Owning Our Older Brother-ness--April 4, 2025
"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'" (Luke 15:25-32)
"Privilege" is a complicated word these days, with a lot of baggage to carry.
When I was a kid, privilege was the word trotted out by grown-ups like parents and teachers to describe things like having a bike, owning a pet, being a big brother, or getting to stay up extra late on a night of summer vacation. These things, it was explained to me, were not owed to me, and they were the kind of thing that carried responsibility along with them. If one did not attend to the responsibilities, the grown-ups said, the privileges could always be taken away. Don't take care of a dog, and you won't be allowed to keep it. Don't go to sleep when it's time to go to bed after staying up, and you'll lose the later bedtime.
As a kid, the word "privilege" felt kind of like a badge of honor, and it felt like something that I had somehow achieved--despite the fact that this misses the entire point of what a "privilege" really is. But in kid-logic, if you weren't allowed to stay up last year, but now you are allowed to stay up, it seems like something you must have earned. If you weren't considered responsible enough before to have a dog, but now you are allowed the privilege of a pet, well, it sure sounds like you are being rewarded for your good behavior.
Funny, isn't it, how we take things that are given to us--the extra time to stay up, the dog, the opportunities--and force them into ways to tell ourselves that we have earned these things. Funny, in that bitter kind of way, I guess. Bitter, I suggest, because when you tell yourself that the free gift is something you have earned, you also set yourself up to look down on other people for not having been given the same gifts... opportunities... chances... that you have received... and you end up imagining that all the good things you have going for you are the fruits of your own sheer wonderfulness, rather than gifts beyond your deserving. The thing about privileges--from childhood bonuses like pets and later bedtimes to grown-up realities like the kind of education you received or the neighborhood you lived in--is that we have a way of pretending they are not there, or at least pretending we do not see them as privileges.
And see, that's what has made "privilege" into a dirty word in our day. And it is a negative all around, from all sides. When I am the privileged one, I don't want to acknowledge the things I have been given, the things that have been handed to me as free gifts, because I would rather imagine (that is, lie to myself) that my own achievement or effort or excellence has merited all the good things in my life. I don't want to have to admit times when I had an easier time, or was given special opportunities, or had chances (and second and third and fourth chances) that others did not have--because if I acknowledge those, it will make me see that my "greatness" is not all it's cracked up to be. And on the flip side, for those who can see my privilege (usually precisely because they have not been given the same things I have received), the difference feels like a cruel injustice. It begs questions like, "Why wasn't my kid able to have the same opportunities?" and "Why can't they see that they only won the race because they had a ten second head-start that they've all pretended not to notice or count?"
It is a frightening thing to have to come face to face with the privileges we have been given in life when we have been given them, because it forces us to admit we have not "achieved" or "earned" or "deserved" the things we puff ourselves up to think we were owed, and because it forces us to see that others we have gotten comfortable looking down on have overcome a great deal more than we give them credit for--likely more than we ourselves have had to go through, too. We are afraid of having the blinders taken off and seeing our own privileges, because we are afraid of finding out we are not as impressive as we pictured ourselves. It is so much easier to criticize others and imagine that they are the ones with the problems when they point out the number of times we had a leg up in life, or to wag our fingers at people we imagine as having an air of entitlement... because we don't recognize that we have the luxury of being able to hide our feelings of entitlement by telling ourselves we really do deserve the good things we have more than others--because we must have worked harder for them than anybody else. After all, why would I have the perks I have in my life if I didn't get them by being just plain qualitatively "better" than... those people (however I picture "those people")?
I was in an interesting conversation not too long ago. I was talking with someone who had recently had a frustrating schedule conflict and couldn't get done in one particular day all they wanted to have happen, and in the midst of venting about how things hadn't gone according to Plan A for the day, the other person says, "Doesn't it just feel sometimes like the whole world is against you?" And I thought for a moment... well, while I surely have some days when things don't go as I'd hoped, I'm a middle-class, white, married male who is a member of the predominant religion in the country where I live and who had a college education... Nope. I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to say "the world is against me." I'm pretty sure that list is a set of privileges that were not my accomplishment but were given to me. Nope--I don't get to complain that things are stacked against me; I just get to say, "I wish today had gone differently." But for a moment, as I thought about the question, it really haunted me to consider just how many ways I am probably not even aware of that I have it easy. And I realized that there is a big part of me that doesn't even want to open that can of worms, because there is this prideful beast inside me that wants still to live in the illusion that every good thing that happens to me is my achievement, my reward, or my accomplishment. And they are not--they are privileges.
