H. Michael Brewer
Crescent Springs Presbyterian Church
5 September 2004
JESUS’ GREATEST HITS: The Big Brother
Luke 15:11-32
I love the parable of the prodigal son. Of all the surviving stories of Jesus, to my mind this
particular parable is both the most touching and the also the most challenging. Part of what fascinates
me about this story is that Jesus left it unfinished. It has no ending. When the curtain drops on Jesus’
little family drama, the prodigal son is whooping it up in his welcome home party and the older son is
out in the yard fuming. The father says, “Come join the party! This is a day to celebrate! Your brother
was lost to us, but now he is found again. He was as good as dead, and look he is alive once more.”
As the story ends, there stands the father, hand extended to his older son, waiting for his answer. And
that’s as far as we get.
We’re left to wonder what happens next, and I have wondered about it for years.
How does it end? Maybe it goes like this. Maybe the elder son reluctantly takes his father’s hand and
joins the homecoming party. It’s not easy for him to welcome back that no-good runaway, but
eventually he makes peace with his little brother. The boy is so truly repentant and so overjoyed to be
home, that the older brother just can’t seem to hold a grudge. The years go by, with the sons working
side by side on the family estate, and everything is fine in the family. Or at least everything looks fine.
But deep inside the soul of the older brother something is terribly wrong. He feels that his
father doesn’t really love him. He feels that somehow he’s never measured up to his father’s
expectations. During those years that his little brother was wasting his life in wine, women and song,
the older boy had worked so hard on the farm, trying to do the work of two sons, keeping his nose
to the grindstone, all work and no play, always hoping to please his father.
Which was strange, since his father was always telling him to slow down, take a break, have
some friends over for a cook-out. But the boy was afraid to stop working. He figured hard work and
long hours were the way to his father’s heart.
And after the younger son came back home, the older boy just worked that much harder.
Now he was really insecure. Now he had to compete with his little brother, the fun-loving brother, the
life-of-the-party brother. So he worked even harder, longer hours, fewer days off, thinking what a
good son he was and always hoping that he was working hard enough to make his old man happy.
The years went by, as they have a way of doing, and one day the servants ran into the field and
summoned the older brother to come quickly to the house. The father was now very old and his heart
was failing. When the son reached his father’s side, he could see that the old man was dying, and
apparently he was delirious because the father laid his hand on his son’s shoulder and he said, “My
son, I have waited so many years for you to come back to me.”
The older son said, “Father, it’s me. I’ve never left you.”
The old man said, “You left me a long time ago. Every day I have watched you in the fields
working furiously from sun-up to sun-down, and how I longed for you to stop long enough for us to
share a glass of wine together. How I wished you would come sit in the shade sometimes and just
visit with me. But you never did.”
“But, Father,” cried the boy, “I did it all for you! All I ever wanted was for you to love me!”
The old man looked at the boy sadly, and he said, “I have always loved you, not as a slave,
but as my own child. All I ever wanted was for you to accept my love instead of trying to earn it.”
There were tears in the old man’s eyes as he closed them for the last time.
The story could end that way. It often does.
Or it could go like this. The older son is furious at this no-good brother who has come crawling home
with his tail between his legs, and he’s even angrier at his father for taking the bum back into the
family. The older son turns his back on his father’s outstretched hand and refuses to come into the
party. He stalks off into the night. In the wee hours of the morning when everyone else is finally
asleep, the older son sneaks into the house, he pulls up the tiles in the kitchen floor where the bag of
gold is hidden, his father’s nest egg. The boy figures this is his share of the inheritance, and he hits the
road without leaving so much as a goodbye note on the refrigerator.
What happens next, I’m not sure. Maybe he squanders his money on good times just like his
little brother did, and ends up cleaning out the spittoons in the local saloon. Or maybe he’s smarter
than the prodigal. Maybe he invests his money in Roman commodities and makes a killing in the
market. Could be he ends up rich and fat in the mansion on the hill. It doesn’t really matter, because
every day he thinks about the home he ran away from and the family he left behind. Every day he
thinks about going back, but a fellow has to have some pride.
Once again the years fly away, and then one morning a servant arrives from the old homestead.
“Come quick,” the servant says. “Your father is dying of the fever, and he’s been calling your name
for days.” The boy leaves immediately, and he travels as fast as you could travel in those days, but he
arrives too late. His father is already dead and buried. The boy finds his little brother sitting in the
grass beside the tomb.
In exhaustion the older brother settles on the grass and asks, “How bad was it?”
“I don’t think he had much pain,” little brother says. “He held on as long as he could, hoping
you’d come.”
The older son says nothing.
“You know, he never stopped missing you,” little bother says. “He used to make up silly
excuses to walk down the road toward town, but I knew he wasn’t running errands or visiting the
neighbors. He was standing on the hill watching for you.”
Still the older son says nothing. He just stares at the tomb.
His brother reaches out and squeezes his arm. “I’m glad to see you. I love you, too, you
know. Your father watched for you from the road. I watched for you from my window. We’ve both
waited a long time.”
The older son finally speaks. “I’ve come too late,” he says.
“No,” says his brother. “How can it ever be too late to come home? Are you back for good?”
“Yes, if you’ll have me. I’m just sorry it took Dad’s death to bring me home.”
“It’s all right,” little brother says. “Dad would have been glad to die if he knew it would bring
you home."
It could have ended that way. Or maybe it wasn’t so dramatic. Maybe the older son accepted
his father’s invitation to the homecoming party. Maybe the boy came to his senses, buried the hatchet
with his little brother, and made up with his soft-hearted father. And they lived there together on the
farm, not always in peace but always in love. And in the evenings when they sat by the fireplace, not
talking much but just looking at the flames, the father would look at his sons, and his heart would
climb into his throat, and he’d blink back the mistiness that clouded his old eyes, and he’d say, “I’m
glad you’re here, boys. I’m real glad.”
The ending could be as gentle and quiet as that. Of course, you may not like any of those
endings, and you have my permission to write your own. In fact, you’ll have to write your own ending
to this story in one way or another because this is your story, and my story. It’s the story of all of us:
running away from God, and coming home, or not coming home… It’s up to you and me. And while
we try to make up our minds how to wrap up the story, there is someone looking down the road,
watching for us, there are arms open and waiting for us, there is a heart beating for us and hoping for
a happy ending, an ending that is up to you and up to me.
Soli Deo Gloria!