Repairing The Breach

The older son is often assigned the role of the long-term believer, or the established church-goer, and serves as a warning to Christians not to resent God’s grace to those we might consider late comers to the party. And certainly there are other verses in scripture that support this piece of interpretation. However, there is more to the character. Two key points about the situation are often overlooked. Firstly, in Israelite culture, the first-born son was given a ‘double portion’ of any inheritance, as commanded in Deuteronomy 21:17. In this story, the father would not have divided the inheritance in half, but in thirds, with the older son receiving two thirds, and the young son only a third. The older son was more powerful, more wealthy, and more influential than his younger brother. He would have felt that that was as it should be. Secondly, when the younger son returns, and the father begins lavishly spending on clothes, jewellery, a feast, whose money is he spending? At the beginning it says he “divided his property between them.” The younger son already spent his bit, so the father is using the bit that legally should have gone to the older son. He takes the resources of the older son to restore, and then celebrate the restoration of, the profligate younger one. Of course, we are to take from this parable that God is in the business of restoration and grace. We are also to take from it that, when God moves, and takes action, he wants us to join in with what he’s doing, even if that costs us something. The Israelites at Gilgal It’s counterintuitive to say, but in the western church, we’re fond of the idea that material things don’t really matter. “Jesus taught that we should have treasure in heaven,” we say, “so it’s spiritual wealth and poverty that really matters. Not the physical so much.” That allows us to elide some of Jesus’ teachings, like the one where he tells us to sell all that we own and give the money to the poor; or the one where he talks about camels and the eyes of needles. Found - Carol Aust 69