Luke 15:11-32 The Heart of God - Loving the Older Brothers Sermon preached Jan 20, 2013 Opening

You all know what a cliffhanger is, right? An ending that leaves you hanging, and wanting the story to continue. The TV show 24 was a master of the cliffhanger - thered be a nuclear weapon in an American city counting down to detonation and theyd show the countdown going into the final sixty seconds....and then the show would end and youd have to wait for the next episode to see if Jack Bauer would save the day. Susan and I made the mistake of renting an entire season of 24 that we hadnt seen and we started watching and couldnt stop - those DVDs were like crack cocaine - four episodes to a disc - wed come to th end of a disc and just couldnt help ourselves and by the end of the weekend we had bloodshot eyes and were exhausted from the marathon of watching the show. Our story today - known variously as the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Parable of the Waiting Father - is a cliffhanger too, with an ending that Jesus leaves open. Brief recap This is the second sermon on the parable of the Prodigal Son, Waiting Father... Remember from last week how the younger son humiliates his Father in a number of ways: - give me my inheritance, drop dead! - quickly sells off family land and gets out of town to get away from the old man and loses it all and hatches a scheme to take advantage again of the old man soft heart and heads back home still a calculating little booger-head. Yet Father willingly humiliates himself to welcome his son back: - runs to him and embraces him - restores him to the family - restores him to the village - throws him a big party, everyones invited and theres music and feasting and dancing because the fathers joy is so great that he wants to share it with everyone! Older brother And everybodys happy, right? Wrong. 1

In that culture, the party started when the musicians started to play music - people in the village had heard there was going to be a party, and the signal to come, that the food was ready, was when the music started - the music called them to the party. Parties fluid - people would come and sing and dance and clap to the music and drink wine and eat and talk and go out and come back - and parties lasted well into the wee hours, and provided a rare source of joy and fellowship for people who lived hard, short lives. Older brother comes in from working a hard day on the farm - hears the music - and asks a servant whats going on - and he is enraged. Now older brothers got a point here: His kid brother has not only shamed his father, but the whole family He has reduced the familys wealth by selling off his part of the family land And then he comes crawling home, not having made something of himself, but he lost it all - and his father doesnt do the culturally mandated thing by casting the son out of the family, or at the very least, punishing him in some kind of public and humiliating way - he throws the boy, a party? I never got no party! And he refuses to go in. Can you blame him? Hes been the good, responsible older brother who stayed on the family farm and never made outrageous demands like give me my inheritance, never disgraced the family name or shamed his father by his actions, never ran away from home and spent the familys money like a drunken sailor on shore leave and certainly never had the nerve to come back and ask for a job on the family farm! The older son stayed home and worked on the farm day-in and day-out, kept his nose clean, behaved like a respectable son of a patriarch was supposed to behave, was a model citizen of the village. And the younger son gets the party? Some years ago the great preacher Fred Craddock preached on this parable and changed the scripture reading and had the younger son end up mucking out the barns for a year as punishment for his actions, and the father throwing the banquet for his faithful older son. After the scripture reading, a woman in the back of the sanctuary yelled out, Thats how it should have happened! Jesus talking to the older brothers 2

Now we know were supposed to be all spiritual and celebrate the return of the prodigal but admit it - maybe you feel like that woman who yelled out, Thats how it should have happened! And thats how the people who heard Jesus tell this parable felt. The good religious people who had devoted their lives to serving God. They are like the older brother - they had been responsible, obedient to God - always obeying Gods law - kept their noses clean, had not openly rebelled against God and shamed God. And heres the big surprise - the parable is really about them - the older brothers - not the younger brother. The parable is not so much about the younger brother returning home and being welcomed by his fathers amazing grace - its more about the reaction of the older brother to what his father has done. In other words, its less a parable for sinners and more a parable for saints. How do we know this? There are clues but most important one, is that the parable ends with a cliffhanger ending - where the older brother refuses to go into the party - that ending is left open, hanging, and thats were the real force of the parable lies. Will the older brother go into the party? Elder-brother-itis And Jesus told this parable because- the older brother in the story, and the older brothers of the world - are just as lost, maybe more lost, than the younger brothers. And Jesus loves them too and wanted them to open their hearts to his amazing grace. Lets go back to the parable to see this. The older brother was out working on the family farm and its quitting time and so he heads back to the village - and he hears the music of the party coming from his home. And he stops, and asks whats going on. And this is the first clue that the older brother has a problem. Because hes suspicious of his father. Ordinarily, youd just head in and join the fun. The older son does not, he wonders what the old man is up to this time, and asks one of the people out in the street - whats this party about? And the older son hears that his brother has returned - and maybe got some of the rest of the story - the juicy stuff - that the boy had lost everything, come home gaunt from hunger and stinking of pigs. And the older brother, is furious.

