The Prodigal Son's Brother

Remember Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son? It’s the one where the younger son squanders his share of the family estate in wild living, only to have his father throw a lavish party when junior finally goes broke and crawls back home with his tail between his legs. Sometimes people forget that there was an older son in the story, too—one who had been carrying the load all by himself while little brother snorted coke in the bathroom of some seedy nightclub (or whatever spoiled rich kids did in biblical days). Big brother never got a party to honor his faithfulness, so he was none too happy about all the fuss over junior’s return.

Well, I, for one, always thought the older brother had a legitimate beef. He did the right thing year after year, got taken for granted, and watched some immature coke-head get all the attention. That sequence of events would be tough for anyone to swallow without feeling a tad resentful.

I know because I sometimes felt like the big brother during my last year at Golden Gate. I kept trying to do the right thing—build a strong marriage, work hard, get good grades, pour myself into two young churches—but it was all a bit exhausting. And Pastor John did not seem like the man to turn to for sympathy, fond as he was of statements like, “Relax? That’s what heaven is for!” and “Technically, a biblical workweek was 72 hours.” John based that last number on the agrarian societies that dominated Bible times, where people worked six days per week from sunup to sundown. To him, those were the good old days.

The ever-increasing efforts eventually left me feeling like the older brother in the parable. New people were coming into the churches, and while most of them weren’t exactly fiscally irresponsible coke heads like the prodigal son, there was no question that each Sunday service was a party thrown in their honor. Every last detail had been carefully orchestrated to make them feel welcomed, put at ease, and valued. But there weren’t any parties for the poor schmucks who were making it all happen.

As one of the worker bees, I sometimes fantasized about donning a disguise and trying to pass myself off as a non-Christian visitor with a shady past—just so I could get a taste of the prodigal son treatment. Of course, when these thoughts came, I recalled that the older brother was not exactly the hero of Jesus’ story and tried to will myself to be happier that things were going so well at church.

When that didn’t work, I reminded myself that if they stuck around long enough, all the newbies would eventually become worker bees themselves. And as they wondered where the party went, these ex-prodigals might also find some sympathy for the dutiful older brother.

This made me feel a little better. But not much.