Big Sister, Little Brother

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in.” (Lk 15:28)

How many of you have a younger brother, or perhaps a younger sister?  Do you find anything of yourself in today’s parable?  I may have resented my little brother from the day of his birth, before he made any of the poor choices I liked to chide him for.  At that moment I ceased to be the undisputed queen of the universe and spent the rest of my days trying to reclaim the limelight.  I would love to picture myself as the Prodigal, welcomed into the arms of his father’s unconditional love, kissed and dressed in finery and celebrated with feasting and merriment.  But it is the older son, faithful and true, angry and resentful, who attracts my empathy and identification.  I am Big Sister: taller, stronger, smarter, wiser, and always in charge.  He is Little Brother: docile, submissive, always in need of guidance and instruction, not to say correction.

Today’s parable is a tale of two brothers.  It is not alone in the Scriptures.  Think of Cain and Abel, of Esau and Jacob, of Joseph, and of David.  We might call it a biblical trope: the brothers who strive with one another for supremacy, the younger who is exalted over the elder.  In the Old Testament this points to a theological discovery: God has chosen Israel, the least among the nations, to be his own.  In the New Testament, especially in Jesus’ parables, this trope takes on a new lease of life.  The “brothers” in conflict are the workers who came first and those who came last, the Pharisee and the publican, the scribe and the prostitute, the priest and the ritually impure, the Jew and the Samaritan or, God forbid, the gentile, even the disciples and those who do not walk with us.  Behind these symbolic pairs stand self-righteous Israel on the one hand, and the poor, the sick, the sinner and the foreigner on the other.  We are left in no doubt with whom Jesus aligns himself.

The parables of the lost sheep and lost coin are picturesque and consoling, but the story of the lost son takes us to another level when it turns to his older brother.  Now the unspoken subtext of so many other parables and encounters in the Gospel is made explicit: do not be too quick to assume that you are the one sheep, lost and found, the one coin, searched for so diligently, or the favored younger son.  There is more challenge than consolation here.  My inner Pharisee is challenged by the outpouring of mercy on the undeserving.  What about me?  Haven’t I served you uncomplainingly?  Haven’t I borne the heat of a full day’s labor?  Haven’t I given up everything to follow you?  What am I to have?  Not even a young goat?  My desire has always been to be close to you, and this has not been without cost to me, but am I now to be made out a fool by this unfaithful one who has not tried, has not sacrificed, and yet has become your favorite?  It is not the desire to be close to God that is at fault here.  But perhaps the expenditure of energy in pursuing that goal has convinced me, wrongly, that I have earned for myself a special place in the kingdom, a seat at Jesus’ right.  Unconsciously, I have been counting the cost of my discipleship, and now I find God to be in my debt.

The parables of reversal tell us that the last will be first and the first last.  Never have I read a better gloss on this than Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation.”  We first meet the portly Mrs. Turpin in a doctor’s waiting room, where we are witness to two simultaneous conversations.  The first is between herself and the various other persons in the waiting room.  Mrs. Turpin is unfailingly gracious and full of wisdom and good sense.  The second conversation occurs within herself.  Here we see a woman constantly judging those around her and finding them lacking.  She enjoys categorizing people and wondering what it would be like to be someone else instead of herself.  At one point she comes out with the following self-assessment:
“If it’s one thing I am,” Mrs. Turpin said with feeling, “it’s grateful.  When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!’”

It is at this moment in the story that a young woman in the waiting room throws a book at her, striking her above the eye, and proceeds to leap on her and drive her nails into the soft flesh of her neck.  As the girl is pulled away, she casts a fierce look at Mrs. Turpin, seeming to see right through her.  
“‘What you got to say to me?’ she asked hoarsely and held her breath, waiting, as for a revelation.
The girl raised her head. Her gaze locked with Mrs. Turpin’s. ‘Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog,’ she whispered.”
The young woman’s name, tellingly, is Mary Grace.

The revelation bores into Mrs. Turpin, who spends the rest of the day fighting with it.  “‘I am not,’ she said tearfully, ‘a wart hog. From hell.’  But the denial had no force.”
At day’s end she goes out to the hog pen on her farm to take care of the animals.  “‘What do you send me a message like that for?’ she said in a low fierce voice, barely above a whisper but with the force of a shout in its concentrated fury. ‘How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?’”
“She braced herself for a final assault and this time her voice rolled out over the pasture.  ‘Go on,’ she yelled, ‘call me a hog!  Call me a hog again.  From hell.  Call me a wart hog from hell.  Put the bottom rail on top.  There’ll still be a top and bottom!’
A garbled echo returned to her.
A final surge of fury shook her and she roared, ‘Who do you think you are?’”

There she stands, like the Prodigal among the pigs, when a vision comes to her:
“There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk.  She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound.  A visionary light settled in her eyes.  She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire.  Upon it a vast horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven.  There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.  And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the given wit to use it right.  She leaned forward to observe them closer.  They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior.  They, alone were on key.  Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being burned away.”
(Flannery O’Connor, Revelation)
I ask myself: which of my virtues does God want to burn away?

“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” (Lk 15:31)

These words of the father to his older son speak volumes to those of us who live in God’s house day and night, who spend our lives in his service.  It is both a consolation and a challenge to those of us who have sought God persistently and struggled through the heat of the day.  There is great joy in being lifted out of one’s misery by the felt embrace of God’s mercy.  This is a peak moment, characterized by a burst of transformative energy.  Then there is the more subtle joy of quiet fidelity, of pouring oneself out day by day without the drama of great loss and redemption.  This is characterized by duty, routine and ordinariness, at risk of boredom and resentment, but open to growing in appreciation of God’s hidden inner gifts.  What is called for from us, as older brothers and sisters, is to receive the gift of joy in the salvation of others, whether those far from us in time and space and culture, or those close enough to be more of a threat.  Joy in God’s prodigality, in his wanton generosity poured upon the deserving and the undeserving alike.  Joy in letting someone else be his favorite for the moment.  May we learn to receive this joy like children – without having earned it.  Then, at last, we can join the party.

“Rejoice, Jerusalem, and come together all you that love her: rejoice with joy, you that have been in sorrow; exalt and be satisfied at her consoling breast.” (Introit for Laetare Sunday)