The Older Son’s Return

1. The Father Loves Us All as We Are

This parable has no conclusive ending. What happened next? Did the older son listen to his father and join the celebration? This open-endedness of the story calls us to do some serious self-examination. Jesus presents us again with a choice. Are we going to remain imprisoned by our self-righteous pride or our self-condemnation? Or are we going to listen to our Father’s voice and come home? The father loves both sons. The older son, too, needs to be found and led back home into the father’s love and joy. The older son deserves a severe reprimand but again, as with the younger son, the father is generous and gracious. The father does not defend himself, judge, or comment on the older son’s behavior. He gently addresses him as “my child.” He declares his unqualified love. He goes out to the older son just as he went out to the younger son. He wants both to sit at his table and participate in his joy. While the younger son surrendered to the father’s love and allowed himself to be held in a forgiving embrace, the older son still stands aside and holds himself back. He cannot yet step over his anger and resentment and allow his father to love him as well.

The father reaffirms their intimate relationship. “My child, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” The older son has all these benefits because he has been with the father, and always had access to the father and his inheritance. The question comes to mind, did he not make use of these benefits? Was he so filled with entitlement and focused on self that he could not see and enjoy the blessings and grace he has already received and has access to? The father shared everything with him. “All I have is ours.” This is a clear statement of the father’s unlimited love for his older son. Thus, the father’s love is offered completely and equally to both his sons. The joy at the return of the younger son does not mean that the older son was less loved, less appreciated, or less favored. The father does not compare the sons. He loves them both and he expresses that love according to their unique giftings, personalities, and individual journeys. He knows them both intimately.

In the same way, God, our Father, loves us all as we are. Whether you are the younger son or the older son, God’s only desire is to bring you home. Perhaps you are the younger son who is still lost far away from home in the distant lands enslaved by the ways of this world. Perhaps you are the older son who is at the house but not home because you are lost in some dark place in your heart enslaved by that inner darkness and lostness. It does not matter who you are, where you are, or what you have done, God is urging you to come home and enter into the light of his love. God is there. God’s light is there. God’s forgiveness is there. God’s boundless love is there. God is always there, always ready to give and forgive. He loves us as we are. He loves us even when we are still sinners, his enemies. He urges us to come home and discover there that God loves all people uniquely and completely. In the light of God’s love, we can finally see our fellow human beings, our neighbors, and even our enemies, as our brothers and sisters. There we see them as children who belong to God as much as we do.

2. Surrender to Love

Therefore, we have to let go of all comparison, all rivalry, and competition, and we must surrender to the Father’s love. Surrender is a word we don’t like. It means we have given up. We have lost the game, the race, the battle, or the argument. But that is what it takes to come home. We must come to our senses, stop fighting, and let go of our egos. We must die to self, take up our crosses, and follow Jesus. We must surrender to God’s love and step into the light. As long as we stay outside in the darkness, we can only remain caught up in the resentful complaints, envy, and anger which come from our comparisons and self-righteous judgments. Outside the light, my younger brother seems to be more loved by the Father than I am. In fact, I cannot even see him or her as my own brother or sister. Note how the father will not allow the older brother to separate himself from his younger brother. He says, “this brother of yours.” Where there is such repentance and resurrection (lost & found; dead & alive) it is appropriate and necessary, actually, it is a moral obligation that we should rejoice and celebrate. God is at work and new life is bursting forth and is being reborn from above. That must result in joy and gratitude. We should rejoice and give thanks.

When we do not surrender to God’s love and remain outside his house, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, family, friends, and coworkers become rivals and even enemies. We are plagued and enslaved by jealousies, suspicions, and resentments. We become strangers to one another. Outside the light, we are afraid and show disdain for others. Either we become victims and suffer submission to and exploitation by others, or we enforce control and power over and become oppressors of others. Sins cannot be confessed, forgiveness cannot be received, and love cannot exist. True fellowship becomes impossible. Everything becomes suspect, self-conscious, calculated, and full of second-guessing. There is no longer any trust. These are the dangers and fruit of the darkness, of the inner lostness of the older children. When we do not surrender to God’s love and step into his light, we cannot experience grace and live out grace.

The story of the lost son is the story of God who goes out searching for us. He doesn’t rest until He has found us. He urges us to stop clinging to the powers of this world, the powers of darkness and death. He invites us to allow ourselves to be embraced by his arms that will carry us home. We must let go of self and surrender to God’s love. We must turn away from a false dependence on self and the world. We must return to the true dependence on the divine Father who says to us: “You are with me always, and all I have is yours.” We must surrender to the Light, and come home to our true self in Christ. Surrender to God’s love, and His unlimited, unconditional love melts away all resentments and anger. Surrender and allow Him to make us free to love others unconditionally.

