Luke 15:11-32
In Jesus’ parable, the older brother probably couldn’t
remember a time without his younger brother.
They would have eaten together, worked together,
gotten in trouble together, and played together.
From the first light of dawn until the last word
spoken before drifting off to sleep, their lives were intertwined, they were brothers.
And that’s precisely why it would have hurt so much.
Sure, they would have fought, all brothers fight and there were probably times when his younger brother
said stupid things, hurtful, disrespectful things, like all kids do.
But when did it really go bad?
At first maybe his younger brother made threats, “Fine, if nobody understands me, if nobody really
cares about me, then I’ll just leave.”
It would have been a horrible thing to say, an
unthinkable thing to say,
but who could have imagined that he’d actually go
through with it.
And then his younger brother finally made that
scandalous demand to their father,
for his share of the inheritance…
imagine that, half the inheritance—as though their
father was already dead!
No one ever thought his father would agree to it.
And maybe in the days that followed he watched in cold
disbelief as his father sold the land and the cattle and put together the
money.
It was unthinkable.
But none of it seemed real until that last day, the day that his younger brother actually took the
money from his fathers hand, and walked out of the house, out of the village, and out of their lives.
How could his younger brother do it?
The older brother must have been so angry!
It was so stupid, it was so selfish, and idiotic!
Everyone in the village knew about it, and it was so
shameful.
Everyone would be talking about their family; the awkward looks in the market, the accusations, the
innuendo.
It would have been the cruelest thing a brother could
do.
So while younger brother left with his money, the older brother was left to pick up the pieces.
There was no less work to do in the household, the fields were no easier to plow and plant, and
harvest.
And his father wasn’t getting any younger, so the older brother would have had to take over his
younger brother’s share of the work.
For what?
Did he get anything out of it?
No, he didn’t.
His foolish, wasteful brother took off with his share
of the family money to do what?
To start a business, to invest in trade, to build something meaningful?
No, of course not.
He went off to party, to wine and dine, and sleep
around.
Even in those days, news traveled from place to place, and bad news traveled even faster.
So, I’m sure that the older brother would have heard
about his younger brother’s exploits.
And at some point, he probably heard about the famine
and how the money had run out.
How his younger brother had burned through all the
family money, and how he was forced to take a dirty, filthy
disgraceful job.
And perhaps at that moment, the older brother thought, “Well, he betrayed us all,
he made a laughing stock of our father and our family, he burned through everything in sinful, drunken debauchery, and now he gets what he deserves."
Maybe he said to himself, “Sit in the mud with those unclean swine and think
about what you’ve done.
Think about how good it was here in your father’s
house.
You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”
And so the big brother would have carried on, working at home, in the fields, in obedience to his
father,
day in day out, through the seasons, under the hot sun
of the summer, and through the rains of winter.
And then one day, the older son finished his work and
on his way back home, and he heard a strange sound.
Music and dancing.
This didn’t make sense, it wasn’t a feast day, and
nobody was getting married.
What on earth was happening?
He saw some of the servants, carrying fresh meat from
the slaughterhouse.
He asked “What’s going on? What’s all the music, and
where did that meat come from?”
The servants say, “Your father told us to kill the
fatted calf for a great feast, because your brother has come home. Your father gave him his best robe, put sandals on his
feet, and a ring on his finger. It’s a huge celebration.”
“What, you’ve got to be kidding!?! He’s back? That worthless good-for-nothing has dared to come
home? And now my father is throwing a party, serving a feast…?
OK,
fine. You guys go about your
business if that’s what my father wants.
But count me out. I’ll have nothing to do with this. My brother is dead to me. I have no brother!”
Now the older brother, thinks that he’s on moral high
ground. After all, he’s the one who’s been a good obedient,
hard working son. But his anger and sense of righteous indignation lead
him to make a tragic mistake. Because the moment that he says that he will not come
in to the feast, the older brother does exactly the same thing that the
younger brother did. In his arrogance, he presumes to know better than his
father, and he cuts himself off from the family.
Sure, the older brother is not sitting in the mud with
the swine, but in his anger he has severed ties with his father
and his family, and how awful it must have been for him to stand out
there in the fields, hearing all that music, seeing all those people
joining the celebration, as he was alone with his anger and his righteous
indignation.
