We tend to think about this story as a story of a lost son, a prodigal. The truth is that the crowd listening to Jesus would not have been shocked by the lost prodigal son; they were absolutely shaken by the revelation that the older brother was also lost, religiously lost. This would cause them to consider some hard questions about themselves, and it should do the same for us. Being lost is easy to see; being religiously lost can be much harder to see and even harder to admit.