Confessions of an Elder Brother

  

   

     My typical Sunday morning begins with waking up to a ringtone or three before sprinting across the room to turn off the mother of all alarm clocks before the horrific beeping begins.  If I don't make it across the room in time, I have to try to run with my arm over my head to cover my ears while trying to turn the blasted thing off.  I am convinced this device is evil incarnate, but by George, it gets me moving.  And that is not an easy thing to do at 7:00 in the morning.  I am just not a morning person.  Never have been.  After I turn off the alarm, I scramble to make myself look presentable.  I grab a banana and a Coke Zero (don't judge me) for breakfast, let Roo out, throw him a Pupcorn treat as I lock the door, and hurry to my car.  
     The majority of my morning involves teaching, fighting with the laptop or projector, trying to hold thoughts in my head until I can find the nearest notepad, checking kids in with our amazing new system, etc.  I am not teaching Sunday School this month, so I get to roll with the big kids.  I still miss a good twenty-five minutes of class while I check kids in and sneak a few doughnut holes, but I manage to hear a healthy portion of the lesson.  The portion that I heard a couple weeks ago had a big impact on me.
     Ryan told me he was really excited about the new material.  The series is based on a book called The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller.  I haven't read the book yet, but I intend to.  The parable of the prodigal son (found in Luke 15:11-32 ) is a story I have heard and read and studied a hundred times.  Most of us have, right?  Younger son steals the fortune, parties like it's 1999, turns himself into a hot mess, then comes crawling back home asking to work as a servant.  The father runs to meet him before giving him the royal treatment-robes, rings, and a feast of roast beast that was outrageously expensive.  The end.  


Informercial voice: "But wait, there's more!"


      Timothy Keller paints a much broader picture of what Jesus was trying to say.  Never, in all the times I've heard this taught or preached on, have I given a second thought to the elder brother.  He's just the responsible kid that gets the short end of the stick.  He's mad, and we get that.   If we think of it at all.
      Keller points out several things I had never thought about:
1. Jesus's audience was made up of tax collectors and do-no-gooder's on one side and Pharisees and V.I.P. guys on the other.  Younger brothers and elder brothers, respectively, if you will.  
2.It was the elder brother's duty to go and look for his younger brother-an obligation he completely neglects.
3.Because the younger brother had received his inheritance, everything the father had would be the elder brother's.  Any expenditures of the father came at a cost to the elder brother.
4. Wealthy men at that time would not have been caught dead committing the serious faux pas of running.  Not only did the father run out to meet the younger brother, he had to run out to the elder brother (in the middle of the lavish feast, no less).  The elder brother was in the field when he heard the big party, and he refused to enter the house.  The father ran out and pleaded with him to come in.  The elder brother refuses to even acknowledge that the man is his brother, instead calling him, "this son of yours." v.30


   The elder brother is upright and responsible.  The younger brother has made such a mess of his life that, at a particularly low point, he was jealous of pigs because they were eating better than he was.  Yet, Keller points out that the father has to run out to ask both of them to come home.  The elder brother is doing the right things for all the wrong reasons.  He cares nothing for his brother who has finally come home, and he certainly doesn't have the heart of his father in mind.  


     Keller suggests that, just as the tax collectors and Pharisees would have found themselves in this story, we also identify with either the younger or the elder brother.  There are so many challenges inherent in this; I couldn't begin to cover them all.  Throughout my life, I've definitely been more of an elder brother (or sister, I suppose).  I've grown in my desire to draw nearer to the heart of the Father, and I certainly know that it is by grace alone I have been saved.  But am I searching hard enough for my younger brothers? Are my motivations always to please the Father?  
     
      Our class agreed our churches are typically full of elder brothers.  Many of them, tragically, are perhaps more lost than the younger ones.  Their good works bring them no closer to the Father.  They are not concerned with pursuing younger brothers who, (if they walk into the church at all), are apt to take a look inside and walk right back out, knowing they don't fit the mould.  Elder brothers look put-together and attend church picnics.  They are responsible citizens.  They have their acts together.  But why?  Because they want to look good?  Because they want God to give them good things?  Because they think it will get them into Heaven?  


     Meanwhile, the Father is still running out, pleading, "Come home."