INTRODUCTION – MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND
Today our nation pauses to remember those who gave their lives for freedom.
For many, Memorial Day is a date on the calendar; for me, it is a name.
My older brother Bob, now laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, reminds me that freedom always carries a cost.
Every time I see the images of those endless white markers stretching across the green hills, I think of sacrifice, duty, and love that keeps no record of self.
Those rows whisper the same truth the gospel proclaims: someone paid the price so that others could live free.
I have another brother, Stephen, retired now, entering the season where life’s pace slows and reflection deepens.
My prayer for him is simple—that he finds joy, strength, and the quiet assurance that God still has purpose for every sunrise ahead.
Growing up, I had two older brothers… but I rarely lived with them.
My father’s medical work carried our family across oceans and continents.
By the time I was twelve, I had circled the world five times.
At thirteen I left for boarding school and, except for brief holiday visits, never truly lived at home again.
I belonged to my family, yet I grew up in motion—connected by love, but always leaving one home and learning another.
There is a strange ache that follows a child who never really settles; it’s the ache of being loved yet distant, included yet traveling.
So when Jesus tells a story about sons and home and distance, I pay attention.
Luke 15 holds truth for every heart that has ever felt inside the family but outside the joy.
Jesus begins:
> “A certain man had two sons…”
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TWO WAYS TO BE LOST
We all know the younger son first.
He’s the headline grabber—the runaway, the rule breaker, the one who says out loud what most people only think quietly.
He goes to his father and says:
> “Give me my inheritance now.”
To the Middle Eastern mind, that request was unthinkable.
It was the same as saying, “Father, I wish you were dead.”
Inheritance came only after death; to demand it early was to cut the family tie at its root.
But here is the shock of the parable:
the father doesn’t rebuke him.
He doesn’t argue.
He simply lets him go.
Because love, to remain love, must allow freedom.
If there is no freedom, there can be no love.
So the father divides the estate.
The younger son packs up his belongings and leaves home—no keepsakes, no reminders.
He wants nothing that smells of the old life.
He’s determined to find himself by erasing his past.
He travels far, burns through his money, burns through his friends, and ends up feeding pigs—an image that would have made any Jewish listener wince.
He goes from heir to hired hand, from favored son to foreign servant.
Then Luke writes five of the most hopeful words in Scripture:
> “He came to himself.”
He remembers.
Memory becomes mercy.
He rehearses a speech:
> “I have sinned… I am no longer worthy… make me one of your hired servants.”
That’s the language of shame—trying to negotiate your way back into grace.
But while he is still far off, the father sees him.
Why?
Because the father never stopped looking down that road.
The old man runs.
He lifts his robe, exposes his legs—something no dignified patriarch would do.
But love outruns decorum.
He races down the path, gathers that broken boy into his arms, and kisses him before a single apology can spill out.
The son begins his speech, but the father cuts him off.
The words “make me a servant” never make it past his lips.
The father will have none of it.
“Bring the best robe.
Put a ring on his hand.
Shoes on his feet.
Kill the fatted calf.
We’re going to celebrate.”
The robe covers the shame.
The ring restores authority.
The sandals mark him as family, not slave.
The feast proclaims to the village that reconciliation has already happened.
Grace doesn’t wait for proof; grace throws a party first.
Jesus paints this scene so vividly that you can almost hear the laughter, smell the roasted meat, feel the tears on that father’s cheek as he says:
> “This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
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GRACE THAT RUNS
Pause here for a moment.
The Father’s sprint is the gospel in miniature.
It is what God has always done—run toward humanity.
From Eden to Calvary, the story of Scripture is God moving toward us.
The younger son expected condemnation; he found celebration.
He expected punishment; he found a party.
He expected probation; he found restoration.
That’s what grace does—it turns the courtroom into a banquet hall.
Many of us love that part of the story because we see ourselves in it.
We’ve had our far countries.
We’ve known what it is to make a mess of things and then marvel at a mercy we didn’t earn.
But Jesus didn’t stop there.
He wasn’t finished.
