August 23, 2026
The Party Already Started
Luke 15:11-32
“There’s a party going on right here; a celebration to last throughout the years. Bring your good times, and your laughter too; we’re gonna celebrate your party with you.”
If there is a song that captures the spirit of the parable, it is that iconic 1980 hit by Kool and the Gang. This parable is an invitation to God’s party, given to anyone who will receive God’s unconditional love.
Jesus tells this story to people who are resentful and alienated from God – though they do not know it – from others and from themselves. He says, “Leave the distant country, wherever that may be, come home, enter the celebration of all heaven and the joy of God.”[1] There’s a party going on right here.
You know the story. You’ve heard it, you’ve studied it. So, this morning, I’m not going to spend much time retelling it. Instead, I want you to stand inside it and ask where you are.
Most of us, if we’re being honest, are not much like the son who left. Most of us are more like the one who stayed. And this is actually the audience Jesus had in mind when he told the story – not the younger wayward son, but the older bitter son.
He did everything right. He worked the farm every day. He did not ask for the inheritance early, never took anything he had not earned, never gave his father one reason to worry. And when he hears the music coming from the house, and smells the fatted calf, he walks away angry. He goes out to the field. Luke tells us that he was not far from the house, physically. But on the inside, he went to a distant country. The eldest son went to a country as far away as his younger brother had ever gone.
There’s a phrase circulating right now in pop psychology that describes this posture. Though the phrase uses a different gender, the heart condition is universal. People call it ‘eldest daughter’ syndrome. Whether you are an eldest daughter, a firstborn son, or simply the child who felt forced to grow up too fast, you can recognize this pattern: the child who became competent early, who learned to be useful before she learned she was loved, who can organize a crisis in her sleep, who can tell you everyone’s opinion except her own, who feels guilty resting or sitting for too long, who has assumed for years that her place in the family is something she keeps by continuing to be helpful. Ask her what she’s angry about and she’ll struggle to say. Ask her what she’s afraid of, and she can probably tell you: that if she ever stops being useful, she’s afraid she won’t have a place and may not even be wanted.
That is a hard way of life for a person, woman or man, and it is the older brother’s whole life in summation. All these years I have been slaving for you, he says. He does not say, “I’ve been your faithful son.” He says, “I’ve been slaving for you.”
He has been living in his father’s house for his whole life, but somewhere he internalized that his place in the house depended on performing his duties. He internalized that he was loved not because he wore a robe and sandals and a ring and called that person, Dad; he was loved because he did everything he was asked, and plenty more that was needed.
Nobody told him that. His father did not treat him as a hired hand. But the eldest son built a distant country in his own mind, brick by brick, out of loyalty and duty and the fear that to be sure of love he had to earn it.
So many of us have done the same thing, in our own families, and relationships–and in our own life with God. We’ve settled in a distant country, not through rebellion, but through joyless faithfulness. We show up. We say yes when asked. We make the plans, and wash the dishes, and organize the work. We keep the commandments and the commitments, or at least we try.
But on some morning, we are standing outside a party that was thrown for someone else who hasn’t done nearly what we’ve done, and we wonder when it will finally be our turn to be celebrated rather than thanked.
To see how this story plays out when grace is absent, look at how the playwright Arthur Miller framed it. Miller understood the tragedy of the ungraced life better than most. He wrote a play about two brothers like this, but he never let them find their way into the party. It’s called The Price.
Near the end, Victor and Walter Franz meet in the attic of their childhood home, years after their father’s death, to sell off the furniture before the building comes down. Victor had stayed at home. He gave up a career to take care of their father through very hard years. He became a policeman instead of the scientist he might have been. Walter left and built a career as a leading physician, made money and made a name for himself.
Sixteen years have passed since the brothers spoke to each other. When they finally do, in that attic full of old furniture, they spend the whole conversation trying to prove who sacrificed more, who was wronged worse, who owes whom an apology that neither is willing to give. Finally, Walter storms out, and Victor’s wife Esther is left to lament the whole sorry mess.
Miller never resolves the relationship. The play ends with both men still holding their side of the grudge. The one person who could have looked at them and said, you don’t have to keep score, I love you both, is not in the room. He’s gone. They’re sorting out his furniture, both in a distant country.
That’s what this parable looks like with no father to run down the road or come out from the party. It is a sad and sorry mess.
But this parable is full of truth and grace. Someone does come.
While the party is going on, at its peak, with the music playing and the neighbors gathered and the fatted calf carved, the father leaves the celebration. Just as he ran down the road to meet his son, he doesn’t send a servant to fetch his older son from the field. He goes to him. To the son who is sour and furious, who accuses him of never once throwing him a party with so much as a goat.
And the father does not defend himself. He does not point out that everything the son said is unfair or a construct of his woundedness. He starts with this: My Son. Everything I have is yours.
The specific word the father uses is tender. It’s the same word Mary uses for Jesus when she finds him in the temple at 12 years old. My son. The father is not correcting a young man or reprimanding a servant. He is not negotiating with his son’s anger, nor returning it in kind. He is talking to his wounded child.
He is receiving the tension and holding it, so that he can transform it by love. He names what has been true the whole time: You were always my son. My love was never something you had to earn. You were never my servant. You were always my child.
That is the good news in this story. It’s not about our own family dynamics or our parents. All our parents are human and wounded. This is not about how your parents feel about you. This is how God’s feels about you. This is an invitation to God’s party with your name on it.
On the road with his wayward son, the father does not wait to hear the apology before he starts dressing him in the robes of an heir. In the field with his bitter son, he does not wait for the anger to cool down before he declares his love.
The father meets both of them where they are, before anything in them has resolved, and says: come inside. You don’t have to work it out first – you don’t have to finish repenting or get over your grudge. You are my child. There’s party going on right here, a celebration… It would be so foolish to miss it.
Some of us went into a distant country searching for acceptance and belonging a long time ago, and we would like to come home and be at peace, but we are waiting to find out if we’re fully welcome, or still on probation. You aren’t on probation. The robe, the ring, the sandals — all the signs of belonging are yours. God welcomes you home.
Some of us never left home, but we built a distant country on the inside. We are faithful and loyal, but quietly wondering why appreciation never counted as much as celebration. We want to feel the celebration. You can. You. have been loved the whole time. Just as you are. But you could never let it sink in; there was always something else to get up and do. God welcomes you home.
The kingdom of God party is symbolized by this font – which says that God loves you first and always. It is symbolized by this table, where we get a taste of the joyful feast of the kingdom of heaven. And it is found in the still small voice that we hear in prayer, that says, “You are mine, and I love you.” Believe it. There’s a party going on right here. A celebration of all heaven. This party is for everyone.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina
[1] Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables, p. 325