“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
- Luke 15:31-32

Parables are like rooms you can stand in and look around. They are told that way deliberately. When something is varied and complex, you can’t always explain it in a textbook way. So Jesus told stories that could be explored from different angles - stories that could slip underneath our defences and assumptions, and reshape our lives.

In Luke 15, we are given what is often treated as three parables, but it is really a story in three chapters. The pattern is identical each time: something is lost, something is found, and there is great celebration. A shepherd finds a sheep. A woman finds a coin. A father receives back a son.

By the time we reach the third chapter, the pattern is familiar. The younger son is clearly lost. He demands his inheritance, disgraces his father, wastes everything, and ends up ruined. According to Deuteronomy 21:18-21, a rebellious son deserved judgement. Rebellion results in death - that is the direction the law runs. But here the mechanism is reversed. The father runs, embraces, and restores. The son is not alive, then dead - he is dead, then alive. Lost, then found. And, as before, there is rejoicing.

Which means we expect the story to end there.

But it doesn’t - after the three chapters, there’s an epilogue! The elder brother stands outside the party. He doesn’t celebrate, but complains and criticises: “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”

The older brother does not speak as a son but as a servant who believes he has earned something. In the logic of transaction, grace is an insult. If the reckless brother is honoured, what was the point of obedience? He is scandalised less by his brother’s sin than by his father’s mercy. The father’s response is astonishing: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” The elder brother believes that there is only so much blessing to go around, and the love the younger brother receives means that he is excluded. was never outside the blessing. Yet he cannot enjoy it because he cannot rejoice in grace.

Many of us, as we read these words, will feel like the older brother. But what if we’re operating with the wrong assumption? There is no scarcity of blessing, love or mercy.

The Parable of Lost Things