Lent 4 2007
Parable of the Outraged Brother

When Nell was a baby, we used to borrow a video camera from time to time, to film a record of her progress to send to my mother and father in the UK. Before we posted the completed cassette, we would play it through on the TV to check it. Nell’s reaction was fascinating. At first she would interact with herself on the screen in front of her as with a stranger. She enjoyed the images, but without recognition. Then one day it dawned on her. The image up there on the screen in front of her was not just an object to be observed as it were from the outside. It was her that she was seeing, her very own self.

This is the way that the scriptures impact on us, if we are willing to allow them to do their work. We read as observers, looking in from the outside. But we progressively realise that what we are observing is in fact ourself. The very depths of our being, and all being, is set out for us, interpreted through the prism of God in Christ.

So it is with today’s Gospel story. As we read, do we not begin as observers on the conduct of the headstrong young man? He’s in such a hurry to engage with life that he demands his share of the inheritance immediately, effectively wishing his father dead. And once he gets his hands on the money, once he tastes freedom, he grabs it with both hands, oblivious to the destructive nature of his choices. Until life forces him to confront himself, and as he languishes in poverty and degradation he comes to his senses.

But it’s not just someone else we’re looking at, is it? True, we might not have wasted our substance on whoring and carousing. But the wilful pursuit of our own choices, irrespective of the cost or outcome, until we realise our radical need for forgiveness and grace, surely that is part of the human journey. Most of us, if we’re being really honest, can see something of ourselves in this wayward lad.

That broken humanity is a prime theme of the story is recognised by the title Christians have traditionally given it. We call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Our attention is directed to human sinfulness, our sinfulness, and our radical need for grace. This is theology from below, beginning with an acknowledgement of our human condition and looking up and out towards God.

But there are two other significant actors in the story. The father’s constant love through the trials and disappointments of his child speaks at two levels. It tells us something about the best of ourselves, our own capacity for love, forgiveness, constancy. At the same time it points beyond that, to the paradigm of love and fount of grace. The one who loves absolutely us and all humans. Who, in John’s words ‘so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’

Here is theology from above. God comes to us, freely bestowing grace before we ask and beyond our need or our deserving. In an attempt to redirect our attention, the German Theologian Helmut Thielicke renames the story the Parable of the Waiting Father. But even this is not quite right. Because in the end the Father does not wait. Rather he runs to greet the son, and almost before the boy can utter his abject confession the father takes him in his arms. ‘For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

There’s another player in the story, not so well recognised. To acknowledge and draw attention to his part, we might rename it the Parable of the Outraged Brother. This one also offers us an insight into part of our character, perhaps a harder part for us to own up to.

So hands up if you have ever fallen out with anyone; hands up if you've ever got cross or resented something. Hands up if you've been unfair and difficult. And for anyone who didn’t put their hands up; liar, liar pants on fire!

The man at the centre of this reading is not a man who lived dangerously. Not a man who has, in the words of Jean Paul Sartre, les mains sales, dirty hands. He has played it safe, not taken risks, assiduously done the right thing. In fact he’s a bit of a goody two-shoes. But he also carries in him seething resentment. He just can’t understand why the whole house is turned upside down just because this irresponsible ratbag has come skulking home, morally compromised and with empty pockets, when obviously there was nothing else for him to do.

Is there not in us something of this brother, the one whom Thielicke describes as ‘this faithful Christian church member, this model citizen of the Christian West, the guardian and representative of tradition?’

Do we not have the capacity for smug self-satisfaction, and just a trace of judgmentalism? Despite the fact that we use the language of free and universal grace, do we not sometimes, in our heart of hearts, resent the fact that the drug dealers, child abusers and murderers get the same access to grace as we, the good people? Is there not just a little of the Pharisee in us too? And when we look at those in the church who take a different view to us, be it the dangerous liberals of the United States, or the ultra conservatives of Nigeria, don’t we have a tendency to say, ‘these children of yours’ rather than these brothers and sisters of ours?

You would have thought, wouldn’t you, that for this man, life lived in close proximity to his father would of itself have been fulfilment. But it’s not enough. Notwithstanding all the good things of his life, there’s a sense that he has somehow been disadvantaged. That the others have had all the fun whilst he has been working faithfully away at home. That life is somewhere else. That he’s missed out. There are no festivals in his life – only tedious, tiresome though highly serious monotony.

There are plenty of people, you know, whose religious impulse doesn’t make them warm and happy. There is a kind of piety, a kind of obedience which doesn’t bring freshness and hope and joy, but rather looks numbing, mildewed. This is the fruit that self-righteousness and judgementalism returns. Not the glorious liberty of the children of God. Not the promise of life and life in all its fullness. Rather it’s what the philosophers call resentement, that French term that literally means “feel again,” which is the perverse joy in reliving miserable experiences and can be compared to picking at a scab.

If we are being really straight with ourselves today, can we admit that there‘s a bit of the Pharisee in us too. A bit of resentement.

But the father in our parable doesn’t judge this brother. Doesn’t snigger at his slightly pompous self-righteousness. Doesn’t see his secret shortcomings as making him somehow contemptible. Doesn’t take malicious satisfaction in calling him a Pharisee. No, he assures him of his love too. ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.’ The outpouring of grace on the younger brother doesn’t diminish to pool of grace available to the elder. Since the source of grace is infinite, there’s more than enough to go round.

The older brother has made his choices. His task is to live fully, with the choices he has made. And that is our task too. Not to harbour resentment, not to judge and condemn others as a misguided way of making ourselves seem more important than we are, or justifying to ourselves our lack of courage and freedom.

Sherlock Holmes is widely recognised as the world’s greatest detective. Sherlock had a brother called Mycroft who was in Sherlock's eyes was far more brilliant than he. Mycroft had his faults too. He was on the lazy side, not perfect. Sherlock Holmes is gracious enough to admit that there is one more amazing than he: and maybe here is a lesson for us too. Can we take from today’s parable, of the prodigal son, the outraged brother and the waiting father the deep spiritual truth that there is always one greater than us who can show us the way. For if we trust in God at all, it is surely to ensure that we don't believe our own publicity.

For a church, made of people, in need of grace and blessing, that is a valuable lesson indeed. God will rejoice that we who were lost have been found, but if we pretend we're not lost we will end up going over the edge into an abyss. And as today we celebrate 'refreshment' Sunday can we assert that it’s not a time not for gambling, boozing, or carousing? Nor indeed is it a time for sitting on the sidelines smug and self-satisfied? Rather it’s a time to be refreshed in God's extraordinary generous and profligate love.