The older brother falls into the most deadly trap of
Satan, the trap of pride and arrogance.
Now, only a few of us are older brothers, and some of
us have brothers and sisters.
But all of us have friends, and classmates, and
spouses, parents, colleagues and coworkers.
All of us are part of a community.
And anyone who lives in community has a ministry, because ministry is about serving others.
It is ministry, our service to others, that creates
and strengthens community.
But living in community, serving in ministry is not
easy, because sometimes people let us down, and it hurts.
This is the challenge of ministry.
And there are times in our lives of ministry in
community, when we may say to ourselves, “There is just no way. How can I continue in my ministry of being a brother
or sister,
my ministry of being a parent,
my ministry of being a friend,
my ministry of serving others in the name of Jesus
Christ?
It is just too painful."
When people betray us, when they let us down we
wonder:
how can we ever love them again;
how can we ever trust them again;
how can we ever allow them back into our lives when they
have caused us so much pain?
The older son felt that kind of pain when his younger
brother left, and he felt even more of that pain when his brother
came back.
Betrayal is painful, but what hurts even more is when
we refuse to love another person, when we stand in judgment over them and reject them
because of their sins and failures. This is when we condemn ourselves to the hateful
isolation of hell.
But it doesn’t have to end like this.
In the Bible there is a story about another son who
found himself in a similar situation.
He had a large family, in fact, it was a huge family. And in this family all of his brothers and sisters
betrayed their father.
But this son was not allowed to stay home.
His father said to him, “I’m sending you out to find
your brothers and sisters.”
And being an obedient son, he went. He left his father’s home and went to live with his
people. He did everything he could to convince them to come
home.
But the people did not believe him.
They called him a liar,
They said he was a fake, an imposter, a deceiver.
But this son wouldn’t give up. His father had sent him to bring his brothers and
sisters home,
and he would not abandon them.
But the people he came to rescue were so fixed in
their ways, so mired in uncleanness and sin, so hardened with arrogance and pride, that they decided they couldn’t let him live.
And so they decided to kill the son.
Of course we know who this son is, he is Jesus Christ,
the Son of God.
And on that night in the Garden of Gethsemane when it
was absolutely clear that the people were going to kill him, He prayed to God, “Father if it is possible let this
cup pass from me,
nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
As we know, they handed Jesus over to the Roman
soldiers, who beat him and mocked him and crucified him. But his Father raised him on the Third Day, revealing to his disciples and to anyone with ears to
hear that Jesus IS the Son of God. And after forty days, Jesus ascended into heaven to
show us the way home to the house of our Heavenly Father, the Kingdom of Heaven.
Christ does not bitterly condemn us, nor does he stand outside of His Father’s house filled
with indignation that sinners like us are welcomed home.
Instead, Christ gives his life so that we might be
forgiven and welcomed home to His Father’s house.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is one of us, like us in every way except sin,
He is perfect God and perfect man, which makes him very much like our older brother, as one of my Church School students pointed out last
week.
Jesus is like our older brother who leads us back to
the house of the Father.
And today, we take another step on that amazing
journey home. Today we rise up out of the mud of our sins, and our
bitterness, for the Risen Lord raises us up out of the darkness of
sin.
It is not a journey that we make on our own, or according to our own plans or rationale, for it is Christ who leads us on every step of the
journey home.
Our journey with Christ is one of love and forgiveness
and mercy.
It is not a journey to a distant location, somewhere
“out there,” but it is an interior journey of the heart, bringing
us ever closer to God and ever closer to one another, for the love of Christ reconciles us to God and to one
another. The love of Christ strengthens us in our loving
service to others, strengthens us in our ministry to the people around
us.
Ten years ago a very wise person said to me,
In your ministry there will be moments when Satan may
whisper in your ear that you do not belong in your ministry.
But always remember, no matter what, no matter how hard it might be, no matter how much you might doubt yourself, that Christ
has called you to serve others in love.
And whether we are mothers or fathers or brothers or
sisters or priests or laypeople,
today Christ renews our ministry as we are forgiven
our sins, and as we forgive the sins of those around us.
And whenever God’s children turn and repent from their
sins, and return home, our Heavenly father prepares a great feast to welcome
us home, not the feast of a fatted calf, but the feast of the Body and Blood of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ.
For today we who were dead in sin are alive again, and we who were lost now are found.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
