The Prodigal God: The Elder Brother

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Which is worse? To be lost and know it? Or to be lost and not realize it? It’s one thing to get yourself lost, but you realize you made a wrong turn, you don’t really recognize any of the landmarks that are around. At least at that point, as bad as it is that you may be lost, if you realize it, you can do something to correct the situation. I suppose a last ditch effort, you could actually ask for directions. But if you’re lost and you know it, you can do something about it.

To me, it’s worse if you’re lost and you don’t know it. Haven’t you been there? You’ve been confident that you know exactly where you’re heading and you know exactly how you’re going to get there and so you head out in all confidence. You don’t really pay attention to what’s happening around you because, after all, you know where you’re going and you know exactly how to get there. The problem is when you’re lost and you don’t know it and you keep going because you’re sure it’s just around the next bend. It’s just over the next hill. And you end up going further and further and further away from your destination until finally, you have that sinking feeling and you realize you’re lost and it’s worse because what’s really bad is you’ve been so confident about this, you haven’t paid attention to where you’ve been and so you can’t even find your way back to where you began. I think it’s worse to be lost and not know it.

This is the point that Jesus is getting across in the second part of His parable as He starts to tell us about the older son. You see, it’s a parable of two lost sons. Both of them are alienated from the father, but one of them knows it. The other one doesn’t. For the younger son, it’s obvious that he’s alienated from his father. He does this bold move and he asks for his share of the inheritance. He goes off and squanders it away on wild living. He knows perfectly well that he’s doing things his father doesn’t approve of. He knows that he’s alienated from his father.

Meanwhile, you have the older son, the good son. He stays at home. He’s obedient to the father and he is confidently going down that path. But what he doesn’t know is he’s just as alienated from his father as his younger brother.

Today, we want to dig into the second half of Jesus’ parable. I think it’s the most challenging half of Jesus’ teaching. At first glance, when we take a look at the parable, we’re looking at it through the eyes that we’ve traditionally seen this parable. That is the parable of the prodigal son. All of our focus has always been on the younger son, the younger brother and him going off and then finally coming home and being welcomed by the father. Looking at it from that perspective, when we start to read about the older brother, we’re in agreement with him, are we not? I was all the time throughout the years. Yeah, he’s got a point. “You know, Dad, what are you doing? You have this kid who’s always back talking you. He’s disrespectful. He’s insulted you. He’s dishonored the family. He’s squandered away a third of our estate and now he comes back, no consequences? Open arms? No stipulations? No ground rules for coming back into the family?” How could the father be so foolish to do this with the younger son? If the focus of the story is on the younger son, then I’m in agreement with the older brother. What’s going on?

But that’s the crux, isn’t it? The focus of Jesus’ story isn’t on the older son or the younger son. It’s on the father. Now that changes everything. If the focus of the story is about the father and how he deals with his two sons, now all of a sudden, you see the story in a new light. You see, if it’s about the father, then the older son, when he comes back and he sees all the celebration, he has to realize what an important day this is for his dad. After all, he comes back and he finds out that the fattened calf has been butchered and now they’re roasting it up and the entire community has been invited in for a party. You’re in a culture where meat is not served at every meal. It is a delicacy. It is something to look forward to. And especially now, he’s killed the fattened calf. That means that this is an extremely important event. He went to enormous expense. He is being extravagant in this celebration.

The older son must realize that this is the most important day in his father’s life. So how does he treat his father? He insults him by not going into the party. You see, if he loved the father more than anything else regardless of how he felt about his younger brother, he would have gone into the party. Because this is such an important day for his dad, he wouldn’t want to ruin it. And if his dad is joyful and excited, then he would be filled with joy and excitement for his dad if he loved the dad more than anything else. But that’s not how he reacts. He refuses to go into the party. He dishonors his father just as much as the younger son dishonored his father. By not going into the party, he is saying he no longer respects his father as the head of this family. He rejects that and he rejects his father. In the end, the father has to come out to his son and plead with him, in the same way the father had to go to the younger son and bring him home. So now the father is going to the older son to bring him home.

