We Orthodox Christians are not yet in Lent, but we’re in the Liturgical Cycle called The Lenten Triodion. Today is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son.
For whatever reason, I didn’t really notice the significance of the non-prodigal older brother in that parable until I was Orthodox. I don’t know if sermons never focused on that part of the story or if I just didn’t notice. There was a lot to think about just with the Prodigal, and the Father.
But I now think it’s a mistake not to notice that righteous older brother. And last night, my understanding of him got markedly deepened:
Who is the Older Brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son?
We know who the Prodigal Son is. It is us …
We know this story. It is all deja vu. We know the Prodigal, for he is us.
But who is the Older Son who was upset with all the celebration? Who is the Older Son who stayed and was faithful? Who is the Older Son who took his father to task for spending so much in the Welcome Back Party for someone who betrayed the family so poorly?
One possibility is that the Older Son represented the Jewish Christians who had to put up with Gentiles (that is, non-Jews like Greeks and Romans and barbarians) coming into the Church. These Gentiles never had to put up with circumcision and kosher. These Gentiles were able to get into the Church on a shortcut. It just didn’t seem fair.
Another possibility is that the Older Son represents those Christians who are faithful Sunday in and Sunday out. They are the 20% who do 80% of the work. They are the ones who should the spiritual and material burden of a Church throughout the year. And they naturally wonder why people who don’t do the work, who don’t fast and pray and give — why these people should be given any leeway or any notice.
Both of these possibilities are discussed by the Fathers. Both are acceptable interpretations.
But another interpretation remains, and this interpretation is the deeper and most theologically meaningful.
The Older Brother stands for the faithful angels.
There are only two species in this entire Universe that have the moral freedom of whether to accept God’s Love or to refuse it. To refuse God’s Love is a rejection of their own soul. To accept it is to follow along on the eternal way of perfection, an ever-unfolding moment of infinite beauty and peaceful difference.
One of these two species is humanity. The other is the angels.
…
We do not really think much of the angels, and perhaps this is why we don’t often remember that the Older Son could represent the angels who were never so jejune and foolish to go off as as a wanton Prodigal…
It may have been that when God revealed His plan to create man, and then to redeem man from sin and death, and to actually become man and to bring man into eternal fellowship ahead of the angels themselves — it may have been at that very moment that Satan and his followers said no to God …
You can just imagine God pleading with His Archangel: “Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.”
Satan and his followers could not accept this Love of the Holy Trinity, that always seeks the lost and redeems by way of quite scandalous kenosis. He and his followers could not accept the Angelic task, which is to serve humanity and help humanity in salvation.
So they left, and invented hell for themselves — which is really the description of the life of any Older Brother who cannot tolerate God’s love for a sinner….
(Fr. Jonathan Tobias, Who is the Older Brother? — or, When was the Prodigal Son Story First Told?)
What words best describe present-day Washington politics? The commonplace answer, endlessly repeated by politicians themselves and media observers alike, is this: dysfunction, gridlock, partisanship, and incivility. Yet here’s a far more accurate term: tacit consensus …
In the Bill W. Obama era, a neoliberal consensus defines American politics …
If there’s a fresh element in today’s neoliberal consensus, it’s found in the realm of culture. As neoliberals see it, received norms related to family, gender, and sexuality ought to be optional. What Hofstadter in his time described as a “democracy in cupidity rather than a democracy of fraternity” has become in our day a democracy combining cupidity with individual autonomy at the expense of fraternity and self-restraint, all backed by the world’s most powerful, widely deployed, and busily employed military establishment.
Are the troops in Afghanistan fighting for our freedom? If so, the package of things they fight for includes the prerogative of dispatching U. S. forces to wherever it pleases Washington to send them, along with no-fault divorce, abortion on demand, gay marriage, and an economic system that manifestly privileges the interests of the affluent at the expense of those hard-pressed to make ends meet. To pretend otherwise, indulging in some sanitized or cliché-laced definition of freedom, is to engage in willful self-deception.
…
Here we come to the heart of the matter: the climate of opinion. Only politicians who possess an aptitude for interpreting the prevailing climate will succeed in gaining and holding high office. In the political sphere, ideas at variance with that climate are by definition inconvenient. Expedience dictates that they should be ignored.
Whether the precepts informing basic U. S. policy today actually work as advertised – whether the neoliberal consensus keeps us safe, liberates us from archaic and repressive attitudes, and creates conditions conducive to broad prosperity or whether they foster needless wars, moral confusion, and social injustice is an interesting question. That the question deserves more attention than it presently receives is undoubtedly the case. What cannot be argued, however, is that those precepts depart in any significant way from what the prevailing climate of opinion demands.
(Andrew Bacevich, American Political Praxis)
Such a promising title, such disappointing substance. Chastity Is About More Than Abstinence from Sex. Should have stopped after the first paragraph-and-a-half.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 