"But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him." (Luke 15:17-20)
Both father and have prepared for this moment, each in their own way. I don't know that I had ever realized that before, for as many times as I have heard this story of Jesus (which many of us heard this past Sunday).
Of course, the lost son's preparation is a matter of getting a speech ready. At his point of desperation, he realizes what he has lost by leaving home and blowing his share of the inheritance and going off to a far country where no one is neighborly enough to help him when a famine comes and he is completely broke. And so, Jesus tells us, he concocts a plan to go back home and offer his father a new arrangement. He is convinced he has burned the bridge of family once and for all, but perhaps he could be taken on as one of his father's hired hands.
It's a gamble, of course. There is not only the very real possibility that a father who had been so grievously disrespected might not even look a returning son in the eye, much less let him speak, but also there was potential danger to the son's own life. The Torah had provisions for addressing disrespectful and insolent sons, and the punishment was death. The commandment from what we call Deuteronomy 21 says that the parents of a child who does not obey are to take him to the edge of town where the community elders meet and "shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." You could easily imagine a father, already humiliated by the request of the younger son to mortgage the family farm so that assets could be liquidated and a share given to him, deciding to press charges as soon as the son came back, tail between his legs, to his old house. You could imagine a father grabbing such a son to the gate of town and hefting rocks to put him to death. You could even more easily imagine a lynch-mob deputizing itself to "purge the evil from their midst" and taking it upon themselves to stone the son to death as soon as they saw him walking down Main Street and recognized who he was.
But, obviously, that's not what happens. We know, of course, that the father in Jesus' tale saw his son "while he was still far off" and "he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him." And while that might at first seem like a completely spontaneous, unplanned response, I think it actually suggests just the opposite. The fact that the father sees his son from a distance, "while he was still far off," means that he had been looking for his son--watching the horizon and keeping his eyes open, ever since his son left home. For however long it had been since his son had left home with his share of the inheritance, burned through it all, and found himself in dire straits, the father had been watching for his son to come. And he was ready when he spotted him. The father had been preparing for how he would respond if and when his son came home, which means he had decided long before how he would handle a reunion. The father has forgiven him in advance. All that remains to be done is for that forgiveness to be communicated to the son. But there was never a moment in the story where the father was waiting for the son to do something "right" first. He has been straining his eyes looking to the distance and knew already the moment he recognized his son's silhouette or the way he walked exactly how he would respond. He had been ready for reconciliation all along.
The other thing that suggests about the moment the father embraces his son is that this may well have been a human shield strategy on the part of the father. Presuming for the moment that everyone in town knew the instruction from Deuteronomy about stoning an insolent child to death in order to "purge the evil" from the community, the father may well have feared that his own neighbors would take matters into their own hands and lynch the son, with or without the father's consent. And if they had, the whole town could have insisted it was only a matter of "law and order" and that they had the fortitude to do what the father apparently didn't. They might well have started hurling rocks at the son before he even had the chance to plead for shelter and sanctuary on his father's front doorstep.
So the father runs out to meet his son--not merely out of overwhelming emotion, I suspect, but because he is prepared to put himself between his son and any danger. He offers his own body in case there are any rogue neighbors with stones in their hands who think this lost son has brought shame to their whole town. Before the son can even get a word in edgewise, the father has embraced him. That is both an expression of the forgiveness that was already given by the father, and also a move to put his own body on the line in order to protect his son. And this, dear ones, is how you are loved.
Honestly, before we go any further in the story or miss the power of what is happening in this moment, let's pause and let it sink in. This story of Jesus offers a glimpse of the way God's love operates, not just in the hypothetical setting of a parable, and not just in the historical setting of first-century Palestine, but here and now. And as Jesus tells it, God's forgiveness is not something that is ever in doubt. It is neither conditional nor contingent on our taking the first step to make amends. God crosses the entire distance, running out to us while we are a long way off still, in order to wrap divine arms around us. God's forgiveness is already decided on God's part. Like the father in the story, God knew what God was going to do from the moment we strayed. The only thing yet to be done is for that forgiveness to be communicated to us who have been off in the far country over and over again. And at the cross, God puts God's money where God's mouth is, so to speak. God wraps arms around us in Jesus, taking the hit of any stones that might have come our way. In Jesus, God becomes the divine-human shield absorbs the blows and stones that might have otherwise come from bloodthirsty and vengeful townspeople convinced they were the deputies of righteousness. This is how we are loved.
All this Lent, we have been looking at how God's love crosses the boundaries that we might have thought would hold it back. Whether it was the line between Jew and Gentile, insider and outsider, or righteous and unrighteous, God was not content to stay put leaving others out. Whether it was the boundary between respectable, restrained common sense and reckless, audacious mercy, or the line between life and death itself, we keep meeting a God who crosses all those lines in order to bring us back home, to restore our lives, and to express forgiveness to us. Here it is, one more time, in utter fullness. The God of the universe has already determined to forgive you; that is a done deal. God has already run out to meet you exactly where you are and says, "You are my beloved. Before you've done a thing I will offer my life to protect yours." What else can we say in response to such love? Or maybe that's the point? Maybe there is nothing we need to say... or do... or earn... or achieve... only to recognize that we are already forgiven, already loved, and already claimed as children in the family.
Could we dare to see God's love this way--and to see that this kind of love isn't reserved just for ME or "Me and My Group First," but everybody on our personal lists of unworthy "sinners" too?
What might that do in the day ahead? Let's find out.
Lord God, let us see the depth of your love in all of its fullness, and let us be transformed by the gift of your already given forgiveness.
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