"I've busted my hump for you all this time, and you've never thrown a party for me."
Sure, we've all had moments when we felt unappreciated, and no, that doesn't feel good. But this is something different. This is not someone who ever felt, in the moment, that he was being overlooked or neglected.
This is someone who had always lived right in the sweet middle of his father's safe space, where he had everything he needed, and probably everything he wanted, including a sense of superiority over his long-lost loser of a brother, about whom he couldn't just be critical, but had to be specifically critical, not just mourning the wasted money, not just grieving the lost inheritance, not just taking up for his father's honor in a way his father never did, certainly not missing the lost years of fellowship, but making a pointed and intentional mention of the prostitutes, as though they alone accounted for the entire lost fortune, instead of just being useful as an easy way to embarrass the prodigal son, the blood relation the older son wouldn't even own, insisting on referring to him as "this son of yours" when rebuffing his father's pleas to join the celebration, only to have the father put it right back in his face, referring to the ruined one as "your brother", leaving no misunderstanding about the expectation to celebrate the return of even the one who has treated your family name like a roll of toilet paper.
When we're honest, we acknowledge that we identify with the older brother, even as we see how:
*He fails to be gracious to the one who repents.
*He fails to respect his father's love, his father's joy, and his father's forgiveness toward the undeserving.
*He resentfully refers to his life's work as though it only served his father's ends.
*He wounds his father in a new place, at the very moment when the father's long-bleeding wound was finally healed.
All this we see, both in the older brother and in ourselves, but do we also notice (and relate to) the older brother's dishonesty? Or, at least, his disingenuousness?
He never got to celebrate with his friends.
This is his complaint.
But is this really what he is so mad about?
No.
The father's response is more generous than the older brother deserves:
"My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours."
The older brother has always known this, but the trouble is, this has never been the point.
The older brother has never partied over his presence with his father, because he has never viewed his presence with his father as something to party about. He has never celebrated with his friends over what he has with his father, because he has never rejoiced within himself over what he has with his father.
He is saying he's mad because he never got to party, but the truth is, he never wanted to party anyway.
And he doesn't want to party now.
What he has wanted all this time, and what he has received all this time, is the satisfaction of being right. Being approved. Being the good son. Being the upstanding citizen who pulls his own weight. Being the one whose actions justify himself.
Being better than his brother.
And, while the older brother watches his father reduce himself to sprinting to embrace the loser, he has his reward.
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