The Return Of The Prodigal Son: The Elder Son Returns

 "The elder son...was angry then and refused to go in, and his father came out and began to urge him to come in...

The father said 'My son, you are with me always, and all I have is yours.   But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.'"

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For Henry Nouwen (and he argues, for Rembrandt) the possible conversion of the Elder Son remains the great question of the story of the Prodigal Son and of Rembrandt's painting; the crucial question, as Nouwen says.  Neither the parable of Jesus nor Rembrandt's interpretation leaves us any clue as to what the final outcome would be.

The question, says Nouwen, is critical because it becomes clear that "...the father does not love the younger son more than the elder.  In the story the father goes out to the elder son just as he did to the younger, urges him to come in and says 'My son, you are with me always, and all I have is yours.".  The father, Nouwen notes, has shared everything with the elder son just he did with the younger son who took his and left:  "He made him (the elder son) part of his daily life, keeping nothing from him.  'All I have is yours' he says.  There could be no clearer statement of the father's unlimited love for his elder son.  Thus the father's unlimited love for his elder son.  Thus the father's unreserved, unlimited son is offered wholly and equally to both sons."

Nouwen notes that the Elder Brother complains to his father about his Younger Brother, to the point that he no longer sees his Younger Brother as his brother - or by extension their father as his father:  "Here I see how lost the elder son is.  He has become a foreigner in his own house.  True communion is gone.  Every relationship has been pervaded by the darkness.  To be afraid or to show disdain, to suffer submission or enforce control, to be an oppressor or to be a victim:  these have become the choices for one outside of the light.  Sins cannot be confessed, forgiveness cannot be received, the mutuality of love cannot exist.  True communion has become impossible."

I know, says Nouwen, the pain of this predicament:  Everything becomes suspect, self conscious, full of second-guessing, calculated, lacking trust.  Move calls for counter move; each remark must be analyzed and each gesture evaluated for meaning.  This, he says, is the pathology of darkness.

Can he - or I - get out?  Not by ourselves, suggests Nouwen.  He - and I - are as lost in the the darkness of judgement and lack of true communion as that Younger Brother was lost in sin.  We cannot find our way out - but God can find us:  "The story of the prodigal son is the story of a God who goes searching for me and who doesn't rest until he has found me.  He urges and he pleads.  He begs me to stop clinging to the powers of death and to let myself be embraced by arms that will carry me to the place where I will find the life I most desire."

What can we do to make the return of the Elder Son in us possible?  Recognize, says Nouwen, not only that we are lost, but also be prepared to found and brought home.  And while we cannot liberate ourselves from our "frozen anger", Nouwen proposes that through trust - the inner conviction that the father wants me home, that I am worth finding - and gratitude - the opposite of resentment, the effort of acknowledging all that we have and all that we are is a gift of love given to us, a gift to be celebrated - we can position ourselves to receive God's love.

When we tell ourselves we are not important enough to be found, we make our complaint so internally loud that we drown out God's voice calling us.  And by choosing gratitude over resentment, we choose against dwelling the darkness where we are and focusing completely on us and our suffering and how we have suffered.  Instead, we can look into the "eyes of the One who came out to search for me and see therein that I am and all I have is pure gift for gratitude."

 

As he did with the Younger Son, Nouwen finds in Jesus the Elder Son as well.  He is the son that lives in communion with the Father in total trust and gratitude.  In the parable of the wicked tenants and the vineyard, it is the true Son - Jesus - that ultimately goes to the vineyard and is recognized by the tenants as the heir.  There is no difference between him and the Father:  "The true son obeys his father, not as a slave, but as the Beloved, and fulfills the will of the Father in full unity with him."  

In the end Jesus is the Elder Son that does the Father's will without any hesitation, seeking out the resentful children as much as the children caught in sin