Comments on Luke 15:25-31
“Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’
“But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. So he answered and said to his father,
‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you;
This is probably true. We should neither doubt nor minimize this brother's faithful service.
I never transgressed your commandment at any time;
We might as well take this as true too. Think of the Pharisees to whom Jesus speaks. Likely, they kept the commandments of God fastidiously, but at the expense of pure relationship. This brother's claim to faithful service and perfect obedience might as well be accepted.
I have heard the older brother described as insufferably prideful because of these statements. Yet I see no need to accept this. If it is true that he has been faithful and obedient, what is the sin in saying so? And, in a story like this parable, it is more dangerous to disagree with the details the story gives than to accept them. We have here an obedient and hard-working son, one who is highly invested in the honor of his family, his father, and himself. He is very much like the hard-working pastors who I heard trying to villanize him.
Doesn’t this son seem good? Very much so! Thus far, there is nothing to criticize and much to commend.
and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends.
As far as fact goes, this was likely true too. Yet it’s a classic example of an argument that works with true premises, but errs in its combinations of those premises through unwarranted leaps or mixed-up logic. Like so:
"And yet" sets this statement in contrast to his faithful service and obedience, suggesting a necessary, causal relationship. As if the result of faithful obedience was a lifetime supply of mutton.
This is the older son’s first error. Obedience had bred presumption. He had an idea of entitlement that was founded in truth, yet wrong in its applications.
The truth here is that good people become happy people, and that just people receive a free reward. That God gives good gifts to his faithful. The falsehood is that the reward belongs to the older son as a result of his actions, and that he is maltreated in its absence. Instead, he should have seen that a gift is superfluous by nature, flowing from the beneficence of the giver. And though givers will often give in response to love, it does not follow that those who love them have a right to their gifts. As soon as obligation is added, they transform from gifts to a payments.
I am not saying that God does not or will not reward the faithful. In a sense, even the faithfulness of the faithful is a gift of God, a gift that will bear fruit both in itself and because of the promise of God. What I am saying is that faithfulness does not necessarily yield mutton, or immediate happiness, or immediate comfort, or any other immediate good thing. God will freely reward his people, and when he does we will be surprised and delighted. But first and foremost, faithfulness leads to God himself, and therefore to the bliss of all good things in him.
Caleb received land from the Lord because of his fearless report to the nation of Israel in the wilderness. It does not follow that whoever tells the truth will inherit a country (though it is quite within God's resources and capabilities to give it). Such a static system smells more of math than relationship. Such an algebraic view of God's love or of goodness can often be much simpler and thus more attractive, but that simplicity is at the expense of freedom.
But as soon as this son of yours came,
Here is the older brother’s second mistake. In his antipathy for his brother’s choice to leave home with his inheritance, he set his brother apart from himself. They cannot share the same category. He is not “my brother,” he is “your son.”
It is easy to see the contempt that the older son expresses for his brother in the statement. Yet what even he probably missed was the contempt that it expresses for his father. By alienating himself from something his father treasures, he rejects not merely it, but in some sense, he rejects his father himself, whose own heart was invested in this son of his. This is the elder son's rebellion, hidden even from him. Here he implies, "I will not love what you love," to his father. “I will not be in a group with you while you are in a group with that scoundrel.”
This may be excusable in a son/father relationship in everyday human life, but at the level of this story’s theological meaning, to say that we will not love what God loves constitutes rebellion. How can we cling to God while rejecting whatever he loves? Who we are and what we love are so closely connected, and it’s dangerous to pick and choose God’s features. We always find that, rather than improving God by rejecting anything he loves, we’ve picked a different god altogether, to our danger.
who has devoured your livelihood with harlots,
The unpardonable sin? The elder brother here thinks so. This is the worst light in which he can present his brother, and his argument depends upon his father's son's villainy. The villainy is so pervasive, the older brother believes, that there can be no joining with him anymore. He must be cut off.
you killed the fatted calf for him.’
“And he said to him,
‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours.
All that the father has. Including the errant brother. Including the fattened calf. Including the celebration.
Here God is saying, "Those who are mine already have possession of all good things in me." It is like, “your life is hidden with Christ in God.” If you are in Christ, you already have all good things, because God has all good things.
It was right that we should make merry and be glad,
God likes a party.
for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”
By saying “your brother,” the father relocates the prodigal son in relationship with his older brother, expressing his restoration, reconciliation, redemption, and recreation.
We are left unsure whether the elder brother's rebellion was quelled. His response is not recorded. Yet that isn't bad storytelling. It was told by God, for heaven's sake. Rather, its omission left his audience with the responsibility to insert the answer for themselves. The father's counter-point hangs like a huge question over Jesus' listeners and Luke's readers. Will they accept celebration and relationship, or will they continue an austere rebellion founded in a self-created justice and righteousness and bearing the fruit of economic or mathematical relationship, deprived of gift and freedom?
The older brother confused self-righteousness and presumption with merit, justice, and a righteous indignation. Yet merit cannot dispel grace, as his self-righteousness did. Justice cannot dispel mercy. And righteous indignation cannot inhibit love. His understanding of justice was simplistic and static, and he was ready to subject his father to his understanding, rather than learning about justice from his father. Static, algebraic justice is not just, an unchanging righteous indignation is merely stubbornness, and a merit that demands specific reward trades a relationship of love for a client/service provider relationship.
In effect, the eldest son had incited rebellion in the name of justice, and made his supposed virtue an impediment to godliness. His understanding of the blessings of goodness only led to a refusal to participate in his father's blessed feast, and a blindness to the goodness of his brother's return.
We are so often like him, often treating faithful obedience as if it earns us the right to make tyrannical demands: a treat we desire, the avoidance of a pain we fear. Faithful obedience is good for its own sake: an expression of love for God. It will be rewarded, because God keeps his word. But how, when, and what the reward will be is entirely up to him. He is free to throw whatever party he chooses.
This is the foolishness of self-righteousness that forgets the father's love. Self-righteousness, unlike true righteousness, rejects the feast, snubs redemption, cuts off the sinner, and inhibits mercy and love. We must not, like the older brother, impose an equation on God's love, or, foolishly, begrudge God anything. By his word, we already have all good things in him. We cannot allow ourselves to be jealous of the blessings of others, but must always, like the writer of Ecclesiastes, return to the fear of the Lord and the hope of glory, celebrating always as we see the fruition of Christ's death on the cross, where he "reconciled to himself all things."