The Parable of the Merciful Father and His Dutiful Son

Last time we looked at the much beloved parable traditionally known as the Prodigal Son. Today we’re looking at the sequel to that story, which focuses on the elder brother’s response to its events.

As always, if you don’t have time or interest in going through the whole study, feel free to skip down to the Summary and Conclusions at the bottom.

Text

[15.25] But his elder son was in the field. And as he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing [26] and called out to one of the slaves to ask what it was all about. [27] And he said to him, “Your brother has come, and your father has slaughtered the fatted calf, because he has got him safe-and-sound. [28] And he grew angry and refused to enter. But his father came out and tried to comfort him. [29] In response, he said to his father: Look, for so many years I’ve been working like a slave for you, and not once have have I disobeyed your instruction, not once have you offered me a small goat to celebrate with my friends. [30] But when this son of yours, who devoured your livelihood on whores came home, you offered him the fatted calf! [31] And he replied, “My child, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. [32] But we have to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and now he lives, was lost and has been found.” (Luke 15.25-32)

Experience

Just as with the first half of the story, I’m struck most by the father’s unbelievable love, for both his sons. The elder son is dutiful and responsible — good things his brother has not been — and yet comes across as rigid and selfish. He’s caught up in his automatic negative thoughts and complains about his brother’s behaviour. It’s a great example of how caring too much about the rules can often blind us to the realities of other people’s lives — and thereby blind us to our own failings.

Encounter

The context for this story remains Jesus’ response to a group of religious leaders attacking him for keeping ‘bad company’ This is the final salvo as he attempts to get them to join the celebration at the return of the lost. In the story, the wasteful younger son remains the topic of conversation, but recedes entirely into the background. Instead we get a dramatic confrontation between the father and the elder brother, who is indignant at his father’s warm welcome and what he thinks it means about his father’s feelings about him.

Explore

A few questions have arisen here to guide the rest of the study:

• How does this connect to the first half of the story?
• Are there any details that can tell us more about his reaction to his brother’s return?
• What does the father’s response to him tell us about him and his desires?

Literary Context

This is the second half of the third of three parables Jesus tells in response to the Pharisees’ attacks on him for welcoming ‘sinners’. While the first half stands on its own as a parable, this second half is dependent on the first (Scott 100).* If we think of this whole parable as an expansion on the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin, this half unpacks the climax of those stories, the invitation to celebrate at the finding of the lost (Just 604; Scott 109). Bailey and Just have both identified a chiastic structure to all of these stories, with celebration being at the heart of the first two, and the prodigal’s repentance in the first half of the third; here, complaint forms the story’s centre (Bailey (1976) 194; Just 604). This chiasm is left unresolved; so we are left hanging as much in terms of the story’s structure as we are in its narrative.

The Elder Son

The elder son was off stage the entirety of the first half of the story — not to his credit: Where was he when his brother was setting his plan in motion (Nuechterlein Lent 4C)? Several commentators point out that it would be an elder son’s role to reconcile a father and son, a role he’s neglected from the start (Walton & Keener; Bailey 161ff; Just 597).

When he now comes on stage, something is off: How is the whole village present at a party he knows nothing about? Amy-Jill Levine takes this as evidence that his subsequent complaints about his father are justified (Levine; Levine & Witherington 425). Others chalk it up to his obliviousness is to what’s happening around him (e.g., Capon). But Walton & Keener are probably right when they suggest it is simply a narrative device to emphasize his lack of participation. At any rate, as our story begins, he is on the outside of the party looking in, and the question of whether he will choose to enter is the main drama (Scott 119; Capon).

When his father comes out to see him, he launches into a litany of complaints that he’s clearly been rehearsing, probably since the day his brother left. These complaints accuse both the father and brother: His father has been demanding and stingy to him, treating him like a slave, but indulgent of his brother’s every whim — the same brother who has been off God-knows-where eating through his father’s hard-earned money, feasting and whoring it up! There’s a lot to unpack here. His dutiful nature and responsibility represent the best of firstborn stereotypes; but something has twisted in him, turning these positive traits into something done to and against him (Nuechterlein Lent 4C; Scott 119f). Moreover, he comes at this responsibility from a scarcity mindset: Remember, his father has distributed the estate between the brothers, meaning that his portion (two thirds of the estate, per traditional precedents) has been at his disposal the whole time. But this doesn’t register for him. Meanwhile, he accuses his brother of things he has no way of knowing and which are none of his business, “straight out of his own two-bit sexual fantasies.” (Capon; cf. Nuechterlein Lent 4C). A more literal translation of the Greek, “he devoured your life on whores,” both perfectly articulates his anger and reinforces the life-and-death imagery we saw last time (Nuechterlein Lent 4C).

