Dad always liked you best.

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32


Do not be like horse or mule, which have no understanding; *
who must be fitted with bit and bridle,
or else they will not stay near you.

--Psalm 32:10

We love the story of the prodigal son. We love to tell people (and to hear about) how God is just like the father in the story when we, like the younger son, turn back home with the idea of throwing ourselves at God's feet, willing to do anything if we can just be back home again. It's a nice cozy scriptural hot water bottle. And I don't dispute it. God loves it when "sinners" choose God again. But what often gets overlooked in this story is that there are three people in it, and only one of them is doing any repenting.

Right, you're thinking, because the older brother doesn't have anything to repent about. He's been doing everything right all along. To which I say, Oh really? I mean, he certainly thinks so. Here's the dutiful son, doing what his father says, being the good, faithful, child, pretty much being his father's servant and waiting for his father's death so that he can finally have everything that's rightly his. So if he's so great, why do we all want to cast ourselves at the prodigal child--why do we all identify with the fuckup?

Part of the reason is that we've all been fuckups at one point or another, and that experience has serious staying power. You fuck up bad enough, you can have a residual feeling of being damaged goods for the rest of your life, easily. But I think there's a more compelling reason for choosing to align with the prodigal child. He's interesting, adventuresome, impulsive. He's likeable. And honestly? Don't you think his big brother is kind of a douchebag?

I mean, here's a guy who, by his own description, is dutiful, never gives his dad any trouble, home by curfew, no loud parties, perfect behavior in every way. Except for the judgmental prig part at the end, where his brother comes home, and instead of running to embrace him and hear all the stories of the prostitutes and the starving, big brother stays outside and pouts because Dad always did like the younger brother best. I mean, seriously, who wants to be that loser? Like the mule in the psalm, the older brother has fitted himself with a bit and bridle of his own making. They help him to play it safe. Wouldn't we rather be the kid who screws up royally, but still somehow survives, and makes it home in rags, destitute, having fully lived? Of course we would. Which is why I have some bad news for you in the next paragraph.

We're the big brother. The judgemental prig. The Pharisee. And we're the ones the story is really about. I'm not sure, but I think I can prove both those assertions: first, that the story is not about the prodigal son at all, but about the older brother who stays home, and second, that we all are the older brother.

The first assertion is pretty easy. When Jesus tells this story, it's in response to the Pharisees, who are complaining about his dining companions, which is to say, they're taking offense that he's not falling all over himself to eat exclusively with them. They, like the second brother, have no doubt of their righteousness--they are right by God's side, doing the work he has given them to do, and doing it faithfully, without so much as an extra glass of wine on their birthdays. So when Jesus tells this story in response to their complaint, yes, there is a teaching about the quality of God's enthusiastic devotion to the "unworthy," but, more importantly, there's a tacit scolding about their hospitality, and frankly, about their inability to cut loose and remove proverbial sticks from parts of the anatomy that they (and the rest of us) would consider unclean.

The second assertion is tougher. But I would say that if we've ever been convinced that we're "saved," or if we know that God has reserved a mansion for us in Heaven; if we've lived our lives trying to do all the things we've been told we ought to do in order to be good Christians (including repenting when we've done wrong), then I would argue that we're a lot more like the Pharisee/older brother than we are like the sinners/prodigal son. And if those of us who don't affiliate with any kind of organized religion have ever looked at a church, whether it's the Catholic church with their sex abuse scandals, or the Westboro Baptist Church with their appalling demonstrations, or the Episcopal church with its scandalous ordination of women and gays, and thought something along the lines of, "Well, God will give them what's coming to them in the end," I think we've got way more in common with the non-prodigal brother than we might be comfortable admitting. If that assertion really annoys you, may I suggest that you sit with it for a little longer before we move on? 

OK, so we're at least entertaining the possibility that we are as much like the older brother as we are like the prodigal son. This is kind of a problem, because as we see in the story, it's the guy who thinks he hasn't done anything wrong who ends up excluded from the party by choice--through his own pig-headedness. Which just goes to show that the two brothers aren't so different after all--apparently, you can screw up just as royally playing it safe at home as you can squandering your father's life savings.

Which is why, in a twist that I find much more meaningful and touching than the reunion with the younger brother, the father comes out to tend to his older son. When we read the parable, I think we might sometimes miss the emotion and intensity of this moment. But this guy has been the dutiful son, never saying a word, never disobeying, probably having to hear over and over again from his father, "I wonder what your brother is doing right now." He has probably never complained to his father in his whole life. But this time, when his dad comes out to find out what's going on, it all spills out. All the ugliness of sibling rivalry, all the unsavory self-righteousness, and what does the father do?

Well, he doesn't do what I would do, which is to say, "What's wrong with you? Your brother's home! You should be ashamed of yourself. Now go in there and give him a hug." Instead, the father does with his older son exactly what he does with his younger son: accepts him, affirms him, and invites him back into the fold.  And the amazing thing is that the father does all this without his older son being in any way repentant about his own small-heartedness. Both children are in a state of grace by the end of the story.

Of course, it would be interesting to know what happens the next day. Does the father accept his younger son's offer and allow him to work as a servant? We assume not, but we don't know. Do the brothers enjoy their old relationship, or is there always a rift between them? Only time will tell. I imagine the brother having to shell out half of his half of the inheritance at some point, but again, we don't know, because we close on the scene, not back at the party, but outside with father and faithful son, as the father tries to persuade the faithful one to join the spendthrift inside, and not to mention the way his robe looks so big on his brother's emaciated frame.

So the big question for us is, do we go in? Whatever it is that makes me judge my brothers and sisters in Christ, whether it's the wealth of their denomination or their politics and protests or their wastefulness of the world's resources, it is Lent, and they have come back to the father. He is celebrating, and it is up to us--are we able to welcome them home?