The story is well known. A kid can’t wait for his pop to die, so he asks for his inheritance right away. His pop gives it to him. He goes to a far country. He knows the name of every hooker in town. He has a high degree of expertise in different intoxicating drinks. He scatters his fortune appeasing his appetites. This is the beginning of the story of the prodigal son ( Luke 15).
Suddenly he’s starving. He takes the only job he can get. It’s a terrible job. (Let’s assume that a man who’s famous for passing out in brothels has few job options.) He doesn’t even eat as well as the pigs he’s hired to feed. The man he works for treats his pigs better than he treats his hired hands.
1. A morality tale.
We know this story well, so as we read it the ending seems invetable. But when we hear it for the first time, we reach this point in the story, and it might seem that the story should end here.
Then, this would be a story of cause-and-effect, just deserts, crime-and-punishment, comeuppance-writ-large, bad things happening to bad people. It would be the story of a piggish son who dishonored his father and then starved among real pigs. After all, isn’t it written: "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you"? (Exodus 20:12 (NRSV).)
So at this point, we might be ready to say, "Great story!" But the story goes on.
2. Surprise: grace!
Now grace enters in.
The kid comes to his senses and remembers that his father is not like the lickpenny that had hired him to keep his pigs. He begins the long journey home. His father sees him from far away, runs to welcome him, shoves the ring of authority onto his food-deprived finger, kills the fatted calf, and throws a party.
The story could end here, too. Then, it would be a story of sin and repentance and forgiveness, a story of love covering a multitude of sins. Once again, we might be ready to say, "Great story!" But the story goes on.
3. Surprise: no grace!
The happy ending gets upended.
At the moment that the loving father gets one son back, he loses another. His elder son is resentful. He won’t join the party. The elder son thinks: his brother has sinned and spent, but he, the elder son, has been responsible. He himself has been faithful, and he has worked hard. He is the good son, but the father makes a party for the wastrel. He hates that his father honors the bad over the good. It isn’t supposed to be that way.
If you didn’t know the story, who could know that the good, hardworking, self-sacrificing, up-till-now not-complaining son would spoil the happy ending? After all, isn’t it written, "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you"? Who honored his father more than the elder son did?
But there was something lurking under the good works of the elder son that dragged his heart down. While he was busy doing good, he craved recognition and reward. And when time came to celebrate the return of the prodigal son, that craving for recognition and reward bound the elder son’s willingness to join the music and dancing.
Cain repents; Abel resents.
4. Exposed!
The father is dismayed; God is not surprised. After all, "[T]he Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7 (NTSV).)
Probably even the elder son did not know his craving within. Or he did not recognize it as something that suppressed love.
Even as he judged his younger brother during his brother’s wastrel-years, he did not know the likeness between them. They both valued what the father could give them more than they valued their father. The younger son craved the high life with his father’s money. The elder son craved recognition, and, yes, from time to time, a feast for himself and his friends. Apart from the gall of the younger brother, the difference between them was a difference only of degree.
The prodigal son’s return potentially was a blessing to the older son, but the older son did not know that. The return of the prodigal brought to the surface the inward sin of the elder son, which otherwise would have been un-covered, un-acknowledged, and un-known while he toiled in his father’s fields. The return of the prodigal gave the elder son the potential for an epiphany – sudden, spiritual insight about himself.
So it’s not only a story of a bad son’s comeuppance. And it’s not only a story of sin and repentance and forgiveness. At this point, it’s also a story of reversal: the bad son becomes good, and the good son becomes – something like bad. But the story is not done; it goes on.
5. Loose end.
At the last, the father appeals to his elder son, the son who suddenly is lost to him.
We don’t know. The story goes no further.
6. The preachy part of this essay.
Maybe the story goes no further because the story of the elder son is our story, and our stories are not fully written.
I might feel spiritual. I might feel right with God. But it’s worth trying to rid myself of any careless assumption that I have nothing under the surface of my spirituality, or under my (*blush*) goodness, such as it is, that God knows about, but I don’t. I am not free to assume that there is no – to me – unknown disease of the spirit that could stunt my ability to "grow into salvation". (1 Peter 2:2.)
Maybe we who pray should pray for all of the elder sons of the world. In praying for them, we might be praying for ourselves.
7. Prayer.
God, let me be humble. Free me from the self-centered desire to rise above others in riches, in honor, in recognition, in rank, in spirituality, even in love and in holiness. Let me pray from the heart that I might live among giants, that they might help me be a giant like they are. Amen.
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