Shortly before the service started on Sunday, I overheard someone who was browsing through the bulletin say, “Conflict, huh? Well that’s easy – you just ignore it.” I’m sure he was just joking, but at the same time his comment highlights a common “technique” we all use from time to time to deal with the interpersonal issues in our lives. It can be a tempting response when addressing or confronting discord, even in the best of circumstances, always seems like more work, more difficulty, and the potential for more pain than just pressing forward like nothing is wrong.

There certainly are some situations where discretion is the better part of valor, and it is entirely within God’s power to give a person the ability to forgive an offense without needing to bring it up with the offender. However, the danger in addressing conflict in this way is that it drive the issue underground, effectively eliminating the chance for real reconciliation and restitution of the sweetness in that relationship.

In chapter 15 of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is confronting the Pharisees’ apparent unawareness of the fullness of God’s desire for reconciliation with sinners. Jesus tells the parable of Two Wayward Sons and a Tender Father, which is frequently called by the shorter, but unfortunately less insightful, title of “The Prodigal Son.” It tells the account of a wealthy landowner with two sons, the younger of which demands his inheritance prior to his father’s death. This was not only crude and insulting, but supremely dismissive of the father, because it clearly demonstrated that the son valued what his father could give him more than the presence of his father himself (ring a bell about how we can treasure the things on earth more than the things of heaven?). Long story short, the son spends all his inheritance on wild living and ends up starving, destitute, and so desperate and he decides to go home and beg his father to let him live as a servant in the household, since at least the servants have plenty to eat. When the younger son arrives back home, his father is wildly happy to see him and throws a lavish party to celebrate his return. However, the older son is not as thrilled about the reunion.

Let’s pick up the story in verse 25: 25“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ 28But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, 29but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. 30But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ 31And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”

This reaction of the older son is the reason we need to remember that the story really is about two sons who are far from their father. The younger son is physically and overtly distant, but the older son is no less separated, even though his situation bears no obvious indications of conflict through most of the story. We see this hidden tension particularly clearly in verses 28-30, where he explodes with years of anger and resentment stemming from his feelings of underappreciation from his father. What is telling, however, is that the older son has labored dutifully his whole life, and yet has seemingly never asked his father for the recognition that he so craves. This is exactly the lesson of James 4:2 (“You do not have because you do not ask”), and it shows that the older son had a weak and potentially idolatrous relationship with his father, even though he is physically present in the household and there is no overt conflict between them.

Jesus ends the parable by saying that, in spite of the father entreating (begging!) his son to give up his anger and come into the feast, in the end the older son is left outside in the cold of his own resentment. His unwillingness to forgive either his brother or his father means that, even though he is heir to all that his father owns, he ultimately gains no value from any of it. Let us hear this as a gentle warning that the absence of overt conflict does not indicate there is peace, and perhaps the momentary pain of confronting conflict in a righteous way might provide for the freedom of true and total reconciliation.