The Older Brother

One of these past Sundays we were reading the story of the prodigal son.  This is a familiar story and the father's love for his returned son are the subject of countless sermons and that is as it should be.  And I have read many commentaries on this story and they sometimes turn into a diatribe against that familiar scapegoat, the Pharisees.  They were the ones zealous for the law, sometimes to such an extreme that they pit the strict keeping of the law against doing works of mercy, healing, compassion.  They seem renowned for the degree of separation from all that is not in keeping with what they perceive to be the will and purpose of God...the picture of the Pharisee drawing in his robes in the marketplace to avoid defilement by an inadvertent contact with sinful humanity is classic sermon fodder.  But then I thought that if scripture is universally true, transcending time and geography, then a retelling of the story today would sadly cast us, the formal, established, set-in-our-ways Church as the older brother.  We are always with our Father through the work of His son Jesus, and all that He has is ours, because He delights to give to us the kingdom.  But what the Father's love really done for us, what types of people are we?

We are decidedly uncomfortable when the world sets foot on our turf.  We jealously guard the sanctuary of God  lest any part of the world invade it, and when these "others" enter in, drawn by a remembrance of a father's love, we become stern gatekeepers; because like it or not, these newcomers are covered and clothed in the world and its ways.  How many hoops do we force them to negotiate before they pass muster and are accepted into the fellowship of believers, admitted to the Lord's table, granted church membership, or even just given genuine attention and compassion?

I think this occurs because our perspective of the Father is limited, it may even be dead wrong in many areas.  In our hymns we sing about God as immortal, invisible, the only wise God, beautiful, perfect, transcendent and a dozen other words.  But this is theology singing, and even though we sometimes seem overly fond of it, it skews our perspective of God, how He works, and how he views the prodigals of this world.  We are the ones that are ever with the Father as the story goes, and all that He has is ours because it is His delight to give His kingdom to us....but what happens in us when He also delights to give it to flagrant prodigals who have squandered the better part of their life in worldly living far separated from Him.  And that makes it difficult for us to rejoice with the Father when one of "them" stumbles home stinking of pig manure.  But in the end of the matter, it is the prodigals who are the ones who remember what the Father is really like and who have no reservation of coming back knowing that they deserve nothing and instead find that they receive everything.  It is us who have forgotten what grace is able to accomplish and we are the ones who cry out that it is unfair.  I think it is time we took a second look at the whole way that we have organized and run our churches and let the Father once more transform them into havens of forgiveness and grace.