Every Pooper Needs A Party

In my fourth grade year of elementary school there was this annoying kid in my class. You’ve probably met someone like him. Always does what he’s told, and loves to point out when others don’t. This is the kid who reminds the teacher about the homework assignment, the kid who complains that his class project partners never contribute enough and that he could get more done on his own. But there is one thing this kid does that he enjoys more than anything else. When the teacher has to leave the room, she will ask a student to take down the names of anyone who misbehaves. In my fourth grade year of school, there was only one kid my teacher ever called take on this responsibility. That kid was me.

I am an older brother. Technically, I have a brother who is 9 years my senior, but he would be the first to say that, for all intents and purposes, I was the older one. The responsible one. When it came to the mistakes of my siblings, my parents’ didn’t even need to ask, I was taking names. Without anyone having assigned me the job, I took it upon myself to lay down the law. And while a lot has changed since we were growing up at home, old habits still die hard.

This last weekend I went to Chicago to see my brother, Scott. It was the first time for me to see him in a few years and the first time he and Rachel had ever met. At one point during the weekend, he mentioned that he and a high school friend of his had been discussing my visit. His friend had said “You better be on your best behavior, you don’t want him calling mom and dad.” It was a painful reminder.

The Gospel of Luke 15:11-32 is best known as The Parable of the Lost Son or Prodigal Son. But I would suggest that it is a story of two lost sons. One who left home and one who never felt at home. I believe that all of us have felt like at least one of these brothers at some point in our lives.

The younger brother is the main focus of the story, and us older brothers sigh in frustration. Once again, the bad kids get all the attention. The younger brother asks his father for his share of the inheritance, in a sense saying to his father, “I wish you were already dead.” His relationship with his father is all about what he can get from him. The younger son takes his father’s money, moves far away, and goes on the bender to end all benders. What he wants most is that life be one big party. And, for awhile, it is.

Many of us have been this younger brother. Seeing relationships as a means to an end, we squander all that we are blessed with and keep asking mom and dad to send another check. Eventually, the well runs dry and the party ends.

This is what happens to the prodigal son. Not only does the party end, but the people who he partied with are nowhere to be found. The younger brother experiences firsthand what the old blues song meant when it said “nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” The prodigal takes the most miserable of jobs and it is while he is working that he has a sudden epiphany. He knows that his father would never let him come home, but perhaps he would give him a job. The son decides to head home and ask for just that.

In Galatians 3:24 we read “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified through faith.” The prodigal son is ready to submit himself to the law. But he finds that his father has other ideas.

The son explains to his father what he hopes is a fair deal, but the father isn’t hearing it. His son is home! This is a time to rejoice, to celebrate, to party! The law served its purpose in getting the son home, now the relationship can begin again.

This is as good a time as any to say that I have seen this story play out. As I have said, my brother was the trouble maker. He looked in a lot of places trying to keep the party going. But what I remember is one party in particular. The welcome home party that my parents threw after my brother returned from the Army.

What a bitter memory. Everyone seemed so happy for him to be coming home. Didn’t anyone remember how much trouble he had been? Didn’t they know that some things never change!? Well, I did and I wasn’t going to celebrate.

My mother used to have a saying for times that one of us (oftentimes me) would sulk at a party. “Every party needs a pooper, that’s why we’ve invited you.” It’s a theme song for older brothers. The older brother in this story is no exception.

Here comes the older brother after a hard day’s work. He is tired, he is achy, but its all good, because he understands that life is about hard work. He may be tired, but he is also responsible. He is good. He may be basking in just this thought when he hears the sounds of a party.

I have to wonder what he thought as he realized that a party was going on. Was he so much like me that he thought maybe his father had finally decided to recognize all the hard work he had done? Did dome part of him think “finally I am going to get the recognition I deserve”? Whatever he may have been thinking or hoping, those hopes were soon dashed. The party wasn’t for him. The prodigal son was home.

Now we know exactly what the older brother was thinking. He expresses it angrily. And one phrase in particular stands out. “All these years I have slaved for you”. I don’t know how you see this moment, but I always imagine Steve Martin’s character in Parenthood when he shouts at his wife “My whole life is have to!”

His father pleads with him not to be a party pooper. He begs his son to join in the celebration, but the son folds his arms and sulks. And misses the party.

Returning to the end of Galatians 3 and the beginning of chapter 4, we see a discussion on slaves and sons. Those who are slaves to the law only until they have clothed themselves with Christ in baptism. Then they take their place as sons and come into a full inheritance. This is a story of slaves and sons and inheritance. One son squanders his inheritance and is willing to become a slave, but finds himself reinstated as a son. Another chooses to slave for his father rather than be his son, and so ends up squandering his inheritance as well. Both sons come dangerously close to missing out on the party. The prodigal goes in search of a party only to discover one waiting for him at home. The other son longs for a party, only to discover he could have had one at anytime.

The gospel for the prodigal son is one that has been preached many times and one that I would echo. For those of you who have seen God only as a means to an end, but never as one to be in relationship with, for those who have experienced the emptiness that comes when the well runs dry, you are invited to take on Christ in baptism, to gain access to a well that never runs dry and to claim your proper place as children in Christ’s kingdom.

But there is grace for the older brother as well. For those of us who never had a “drunk in the gutter” story. For those of us who have always made faith about how well we behaved ourselves, for those of us who never left home but have never really felt at home, there is gospel for us as well. We have fooled ourselves into believing that we show maturity when we live by the law. But Galatians says just the opposite. The law is for those who are still children. We show maturity when we are willing to lay down the law. Christ has already taken our burden, why are we still trying to carry it? Christ says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. That doesn’t mean that there won’t still be work to do for all of us who put on Christ. It simply means that the work can be done as a part of a relationship, and work that is done as sons is far easier than work that is done as slaves. And that those God calls to work hard, He allows to play hard too. Its time to join the party. Every pooper needs a party, that's why He invited you.



One last thing. It has been said that the job of a good prophet is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I’m going to do just a little bit of that right now. We as the church will always have people among us who have made mistakes. I should say that we have all made mistakes, but some mistakes are less easily hidden. When I was working my first job in ministry, there was a girl in the youth group who got pregnant at the age of 15. And when she did, there was a woman at the church who had long stated that we should not have baby showers for babies born out of wedlock. She changed her mind when this baby was born, because the baby was her great-granddaughter. What changed was that it became about a relationship and not a rule. Too many of us are still taking down names for the teacher, thinking that when God gets back He’ll want us to give an accounting of everybody who misbehaved. But scripture teaches that love keeps no record of wrongs. We’re not trying to say sin isn’t important, if it wasn’t then Jesus wouldn’t have died. But he did die, and when he did so did the power of sin. If Christ has lifted that burden from us, he has lifted it from all of us. We older brothers need allow ourselves some grace, but we need to extend that grace to others as well.