The Two Brothers

A soft answer turns away wrath, 

but a harsh word stirs up anger. 

(Prov 15:1)

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

Jesus tells the story of a man with two sons, neither of whom loved their father. The younger son came to him one day and asked for his inheritance in cash. He then took the money, left town, and began living in style in a foreign country. This reckless lifestyle did not last long and soon the young man had to get a job. Not being a planner, he had to accept degrading work. As the son’s mind began to wander, he remembered his good life at home and resolved to beg his father to take him back as a household servant. When the father saw that his son was coming, he went out to meet him and wrapped his arms around him. As the son began to apologize for his horrible behavior, his father would hear none of it. He took his son; cleaned him up; and got him some new clothes (Gen 3:21). Afterwards, he threw a party for his son. Later, when his older brother came home and discovered the party, he became jealous and started behaving badly. But his father reminded him: “celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:32)

The Parable of the Two Brothers, often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, shows a young man going through a series of challenges—transitions—that enabled him to see his father with new eyes and to accept his father’s help. Without these challenges, he—like his older brother—would not have been able to bridge the gap between him and his father. Without his father’s acceptance, he could not have returned home.

Here we see the father’s love for his son as the catalyst for his son’s growth and maturity, a kind of coming-of-age story. By contrast, his older brother remained angry and stuck neither able to love either his brother nor his father, a pattern that today might be described as co-dependency. We might imagine that the boy’s absence helped the father move beyond a stricter parenting style that obviously failed to engender growth in the older brother.

Grace as Love

In the Parable of the Two Sons, the father models God’s grace in two paragrammatical cases represented by the two sons. In both cases, the father offers restorative justice—grace designed to allow growth—where he might have rendered criminal justice, had the sons not been in relationship.

Restorative justice makes sense to Christians because we have known Christ our entire lives, but it was new to Jesus’ audience, as we read: “This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.” (Deut 21:20-21) One reading of the passage—“but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)—is that the father was protecting his son from a community more accustomed to stoning rebellious sons than offering them restoration. Against this backdrop, the father’s response is unexpected, a radical departure from local custom.

The love that Jesus highlights in the parable is transformative because it allows renewal of relationship and the opportunity of personal growth, reminiscent of God’s request of Abraham: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”(Gen 12:1)  Growth in relationship is a radical departure from a traditional society that more typically values loyalty in well-defined (static) relationships, not independence and growth in dynamic relationships.

In my own family, sons were expected to serve their fathers on the farm well into middle age. My grandfather broke with this tradition because his own ambition to attend college and study to become a pastor was not warmly embraced. Instead, he followed his own father into farming, a source of much resentment.

A Structural Interpretation

Craig Blomberg (2012, 197) classifies Jesus’ parables by their structure, not their content. He begins with an analysis of parables, like the Parable of the Two Brothers, writing:

“Many of Jesus’ parables have three main characters. Quite frequently, these include an authority figure and two contrasting subordinates. The authority figure, usually a king or master, judges between the two subordinates, who in turn exhibit contrasting behavior. These have been called monarchic parables.”

Here the authority figure is a father who has two sons. Blomberg (2012,200-201) sees one point for each character:

“(1) Even as the prodigal always had the option of repenting and returning home, so also all sinners, however, wicked, may confess their sins and turn to God in contrition. (2) Even as the father went to elaborate lengths to offer reconciliation to the prodigal, so also God offers all people, however undeserving, lavish forgiveness of sins if they are willing to accept it. (3) Even as the older brother should not have begrudged his brother’s reinstatement but rather rejoiced in it, so those who claim to be God’s people should be glad and not mad that he extends his grace even to the most undeserving.”

The extraordinary love of the father is unexpected, which hints that the parable is allegorical (Blomberg 2012, 204). The love offered by the father is also unconditioned, contrary to Jewish tradition. Because growing up and leaving home involves many forms of loss that must be grieved, such growth is difficult under the best of circumstances (Mitchell and Anderson 1983, 51). This makes Abraham’s journey of faith and ours all the more remarkable in this time when many turned the noun, adult, into a verb.

References

Blomberg, Craig L. 2012. Interpreting the Parables. Downers Grove: IVP Academic.

Mitchell, Kenneth R. and Herbert Anderson. 1983. All Our Losses; All Our Griefs: Resources for Pastoral Care. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

The Two Brothers
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
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Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com




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