Many years ago, in a college literature course, our teacher taught us something I’ve never forgotten. “Pay attention,” he said, “to the opening sentence of a novel.” He said, “Sometimes the key to the whole narrative is right there in the very first line.”

Well, that was wise counsel. Take, for example, this first line of a novel: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” That’s, of course, the first sentence of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, a novel about the approaching French Revolution, and the theme of the whole book is right there: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

I mention this lesson from my teacher because, in trying to understand the parable of Jesus we just heard from the Gospel of Luke, the parable we usually call “The Prodigal Son,” it is important to pay close attention to the very first sentence of that parable: “There was a man who had two sons.”

That first sentence is significant because we can easily forget that this story is about a man who had two sons…not just one, but two. You see, down through the years, preachers have tended to give most of their attention to only one of those sons, the younger son, the “prodigal son.”

In some ways, that’s understandable. After all, he’s the flashy one, the one whose life is a fascinating scandal that grabs our attention. He’s the one, you remember, who asked his father for money, and then, as soon as he could get out the front door, left home and went to a land far away. But then he lost his moral bearings and wasted everything in wild and wanton living. In other words, this son became dissolute, “prodigal,” and that’s why we call this “the Parable of the Prodigal Son” as if it were a story only about this younger son, the reckless son.

The prodigal son part of the story appeals to us. It’s brutally honest, real about the kind of trouble that can happen in life. It also has a heartwarming ending. You know how it goes. The younger son leaves home, like so many of us when we’re young, seeking a new life, confident, headstrong, the wind in his sails, wanting freedom. But then out there far away from home, there’s trouble. The bright lights aren’t so bright as he thought, some friends turn out not to be true friends, the temptations of life are strong, and the younger son hits rock bottom – one bad choice after another, and now there he is … far away from home, humiliated, broke, desperately hungry, not a friend to be found. “No one gave him anything,” Jesus said (Luke 15:16).

So, broken, ashamed, alone, empty, he finally comes to his senses, faces up to the reality of his life, and heads back home. But he knows where he stands now. He has his tail between his legs, and he intends to say to his father, “I blew it, Dad. I have sinned, sinned against God and sinned against you. I don’t expect to be treated as your son anymore. I’m no longer worth it. Treat me like a servant.”

But there is a stunning and magnificent surprise in store for the younger son. His father sees him coming in the distance and doesn’t hesitate for a second. Full of compassion, his father runs down the road to meet his son, embraces him, kisses him on the neck. He calls back to those in the house, “Bring a robe – the best one – and bring a ring for my son and bring sandals. Start preparing a feast and let the music and the dancing begin! My son is home! My son who was dead is now alive again, my boy who was lost is now found!” Back in the far country, no one gave him anything. Now he comes home to a great surprise: his father gives him everything.¹

So, no wonder we pay close attention to the younger son’s story. It’s a good story, and it’s our story, too. Maybe we haven’t hit bottom as hard as he did, maybe we have, but who among us has not experienced times when our life has unraveled, when we have made poor choices, when we have acted out of our worst instincts, when we are ashamed? And who among us does not long for the love, mercy, grace, and restoration this story promises. We like the “Parable of the Prodigal Son.”

But remember how the parable begins: “there was a man who had two sons.”

Yeah, the younger son had an older brother, a brother who did not leave looking for freedom, a brother who stayed at home and who worked in the fields of the family farm. But we often pay less attention to this other son because, frankly, we don’t like him very much. He gets overlooked because he often comes across as a stick-in-the-mud, a sanctimonious jerk, a pompous prude, something like the jealous and cruel stepsisters in the fairy tale Cinderella.

What happens is that when his younger brother comes home and the joyful music and dancing begin, this older brother is out in the field doing his work. When he hears the party going on in the house and finds out that it’s happening because his sinful brother is back, he is furious, so angry he stays outside and won’t even go into the house, won’t join the party. Well, we’re tempted to just leave him out there to stew in his own petty juices.

But remember: “There was a man who had two sons.” So, this man, this father, who earlier had gone down the road in love and compassion, to welcome his younger son home, now goes back outside, this time in love and compassion for his other son, this time to encourage him to come into the house and join the joy of the feast.