And then comes the second round of humiliations for the father. Last week we saw how younger son inflicted a grave insult, humiliated his father by asking for the inheritance. Now its the older brothers turn. Not going into the party, was an insult to the father in that culture. The eldest son had a role to play in the party - he was supposed to be in charge - welcoming and complimenting people, making sure they had enough food and drink, bossing the servants around. And he would have especially been expected to go in and embrace his fathers guest of honor - his little brother - and welcome him home. But instead his sticks out his bottom lip, folds his arms over his chest, and refuses to go in. Humiliation one, for the father. Then the second. The father comes out to the older brother. Remember last week, about the father running to the younger son, how men of stature never ran in that culture, but how this father out of love ran to his boy anyway? This is kind of parallel - he goes out to the older son to plead with him to come into the party. And then a third humiliation for the father. They are out in the street, people are coming and going into the party, and the older son creates a scene by arguing with his father right in front of the villagers. He tears into the old man - he doesnt even use the title, father as the younger son did when he began his speech and as was expected when a son addressed his father - not so much out of respect but acknowledging we are in relationship, we are family. And his complaint is very revealing - this son of yours goes off and loses your money and you throw him a party; Ive been slaving for you for years, obeyed all your orders, and you never gave me anything. Public humiliation - there is a story about a father who had his three-yearold son with him at the grocery store. The child was kicking up a fuss and the father was going down the aisles saying, Its ok, Freddy...well be home soon, Freddy....calm down, Freddy.... A women observed the father with his son and said to the father, I have to say, Im impressed with how patient you are with little Freddy. And the father said, Lady, Im Freddy! Public humiliation! And in that culture, the father should have turned his back on 4

the son, and gone back to the party to be with his guests. But the father lowers himself again by engaging the boy, trying to reason with him, trying to get him to go into the party. he ignores the lack of a title, the bitterness and anger, the insult, the unjust accusations. And he calls him teknon - my child, rather than more formal my son - you see, this is a cry from the heart - please, come into the party and celebrate - please, be a son to me - and the awful truth is, the older son is dead, too - can he come to life? And what does this reveal? That the older brother is just as alienated from his father, as the younger son was at his worst. That the older brother needs to be reconciled to his father, just as much as the younger brother did. And heres the cliffhanger at the end of the parable - the younger brother has gone into the party to be reconciled to his father, to share the joy of his father. But at the end of the parable, the older brother is outside the party - meaning outside of relationship with his father, outside of salvation - and the question hangs in the air - will he go into the party and the question hangs in the air for Jesus hearers - will you go into the party I am hosting as I bring lost people back to the Father? Churches full of older brothers Now, the story of the younger son is kind of a template for conversion testimonies - I was lost, but now am found - you sin, you hit bottom, you turn to God and get saved. And its not hard to diagnose if someone is lost like the younger brother - addicted to drugs or porn, drinking cheap vodka and falling down drunk in the gutter. Elder brothers - their lostness is hidden and much, much harder to see. And maybe, harder to cure. And now for the part where I make you mad. There are very few younger brothers in church; very few younger brothers here this morning. But there are lots of older brothers, lots of older brothers here this morning at Central. Older brothers who are lost and alienated from God their father, and who are figuratively standing outside the party with arms folded. Churches are full of lost older brothers. Whom God wants to save. Sometimes Im one of them. Ill tell you one way God has worked to save me from this. My last call, Trinity Presbytery in South Carolina called me to plant a new church from scratch. Tremendously hard work. The church is your baby and you have to put your heart and soul into it. Tremendously rewarding work - you get to help people come to know Jesus and find their way back to the church and grow in faith, you get to start something where there was nothing, you get to see tangible results from your work - a new and growing congregation, then a church building, and so on.