Do you see what Jesus is teaching here? Jesus is saying that the older brother is just as lost as the younger brother, just for very different reasons. Remember the primary audience is the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. They would understand very well the point that Jesus is making here. The father in the story represents God. The meal, it’s the feast of salvation. But this is where it gets dicey. This is where their whole world is rocked and this is where they get deeply offended by Jesus because He has the whole thing turned around. In Jesus’ story, the younger son, the immoral son, the bad son is in the party. Meanwhile, the good son, the obedient son is left outside of the party. When Jesus does the cliffhanger and He ends the story with the son still sulking outside, not going into the feast, you can almost hear a pin drop or at least the Pharisees gasp as they say, “What? No, no, no, no, no, you have it all wrong. No, no, no. The younger brother can’t be in there. He’s the sinner. He’s the immoral one. It’s the good son, the obedient son. He should be in the party. Why hasn’t he gone into the feast? Why isn’t he part of the celebration?”

Jesus tells us. “The son says, ‘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.’” The older son says to his father, “I’ve never disobeyed you. I’ve done everything that you’ve asked me to do. Meanwhile, you have this younger son who hasn’t done anything you asked him to do and look at all that you gave him. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do and you’ve given me nothing.” The part of the story is this: The good son is lost not in spite of his good behavior but because of his good behavior. Did you catch that? The good son is lost not in spite of his good behavior but because of his good behavior. Because he’s been obedient, because he’s done everything the father has asked him to do, he expects some sort of reward. He expects something to come his way and, when it doesn’t, he becomes angry with the father and he disrespects the father and will not go into the party.

What’s revealed here is the older son loves the things of the father more than the father, the same as the younger son. He just goes about getting it a different way. It isn’t that he doesn’t love the father, but he loves the things of the father more. Because if he loved the father before everything else and more than anything else, then he would have been filled with joy just to see the joy of his father. He would have been filled with excitement and celebration because his father was filled with joy and excitement celebrating his son who was lost and is now found.

If he loved the father more than anything else, it wouldn’t matter how he felt about his younger brother. He would have gone into the party. But it reveals he loves the things of the father more than the father. He objects to how the father uses his possessions, the robe, the ring, killing of the fattened calf. “How could he do such a thing?” You see, he feels that because of his obedience, he has a right to tell the father what to do with his possessions. The older son has been obedient to the father but only with anticipation that there would be a payback, that he would receive something on the other end. That’s why he’s been obedient to the father.

Again, recognize that Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law and here is where they become very, very offended because what Jesus is saying to them is, “You’re lost but you don’t know it.” The Pharisees have been trying to do all of the right things. They’ve been the obedient ones. They’ve gone to the synagogue on a regular basis. They’ve studied the scriptures in depth. They watched the letter of the law and even beyond the letter of the law. They’ve done everything they think that is pleasing to God and so, certainly, God would listen to them. Certainly, God would bless them. They’ve been obedient to the Father in anticipation that they’ll receive something from the Father, thus revealing they love the things of the Father more than the Father. They’re alienated from the Father. They’re lost. They just don’t know it, and that’s worse.

But the question for us this morning is are we lost? And do we not know it? And I’ll start with another question, are you deeply offended at that suggestion? Would you counter me by saying, “But look at the things we do. Look at the fact that we’re in church every Sunday.” I mean, it’s daylight savings weekend and you’re here. Come on, that’s dedication. You say your prayers before every meal and at midnight before you go to bed. You read your scriptures diligently. You come before God with your requests and with your praise. You do all the things that you’re supposed to do, and those are great things. But the question of today is why do you do them? Are you obedient to God in anticipation of what you will receive? This is the challenging teaching that is going to get underneath your skin as you start asking yourself, “Why do I do the things that I do? Why is it that I come to church? Why is it that I read my bible? Why is it that I pray to God? Is it in anticipation of what I’ll receive?”

Tim Keller in his book uses a great illustration, I think. He talks about an MBA program that teaches honest business dealings. Alright, that might seem unusual to us. But he goes on to explain, “The reason that they teach them, they say it’s twofold. One is if you lie and cheat and you get caught, that’s bad for business. Number two is if you have an honest business, that will trickle down to your employees and that will raise the morale and that will then increase productivity. Both perfectly legitimate and honest reasons of why you should have honest business practices, but they’re both self‑serving.” Right? If you’re honest and you’re truthful, you’ll be rewarded. So then he asked this, “But what happens if by being honest and truthful, it will cost you dearly?”

