Coming Home: A Lenten Meditation on Luke 15

And when he came to himself, he said,

How many hired servants of my father’s have bread

enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!

 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him,

Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,

And am no more worthy to be called thy son:

Make me as one of thy hired servants.

And he arose, and came to his father.

But when he was yet a great way off,

His father saw him, and had compassion, and ran,

and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 

And the son said unto him,

Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight,

And am no more worthy to be called thy son.

But the father said to his servants,

Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand,

 and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it;

and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead,

and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

Throughout the many twists and turns of a person’s life, it is not uncommon that people do things which make it hard for them to go back the way they came.  Whether it’s in childhood, or adolescence, younger or older adult years, people have a tendency of hurting each other in ways that make reunion very difficult.  That girlfriend you treated poorly in middle school, or that boyfriend you abused in high school, or that roommate you took advantage of in college, all can make the idea of heading back for school reunions ponderous.  Perhaps you were the kid who did the abusing, or the one who was abused; perhaps you were the one who vandalized property, or had your things vandalized; perhaps you did things you’re not proud of, and you have no interest in reliving those indiscretions with your contemporaneous witnesses.

For all the things that people do which make going back difficult, there may be nothing more painful than events which tear the fabric of families.  Those closest of relationships between husband and wife, parents and children and siblings, were never intended to be trampled upon and abused the way many of us have done.  Husbands and wives were created to treat each other with love reflected from God, and raise their children awash in the same; children were brought forth to return that reflected divine love back to each other and to their parents, growing in wisdom and virtue.  Families were created from the beginning to be unbreakable units of community, with bonds of love and affection that would transcend generations.  So it is that when this most intimate and fundamental community is broken—the community through which we were all brought into the world, and the community that will likely one day lay us in the ground—the pain, shame, and remorse of those rifts often make people feel that it is impossible or unbearable to come home.

But for all the shortcomings, failures, and abuse we so often inflict upon each other, especially within the boundaries of our own families, and the just perceptions of guilt, humiliation, vengeance, or injustice we may feel toward each other, Christ has something to teach us about the way He sees His family.  From His perspective, every single person in every far flung corner of the globe, across all time and distance, is a beloved creation.  Every single one of us, created by Him to be in eternal, unbreakable, and intimate familial communion with Him, has done much to tear that fabric of fellowship.  By our own wicked impulses we have committed every sin imaginable against Him, eventually slamming the door behind us as we ran away from Him.  And at some point in our lives, sooner or later, we will all be sitting in the filth and destitution of our own evil, with the realization that we have fouled everything up.  There in the darkness, hungry and abandoned, throbbing in pain and sobbing in despair, we will come to know that it isn’t God who abandoned us or broke our fellowship, but we who have despised and abandoned Him.  Coming to our senses upon the great precipice of eternal oblivion we have rightly earned, our eyes cast backward toward the distant light of our divine home and wonder if we can ever come home again.

Christ’s answer to you is now, and has always been a resounding, “YES!”  He who brought you into existence to share the wonders of His fellowship, has also descended into your darkness to pull you from that hellish oblivion which yawns before you.  Taking your offenses and your shame and your guilt to the lonely hill of Calvary, He has nailed your condemnation to His Cross, and forever freed you from its stain.  It is He who has washed your scarlet sins as white as new fallen snow, and He who has pursued you with His all consuming love.  His Word has pierced your malaise, slowed your wonton pace into perdition, and called you back home to Him.

What shall you find upon your return?  Perhaps you fear that your sins and shame shall be hung before you, and that you shall stand before the saints and angels to be ridiculed and scorned.  No, dear Christian—for Christ has already been hung upon the tree, bearing all the sins and shame and ridicule and scorn of all the world... including every other sinner-saint who has been called home and saved alone by His grace.  Your Savior has already done all to redeem you, and paid your price in full.  For you, as for every other child of God who once was lost but now is found, was dead and yet now lives, there is nothing but rejoicing, merriment, and tears of great joy upon your return, for this is the very reason He came to rescue you.  Far from condemnation, He races out to meet you, to embrace you, to put His own robe and ring upon you, and usher you once again into His feast which never ends.

Hear Him as He calls to you.  Turn from the dark and lonely paths of death.  Trust His blessed and eternal Gospel of salvation, which lights your path back to His loving embrace. Come home, dear child—come home. 

Amen.