“25 Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 “Your brother has come,” he replied, “and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.” 28 The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.
29 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. 30 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.
32 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.”’”
Am I welcome here? In our previous study of this parable we considered this as the first and final question we answer when it comes to any relationship. The younger son left his welcome only to return and find to his tearful surprise that it was still good. He still belonged.
Today we see that you can’t belong more. You won’t be more welcome than someone else. It’s not as if God has His favorites. The father’s older son wanted to belong more than he thought the younger one should. In our previous study, we saw that our sin makes us afraid that we might no longer belong. In this study, we see that our sin makes us prone to exclude other sinners from belonging. We can’t tolerate them being as in the inside as we are. After all, how can we be truly special to God if someone like her or him is just as special? What’s the point of being near God if they can be near Him too?
This parable, like so many, shows that there are multiple ways to go wrong and that grace is the only way any of it can go right. We humans want to reduce wrongness to one danger we can avoid so then all will go well. That’s not how it can go in a fallen world as fallen people. Now the only the safe way forward is the Father’s continual grace and gifting. That’s the only home. It’s the same claim as last study because it’s the same belonging both sons need; we belong. We belong with God. That’s the claim of these sermons.
We will study this in three points. First: inside out. Second: slaving for you. Third: we must celebrate. First, in verses 25-28, we see the father’s older son is inside out. Second, in verses 29-31, we see that the father’s older son was slaving for him. Third, in verse 32, the oldest son’s father tells us all that we must celebrate.
We see that although the father’s older son seemingly belongs, he isn’t sure what that means anymore; that’s our first point: inside out. This, as we saw this morning, is the third of three parables about belonging. The stakes have upped with each. The lost sheep was valuable. The lost coin was more valuable. A child is incalculably more valuable and this father has two. The estranged younger one had just come home; “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
We first meet the father’s older son doing what the younger wouldn’t; verse 25, “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field.” The father’s younger son has rejected his place in the family estate. The father’s older son embraced his. The father’s younger son frittered away his family’s wealth. The father’s older son build it up. Last study we saw the younger son reject his identity by leaving the family and farm. With the words, “meanwhile, the older son was in the field,” we see the older son carrying out his identity in the family and on the farm.
The younger son went to a far-off country only to come home again. The father’s older son went out to his father’s fields and came home again to this celebration for his brother; “When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing,” verse 25 tells us. The inflection point for both brothers has to do with coming home. It always has to do with coming near the Father. That’s how life works. The inflection has to do with what’s going on in you as you draw near God. That reveals. That, if you will let it, heals.
The father’s older son was understandably surprised. The role of the oldest son was much more important in that culture than in ours and he would have had a hand in all undertakings including parties. ‘So,’ verse 26 tells us, ‘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 father threw this party without consulting his older son. This older son now chooses his response to that. We are always choosing responses. This story could have gone otherwise. The father’s older son despite his frustrations with his brother could have considered his father’s relief at having his youngest son home. This older son could have met this unexpected situation with curiosity. Instead, he chose to be angry; verse 28, “The older brother became angry and refused to go in.”
So now the son who was on the outs that morning—the younger—is inside and the one who that morning was inside is now outside refusing to come in. Given his status as the oldest, this son’s refusal to come is an insult. The oldest was the face of the family. For him to refuse to celebrate his brother’s homecoming is a way of saying that the father is wrong to throw a party to begin with. The younger son has found welcome in the arms of his father. The older son stands, as it were, with his arms crossed at his father. The older son’s actions are a condemnation of not just his brother but of his father’s love. He refuses to party because he thinks they are all fools to celebrate any of this. In that culture, by the older brother’s behavior, “the gracious father is made to look unfaithful and unfair,” as Bock explains.
His father coming out to meet him is just as undeserved as the father’s running out to greet his wayward boy; that’s, “So his father went out and pleaded with him.” The father would have been as within his rights to upbraid his oldest for petulance as his youngest for his waywardness. He does so to neither. He goes to both. His heart goes out to both.
One is afraid he will get what he deserves. The other wants what he deserves. What’s deserved—our rights—are not as important to God the Father as they are to our petty hearts. Fair doesn’t seem to be a category that God prioritizes as we do. It’s worth our consideration, though, whether we’d want God to be as interested in fairness as we are.
Rights is what this older brother demands and so the first word of this sentence in the Greek is, “angry.” The anger bleeds through it all. He’s angry at his brother, at the celebration, but behind it all, he’s angry at his father. It’s a confusing experience to find someone you admire celebrating something you can’t tolerate.
The father understands better than both sons. He knows his boys. He knows now that one lost son has returned, he has another lost son. This third parable is the complicated climax. The surprise is that it’s two lost sons out of two. It’s a way of telling us that we are all natively lost.
The most dangerous form of lostness is presuming that you’ve never needed to be found. The father’s older son never left the farm. His coming home from the field only to refuse to come in reveals it’s more complicated than that, though. We have it in us to leave home without ever seeming to leave home. We have it in us to presume upon our own position in such a way that we think we have the right to presume who can join us at that position. We have it in us to stay physically near the Father while our hearts wander far from the impulses of His. How many marriages are made up of two partners whose bodies are regularly in the same house but whose hearts are far from each other? How many people’s religion is made up of nearness of body to God in a sanctuary and distance of heart? Lostness takes many forms. The father’s older son thought he was on the inside; now he’s standing outside; he’s turned inside out because has grace has entered the equation and he has no way to fit that into his rights. He spills all that on his father in our second point: slaving for you.
“Look,” he tells his Father, “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!”
