Grumbling and Conniving

Sermon byPr. Craig Mueller on the Fourth Sunday in Lent + Sunday, March 30, 2025.

I’m the older son with a younger brother. I don’t know if my parents had a favorite child. They certainly tried to make sure if one of us got some financial help, the other got an equal sum. One thing I do know is that I was sometimes a handful for my family to deal with when I was a kid. If you find that hard to believe, I’ll give you my brother’s phone number! And I wasn’t always the nicest Older Brother.

 But hey, it’s hard to be the oldest child. Your parents are practicing on you, and in many families the parents are more lenient with each additional child. If you’re the baby in a family of four or a family of seven, let me know if this is true!

I’m amazed how my brother and I grew up in the same family, and yet sometimes we don’t remember the same things. My brother will describe a memory and I will give him a funny look. Then he’ll say: “are you serious! You don’t remember that?”

After all, there are always family dynamics to deal with it. And there are no perfect families. At least none I know of. And none in the bible, that’s for sure. Talk about dysfunctionality! It’s no new thing! Is there anyone here who has had no “issues” with their parents or their siblings or their spouse or their in-laws? Family secrets. Who’s the favorite child. Grudges and grievances. But the story will be different. Depending on who you ask.

And that leads me to the well-known parable in today’s gospel. The problem is we’ve always heard the story from just one perspective. Younger Brother takes his inheritance early. Away from home, he is a playboy and squanders away everything. Destitute, he returns to Daddy, repents, and is welcomed back unconditionally with a lavish feast. Older Brother is resentful and won’t join the party. Moral of the story: repent like the Younger Brother and love unconditionally like Daddy. That’s it, right? End of sermon.

But wait a minute! The parable has been made into an allegory by well-meaning preachers and theologians over the centuries. But it’s unlikely this traditional interpretation is what Jesus meant or how his early followers heard it. The prodigal son is the repentant Christian. The older son is the Pharisee or even the Jewish people. And the father is God. Right?

Let’s take a new look! Our guide will be Amy-Jill Levine, a scholar of the New Testament who happens to be Jewish. The way we have heard this parable often lessens the message of Jesus, Levine argues, and bears false witness against Jews and Judaism.

So here we go! First, we usually think the parable is mostly about younger son who turns his life around. In other words, repents. What if the key figure is the rule-following Older Brother? There are three parables together in Luke 15. The lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son. And right before those three is a reference to something we know a lot about: grumbling! The devout religious folks are grumbling. Plenty of grumbling today, right? I was curious what words other translations use for “grumble.” The Pharisees and the scribes mutter Murmur. Complain. Whisper among themselves. This dude Jesus welcomes sinners—deplorables—and even eats with them, they grumble. Shares a table with them! If you’ve ever been judgmental, and I certainly have, you get the jive. 

And that grumbling is exactly what the Elder Brother does when Younger Loser Brother—we’ll come back to him in a minute—gets the biggest, most lavish feast ever! Older Brother pouts. Yikes, I was a pouter at times. Makes a scene. So #2 tells Daddy off. And refuses to celebrate. Parable of the Grumbler, maybe that’s what we should call it. What if Older Brother is the prodigal? He squanders the opportunity for reconciliation and celebration. Like other parables, we are left with the uncomfortable truth that mercy isn’t fair. And that is hard to swallow in a world where everything is about fairness. And getting what you deserve.

Divine mercy. Mercy toward all. It sounds liberal and biblical and all that. But when you’ve done everything to be the perfect child, or the faithful church goer, or the law-abiding citizen, and then scoundrels like your baby brother get all the attention of Dad, I get the grumbling. And by the way, where is Mom in all this?

But here’s the game changer in hearing the story differently. It still kind of blows my mind. Does the younger son really repent? Or is he a scoundrel? When Junior becomes destitute, Amy-Jill Levine proposes that first century listeners would have not heard contrition—but conniving. Daddy has money and Daddy will do whatever he asks. One commentator says that this is Younger Brother’s self-serving ploy, disguised behind his pious, so-called apology. It’s a con!

Well then! I guess it depends on you who ask. And who tells the story. But in the version I’m giving you today, both sons are lost. Son Number One is a Conniver. And Son Number Two is Grumbler, Pouter, and Con Artist.

Both sons have broken their father’s heart. And yet both are offered a second chance. Both are offered unconditional grace and mercy. Both are offered a seat at the celebration table.

The story isn’t all wrapped up. The family isn’t reconciled. And that’s where the parable isn’t about biblical times and Middle Eastern customs. It’s time for us to wrestle with it. Find ourselves in it. Struggle with it. In what ways are we lost? What kind of conniving and grumbling and pouting is going on in us these days?

So come. Come again to this table where a lavish feast is prepared for you. The feast is for all who are coming from messed up families and are trying to heal. The feast is for those overwhelmed with guilt and shame. The feast is for those who live in denial that they are part of the problem. The feast is for complainers and mutterers and grumblers, revelers and rebels.

Come to the feast where Christ eats with—of all people, us—whoever we are, wherever we’ve been, whether we feel worthy or not. For there’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea. And the love of God is broader than the measures of our mind. Mind-blowing is what grace is. Just like this parable.

This feast is for all who are lost. And are now found by a God who never stops searching. A God who never stops offering a second chance. A God who never stops welcoming you home.  

SOURCES:

Lost and Found. Salt’s Commentary for  Lent 4.  

Amy-Jill Levine. What the prodigal son story doesn’t mean. Christian Century. September 3, 2014.

Levine: “‘Prodigal son’ forces reassessment of Bible’s other brother pairs” The Chautauquan Daily. August 18, 2011.