The Elder Brother

One of the things that many people don't know about my wife is that she loves to laugh. She enjoys a good joke, a funny story, and just being around people that make her laugh. One of her favorites things to do is to hind around the corners of our house and when you least expect, jump out from behind the corner and scare you. She things it is hilarious.

And I get so irritated, the only response I can give is "That's not funny". When we were younger, I used to be really worried that on one of her "Surprise!" moments, I would be so caught of guard that I would actually hit her. It never happened, but I was afraid it might.

Surprises are a part of regular living. Some surprises are good; other's not so good. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son found in Luke 15, Jesus is going to lay a surprise on the Pharisees that totally shocked them.

Most people who read and study the parable of the concentrate completely on the character of the younger son, his repentance, and the father’s forgiveness. And yet when you look at the text, it doesn’t end with the return of the prodigal. Almost half of the story is about the older son. 

The story is about two sons, who are both alienated from the father, who are both assaulting the unity of the family. Jesus wants us to compare and contrast them. The younger son is “lost”, that is easy to see. We see him shaming his father, ruining his family, sleeping with prostitutes, and we say, “yes, there’s someone who is spiritually lost.”

But Jesus’ point is that the older son is lost too. This week, we are going to discover a startling new understanding of elder-brother lostness, what the signs of it are, and what we can do about this condition.