Bill’s Bestowals:
“The Running Father”
“But while he was still a long way off,
his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him;
he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
… the father said … ‘this son of mine was dead and is alive again;
he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”
(Luke 15:20-21)
DO NOT READ UNTIL AFTER WORSHIP MAY 2!
Last month’s newsletter spoke of the sermon series we completed today concerning the Gospel of Luke chapter 15. I hope it touched you as much as it did ME! If you were here for the series, I assume you now know why “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” really isn’t the best name for this text. It would best be called “The Parable of the Running Father!” On May 2, I told the story in a modern setting. For this month’s newsletter, I wanted to offer that story as a continual reminder. Here it is:
Philip Yancey wrote a book called “What’s So Amazing about Grace?” and in a chapter called “The Lovesick Father,” he retells this story:
A young girl grows up on a cattle farm outside a small Bible belt town known as Mena, Arkansas. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, don’t much care for the music she listens to or the clothes she wears, and they tend to overreact to her nose and lip rings. For her part, the girl doesn’t much care for their values or their church! They have another argument, and she locks herself in her room. When her dad knocks on the door, she screams, “I HATE YOU!” That night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times … she runs away!
She has heard much about huge celebrations held down on the gulf coast city of New Orleans, and from the pictures she has seen the city seemed to attract people who share her adventurous personality and fashion sense. Upon arrival in New Orleans, she finds herself much lonelier than she had anticipated, but she soon meets a man who drives the biggest car she has ever seen! He gives her a ride, buys her lunch, shows her the city, and arranges a place for her to stay. He also gives her some pills that make her feel better than she has ever felt before, and she has longed to feel really good! She decides that she had been right all along: her parents had been keeping her from a lot of fun!
This good life goes on for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car (she calls him “Boss”) teaches her a few things about what men like. It’s a side of life that she never knew in Mena! The parties and the penthouses and the gifts and the glamour are like being in another world for her! On rare occasion she thinks about her folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there!
She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the words, “Have you seen this child?,” but by now – with changed hair color and style, tattoos and body piercings – no one her would mistake for a child anymore!
After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear. It amazes her how quickly the boss turns mean! Before she knows it, he turns her out on the street; no money, no clothes, no car, no parties. She is alone! She uses what she knows out on the streets to get whatever money she can, but illness has given her a gaunt and thin appearance. The men she entertains now are no longer wealthy and generous, and sometimes they’re dangerous and cruel! All her money goes to support her habit. She eats whatever she can find. She sleeps on a metal grate or on a park bench … if you could even call it sleep, since she can never let her guard down!
One night as she lies fearfully awake, everything around her suddenly looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world, but like a little girl, lost and cold in a frightening city. Her pockets are empty. Her clothes are rags. Her stomach is hungry. She needs a fix. Her eyes are filled with tears, and then her mind flashes on a single image: her home in that small, obscure town in Arkansas. “Oh God, why did I leave!? My dog at home eats better than I do now!” She is sobbing, and she knows that more than anything she has ever wanted in her life, she wants to go home!
Three straight calls. Three straight connections with the answering machine. Twice she hangs up without leaving a message, but the third time she says, “Dad, mom, it’s me. I was wondering about coming home. I’m catching a bus your way, and it will pass through Mena tomorrow night at 1 a.m. If you’re not there, I’ll understand why. I’ll just keep on going. I just wanted you to know.”
The whole time on the bus, she can’t turn off the questions: first, she wonders if they even got the message. Then she wishes she’d given them more warning. She wonders if they’ve given her up for dead. She keeps thinking about what she is going to say to her father. She keeps rehearsing this little speech in her mind: “Dad, I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry! I don’t hate you! I know this was my fault, not yours. Can you ever forgive me?” She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone for anything for a long time!
The bus pulls in to the terminal, and the driver says, “Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all the time we have.” Fifteen minutes to decide her life! She can’t even look out the window, for fear no one will be there. Instead she looks in her little compact mirror, tries to brush her hair and get the lipstick marks off her teeth. She sees the needle marks in her arms and wonders if they are noticeable.
After three minutes of debate with herself, she walks to the door of the bus, and then she looks out. She has imagined a thousand different scenes in her mind, but not one of them prepares her for what she sees, because she finds herself looking into the faces of a group of forty brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, and one dog!
They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing kazoos and cheering for her as if she were a hero coming home from a was. Several of them are holding balloons and signs saying, “WELCOME HOME!” And standing in front of that crowd with a tear-stained face and a trembling smile is the father whom she had told she hated. She can’t bring herself to look him in the face as she starts her little speech. “Dad, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault …”
But dad reacts so quickly! He puts his hands on her face, and he raises her eyes up to him. He begins to laugh and cry so hard his whole body shakes. “Honey, there’s no time for that! There is a banquet waiting for you at home … a PARTY! There is no way I am going to let you miss it!” And he takes her home!
So Jesus tells this story, and then Rev. Yancey says, “Now if you start with that father, and then you think of One a hundred times better, a thousand times wiser, a million times more loving, then you start to get some tiny little echo of what a good God God is and how much he loves you!”
Will you come to the party?!
I’ll see you there! Pastor Bill