3. Come Home through Trust & Gratitude

This brings us again to the question, “Is it possible for us to return to the Father and his home?” How can we, the older sons and daughters, come home? We cannot save ourselves from the bondage of our inner lostness. But we can allow ourselves to be found by God and be healed by his love. How? Through the daily practice of trust and gratitude. These are the disciplines and the way for the older son to come home. Remember—the discipline for the younger son to come home is to become a child of God again.

Trust is that deep inner conviction that the Father loves me and wants me home. Without trust, I cannot surrender to God’s love. As long as I doubt his love and think that I am less loved than my brothers and sisters, as long as I think that I am not worth finding, I cannot be found. I have to keep saying to myself daily: “God is looking for you. He will go anywhere to find you. He loves you. He wants you home. He cannot rest unless He has you with him.” It requires real discipline to step over my complaints, resentments, jealousies, and anger. It requires discipline to think, speak, and act with the conviction that we are loved, that we are being sought and will be found by God. Therefore, at some point, we must die to self. We must totally disown our self-rejecting or self-righteous voices. We must listen to God’s voice and claim the truth that He does indeed loves us and wants to embrace us.

With trust there must be gratitude. Gratitude is the opposite of resentment. The two cannot coexist because resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift. Gratitude goes beyond the “mine” and “yours” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love and grace, a gift that is to be celebrated with joy. Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. “I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still full of hurt and resentment. … I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly. I can choose to listen to the voices that forgive and to look at the faces that smile, even while I still hear words of revenge and see grimaces of hatred.” (Nouwen)

We have a choice. God speaks to us. His light is shining into our darkness, urging us to come home. He declares with love, “You are with me always, and everything I have is yours.” We can choose to dwell in the darkness, or we can choose to look into the eyes of our Father and see there that all we are and all we have is a pure gift of grace and love that calls for gratitude.

To choose trust and gratitude takes real effort, but each time we make it, the next choice becomes easier, and step by step we are on our way home. Both trust and gratitude require courage to take risks because our old self resists fiercely the way home. We have to make a leap of faith to let trust and gratitude do their work in us and bring us home. This leap of faith always means loving without expecting to be loved in return, giving without wanting to receive, inviting without hoping to be invited, and holding others without asking to be held. And every time we make this leap of faith, we see a glimpse of the Father who runs to us and invites us into his joy. And others see a glimpse of Him in and through us. The disciplines of trust and gratitude reveal the God who searches for us, who wants to give us the new life, and who lets us sit with Him at the heavenly feast.

However, to begin this journey home we must first be found. We cannot find and liberate ourselves from this inner lostness. We need the Light of God to conquer the darkness. By myself, I cannot leave the land of my anger and resentment. I cannot leave this dark place of self-righteous pride or self-rejection. We cannot bring ourselves home. We are lost. We must be found and brought home by the Shepherd who goes out, searches for us, finds us and then calls us home. That Shepherd is Jesus Christ.

4. Jesus Is the True Older Son

He is the True Older Son. Please don’t misunderstand this. He is not like the older son in the story. Jesus is the True Older Son. He is the Son of God the Father. He is the Son of Man. He became human like us. He died on the cross and was resurrected. He is the firstborn from among the dead (Col 1:18). He inherited and rules God’s kingdom. He made us children of God, and therefore we are co-heirs (Ro 8:17) and co-rulers with Christ. He is our true Older Brother who brings us home.

Jesus has come to show the world the Father’s love. He has come to free us from the bondages of our inner lostness. Jesus is the Beloved Son who lives in complete fellowship with the Father. There is no distance, fear, or suspicion between Jesus and the Father. The words in the parable, “My child, you are with me always, and all I have is yours” express the true relationship of God the Father with Jesus his Son. All the glory that belongs to the Father belongs to the Son too. All the Father does, the Son does too. Between the Father and the Son, there is no separation, no division of work, no competition, no envy: “The Father and I are one … The Father loves the Son and has entrusted everything to him … I have made known to you everything I have learned from my Father … The Son can do nothing by himself, he can do only what he sees the Father doing.” There is perfect unity between Father and Son. This unity is at the heart of Jesus’ message: “You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” (John 1:14; 10:32; 17:22; 3:35; 15:15; 5:19; 14:11).

To believe in Jesus Christ is to believe that He is the One sent by the Father. He is the One in and through whom the fullness of the Father’s love is revealed. Jesus is sent to reveal God’s eternal, unconditional, unlimited, faithful love for all his children. He is the Shepherd who searches for us, finds us, and then offers Himself as the way home. Jesus Christ is God’s way of making the impossible possible. He is the true Light of the world that gives light to everyone and overcomes the darkness. Our complaints, resentments, anger, and self-righteous pride melt away and disappear in the light of his love. When we let go of our self and surrender to his love, Jesus brings us home to the Father. So, surrender! Surrender to God’s love and come home.