The parable’s spotlight begins to shift.
The music fades in the background, and the camera turns toward someone standing outside the house—the one most people forget.
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THE TRUE FOCUS OF THE STORY
Luke tells us that Jesus spoke this parable to Pharisees and teachers of the law—the respectable, religious crowd who never missed Sabbath, who tithed on mint and cumin, who kept every rule.
They were not prodigals; they were pillars.
And yet, they were offended by the way Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them.
So He gives them this story—not to condemn them, but to invite them in.
While the younger son gets the headlines, the older brother is the heart of the parable.
He’s the mirror Jesus holds up to the righteous.
He’s the good man who does everything right but somehow misses the joy of it all.
He’s the one standing in the field, sweaty from another long day of labor, when he hears the sound of music drifting from the house.
Laughter. Tambourines. Singing.
He calls a servant: “What’s going on?”
The answer comes with a smile:
> “Your brother has come home, and your father has killed the fatted calf!”
But the older brother’s face hardens.
Joy for others has never come easily to him.
He feels the familiar burn of injustice.
He refuses to go inside.
He folds his arms.
He digs in his heels at the threshold of grace.
And with that, Jesus pulls back the curtain on a second kind of lostness—the kind that hides behind obedience.
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OLDER BROTHER RELIGION
You can almost hear the edge in his voice:
> “All these years I’ve been serving you, and you never gave me even a young goat to celebrate with my friends.”
He’s not lying.
He really has served faithfully.
But service without joy becomes slavery.
Duty without delight turns a son into a servant.
He sees obedience as leverage, goodness as currency, faithfulness as something God owes him for.
He’s moral—but miserable.
The father’s generosity to another feels like robbery to him.
He can’t celebrate grace because it offends his sense of fairness.
The younger brother broke the rules.
The older brother kept them.
But both tried to control the father—one by rebellion, the other by responsibility.
Both wanted the father’s things more than the father himself.
And this is where we realize the parable isn’t just about two ancient sons; it’s about every one of us who has ever thought, “I’ve done everything right—why doesn’t it feel like joy?”
That’s where we’ll pick up next.
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THE FATHER’S RESPONSE
The father leaves the celebration.
He steps away from the laughter, the light, the clinking of glasses, and walks out into the night where his older son stands sulking in the shadows.
Two worlds meet in that moment—the sound of grace from the house, and the sound of grievance in the yard.
The father doesn’t send a servant.
He doesn’t command his son to enter.
He goes himself.
It’s the second time in one day that he has gone out searching—first for a runaway, now for a resentful one.
The same love that ran down the road toward the prodigal now walks patiently across the field toward the proud.
> “My son,” he says softly,
“you are always with me,
and all that I have is yours.”
Those words are not a rebuke—they are revelation.
Everything the older brother was sweating to earn was already his.
The farm. The flocks. The fields. The father’s favor.
The tragedy is that he has spent his whole life working for what he already possessed.
He has been a son behaving like a servant, a co-owner acting like an employee.
That is what self-righteousness does—it convinces you that love is a wage instead of a gift.
It turns the Father’s house into a factory and joy into a paycheck.
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WHEN RIGHTEOUSNESS GOES ROGUE
Older-brother faith is respectable; it looks good on the outside.
But under the surface it breeds quiet resentment.
You can spot it in three subtle ways.
First, comparison.
He says, “This son of yours…”—not my brother, but your son.
Comparison always dehumanizes; it builds walls where grace builds bridges.
Second, entitlement.
“All these years I’ve served you.”
Entitlement is the shadow that grows when gratitude shrinks.
When service stops being love and becomes leverage, joy disappears.
Third, joylessness.
He can’t dance.
He can’t sing.
He can’t laugh.
The music that fills the Father’s house feels foreign to him.
You see, rebellion and religiosity are twins born of the same fear—the fear that the Father’s love can’t really be trusted.
The rebel says, “I’ll find love on my own.”
The religious says, “I’ll earn love by my work.”
Both miss the Father’s heart that says, “You already have My love; come inside.”
