The father had just gotten back his wayward child, but now he seems to have lost another.
Granted, love can look awfully foolish. And, I am not just talking about a pair of love birds who hold hands and stare at each other as if going to Taco Bell were a fine dining event.
The type of foolish love that the father shows will make a grown man leap and bound down the road like a little boy on the last day of school, until he has embraced his long lost son.
This type of foolish love will cause respectable people to sit with the lowest of the low…the scummiest of the scum…and eat with them while others look on in disgust.
This type of foolish love will forgive over and over again, even if it is unwise.
This type of love will be so foolish and annoying that it will cause the lover to be hung on a cross, and even there Jesus will forgive once again those who would mock and kill and destroy, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
All of this foolish love spills haphazardly everywhere because of this one truth: connecting, loving, and forgiving are the starting point of repentance, not the end.
Understand, repentance in the biblical sense does not mean feeling bad about yourself. The biblical vision of repentance and forgiveness as told in Luke does not have us feeling bad about ourselves and then asking for love and forgiveness from a gracious God, though that might happen from time to time.
Instead, repentance, in this Lukan biblical sense, means thinking and living in different way…in a holy way. But, you can only think and live in a new way if you encounter that new way first.
If you want to understand better, just look at the younger son. After he had wasted away his inheritance and found himself dining with the pigs, he decided to create yet another scheme so that he can get back into his father’s house. He would declare his sin to his father and ask to serve as a hired hand. The scheme looks a lot like “feeling sorry,” but it is, none-the-less, a scheme to influence his father to get what he wants: food and a place to live.
In other words, all the hardships of his recent past have taught the younger son nothing. What will it take to get through to this little rat?
But, before the son even gets to start implementing his scheme, the father runs to him, welcoming him back with open arms, and showering him with the gifts of forgiveness and love (not forgetting to mention the robe, ring, and fatted calf).
Maybe, just maybe, you cannot live a life of full of love and forgiveness unless it has first been shown to you. The words of the book of Romans seemed to echo this idea loudly, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Apparently in God’s kingdom, connecting, forgiving, and loving each other are the prerequisites to a new way of life...to repentance. Love always comes first.
Will it work? Will this show of forgiveness change the younger son’s life? Will he repent?
We do not know. That is not part of the story. Maybe it worked great. Maybe it worked terribly. Or maybe, more realistically, the show of forgiveness just started the younger son down a better path in life which was still filled with bumps and steps backwards, but slowly progressed away from narcissism and moved towards loving others as he loved himself.
But, I think that there is a reason that the outcome is not a part of the story in the first place. It is not the possible outcome that determines whether or not a person is shown love in the first place. It is love that helps to shape the outcome.
Love is not the feast at the end of a long journey. Love is the food that you need to start the journey in the first place.
You are never wrong to show love. Never. Even if it does not turn out well or change anyone's life.
Jesus died on the cross for the sake of the world without having any guarantees as to the outcome. You are never wrong to show love to anyone, despite the possible outcome.
His inability to understand this is what makes the older brother lost. What do we do with older children of the world who refuse to love first, and who seek proof of worthiness instead?
What do we do with the older children who seem to care more about receiving their inheritance than receiving their brother?
What do we do with the older children who have worked hard and see grace given to a sinner as some sort of undeserved welfare?
What do we do with those lost older children?
I guess we say something like, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But 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."
I guess we remind them that they too are cared for and loved; because repentance always starts with love. That is God’s way.
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