To make matters worse, he’s making a scene at a family celebration: Not only refusing to join in, but openly arguing with his father (Just 605; Walton & Keener). The brother may have dishonoured his father before, but “now the elder’s anger and refusal … cut him off just as surely” (Scott 120).

Father

The father responds to all this with wonderful patience and concern. After all that, one might expect the father to discipline him (Walton & Keener). But instead he “comforts him” (15.28). The Greek here comes from parakaleo, the same root from which we derive Parakletos, ‘Comforter/Advocate’, the epithet for the Holy Spirit in John 14.6 (Levine & Witherington 426). It’s a word with a wide of range of connotations, including comfort, advocacy, and exhortation; while it’s rarely an appropriate translation, I think ‘coaching’ is the best English analog to the concept. The father comes out to comfort, but also to reason with him, to coach him out of his negative mindset, and to see things through different eyes:

My child, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we have to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and now he lives, was lost and has been found. (15.31f)

First, the father addresses him in a way that reinforces their familial bonds (Walton & Keener; Levine & Witherington 428; Just 606; Scott 121). Then he emphasizes the connection they have from their shared lives and work (Scott 121). And finally, he tells him that everything he has is at his disposal. He means this literally: Yes, all the father’s resources were available to his elder son if he had just asked, but since the division of the estate, all that the father had was legally his too! Note that there is no hint of any rejection of the son (Levine & Witherington 428; Just 606; Scott 125). The father’s only aim is to have his two sons under the same roof together, celebrating: “He does not upbraid the younger son for leaving; neither does he upbraid his elder son for being such an insufferable prig. He only invites both of them to the party.” (Andrew Marr quoted in Nuechterlein Lent 4C). As the psalmist put it: “How very good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity” (Psalm 133.1). This is the father’s heart.

Interpreting the Parable

But what does this mean for how we interpret the parable? Capon sees his as a thorough judgment against the elder son; as he puts it in his characteristically vivid way, “Don’t bellyache to me. You’re in charge here; so cut out the phoney-baloney,” and “the only reason you’re not enjoying [the party] is because you refuse to be dead to your dumb rules about how [our wealth] should be enjoyed” (Capon). But Levine takes the opposite approach, believing this is an act of repentance on the father’s part that vindicates the elder brother’s way of life and feelings (even if not the way he expressed them) (Levine & Witherington 425; Levine).

I would argue that these perspectives are closer than they first appear. As Levine would point out, nowhere are the elder son’s life choices called into question; insofar as his general behaviour is concerned, he is in the right. But, to Capon’s point, even if he lives rightly, his attitude towards that life is all wrong. Grace “doesn’t work on him,” not because he follows the rules but because he is stingy and unyielding, both in his own life (as demonstrated by not using the farm’s bounty that was by law his) and towards others (as demonstrated by his refusal to celebrate his brother’s return) (Capon; cf. Palamas 18). Moreover, this attitude has caused him to shirk his duty to reconcile his family, and now to publicly insult his father, negating his points about being a dutiful son. Once again we’re left with Gil Baillie’s summary, “you can’t get to righteousness by trying to be righteous” (quoted by Nuechterlein Proper 19C). Neither son is wholly righteous; both need their father’s grace, and both need to want reconciliation.

Jesus leaves the story unresolved. We don’t know whether the elder son relents and accepts his father’s mercy, or chooses instead to stay outside and exacerbate the family’s alienation. In Luke’s narrative context, this ambiguity leaves the invitation for the Pharisees to join in the messianic celebration and welcome of the lost open. But it also leaves us as readers facing that same question; we too are on the outside at the end of the parable (Nuechterlein Lent 4C). Will we accept the invitation of grace and come in and celebrate, with everyone the Kingdom indiscriminately pulls in (cf. Matthew 13.47-48)?

Challenge

Subversion of First-Century Expectations

It’s interesting to think about what the Pharisees might have thought of this story. On the one hand, they’d be primed by their knowledge of the Scriptures to see the younger son come ahead in the story, but they’d be more sympathetic to the elder son’s rule-following. That is until he rebukes his father, in violation of the fourth commandment and filial piety. The father’s lack of punishment in response to this may also have come as a surprise (Walton & Keener), but it’s really hard to know. Again, the only certain thing we can say is that this second half of the story leaves the Pharisees with the same confronting challenge as the first: Will they relent and join the celebration or not?

