Let me tell you a true story. Back in 1893 there were a group of four sisters, the Cherry Sisters they called themselves, who made their stage debut in Cedar Rapids in a skit they wrote themselves. For three years, the Cherry Sisters performed to packed theaters throughout the Midwest. People came to see them to find out if they were as bad as they had heard. Their unbelievably atrocious acting enraged critics and provoked the audience to throw vegetables at the would-be actresses. Wisely, the sisters thought it best to travel with an iron screen which they would erect in front of the stage in self-defense.

Amazingly, in 1896 the girls were offered a thousand dollars a week to perform on Broadway -- not because they were so good, but because they were so unbelievably bad. Seven years later, after the Cherry Sisters had earned what in that day was a respectable fortune of $200,000, they retired from the stage for the peaceful life back on the farm. Oddly enough, these successful Broadway "stars" remained convinced to the end that they were truly the most talented actresses ever to grace the American stage. They never had a clue as to how bad they truly were!

The parable this morning does not tell us what the elder brother did when his father came out to speak to him. It doesn't reveal to us whether he realized that his envy and disdain had made him just as bad as his younger brother. Yes, the elder brother had never stooped to find himself in the pigpens of life. He would never have been caught dead carousing with prostitutes or wasting his resources in riotous living but in the end his refusal to rejoice at the return of his sinful brother was, to Jesus, just as offensive.