But tremendously dangerous work, spiritually. Since you have to put all of yourself into the new church, the line between you and the church gets blurred. Your self-worth gets attached to how well the new church is doing, or not doing. If new people are joining and getting involved, youre on top of the world - and if youre stalled or something is going wrong, youre down in the depths. And then theres the competition between new churches. What, competition between churches - why yes, church planters are a very driven, competitive bunch. My church is bigger than your church! But were doing all this for God, right? Certainly theres no ego involved. Hah. And there was this other new church in our area - a Baptist church - that got into its building six months before we got ours finished - and they started growing faster than we did. We had been the cool new church - we had won a national award for being a great new church - got a check for $50,000! - but then they became the cool church with all the buzz in the community. And some of our people, left MY church to go to that church. And I got angry, I got depressed - God, here Ive been slaving for you...God, Ive been faithful to you, Ive preached the gospel, Ive worked myself to exhaustion - why arent you making my church grow, why arent you giving me what I want, why arent you blessing me? Sound familiar? Elder-brother-itis. Im serving you God, for what I can get out of it. Success. Respect. Status. Glory. Not on the surface, of course, Im far too humble for that. But God, youd better bless what Im doing because Im doing it for you, right? You owe me, God! And youd better not be blessing people more than youre blessing me! Churches are full of elder brothers. Ive been one, I struggle with still being one, and I am sure our pews today are full of them. The good news is, God loves the older brothers like me just as much as the younger brothers. And God is going to confront our elder-brother-itis so we can learn to love him for who he is, and go into the party. Diagnostic tools How do you know youve got a case of elder-brother-itis? Basically, youve got it, if youre quietly mad at God for seeming to love and bless others more than he loves and blesses you. But lets zero in one particular manifestation of elder brother itis: You get mad, when your church tries to be welcoming and hospitable to lost and broken people - younger brother types. Lets face it - most churches are not - they give the 6

impression you have to somewhat get your act together to show up there - at least clean up and put on decent clothes - you wouldnt show up at a church dressed like the younger brother when he came home smelling of the pig pen. Churches and pastors love the older brothers who serve and give out of a sense of duty and obligation - nothing would get done without them - and over time the church becomes designed for the older brothers we sing the music we older brothers like, we do ministry inside the comfortable church instead of waiting out there for the younger brothers, we sit in the same pews that become our pews and if someone else sits there we may not ask them to move but it really is quite annoying...and if younger brother types start showing up and the church starts changing to minister to their brokenness, we feel what about us? And we get resentful. And we end up, over time, inching away from the party - end up, outside the party of Gods joy. God wants us older brothers to come into the party, hes pleading with us but we cant go in unless were willing to let God love lavishly the younger brothers of the world. And willing to stand next to them and claim them as our brothers and sisters. Illustration of this kind of grace Maybe youve heard of Will Campbell. A white Baptist preacher who worked for civil rights in the south. One summer night a sheriffs deputy, a member of the Klan, emptied a twelve-gauge shotgun into the chest of Campbells friend Jonathan Daniels, who had been picketing stores that were whites-only. A friend of his named P.D., a skeptic, brutally pushed Campbell on his faith - did he really believe that God loved that sheriffs deputy, that God would show him mercy, that indeed God loved that deputy as much as he loved dead Jonathan Daniels? Campbell writes, Suddenly everything became clear...I began to whimper...I remember trying to sort out the sadness and the joy...I agreed that the notion that a man could go to a store where a group of unarmed human beings are drinking soda pop and eating moon pies, fire a shotgun blast at one of them, tearing his lungs and heart and bowels from his body...and that God would set him free is more than I could stand. But unless that is precisely the case then there is no Gospel...Unless that is the truth we have only bad news, we are back with law alone.1 You see, unless there is grace and mercy for the younger brothers of the world, there is none for us too. None of us is good enough to stand before God through our own goodness. We all need Gods mercy and love. And we can no more earn Gods love by our good living than one of our children can earn our love by keeping his room clean. The love is freely given through Christs life and death on the cross and resurrection. But the tough part is, we lose all control. We have to give up our pretensions of being good, together, righteous people and admit that we need grace and mercy just as much as the younger brothers of the world. 7

So - maybe you and I find ourselves today at the end of a cliffhanger. Will we go into the party with the younger brothers of the world? God wants all us of there, and the only way to miss the party of Gods everlasting love and grace, is to refuse to go in. Amen. Endnotes 1. Quoted in Philip Yancey, Whats So Amazing About Grace, pp. 143-144. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997.