Currently Listening to: “Radio Cloud” by Ruston Kelly
One of my favorite moments as a dad is coming home late on Sunday nights. Since I have the privilege to work with teenagers at my church, Sundays end up being long days spent away from my house and my family. As a result, I’m always eager to get home in hopes I can beat the clock before my son’s bedtime after we finish up youth activities. And on very rare occasions, something beautiful happens when I pull into my driveway: I open the garage, come through the door, and lock eyes with my little man as he hops up to see who it is. And as he realizes that I’ve made it home in time for bedtime stories, he runs to meet me arms-open wide for a hug.
I will break every traffic law in the book to be a part of that moment.
Before this becomes a Hallmark commercial, though, let me be clear. This doesn’t happen every time. Honestly, there are just as many times, if not more, where he is either already asleep or where he sees me, turns away, and tells me to go, shouting “I don’t want you here!” Yet somehow, that doesn’t sway me from yearning for the moment when he does. Despite the more probable outcome of threenage verbal abuse, I keep bursting through the door, wide-eyed and expectant for my little man to be ready with a bear hug for his dad.
The story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) has always been familiar to me. I’ve heard it. Read it. Studied it. Taught it. But the older I get, the more I’m learning that every good story grows with you – evolves, even – as you travel the gritty terrain of personal experience. A story can be “known” and yet not realized. Understood in your mind without being transposed into a lived-out wisdom. Story invades our realities by forcing us to locate ourselves within it. That is its secret sauce – its solicited framework for transformation. It is the chrysalis that begs you to enter, knowing that once you do, you cannot come out the same.
If you’re unfamiliar with this parable from Jesus, let me give you a brief summary. There are 3 main characters: the younger “prodigal” son, the older son, and the steady father. The prodigal (i.e. meaning “reckless” or “wasteful”) son asks his father for his inheritance early, deeming his father “dead to him” in all senses of the word. And, upon hearing his son’s request, the father grants his son’s wish, no questions asked, knowing he had already arrived at his decision. Then, shortly after receiving what he’d asked for, that son moves away and squanders the wealth he had been given prematurely, leaving his father and brother left to deal with the consequences of his leaving.
But at his lowest point of desperation, in the midst of struggle, pain, and failure, the younger son was able to sober his spirit and see clearly. By wrestling with his own past, he manages to squash the little bit of pride in himself preventing him to act in the present – to make the restorative journey of return to his family. Thinking that – best case scenario – they might take him back not as a son, but as a hired hand, only to be paid in the basic forms of food and shelter. And so, he rehearses his speeches and apologies and begins the humble walk of shame back to the place from which he so fervently fled.
As he walked through the fields that grew him up, doubting each and every step as a mistake, his fears and insecurities were disarmed by an unexpected welcome: his father running towards him, completely uninterested in his prepared speeches and apologies. His father’s face was not judgmental, disappointed, or angry. There were no fingers shaking or I told you so’s shouted. Just joy. Boundless and uninhibited joy. While the prodigal son was focused on how to sell himself back into the good graces of his family, the father was solely focused on celebrating his son’s long-awaited and hoped for return.
Meanwhile, while all this dramatic reunion is happening on display, the older son is standing where he’s always stood: next to the father. His right hand man. The one that’s always done what was asked and expected of him. As he sees his younger brother being rewarded for his floundering mistakes, he refuses to be part of a celebration that seems to mock his own faithfulness and sturdy obedience. When his father tries to talk him into joining the feast, the elder son shares his resentment for all his years of service that never once received the kind of celebration his brother was being given. And the father, broken in spirit at such a response, realizes that this son – the one he had the most access to all these years – had missed the point of their relationship entirely. “You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours. But this brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!” And the story ends.
I’m a big believer in that everyone needs their own journey to arrive at their own conclusions. You can tell someone how to get there, what to do, when to do it…but until they arrive at that place on their own, any conclusion or truth will remain personally unrealized. I imagine that the younger son discovered his own conclusions prior to running away that justified his means of the moment. But later, he came to quite different conclusions before burying his pride to return to the home he abandoned. The difference in discovery was mined in the middle of those decisions. Without a lived-in journey, truth remains distant and elusive. The paths we walk can change the conclusions we thought we knew and understood, because the walked-down path merges what we know with our heads with what we know with our lives. That kind of earthy spirituality forges truth that can materialize real transformation, the kind that’s more focused on happening than making sense.
Although it’s an oversimplification, I believe this is the prodigal son’s journey. An exciting, chaotic, and bold journey – one that shapes a self-centered, entitled child into a creature of homecoming, a man who can conquer himself in order to reconcile what is not yet right within and around him. A son who recycles his own prodigal wastefulness into an efficient submission of himself capable of yielding real relationship. While his mistakes were far from good or justified, they were pavers on his path – milestones that ultimately raised the high road back to his truest self. Before any homeward-bound march was made, his life’s story – the story he told himself and others – had to be deconstructed and laid bare in the wreckage of humility. And out of that surrender came a willingness to do the unthinkable. Return. Go back. Make right what was ruined.
