Brotherly Love?

Come with me, if you will, to the blowout Welcome Home party at the Prodigal Son’s house.  Are you picturing the merry scene?  Plentiful food and drink and lively music fill the huge canvas tent, while friends, neighbors and servants vie for the son’s attention.  As the celebrity, he is inundated with questions, encouraged with back pats, and in general basks in the warm glow of renewed friendship, and his devoted father’s love.  As he hugs his dad for the umpteenth time, the crowd raises their glasses amidst claps and cheers. But look closer, do you see that one sullen guy in the corner?  He is the only unhappy one in attendance, almost seething with animosity.  Who is it, you might ask, an old enemy?  Sadly it is his own older brother.  Let’s go over and chat with him.  As you listen you realize he is afflicted with a justifiable case of sibling rivalry.

 Speaking as the oldest, we were always expected to set the behavioral example, and that’s not easy.  I’m sure, that through the years, his younger bro had been difficult to deal with, and he may have thought that the younger was the favorite son, especially when dad reminded him of his obligations as the eldest.  It happens.  Scripture shows us many examples: Cain and Abel; Ishmael and Isaac; Jacob and Esau; Joseph and his older brothers; and Mary and Martha.  There was always some burr under the saddle that brought strife into these relationships.  I’m sure that the Prodigal’s brother was  relieved when the “spur” in his life left home.  “Now I can be Dad’s golden boy!”, he probably thought.  But as the months and years went by, he saw his Abba mourning for the loss of his youngest child, no matter how hard he worked to please him.

 The story doesn’t say anything bad about the older brother, so I assume he was a good, dutiful son.  One day that all changed, when the pesky rapscallion returned, and big bro wandered in on the fiesta. “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’” Luke 15:25-30.

 You know, I really feel badly for this brother, do you?  There he was, never causing waves, busting his buns and what did he ever get? Nada, or at least that’s what he thought.  It’s easy to show empathy to an injured or grieving person, but when someone has good things happen, when you feel they don’t deserve it, it is oh so difficult.  Here’s what his father told him: “My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’?” Luke 15:31-32.  Is there a bur under your saddle today?  Human relationships will always have them, but with God’s help, we must allow the annoyance to grow us, not into calloused individuals, but loving and caring ones, able to see the full picture through our Father's eyes.