Here we see the master word of this morning—give. The prodigal wanted his father to give him his share and later no one would give him anything. Now the older son is indignant at what the father hasn’t given to him. He’s interpreting his father’s love for his brother as a favoritism. It seems all out of proportion. A cow was worth about ten times as much as a goat. “He does bad and squanders your wealth and gets a party with cow meat. I’ve done right and built your wealth and have never gotten a party with even goat meat.”
He’s stuck on fairness and stuck on rights. If we are to learn anything from this parable, we must admit that’s us too. “The elder brother’s concern for justice is natural,” as Bock explains. “But the point is that God’s action is gracious, not deserved.” The father’s older son is focused on what’s deserved. The father is focused on something else. That’s the conflict.
That’s often our conflict with God. Give this son credit. He takes it the source. That’s much more than the religiosity crowd was doing. They wouldn’t dare have it out with God the way this son was having it out with his father. This was Jesus’ invitation for them to do so—to stop venting their venom on prodigals and to start dealing with their relationship with the Father.
The older son gives himself away in this regard. Under the rights talk is a word of seemingly howling betrayal. You see it six times in his anger in verses 29-30. The word is you or yours. That’s who the older brother doesn’t know how to deal with anymore. His younger brother he can marginalize and maybe even come to tolerate. He has no idea, though, how to deal with this father who says his younger son belongs just as much as his older. He has no idea how to deal with this father who traffics in grace rather than rather what’s fair. That’s scream behind “All these years I’ve been slaving for you,” “never disobeyed your orders,” “you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate,” “squandered your property,” “you kill the fattened calf for him.” “Working for you is now intolerable, your orders are now intolerable, this celebration of yours is intolerable, this son of yours is intolerable, building up your property has become intolerable to me, you, father, are now intolerable to me.”
He’s as self-absorbed as his brother. He doesn’t see that. The father does and so he treats him in the last way his older boy would want to be treated. He treats him the same way he treats his younger son. “My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”
You belong. The older brother wanted to belong more than the younger would ever would again. That’s not how it works. “You get all of my love, son, just like your younger brother.” Both sons have the same access. Both experience, “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” The younger one was learning to accept that. Would the older?
Will you? You’ve got the older brother in you just like you’ve got the younger one. You, like me, have plenty of sin and plenty of self-righteousness. You also have plenty of anger that God won’t turn your ways into His ways. The question for you as for both brothers is whether you know you belong. That’s what the father’s younger son needed—to know he belongs. That’s what the father’s older son needs too. That’s what you need right now—to know you belong with the Father.
It's Jesus who is telling you this—the only begotten Son. He’s telling us how to happily belong in the family of God. The Father offers belonging. He won’t let anyone overturn that—not even his children. That’s our final point: we must celebrate.
We want to believe our anger can control a situation. We live in an age in which outrage imagines it can force the scales of justice. The father hears his oldest son’s demand for fairness. The father, however, won’t let his older son rule. God won’t change our ways into His ways. The quicker any of us learn that lesson the happier we will be. “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.”’
The father’s way is the way forward—the only way. The father will not be held hostage by his younger son’s shame, neither will he be held hostage by his older son’s anger, nor will he let his younger son be held hostage by his brother’s resentment. The father has forgiven his younger son and forgiven he will be. The father offers his older son the same welcome as his younger—the same belonging—but the older son cannot dictate the terms. You see that in the father’s correction, “this brother of yours.” The older son had called his brother, “this son of yours.” The father won’t let that stand.
Jesus won’t let that stand; look back at verse 1, ‘Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”’ The same howling sense of betrayal and demand for fairness which fueled the older son’s anger with his father fueled the Pharisees’ anger with Jesus. This parable was a call for them to deal with that. Tonight might be God’s call for you to deal with that.
You don’t get to dictate God’s terms. The Father will not be held hostage by us. You are offered the same belonging as the rest of us sinners. Anyone who comes to Him is forgiven and forgiven they will be. To oppose that is to lose everything. That’s why Jesus taught us to pray, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
The Father, as we’ve seen over and over again in the parables, will not allow His celebration to be ruined; that’s verse 32, “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.” That’s not sheepish. That’s not, “I see where you are coming from but we’ve really got to do this.” That’s a correction. The Greek here is a lovely word most often translated as, “it is necessary.” It’s, “this is the way it is going to be.” The father is never once apologetic for embracing his younger son. The message here is that this celebration is right and the older son should get on board with it. The older son told his father the celebration was wrong. The father tells his older son that’s he’s wrong for thinking that. They are not both right. The Father is right. Jesus is right and the religious leaders are wrong. To borrow Eta Linnemann’s paraphrase of Jesus here, “The lost is found. This must be celebrated. I am joining in celebrating God’s feast. And what are you doing?”
They, like the father’s older son, are grumbling against the only grace that can save them. “Grumbling in the face of such restoration only attests that one does not understand what is happening,” as Bock put it and that’s so often the way it goes. It’s one of the most heartbreaking sights in the world to watch someone fuss and fume against grace. Let’s not express it. Accept grace. “See the greatness of God’s love for His lost children and contrast it with your own joyless, loveless, unthankful, and self-righteous loves,” Jeremias paraphrases Jesus’ words here. “Cease from your loveless ways, and be merciful.”
Both the father’s sons need help, which is to say they both need their father. He is the beauty of this parable. He is the only sunshine that gives any warmth in this story. He’s splendid. He’s everything we know we need and everything any born again heart wants to become.
He’s what the sons are to become. The younger son had his ways of avoiding taking on his father’s work but so now is the oldest. The goal for these boys is to become like their dad. The goal of God’s children is to become like Him. “Grace lets you be who you are supposed to be even though you do not deserve to or may not want to,” as Bock explains. That’s the grace of belonging. You do belong. Is that what you want? Amen.