The elder son’s story, though, isn’t quite as well-rounded. While he doesn’t leave his father high and dry like his younger sibling, he silently forges a fire of resentment with every “right” decision he makes. His motive was not-so-different than his brother’s – he only wanted what his father could give him, rather than his priceless presence. Their relationship was a trojan horse – a beautiful, well-made shell infiltrated by the hidden hostages of hostility, self-righteousness, and resentment. And at the sight of his father’s radical grace and forgiveness towards his brother, he implodes. His life’s story becomes equally debunked, as each celebratory cheer for his prodigal brother undermined each of his silent acts of faithful obedience. He refuses to participate in the real version of what it looked like he already had: reconciliation with his family. His brother’s story was an authentic happening of change and transformation, while his story was more about what it wasn’t. The kingdom he had built for himself was really a cardboard castle, a house of smoke dissipating into the confusing clarity of a father’s forgiveness.
As I locate myself in this story, it is painfully evident where I have played each son’s role throughout the different details and directions of my life. I have been the prodigal son, wasteful with opportunity that has caused relational damage to people I love. I have been the elder son, conceited in what is “owed” to me, and distractedly resentful in the face of my own unmet expectations. But do you know what’s even more evident? To this day, I have never spiritually graduated into playing the main character role of the steady Father. He is the only one who is steadfast in his character, the integrity of his actions consistently matching the integrity of his motives. He is irresponsibly persistent in hope, despite the cultural norms that would persuade him against it. He is doing the hard work of showing up for a son who has made a hollow habit of relationship, while still simultaneously creating space within himself for his other son to simply show up again. Both dynamics feel impossible – each relationship treats him as if he’s not present, even though he fights so hard to be. His character and work are, at best, unseen and unnoticed for the majority of the story. And yet, he is unfazed. He just wants return. He just wants relationship.
This story is so much bigger than my little lens of life. But it has spoken to me in the midst of it, nonetheless, for the past year in an uncomfortable, disorienting way. I’m finding that I have so much to learn from each character, so much pride to conquer en route to becoming more of the father in this story. It has identified desires within me that needed to be named. It has given me a spiritual scaffolding to climb and build on. It has disrupted my story with a bigger one. But nothing has been highlighted more than the powerful spiritual discipline of return and the way that practice ushered in possibilities for each and every character in this story. We love to move forward as human beings, but, in my corner of experience, progress isn’t always in that direction. In fact, it often happens in the wilderness of not knowing where to go. It’s there that we are forced to cultivate a radical willingness to actually do something – something that could very well fail and unravel the story we’ve worked so hard to protect. It’s there that we realize if we stop steering the story, we give ourselves space to be characters within it.
There are so many things to soak up, and your life might lead you to drastically different takeaways from this famous parable. But let me offer you a few of many that have stood out to me during this season of life. The prodigal son teaches us that the road of return is one that requires a relinquishing of the story you’ve been telling. His journey teaches us that desperation for reconciliation must be stronger than the grip of pride. Return is progress if it is in the unexpected direction of radical love. The elder son teaches us that remaining is only valuable when you are actually aware of and present to what (and who) is with you. You will not “right” yourself into the reward you want if you pretend to live in a way that authenticity forsakes. Resentment will always be an enemy of relationship, robbing you of real-time reality. And the father teaches us that we must be adept in the giving of grace and forgiveness, committed to working in the background as we create relational environments ready for reconciliation. A father’s role is to be unnoticed, unseen, and ferociously resilient in a love that goes against all odds and reason. I don’t believe you can embody the character of the father without first experiencing the character of the father – the love of God that is formational to the deepest reality of who we are as children shaped out of a father’s love.
I spend a lot of time in church. I spend a lot of time reading scripture and writing about it. But I’m confident that I’m never closer to the gospel of Christ than on Sunday nights, when I’m rushing home, knowingly racing against a clock to see my son one last time before a new day wipes away the current one. In those beautiful moments when my efforts are fruitful – when I am met with his eyes as I walk through the garage doorframe – I am reminded of the prodigal’s father. I am closer to understanding a love that doesn’t need to be justified or explained. It’s just there within me. Busting at the seams. Available for whenever it will be received. It’s there – in that lived-in moment – that the gospel becomes tangible, livable, learned in every sense. What I know with my head is matched with what I know with my life. And I’m a little farther along on my journey.
There is no ending or outcome to this famous story, as is the case in so many parables Jesus tells. And maybe that ambiguity stands as a stubborn invitation into the opportunities available when we place ourselves within its context. As we find our road into this story, no matter where it leads you, may we all be sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers willing to do the unthinkable for reconciliation. May we all be quick to embody the physical and spiritual tasks involved in returning. May we deny ourselves the nerve of narrative and, in its place, wield a willingness to shed the story we’ve held onto so tightly for ourselves. May we have eyes more open to the realities of relationship than the self-serving sights of reward. And more than anything, may we be centered in the love from our Father so that we may be cultivators of that same love through the vessels of odds-defying grace and forgiveness.
From my highway to yours,
Alex
