Luke 15:11-32

Summary: The inclusion of the elder brother’s reaction introduces both confusion and melancholy to what would otherwise be such a glorious conclusion (i.e. v.24). However, the elder brother is central to Jesus’ point in addressing the grumbling of the religious leaders (v.1). Both of the brothers in this parable were rebels who lived in deliberate isolation from their father. The younger son rebelled openly and defiantly, whereas the elder brother rebelled by keeping all the rules. He obeyed his Father, not out of love and devotion, but as a resentful slave trying to earn a deserved status. He embodied the self-righteous and hidden rebellion of the religious leaders (the kind of rebellion to which respectable religious people are most prone). In the end, this is a parable of a Father who is willing to endure any humiliation in order to get these stubborn boys to simply live in the privileged status of being his children. It depicts for us a God willing to endure the humiliation of a cross in order to make sons and daughters of rebels such as we are.