I must have read this story several hundred times. Re-told it myself at least a hundred.
It’s a classic.
And it’s one of those stories Jesus tells that absolutely gets you in your feelings.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a metaphor, many of us are going to find ourselves identifying with one of the characters as a person. And it’s absolutely meant to get us emotionally involved, not just to take a lesson from the story with our brains.
You and I are supposed to get worried or uncomfortable or sympathetic or anxious when Jesus tells about a kid leaving home and squandering themselves and their resources. Supposed to feel the relief, the sadness, the shame or the hope as that kid remembers and realizes what’s at home; supposed to be upset or overjoyed when the wandering, foolish kid comes home. Supposed to react, with our hearts, when the other kid gets mad and spouts resentment about it all.
Maybe you’ve felt yourself, once or often, as the young adult determined to try your wings, making foolish decisions, getting in trouble, yearning for help.
Maybe you’ve been surprised by welcome and forgiveness, or you’ve known what it is to long for those things with all your heart. To feel hope for yourself when Jesus tells this story.
Maybe you’ve felt yourself, once or often, as the responsible one, the steady one, the one who gets the group project done when everyone else is blowing things off. Maybe you know exactly how it feels to watch others extravagantly welcomed and forgiven and made at home while you work and work and work.
Maybe you’ve felt all that stir up grief and longing in your relationship with God.
I’ve felt all that.
I’ve known this story inside and out, in my life, and in the book.
And then it surprises me again.
This week, I sat down with this story, ready for all the welcome and forgiveness and resentment and anxiety and self-righteousness and hope lurking in it, ready for what’s familiar and expected,
and then I felt something new.
A yearning to be the parent in this story.
A yearning to discover in myself the heart bursting with love and joy that can give away, let go, hope at a distance, brim over with joy and forgiveness, give it all away again to the one who was lost and found, and still burst with love and pride and joy in the one who’s always been there.
I want to feel that way about my family, my friends.
I want to feel that way about strangers.
I want my heart to be that big.
And I think that’s what Jesus wants for us, too.
I think Jesus tells this story because he knows we’ve been one of the sons. We’ve been, we are, squanderers, mistake-makers, hurtful to others, selfish…sinners. And that we need to see the possibilities of repentance and forgiveness unfold in front of us when we remember love, remember that there is someone we can trust, even after we fail.
Jesus knows we’ve been, we are, the hard workers, narrowly focused, self-righteous, resentful, lonely…sinners. And that we need to be astonished, shocked into new perspective, by an exaggerated, over the top display of forgiveness, opportunity, love and joy – joy and love that want to draw us in, and share, when we don’t know how to feel that for ourselves.
I believe Jesus knows we need to hear, to recognize, our own relationship to God, our own sin, our own invitation to be loved, in this story.
And that Jesus wants us to take up the invitation to bring our failures to God, discovering in this story that God runs to meet us, to embrace us before we confess, to pour abundance on us before we even begin to start anew.
And I suspect that Jesus also wants us to want more.
Wants us – eventually, if not the first time we hear this story – to want to be the ones pouring out abundance and love. Wants us to want to be overjoyed at welcoming the failures, loving the selfish, delighting in the resentful ones, until they each find the hope and trust that heals them. Wants you and me rejoicing in the generous work of putting the world back together, gleefully giving yourself away.
Jesus delights in all that himself, you know.
And when something is that good, that life-giving, you want the people you love to experience it, too.
So what failure would you love to be able to welcome home?
What foolish mistakes would you love to be “over”? Who do you miss, deeply, since they screwed something up that hurt you?
Maybe it’s something you yourself have failed at and need to forgive.
What anxious, resentful relationships would you delight in reassuring? What would you love to be able to say to help someone who is trying to do it all themselves relax into love and confidence?
What parts of yourself – of your “wealth” of possessions or leadership or control – would you love to give away, so that someone else can find themselves?
What do you long to heal? What do you yearn to forgive?
What do you hunger to restore and renew?
Who do you ache to build a home for, to welcome?
Me, I want to feel that generous love instead of resentment when I read the news or the internet about the way this pandemic gets handled. I want to feel that generous love when someone tells me I’m wrong about masks or vaccines or social protections.
I want to delight in forgiving friends who’ve hurt me. To run and welcome home the person who took love from me for two years and never gave it back, instead of feeling the grief and the hurt all over again when they send me a tentative message.
I want to give you – you here and now – all the love and hope I feel when I read Jesus’ story this week, and keep giving it away and giving it away and keep discovering that it never actually runs out.
I want my heart to be that big.
I want that for you, too. I want your heart to feel that free and open, to rejoice that much in one another.
I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus wants from us, for us, when he tells this story to the selfish, lonely, reckless, resentful, mistake-making, self-righteous “two sons” in each of us, and we recognize the love that’s waiting to welcome us home – home we left long ago, or home we’ve forgotten we’re in the middle of all along.
Wants us to come home, to know ourselves forgiven,
and then long to pour that out on everyone else,
to be so full of prodigal joy and hope and love that we can’t contain it,
and we run to meet every child of God coming home to us.
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