Now what do you do? By being honest and telling the truth, it will end up costing you dearly. Start getting into some of our churchy-type language that we use. This is the part that challenged me to no end. Do we not say things like, “Well, we really can’t expect God to bless that.” Well, certainly God doesn’t reward sin but what is the reverse side of that? The reverse side, the implication is that if we do the right things, if we do good things, then we can expect God will bless them. So what’s our motivation? Why is it that we do the things that we do? Are we obedient to the Father in anticipation of what we will receive from the Father?

If we’re honest with each other, there are elder brother-ish tendencies in all of us. The danger that I see is that we could end up going down a path thinking that we’re going in the right direction but being lost and not knowing it and going further and further and further away from our destination. It’s important for us to recognize some of the characteristics or the attitudes of the older brother, so that in recognizing it, maybe we can stop ourselves, we can correct ourselves or at least we can get back grounded and ask ourselves why are we doing the things that we do.

I doubt that we have any true elder brothers among us. Jesus paints the extreme. The elder brother in the story simply does the things for the father because he wants payback from the father. To translate that into the church, that means we’re obedient to God, we come to church, we pray, we read the scriptures only because we feel then that God must pay us back. We already understand we’re saved by grace. I really doubt that anyone here would disagree with that statement. We can even quote Ephesians 2:8 and 9 and Romans 3 and say, “Yes, God’s gift to us is our salvation. We can’t earn it. We don’t deserve it. God simply confers it upon us.” We understand that in our head but, in our hearts, in our hearts, there could be some older brother‑type tendencies.

There are three attitudes that I think we have to be very, very careful of. They come out in the story. The first one is deep anger. Isn’t that what the brother feels? He comes back. He’s been working hard all day. He sees the big celebration and this no-good son who hasn’t done anything and, all of a sudden, there’s a big celebration for him. Meanwhile, he’s been obedient and he’s been the good son. And nothing has been given to him, not even a small party, not even a goat so he can celebrate with his close friends and he becomes angry. It says, “He became angry and refused to go into the party.” You see, he had been obedient to his father and he had come to expect that there would be some sort of reward for that. The danger for us is for us to be obedient to God, to be truthful, to be honest, to have integrity, to have our morals, to read the scriptures, to go to church but the expectation then is we’re going to have a fairly good life. We know it’s not always going to be smooth sailing. There will be some bumps along the road but, by and large, everything will be fine. And we come to expect that God will answer our prayers and, at least at some level, we expect that God will answer our prayers the way we want them to be answered. But let life go south, let something major happen in our life and we get the impression that God’s not answering our prayers. We become angry, don’t we? We get angry with God. “How could God let this happen to me? What have I done to deserve this?” We become angry, because God hasn’t kept up His end of the bargain.

The second attitude that we notice from the son is mechanical obedience. Did you notice the words that Jesus used to describe the son? They’re unusual really. He says, “Look, all these years I’ve been slaving for you.” Slaving for you? Wouldn’t you expect, “All these years, Dad, I’ve been working side by side with you,” or “Father, we’ve been partnering together in the family business trying to build the estate up.” I’ve been slaving for you? That is the connotation of being forced. That gives us the impression that he’s not doing this out of love for the father. He’s doing it because he has to. That’s what a slave does. A slave doesn’t care about the master. It doesn’t care about the owner. They do exactly what they have to do and, once they get it done, they clock out and they go home for the day. It’s just mechanical obedience, just going through the motions. They really don’t have any care or feeling about it. They’re not engaged in what they’re doing. That’s what a slave does. Mechanical obedience. We just do the things that we do. It’s just 7:30 on Sunday morning, time to head to church. It’s 9:00. It’s 10:30. It’s Saturday night. It’s time to go to bed. It’s time to say the prayers. It’s before the meal, we have to fold our hands and say the prayer. How much do we do without thinking about it? We just do it.