But he runs into a buzzsaw. His older son is shocked and enraged. “I have been here all along, Dad. I have cared for you. I’ve cared for the farm. Never once did I cross you. I did everything you asked me to do. But you never gave me a party. You never had a feast for me. But now this son of yours who blew everything has come home, and even out here I can smell the aroma of the joyful feast. Why nothing for me, Dad?”

It’s so easy to think of this older brother as a scolding little do-gooder, a resentful and self-righteous prig who can’t even rejoice when his long-lost brother comes home, because he’s jealous and self-serving. But this is unfair. We actually know this older brother. Some of us are this older brother. He’s the one who stays home to take care of things. He’s the one who visits his parents in the nursing home when all the other siblings call to say, “I wish I could help you take care of Mom and Dad, but you know I’m so far away.” He’s the one who balances his parents’ checkbook, who sits with them when their memories are fogged by dementia, who stays up through the night to care for them when they are ill. And he is the one, when everybody around him seems to be partying away without a care in the world, who wants to know if any of his sacrifices count. He’s the one who cries out from the depths of his heart, “Dad, do I matter to you? Why has there never been a party for me?”

Every parent who has more than one child knows that you love them all, but true love demands that you love each child differently. One child is shy and withdrawn and needs confidence, while another is almost too eager for attention and needs balance. One child is lonely and cries herself to sleep at night. Another child takes too many risks for her own good. Some children are carefree even occasionally to the point of carelessness, while other children try so hard to be perfect that they can’t forgive themselves when they are not. A mother’s love, a father’s love is not abstract. It’s love that seeks to know who each child is, what each child requires, and then strives to give each child the kind of love, the kind of blessing, they need.

When the younger son in the parable came home ashamed and feeling unworthy even to enter the house, the father ran down the road to give his son the love he needed, the embrace of mercy and forgiveness. Now his other son is standing outside feeling demeaned and unappreciated, wondering if his life matters to his father, and refusing to enter the house. So, the father goes outside again, this time to give his other son the love he needs. “Son,” he says. “You are always with me, always close. Everything I have is yours. Everything. Son, you wonder why there has been no party given for you; there’s been a party going on for you all your life. I want now to give you one more gift. Your brother came home unable to accept himself, so I gave him the gift he most needed: grace. You stand here feeling that the world is unfair, unable to accept your brother, so I want to give you the gift you most need: an imagination of mercy for your brother, for everyone. Your brother was dead, but now he’s alive again, and home again. It’s fitting to rejoice. Listen, there’s music in the house, and joy. I have two sons, and I want you both to come inside and to rejoice at the feast.”

The short story writer Tillie Olsen wrote a story called “I Stand Here Ironing.” Here is the first sentence: “I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.” The woman ironing is a poor woman, a single mother of five children, abandoned by her husband. And now some authority figure – a teacher or a social worker – has asked this mother to come in to talk about one of her children, a 19-year-old daughter born just after the Great Depression, a child this authority figure says “needs help.” So, the mother is ironing and thinking to herself about her troubled daughter as she irons:

She was a child seldom smiled at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I had to work for her first six years when there was work…. She was dark and thin and foreign-looking in a world where the prestige went to blondeness and curly hair and dimples, she was slow where glibness was prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth. … She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear.²

And then, as the painful memories of her daughter’s life flood her, this mother, knowing deeply the kind of love her daughter needs, silently cries out, maybe we could even say prays to God,

[H]elp her to know – help make it so there is cause for her to know – that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.³

Jesus wants us to know that this mother’s prayer is heard and answered, wants us to be assured that in God we have a parent who knows us and who loves us, and who loves us in just the ways we need to be loved. That’s why Jesus told this parable, because Jesus wants us to know that, like the man who loved his two sons, there is a God who has many children, and you and I are among those children. If, like the younger son, we feel unworthy. If like the older son, we feel ignored and unappreciated. Whoever we are, and whatever broken places we have in our lives, look up, and we will see, coming toward us from the house, the God who, in compassion and mercy, will give us just the love we need and who opens wide the door, saying, “Come home. Come home to the house of God where those who were lost are now found, those who were dead are now alive. Come home to the music and the dancing. Come home, all of you, all of my children, to the feast of joy.”

¹ David E. Garland, Luke: Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 629.
² Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing” in Tell Me a Riddle (New York: Dell Publishing, 1961), 9.
³ Ibid., 21.