It is a strange thing to be preaching on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, having myself just returned from a "distant country." In my case the "distant country" was the Holy Land itself where this parable was never very far from my mind.

I was on a pilgrimage with a group of "mid-career" pastors (That’s what the organizers called us. They were too polite to call us "old fuddy-duddies.") We certainly learned a great deal from our travels, but being pastors, most of us couldn’t help thinking about the sermon we would preach when we got home.

Because several of us follow the lectionary, we thought about drawing straws to choose the one person who would write a sermon for all of us to use. Then someone suggested that we write a "round robin" sermon. One person would write a paragraph and pass the pad of paper on to the next person on the bus. She would write another paragraph, and pass it on. By the time the pad got to the back of the bus, we’d have a sermon better than many I have preached on this text.

Well, we never got round to writing that round-robin sermon, mostly because a flu bug struck our band of pilgrims, and several of us embarked on an intimate study not of archeological sites but of plumbing fixtures in modern Jerusalem. (You’ll be happy to know that I have no slides of that to show you.)

Even if we had pooled our exegetical insights, I doubt we’d have done this story justice. Every time I approach this parable, it grabs me in a different way. Perhaps the same is true for you.

I used to focus on the younger son’s remorse – on that moment when "he came to himself" and resolved to go home and throw himself on his father’s mercy. This is story about repentance, I used to think. Now I suspect the little rascal never repented at all. His "coming to himself" was just that – a coming to himself. There in the pigsty he hatched a plan to go back to Daddy and appeal to his better nature, but his pretty speech about unworthiness, the speech he rehearses so carefully on the way home, no longer has the ring of authenticity to me.

I’ve known too many people like this younger brother who carry around with them a sense of entitlement, who expect the world to do them favors. They know how to manipulate others – especially their parents. When they don’t get their way, they usually pout – but they usually get their way. I think this younger brother was like this. I’m not all sure his sojourn in that distant country taught him a lesson or made him a better person. Perhaps he learned humility. Perhaps he repented. Or perhaps he just learned how to be even more like himself by adding a sticky layer of religious piety over his self-serving persona.

A fascinating detail in Jesus’ telling is that the younger son never gets to deliver his pretty speech. His father cuts him off after the first clause, barking orders to the servants to bring the best robe, a ring for his son’s finger, sandals for his son’s scarred and calloused feet. The father reacts not to his son’s apology, but to the mere sight of him coming down the road. He’s just a speck in the distance when the old man gathers his robes round his knobby knees and begins to run.

Ten days ago I was sitting in a little park in Jerusalem near the New Gate to the Old City. I was in sight of a bus stop. Being a diligent pilgrim, I was sitting on a park bench, writing in my journal, when a bus pulled up. The people in the bus queue got on as two figures appeared in the corner of my eye. One was an old man, an Orthodox Jew, dressed in the long black coat and the tall, circular black hat of his particular sect. His beard was long and silvery. I could tell that he wanted to get on that bus, but he was not about to run. He continued to walk with great dignity toward the bus stop.

Coming right behind him was a teenager, also Orthodox, but from a different sect, dressed in black trousers, a white shirt, and a black fedora. He was running like a rabbit, holding onto his hat, his ear-locks and fringes flying behind him. He passed the older man in a flash and jumped on the bus.

The bus pulled away. The older man continued to walk at the same pace. When he got to the now-empty bus stop, he reached in the pocket of his long coat, took out a book, and calmly commenced his study.

Grown men in the ancient Mid East did not run, either. Children ran. Slaves ran. Women occasionally ran. But not grown men. The father in this story runs. He sheds every trapping of dignity and runs to meet his child, this child who once was dead, but now is alive, who once was lost, but now is found. And before the prodigal can deliver his speech -- sincere or not -- this father orders a celebration.

Bring the ring, the robe, the sandals. Kill the fatted calf. Let the party begin.

Is this really the story of the prodigal son? Or is it the story of the prodigal father – the father who squanders his high status, who sheds his dignity, who pours himself out, who takes the form a slave, running down the road? Keeping in mind the two stories Jesus tells just before he tells us this one – the story of the lost sheep and the story of the lost coins – we might well conclude that this story is not so much about the son as it is about the father who rejoices in what is found. "There once was a man who had two sons," the story begins.

Ah, yes, that other son. The good son. The faithful son. The Presbyterian son. The child who does everything he’s supposed to do, decently and in order. What about him? If the younger son is lost and found, this older son is lost without every having left his father’s side.

All these years I have slaved for you. Never once have I have disobeyed, and you never gave me so much as a young goat for me to have a barbeque with my friends. Now this son of yours shows up, reeking of pigs and prostitutes, and you kill the fatted calf for him!

I remember telling this story to a group of fourth-graders at Dogwood Acres one summer. Before telling them the story, I split them up into two groups – younger siblings and older siblings. I had just gotten to the part about the ring, the robe, the sandals, and the party when a little girl from Havana, Florida, piped up, "Hey, that ain’t fair!"

You can guess which group she was in. You might also guess that she had two younger sisters back home.

Every time I read this story I have to remember that Jesus himself was the oldest son in his family. The Epistle to the Hebrews says Jesus "was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin." I strongly suspect that one sin toward which Jesus was tempted was murder: fratricide if not sororicide.

Many scholars suggest that Jesus told this story to "get at" the Pharisees, who were behaving very like older brothers in response to Jesus’ embrace of sinners and those on the edge of society. Perhaps the scholars are right. In any case, Jesus demonstrates an uncanny insight into what it feels like to live in a real, live, flesh-and-blood family.

There are no heroes in this story. The younger son is a rascal and the older son is a drudge. One exploits his father’s generosity and the other begrudges it. And if we are honest, we must acknowledge there’s a little of both sons in each of us.

Speaking only for myself, I must admit that I am prone to take God’s grace for granted, to assume that there will always be a place for me when I return from the far-off country. The sheer audacity of such confidence makes the younger son appear, by comparison, a paragon of modesty and virtue.

What right has any of us to expect God’s good favor? We are none of us righteous, no not one (Romans 3:10). I am that younger brother (the little creep).

And, to be perfectly honest, the role of the elder brother fits me a T as well. How I do enjoy pointing out the logs in other people’s eyes and protecting God from embarrassing God’s self.

Isn’t it fun? It’s more fun than watching the Big Dance on T.V. I take particular pleasure in my moral superiority over conservative Christians of all denominations. When Ted Haggard, the former President of the National Association of Evangelicals, was deposed for taking drugs and purchasing the favors of a male prostitute, I chortled in my heart of hearts. And when he announced, after a whole three weeks of counseling, that he was 100% cured of all gay inclinations, I, quite frankly, laughed out loud.

I am the worst of elder brothers. I am a liberal elder brother. My greatest fear is not that heaven will be populated by gay bishops and ex-cons, but that the welcoming committee will be composed of St. Peter, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson.

"Come on in," they will say. "The party’s just begun." And I will be found standing outside the banquet hall, saying to God, "Have you completely lost your mind? Don’t you have any standards at all?"

In Marilynne Robinson’s masterpiece novel, Gilead, John Ames, the main character, admits that, in terms of this parable, he is the elder son, the dutiful one who never left his father’s house. But through experience he learns not to resent the love that welcomes the prodigal home. He writes toward the end of his life,

May we all live long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance we may acquire. That would be a great blessing. In any case, when we come to the end of the story, band will be warming up, the first course will be on the table, and the Host will come running to meet us.

Of these two things you can be confident, beloved in Christ: First, you won’t deserve it. Second, the party will not be complete without you.