There’s a difference between being religious and being spiritual. Religious just means that you do it on a regular basis. It’s accurate to say that I religiously brush my teeth three times a day. I don’t really think about it. I just do it everyday, day in and day out. I religiously brush my teeth three times a day. You can religiously come to church. You can religiously say your prayers, but is there any deeper meaning behind it? It’s a challenging question. Why do we do the things that we do? Is it just mechanical obedience?

The third characteristic of the older brother is a judgmental spirit. Listen to how he talks to his father, disrespectful as it is, “But when this son of yours who has squandered away your property with prostitutes, comes home, you’ve killed the fattened calf for him.” He won’t even acknowledge him as his brother. He won’t even acknowledge him as being part of the family. “He’s your son. He’s not my brother.” “This son of yours who lives this life that I can’t even think of or dream of who sleeps with prostitutes who squanders away a third of the family fortune, when he comes home, well, then you reward him.” He stands in judgment of his younger brother, thus saying, “I would never do what my younger brother has done.” He condemns his younger brother for the activity that he’s involved in, looks down his nose at him, as if saying, “You’ll never catch me doing the things that the younger brother has done.”

Do you want to know what one of the number one complaints from non‑Christians is about Christians? They say we’re judgmental, that we’re condemning and we’re legalistic. Sometimes, I have a hard time countering that argument. When we look at a group of people and determine that we could never be like them, when we shake our heads and we say, “I don’t understand how anybody could turn their life so upside down,” “I can’t imagine how anybody could let that happen to them, how they could be so messed up,” when we start being judgmental and condemning.

The sad part is what usually happens is the one thing we say we’d never do, we end up doing. And then our lives are shattered because now we start condemning ourselves. Elder brother-ish tendencies, you think you’re going down the right path but you could be every bit as lost as the younger brother.

The fact is that the father had to come to both of his sons, the younger son and the older son. They were both on the same playing field. And my friends, we’re all on the same playing field, whether we’re sitting here every week or whether we’re out in the gutter someplace. It’s all the same playing field. Scripture says all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. All of us need the Father to come to us.

Notice in the story the father comes to the older son. He comes to the older son in the same way that he went to the younger son. He leaves the party. Culturally, the host would never leave a party. It would be disrespectful to his guests. It would be dishonoring to him, but he leaves the party and he comes to his son. And then it says that he pleaded with his son. Patriarchs don’t plead with their children. Their children should plead of the patriarch, not the other way around. But the father pleads with the son. Why? Because the father loves the son more than anything else, more than his honor, more than his pride. He loves the son above anything else and wants the son to come into the feast.

Jesus is reaching out to the Pharisees and teachers of the law, His enemies, His enemies who one day would call for His very life and Jesus knew that. But Jesus knew that His Father loved the Pharisees and the teachers of the law the same as He loved the sinners and the tax collectors, that He loved them above everything else and He wanted them desperately to come into the feast of salvation, so Jesus reaches out to them.

And Jesus reaches out to us on a daily basis, pleading with us, whether we be younger brother tendencies or elder brother tendencies, He comes to us, offering us His love and His forgiveness, offering us His very life so that we can serve the Father out of pure love and joy and nothing else, not out of expectation, not out of wanting some reward but just simply because of the love that we have for the Father and all that He has done for us.

My friends, if you’re like me, during the next week, even weeks, there are going to be occasions where you’re going to ask yourself, “Why am I doing what I do? Why am I being truthful in this situation? Why am I being honest? Why am I praying to God? Why am I reading the scriptures? Why am I coming to church? Why am I doing the right thing as opposed to the wrong thing?” Is it simply out of love for God? You see, I think that is a good intention. It’s been a good intention for me to always come back and to always say, “What is my motivation? Why am I doing the things that I do to make sure that I don’t go down the path of the older son, to make sure that I don’t end up being lost and not even knowing it?” But to keep coming back saying, “I want to be faithful to God just simply because I love God.” It’s a challenge, but it’s a healthy challenge for all of us. Because both were lost, the younger son and the older son, but the father comes to both. Amen.

Copyright 2010 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church