The Older Son
Luke 15: 25-32 The Older Son
Now his elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew near the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the young boys and asked what this meant. And he said to him, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him with peace.” But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him.
But he answered his father, “Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed the fatted calf!”
And he said to him, “Son you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”
Throughout this parable, Jesus is defending his position of accepting the “sinners” at a profound level. As noted earlier, the father represents God, the younger brother represents the “sinners,” and the older brother represents the Pharisees.
In the beginning of the story, when the younger son asks his father for his portion, it was the custom in the Middle East for the older son to mediate between the father and the younger son. Yet the older son remains quiet. Behind his quiet response lurks anger which does not become apparent until later in the story when the father accepts with peace the younger son and holds a celebration. Customarily, it was the responsibility of the older son to serve the guests at an important banquet. The guests would be made to feel so special when the father’s oldest son served them. But in this parable, not only did the older son not accept this responsibility; he didn’t fulfill the minimal requirement of greeting the guests. He stayed out in the courtyard.
Earlier that day, the father demonstrated costly, humiliating love by running to the younger son. The father shows costly love once again by leaving the banquet--a humiliating act in the Middle East—to find his older son. The older son points out how he has served the father as a slave never disobeying his commandments. Yet even in this moment, the older son refuses his responsibility at the celebration as he earlier refused to mediate when the younger son was leaving for the far country. Anger blinded him.
In The Cross & the Prodigal, an insightful contrast is drawn between how the older son and the father approach each situation. When the older son called on one of the boys after returning from the fields, the Greek preposition suggests that they were “facing one another,” in an adversarial position. Yet, the father (as the preposition suggests) asks the older son to “stand parallel to him”—not in an adversarial position, but asking the older son to see the situation from the father’s perspective.
Furthermore, when the father addresses the older son, he does so with the Greek word teknon, a special word for son that indicates love and affection. It is the word Mary uses when Jesus is found in the temple and she says, “Son, why have you treated us so?” (Luke 2:48) The father goes on, gently reminding the older son that the prodigal is “your brother.” The rest of the speech is a defense of joy.
There is no response to the father by the older son--the end of the story is missing. This parable, like most of Jesus’ parables, uses inverted step parallelism but the last section is missing--on purpose. (If you want to find out more about Hebrew step parallelism please see Ken Bailey’s Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15.) The last missing section is to be written by the Pharisees who have been drawn into the parable. How would the Pharisees complete this story? The father (God) would wish that the two brothers would embrace and enter with joy into the celebration.
However, just like the older son, the Pharisees felt seething anger toward Jesus throughout his ministry. And ultimately their answer was to crucify Jesus. And just as The Prodigal Son talks about the father’s (God’s) costly, visible love for the younger and older son, so Jesus died in a costly, visible way so that we might see the heart of God.