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MODERN-DAY OLDER BROTHERS
Older brothers fill pews every weekend.
They teach Sabbath school, serve on boards, lead songs, manage ministries—faithful, dependable, sincere.
And yet sometimes, quietly, they feel hollow.
They wonder why worship feels like work and why serving leaves them empty.
You can hear the older-brother spirit in statements like:
“After all I’ve done for God…”
“After all I’ve given, why haven’t things gone better?”
“I wish I had their opportunities.”
Those sentences sound harmless, but they reveal a hidden transaction—we think God owes us something.
And when He blesses someone else instead, it stings.
Churches can even cultivate older-brother culture: rule-keeping without rejoicing, precision without passion, correctness without compassion.
We defend truth but forget tenderness.
We work the fields of religion while the house of grace rings with laughter we can’t bring ourselves to join.
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COMING INSIDE
So what does it mean to “come inside”?
Jesus leaves the story open so that we will write the ending with our lives.
To come inside means three simple things.
1. Lay down your scorecard.
Stop counting who deserves what.
In the Father’s house, nobody gets dessert for good behavior—everybody eats because the Father loves them.
2. Rediscover gratitude.
When was the last time you simply thanked God without adding a single request?
Gratitude melts resentment; it turns duty into delight.
3. Celebrate someone else’s grace.
When you can rejoice that the Father blessed another—maybe someone who doesn’t deserve it in your eyes—you’ve stepped over the threshold into the music.
The older brother thought the party was for someone else.
He didn’t realize it was for him too.
Every time heaven rejoices over a sinner who repents, the Father invites His faithful children to dance beside Him.
The celebration of grace is not a loss of holiness; it’s the evidence of it.
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THE FATHER’S HEART STILL WAITS
Picture that father standing in the doorway.
Behind him—the sound of joy.
Before him—the stubborn silhouette of his son against the night.
He waits, not with anger but with open arms.
If you listen closely, you can hear his words echo through every generation:
> “All that I have is yours.”
That’s not just theology—it’s invitation.
God is saying to every weary saint, every faithful but frustrated believer:
You don’t have to work for My affection. You already have it.
The Father has never stopped loving His older children.
He’s still stepping out of the house, still pleading gently, still asking,
“Will you come inside? Will you let Me love you?”
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A MEMORIAL-DAY REFLECTION
This weekend we honor those who never came home so that others could.
And maybe that’s why this story touches me so deeply on a day like this.
Because the gospel is, at its core, about someone who laid down His life so that prodigals and older brothers alike could find their way home.
At Arlington, each white stone tells a story of belonging purchased at great cost.
At Calvary, one wooden cross tells the same story in eternal ink.
Freedom—national or spiritual—always comes through sacrifice.
The Father paid it so we could come home without fear.
So when you think of that hillside of marble, think also of another hill called Golgotha.
There, heaven’s true Son stepped outside the joy of the Father’s house so that we who stood outside could be invited in.
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THE QUIET APPEAL
And now the story ends where it began—with the Father waiting.
The music has not stopped.
The lights are still on in the house of grace.
Maybe you’ve been serving faithfully, doing everything right, yet something in you feels distant—“so near, yet so far.”
Maybe you’re tired of proving yourself.
Maybe you long to rest in the embrace you preach about.
The Father is not asking you to perform; He is asking you to come home.
Not to the field of work, but to the table of joy.
Not to start a new project, but to sit and be loved.
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that porch light glowing in the dusk.
Hear the faint music.
Smell the bread from the oven.
Feel the warmth of His invitation.
You don’t have to stay outside any longer.
There’s a chair with your name on it and a Father whose joy will never run out.
Come inside.
Let Him hold you.
Let grace be enough.
Because the truth of the gospel—and of this story—is simple:
The Father has room in His arms for both sons.
And the celebration will not be complete until the older brother finally steps through the door.
So tonight, on this Memorial-Day weekend, remember:
Freedom was bought.
Love is waiting.
And home is only one step inside the Father’s embrace.