Privilege is, in a sense, like grace. Grace demolishes any sense of "earning" or "merit," and has a way of humbling us when we see it, because we realize what we have been given is an undeserved gift and not a reward. Perhaps we could say that when I am conscious of the ways I have been afforded benefits I did not earn, and when I then use my position to offer something good to someone else, so that they can be blessed, too, then we transform "privilege" into grace. But so often, my frightened refusal to see the truth makes "privilege" a source of bitterness, envy, judgment, and division. And because we have these hearts bent on puffing ourselves up and comparing ourselves to the person next to us, we don't want to dare to see honestly how we have been graced, and that leg-up opportunities are meant to be used to help someone else, not to push ourselves ahead at someone else's expense.
That's why my heart is still so unsettled every time I come to the end of Jesus' amazing story of the recklessly gracious father with two sons (we call it "the Prodigal Son" sometimes, but that kind of misses the point). Many of us heard it in worship this past Sunday, and we've been working our way through the story here through our devotions all week, too. And in a sense, we have now come to the hardest part of the story, at least for us church folk. We love to identify with the redeemed and restored lost son, because things work out well for him. We don't mind singing, in words that echo this story, "I once was lost, but now am found," because we bend the words to sound like an accomplishment in our own ears--I was on the wrong road, but then smart ME got my act together and look how I have fixed up my life!" But we have a really hard time with the presence of the older brother in this story, especially because he is so much like us. He is privileged as much as his younger brother, but he has the added danger of blindness to it. He has been given all he needs in life from a generous father, and he is promised that he will continue to have all that he needs ("All that is mine is yours," says the father). But he still paints himself as the poor, put-upon son who has never had a special opportunity and never got a free gift. That makes him able to condemn his brother as a freeloader with an entitlement complex, because he cannot bring himself to see that he has been given just as much privilege as the younger son. He doesn't want to see that--because he is afraid.
And that's what makes this story's ending so haunting--Jesus' parable is left open-ended, like the old story, "The Lady or the Tiger", in that we don't know what the older son will do. Will he choose to be ruled by his fear of having to admit his privileges... or will he come to see that he has had grace and privilege and opportunity given to him in abundance, knowing that he can no longer judge his brother once he sees it? Will the older brother stay outside with his arms crossed and brow furrowed, or will he let down his guard, admit his own privileges, and come to the party to celebrate?
We are all, in that sense, the older brother in this story. Even if there are ways we are like the younger, "lost-but-found" son, too, we are all like the older brother, and we have a really hard time admitting our own privilege... our own reliance on grace. We, too, are afraid of what we will see if we start actually looking around our blind spots for places we have been privileged. We, too, are afraid of how it will change our relationships and views of others that we had already conveniently pre-judged.. We, too, would rather paint ourselves as the poor, put-upon, hard-working, underappreciated hard workers, rather than see that we are a part of a household that is run solely on the economy of grace.
But what Jesus offers us in this story is essentially what the father offers his older son in the story--mercy. And mercy allows us to finally be free from the fear of facing our privileges and naming them for what they are, so that we can be honest about them--and use our situation to bless the lives of others. Blessing is never meant to be a cul-de-sac in the Bible, and it is not meant to be one in our lives, either. Privilege, you might say, is what happens when blessing becomes a dead-end, and grace is what happens when I can be honest about how I have been blessed and then let blessing flow to reach others, too.
So, here in this day, the father in the story approaches you and me--and he says to us, "Look--everything you've ever been had in this life, these things are all gifts of grace. Would you quit puffing yourself up and looking down on everyone else long enough to see that you have been given good things that are meant to be shared rather than hoarded? And would you dare and celebrate when someone else is given a gift beyond their deserving, too?"
Now it's up to you and me--what will we do with this day, and what will we choose to acknowledge about ourselves? Can we dare to name the ways and places we have been privileged--and then let it change and humble our perspective, or will we stay outside of the party forever?
Come in. Come into the party. Take my hand, too, and lead me to go in with you.
Lord Jesus, give us honest eyesight about our own privilege, so that we can be conduits of grace rather than dead-ends of bitterness and resentment.
