Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. – Isaiah 35:5

Today's Scripture Reading (May 29, 2026): Isaiah 35

One of my many favorite Bible Stories is the Story of the Lost Son in Luke 15. The Lost Son is a story about two sons. We sometimes call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but the story isn't really about either a prodigal son or a lost son. Just like the Parable of the lost coin really isn't about the coin, but the persistence of the woman, and the Parable of the lost sheep isn't really about a lost lamb, but the persistence of the Shepherd. The Parable of the Lost Son is more about the persistence of Dad and the arrogance of the older brother.

The Parable spins a tale about a father with two sons. One day, the younger son comes to Dad and tells him to, "Give me my inheritance so that I can go and live my life the way that I want to live it." It was like saying to Dad, "I wish you were dead because I have to wait for my inheritance. You are worth nothing to me."

Surprisingly, Dad does as his youngest son asks and divides up his inheritance between his two sons. And the youngest son (the one we call the prodigal) goes and wastes everything his father has given him. (The word prodigal means wasteful.)

The youngest son loses everything and then has to go and get a job. The only job he can find is feeding the pigs, which is not much of a job for a Jewish boy to whom pigs were unclean. One day, he is out in the pigpen feeding the pigs, and he is so hungry that he wishes he could eat the food he is giving them. In that moment, he comes to this revelation; even hired workers in my dad's house have more than this. And so, he goes back to his father with the plan to ask his dad for a job, putting him on as a hired worker. This is an important point; the young son doesn't ask to be enslaved because an enslaved person, at that time, would have been considered part of the family, and the wasteful son had discarded every expectation of rejoining that community. A hired worker was a level below an enslaved person. Even in tough times, an enslaved person would have work and be fed, while a hired worker would be fired. An enslaved person would be in constant contact with the father, while a hired worker could go days or even weeks without even seeing the father. The father knew the enslaved person's name, but not always the hired worker's.

So, the son goes back to dad, and while he was still a long way off, dad sees his son and runs to him (older men did not normally run), he throws his arms around him, and puts his robe on him and rings on his fingers and bells on his toes, so he could make music wherever he goes (well, maybe not). But what he does is just as surprising; he restores this young son into the family.

However, the elder son isn't happy. He comes back from a hard day working in the field and hears the music of an ongoing party. He asks a family servant what is happening and is told that his younger brother has returned home and Dad is throwing him a party. The older brother refuses to go to the party and goes off into a corner and sulks, thus ending the story.

The whole story is really about how to get Dad's money, and each son has developed a plan to get it. For the younger son, the prescription is to be bad. If I am bad, then Dad will give me the money that I want to get me out of his hair. But the older son has also written a prescription. He wants the same thing, Dad's money, but he chooses a different path. For him, the prescription is to be good. If I am good, I can get Dad's money. I suspect Jesus tells the story because he knows most of his followers are really elder brothers trying to interact with a God who is concerned for the younger brother, and that is a problem. Elder brothers look at the world and say, if I am good, then I will be accepted. If I obey, then I will be part of the family. But inside the church, God turns that upside down and says, "God accepts you, and because you are accepted, I have accepted you as well, regardless of what you believe about yourself." The younger brother of the story never comes to obedience until he realizes beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is accepted.

In the end, the younger brother is restored while the older brother is lost. And maybe even more disturbing to us is that the older brother is damned not despite his good deeds but because of them.

Isaiah says that on the day of victory, the blind will see and the deaf will hear. It will be a day of celebration, but one that will benefit the younger brother. The elder brothers among us will not be saved, not because they don't need saving, but because they don't believe they need to be saved.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 36