After Easter worship several years ago, I spoke briefly with a pastor standing alone near the back of the sanctuary while the congregation drifted toward fellowship hour.
Children were running through the hallways. People were laughing, hugging and talking about lunch plans. The sanctuary still carried the emotional energy churches often experience on Easter Sunday.
The pastor watched the crowd for a moment and quietly said, “I know I’m supposed to feel joy today.”
Gregory C. Smith
I remember the way he said it.
Not cynical. Not bitter. Just tired in a way that felt older than sleep.
For months he had carried funerals, hospital visits, congregational conflict and the quiet emotional burdens pastors often absorb without talking about publicly. He had spent Holy Week helping everyone else survive grief and exhaustion while privately running on almost nothing himself.
And now the celebration itself felt strangely far away from him.
I have thought about that moment often while reading the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. Especially the older brother.
Traditionally, the older brother is treated as the villain of the story — self-righteous, graceless and resentful. Certainly those elements exist. But I wonder if something else may also be happening in the story that many caregivers and church leaders immediately recognize.
What if the older brother is exhausted? What if his resentment is not simply arrogance but accumulated emotional depletion after years of carrying responsibility?
The older brother says to his father, “For all these years I’ve been working like a slave for you.”
“That sentence lands differently when read through the lens of exhaustion.”
That sentence lands differently when read through the lens of exhaustion. He sounds less like a cartoon legalist and more like someone who has been emotionally keeping score for a very long time.
He stayed.
He worked.
He remained faithful.
While his younger brother abandoned the family, disappeared into recklessness and eventually returned home expecting nothing.
And suddenly the father throws a feast.
For many exhausted people, this is precisely the moment where grace becomes emotionally difficult. Not because they oppose mercy itself. But because mercy can start feeling unfair.
Especially to people who have spent years quietly carrying churches, families and communities on their backs.
I have seen versions of the older brother everywhere. In churches. In caregiving families. In nonprofit organizations. In disaster response.
Often these are the most dependable people in the room. The volunteers who always stay late. The caregivers everyone relies upon. The church members who quietly keep ministries functioning year after year.
“I have seen versions of the older brother everywhere.”
And because they are competent and dependable, people stop noticing how tired they are.
Over time, many caregivers begin believing love is earned through sacrifice and endurance. Service slowly becomes identity.
That is why the older brother’s anger feels so recognizable. He does not merely resent his younger brother. He resents the collapse of the moral system he has built his life around.
A system where faithfulness earns approval, sacrifice earns recognition and endurance earns love.
Then suddenly the father disrupts the entire system. The younger brother receives mercy before proving himself worthy of it.
For emotionally exhausted people, that can feel infuriating.
Particularly when they themselves have been quietly starving for tenderness while continuing to function.
I think this helps explain why some of the most resentful people in churches often are not rebellious people at all. They are exhausted people.
People who stayed too long without rest. People who quietly carried burdens for years. People who secretly hoped their sacrifices would eventually produce safety, belonging or recognition.
Then one day they discover grace does not operate according to fairness. And something inside them hardens.
The older brother’s refusal to enter the feast is especially revealing. In the culture of the parable, this would not have been a private emotional moment. It would have been a public insult to the father.
And yet the father responds not with humiliation, but with pursuit. He leaves the feast and goes outside to meet the resentful son.
That detail matters.
The father moves toward not only the Prodigal Son but also the exhausted son who can no longer rejoice.
I suspect many pastors understand this emotionally.
There are ministers who have spent years preaching grace while privately feeling unable to receive it themselves.
There are caregivers who know how to help everyone except themselves.
There are church members who continue serving faithfully long after joy has disappeared.
And there are many deeply responsible people who secretly wonder whether anyone would care for them if they stopped being needed.
“Resentment often begins as grief that has lost the ability to speak gently.”
This is one reason resentment can become spiritually dangerous. Resentment often begins as grief that has lost the ability to speak gently.
Eventually celebration itself becomes painful.
The older brother stands outside the feast unable to enter joy. Not because he is entirely wrong. But because he is wounded.
That does not justify his resentment. But it may help explain it.
And honestly, churches are not always very good at recognizing this kind of exhaustion. We often praise endurance while neglecting exhausted people.
We celebrate self-sacrifice while quietly depending upon emotionally depleted volunteers and clergy to continue functioning indefinitely.
Many churches know how to thank people for serving. Far fewer know how to care for people before they collapse.
This is why the father’s response in the parable feels so important. He does not shame the older brother. He goes outside to him.
The father recognizes the resentful son also needs mercy.
Perhaps that is one of the most difficult spiritual truths for caregivers to believe. That their worth is not dependent upon usefulness. That they do not have to destroy themselves in order to deserve belonging.
That grace belongs not only to prodigals, but also to exhausted people standing outside the celebration wondering why they can no longer feel joy.
I think again about that pastor after Easter worship. The sanctuary had mostly emptied. Children’s voices echoed faintly down the hallway while someone stacked bulletins near the back pews. And for a moment the pastor simply stood there alone beneath the fading Easter lilies, looking toward the celebration he had helped create but no longer seemed able to enter himself.
I suspect there are more older brothers in our churches than we realize.
Not hard-hearted people. Just tired people. People quietly wondering whether grace still exists for those who have spent too many years carrying the weight of everyone else.
Gregory C. Smith is a retired Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor, disaster spiritual care leader and author whose work focuses on moral injury, trauma, grief and faith after catastrophe. He has served with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance National Response Team and the American Red Cross in disaster response and writes widely on theology, suffering and compassionate presence in wounded communities.