Contemporary Challenge

Once again we need to spend some time to think through this parable’s association with antisemitism. As Levine points out, traditional interpretations have seen “the older brother as the recalcitrant Pharisee who ‘works like a slave’ and thus is burdened by works-righteousness rather than saved by grace,” and have equated both him and the Pharisees with the Jewish tradition as a whole (Levine). In her attempts to defend Judaism, she goes so far as to warn against associating the elder brother with the Pharisees at all (Levine & Witherington 426). This is, of course, contrary to the narrative context in which Jesus tells the story. Fortunately, as I think we’ve seen throughout this post, we don’t need to go to such extremes to avoid the problems she rightly wants Christians to avoid.

The problem in the story is not the elder brother’s faithfulness to his responsibilities, but his refusal to rejoice at the return of his brother. Likewise, there’s no indication that Jesus sees a problem with the Pharisees’ Jewish identity or commitment to following the Law. Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees is not that they they are observant; it’s that they reject his welcome of those whose observance is less strict (Scott 102; NIV BTS).

That said, I think there is also an embedded criticism of how the elder brother’s observes: namely, that he takes no joy in it. He’s the one who calls his life enslavement, not antisemitic Christian interpreters! Levine is right to say, with the whole Jewish tradition, that “there is joy in the Torah” (Levine & Witherington 430); the problem is that this is precisely what is lacking in the elder brother’s observance of his responsibilities! If he had joy in his service, he wouldn’t be concocting fantasies about his brother’s life. And these tendencies or archetypes are not about one group versus another; they’re alive and well in all of us. We don’t read this parable and point fingers at the elder brother or the Pharisees because those fingers are pointed right back at us!

And this brings us to a the real ‘challenge’ of the story. There’s more than one way to waste resources. The prodigal wasted them on self-indulgence, but the dutiful brother wasted them by hoarding them. As much as the elder brother complains that he didn’t get a goat, the goat was his; and even if he felt weird about the premature disposition of the estate, if he knew his father, he’d know he’d happily allow him to take one to share with his friends. As people of faith, we take on the nature of the God we believe in; a stingy God makes us stingy. And that’s what we have here. And as Paul Neuchterlein points out, “These are the children who are more likely to stay disconnected from their source of life, more likely to stand outside the party, filled with resentment’ (Nuechterlein Lent 4C).

Expand

The interpretation that has emerged in this study helps us to grow in faith and love by turning the parable into a mirror (Nuechterlein Lent 4C, citing James Alison; Thurman; Levine & Witherington 430). Just as we are the wasteful younger son, called to return home, so are we the dutiful elder son, called to loosen up and celebrate what needs to be celebrated. And, just as we are called to be like the father who mercifully welcomed the wayward son home, so too are we called to be like that same father who mercifully forbore the elder son’s insults and remind him of our love and the open invitation to join in the party.

But the study took us even further, towards a focus not on either son but on their ultimate reconciliation. This is also a powerful lesson in growing in faith and love. The tie that binds the two stories is that the father comes out, to look for and welcome both, so that they might celebrate with him and together (Scott 125). Particularly in this moment of shocking political and social polarization, we are called to remember that such divisions:

play out a framing story of us versus them that seeks to take precedence over the deeper and higher framing story of God’s global family table, where us and them are equally invited, equally wanted, in the biggest “us” of all. (Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, quoted by Nuechterlein Lent 4C)

And again: “For God there are no ‘outsiders’, which means to say that any mechanism for the creation of ‘outsiders’ is automatically and simply a mechanism of human violence” (James Alison, Raising Abel 35, quoted in Nuechterlein Lent 4C; cf. Scott 125).

Summary & Conclusions

As the climax of his response to those who objected to his welcome of ‘sinners’, Jesus tells the Parable of the Merciful Father and His Dutiful Son, in which a responsible elder brother responds to his father’s welcome of his returned, wasteful younger brother with bitterness and not joy. This reveals the resentments and anger that he normally hides but are nonetheless at the heart of how he lives. But the father is just as merciful to him as he was to the brother, trying to convince him that he is precious and beloved, and that neither his brother’s actions nor his father’s response to them are a commentary on him. They are celebrating because it is right to celebrate the safe return of a loved one who had been in danger. And won’t he please just come in and join? This is an obvious challenge to Jesus’ opponents: They too are invited and welcome to join the party; it’s simply not their job to complain about the guest list.

And the same is true for us. Ultimately, God just wants us all to be safe at home, with God and each other.

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.