Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the fourth Sunday in Lent, March 25, 2001, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Joshua 5:9-12; II Corinthians 5:16-20; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Then he became angry and refused to go in.
-Luke 15:28

     This is the elder brother we're talking about. The party pooper. The one who thinks people should get what they deserve.

     We call this the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but it doesn't have any such title in Luke's Gospel. I wonder what title Luke or Jesus might have given it if either had had the chance. Instead of the Prodigal Son, why not call it the Parable of the Waiting Father? Or the Parable of the Self-Righteous Older Brother?

     Well, it's all three, isn't it? But today it happens to be the elder brother who captures my attention and makes me wonder about myself and about you.

     We know everything we need to know about that unworthy wretch, the younger son, don't we? because the narrative lovingly follows his every move, and then caps it all with the father's theatrical, memorable, and immortal summations:

Get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!

This brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.

     Never mind that the little brat knew exactly what he was doing and knew exactly where he was every step of the way. Never mind that he was entirely the author of his own downfall. Never mind that he came home with a well-rehearsed speech well calculated to manipulate his father and to rescue himself from the rejection and disinheritance that he had brought upon himself. Never mind any of that.

     You can see where my sympathies lie here, can't you? I was a younger brother myself in my youth, but I'm a believer in duty, and I resent people who do irresponsible and selfish and lazy things and then manage to charm their way out of the consequences.

     For me, until this week, the most disturbing part of the story was the way the father welcomed him home. And did so, moreover, without any trace of judgment or anger, and worst of all, without even knowing or caring if the kid was the least bit sorry.

     What the father should have done, in my opinion, was what Joseph did when his brothers who had sold him into slavery and then pretended that he was dead came years later, hats in hand, to beg him for food when they were starving and he was the ruler of all Egypt. Joseph didn't grab them and kiss them and slobber all over them and throw a party for them. Well, he did, but first he lorded it over them and humiliated them and frightened them half to death, which they richly deserved.

     One of the scholarly commentators on this parable explains that in the ancient Middle East the father of a family was the patriarch, his sons were required to respect him and to obey him, and if a son came to a father to ask him for something, the father should stay seated in his tent in a dignified manner, and the son should come into his presence as a courtier comes before a king or a worshiper before an altar. Anyway, the father would be wearing an ankle-length robe, and he couldn't possibly get up and run to meet the son without hiking up his skirt, exposing his knobby knees and his hairy legs and looking like a total fool. And that is what this father did.

     Ah, but the elder brother: now, he has his head on straight. He names the impropriety of it all, the kid's wickedness, the father's weakness, the injustice done to him. All these years I have seen him as a kind of necessary but unpleasant accessory to the story - he's the voice of the rulebook, the foil whose commentary helps us to grasp the overflowing and unconditional love of God, as represented by the father, for all of us sinners, as represented by the younger son.

     But now I've had a revelation: It has occurred to me that this elder brother is a person in his own right, a vulnerable human being, and his happiness and well-being are in just as much jeopardy as his younger brother's.

     The father says to him, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours." But the father is wrong there. The elder son has always stayed at home and always done his duty, but he is not really with his father. If he were with his father, he'd be out there hugging and kissing the kid too, he'd be helping to kill the fatted calf and to decorate the kid with the family jewels.

     Big Brother isn't with anybody. At the end of the story, as the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor put it, he's "standing outside in the dark, perfectly right and perfectly alone." To which I would add: perfectly and triumphantly miserable.

     I told you a couple of weeks ago that I don't know much about heaven. Well, I don't know much about hell either. Being a northerner, I have serious doubts about the idea that hell is a hot place where a snowball doesn't have a chance. My instincts tell me hell is precisely the kind of place where snow doesn't melt, it just gets harder and dirtier forever. But when I look at that elder brother standing out there in the dark all by himself, angrily absenting himself from all the music and the celebration and the feasting, I reckon hell must look a lot like that. He's out of place in the only place that has ever been his place.

     And it occurs to me that I've spent some of my time in exactly that kind of a place. And maybe you have too, and maybe we'll go there again. It's a very attractive destination. But while Big Brother is in that place, he is just as lost and just as dead as his kid brother ever was. He has managed to get lost without ever leaving home. You could even say that he's worse off than his kid brother, because nobody can see how lost he is, not even his father, not even himself.

     These stories, these parables, don't have proper endings, any of them. This one ends right there, with the elder brother standing out there all righteous and all alone. This is not the result of bad writing or bad editing. It's done on purpose, to force us to wonder about how it might have turned out, to open up our imaginations to the possibilities and the impossibilities, and in the process to bring us into communion with God, with each other, with ourselves.

     So let me tell you about the proper ending that I want this story to have, now that I have finally seen how lost he is, this elder son and brother. I want him to say, "No, Pop, you've got it wrong! I'm a bigger jerk and a worse prodigal than he is! I'm a self-righteous, jealous twit, I have denied my own brother, I have disrespected you, I have forever spoiled your love and your generosity for me by claiming them as my entitlements, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son."

     And then I want to see his father running knobby-kneed and hairy-legged to him too. I want him to get a big hug and a ring and a robe and a fatted calf and a party. I want it to be a real homecoming. That would do us all a world of good.

     It is not humanly possible to be such a good and virtuous and responsible and fine person that you do not need to be brought up short, yanked out of your shoes and your skin and your comfortable certainties about who you are what life is all about, spun around like a blindfolded child, and pushed off in a new direction while you're still dizzy. We are all prodigals, trying to find our way home, looking to be found.