In The Return of the Prodigal Son Henri Nouwen shares about encountering Rembrandt’s depiction of the son coming home after losing everything his father had given him. Nouwen was showing the painting to friends and asking them what they saw. A young woman walked to the larger-than-life portrait of the son bowing on his knees before his father. Putting her hand on the head of the younger son, she said, “This is the head of a baby who just came out of his mother’s womb. Look! His head is still wet.”
What would it mean if we could be born anew to live fully and freely in spite of our failures and our losses? The son kneeling before his father painting had the wet head of a newborn child. Oh, I wish there were a place called the land of beginning again, where all of our grief and all of our sorrow could be dropped like a dirty old coat at the door and never put on again.
The son thought he had squandered even his father’s good will. There is homecoming dance even after a devastating loss. It is about recovery and renewal after a losing season.
The story begins with the younger son leaving home for a distant country. The distant country, Nouwen suggests, describes the experience of the addicted life. He writes, “Our addictions make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink; and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs and leave us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. We wander far away from home.”
One Sunday while I was preaching, I was watching a humorous struggle between an older and younger brother whose mother and father were in the choir. The little brother obviously wanted to take a break for the restroom and the water fountain. The big brother’s assignment was to help him, but no matter how he tried to help with gentle persistence or red-knuckled insistence, the younger brother was adamant, “I can do it myself.”
We perpetually seek to prove to ourselves and to everyone around us that we can handle things on our own, by ourselves, without support or encouragement. We are adamant that we can make it on our own. We stand alone even at the risk of incredible loss. We head toward the door mumbling words we regret even before they’re spoken.
Ellie Weisel said, “God made us because God loves stories.” And we learn that we can love God because of the love expressed in this story. In love the Father let him go; loved him too much to hold him back; but never withheld the blessing.
Paul Tournier said the overly protective parent actually winds up doing the very thing he or she is trying to avoid; bringing suffering to his or her child. The overly protected child goes into the world without the defenses he or she will need. Nature’s way of building up immunities is through interactions with that which threatens. If a parent never lets a child experience hardship, the child is prevented from developing maturity. A seedling from the green house has difficulty surviving until it is acclimated to normal conditions. The father lets his son go; lets him learn what he cannot be taught. “Here the mystery of my life is unveiled,” writes Nouwen. “I am loved so much that I am left free to leave home.”
I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
Losing is not be the end of the story. In The Losing Season, Pat Conroy reminds us that there is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss. The great secret of athletics is that you can learn more from losing that winning. Losing invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies.” And a change of heart I might add. Perhaps, you can testify that God saw you through a loss from which you thought you could never recover. Perhaps it was a devastating loss which shook your world, starting you toward something you would have never dreamed of reaching.
At the point of absolute loss, the younger son returned home only to discover his father wanting to find him as much as, if not more than, he wanted to find his father. God, like the woman looking for her lost coin, and like the shepherd looking for his wayward sheep, and like the father open and caring toward both his sons, wants to find us. This is what Rufus Jones calls double search. We long for God while God is searching for us. This is the only place in scripture where God is portrayed as running. The father leaves his house, forgets his dignity, and runs to meet his son. The eastern culture demanded that the patriarch walk with his head upheld, too formally bound unable to run. A painting by a recent Chinese Christian revealed a father running to embrace his son wearing two different shoes because he had dressed in such a hurry.
This is a story about love searching for and finding each of us. Love has its origin in the very heart of God. God desires to find us and to care for us. How might our spiritual journey change it we could see God as coming to us?
One son is home. The other is lost in his own backyard. It’s enough to dampen any party, but the father invites all to share in the joy. He gives himself totally to the joy that the returning son brings. Loss is not the last word.
God is looking into the distance searching to find us, longing to bring us home.
We pray: Lord, there is a home for us called grace where those given up for lost are found. We pray in Jesus name for he taught us that God loves each of one of us as God loves us all. Amen.