Jubilee: The father runs to us

Scripture: Luke 15:11-32

            In 2008, I was the Offsite Trip Leader for summer camp at Lutherhaven Ministries in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Midway through the summer, I had a cabin of 7^th and 8^th-grade boys in a program that involved camping out in various locations over the course of the week. The boys were various levels of miscreant from your typical just-can’t-stop-bothering-the-girls’-cabins to the stay-up-all-night and raise hell sort. Two of the boys in particular were the worst—naturally, they were twins. Each night, I would find one or both of them up at 2 or 3 in the morning pretending to be an animal in the woods, or throwing rocks at teepees, or trying to sneak off to Lord knows where. This was not my favorite week of camp counseling.

            Which brings us to Wednesday night… when we had our central worship for the week—a meaningful service on the beach with the rest of the campers on site for the week. It was poignant as always, but I was not engaged. Mostly, I was relieved that there were other staff around to watch out for my terrible campers. I decompressed for half an hour around the campfire before it was time to make our way back up the hill to get ready for another night of poor sleep. As we walked, one of the twins lingered and fell behind the rest of the group so I slowed along with him. I wish I could say I was checking in on his emotional or spiritual wellness, but mostly I suspected he was trying to slip away and I was going to force him to move his butt up that hill before the rest of the boys got out of sight.

            But as I walked alongside him, he started talking about things that I was not prepared for. “There’s a reason why I was crying during the service down there,” he said. I hadn’t noticed… hadn’t even thought to notice. I was looking for rocks in his hands, not tears in his eyes. He continued, “I was crying because it made me think of my dad. The last time I saw him he was yelling at my mom, and then he ran out the door and killed himself.”

            Have you ever had that feeling of shock where a thousand thoughts come into your head but your mouth cannot form any of them into words? Yeah, that’s what I felt in that moment. All the assumptions I had about this kid—all my petty grievances with his behavior—even all the legitimate safety things I was concerned about—it all suddenly felt so trivial. I did not know what this kid carried—could not know, really—until it burst out and I realized it was never going to be as simple as telling him to put the rocks away.

            I think about that boy and his brother when I read of the prodigal son, because that kid, too—that grown kid—was a menace. He was. He did nothing right. He set out on his own without a single bit of smarts in his head and inevitably lost it all; he wasted what his family had spent a lifetime or even generations to build. I suspect he was the kid throwing rocks at other kids’ tents—seems like the type. But nobody knew what he was carrying with him. Yeah, he was a menace, but he was also just a person. Nobody knew the guilt and the shame. Nobody knew—even he-himself did not know—could not know the weight of his own feelings of inadequacy. It is why he so feared coming home to his father. Deep down, he suspected he was unworthy.

            We all do. We all have that nagging fear that we are not enough. If we are successful, we fear we have not truly earned it… if we lose something, we suspect we are to blame… if we fail in any way, we define ourselves by that failure. Then, to cope with our own misgivings, we often turn it against our brothers and sisters. It is why people who have been hurt turn around and hurt others. Like the brother, we define others by their failures. No time to worry about how bad I am; that guy is worse! How dare our father kill the fatted calf! How dare he! I want justice for my brother’s failings!

            Of course, in one sense the prodigal’s brother is right. The prodigal son did fail. The prodigal son was a poor example of how to live. The prodigal son deserved to be treated poorly. But the story takes an unexpected turn when we discover that the father is not in the sin-accounting business. He prepares the best calf for his return because it was never about the son’s faithfulness—it was always about the father’s propensity for grace.

            That’s the God we’re dealing with here—a God who defines us not by our worst mistakes but by the child in us who turns home trembling at the enormity of the mistakes we have made, because if messed-up people look down upon us for our failures how much more so should the one who gave us good things! And yet! And yet!! God throws away the ledgers and prepares only the best for us.

            And it isn’t fair. My goodness, is it not fair! Fair would be a heavenly ladder with rungs for different levels of faithfulness. The son who stayed home would get the best fatted calf; the prodigal son might get a shrimpy little calf; perhaps another child who left altogether would get nothing. That would be fair. But the kingdom of God is not about ladders.

The history of the Bible is littered with stories that defy this deep-seated expectation that we get what we deserve. The scriptural precedent hearkens back to Leviticus 25 and this principle called “jubilee,” (which I am very aware is part of the name of this church). Jubilee is about wiping the balance sheet clean. It is about the forgiving of debts, erasing the ledger. For Christians, jubilee is a harbinger of grace. It is this that we proclaim in baptism and what we profess to be true about faith in Christ, who came to wipe away all the parts of us that are not enough. The father does not care where the prodigal son has been or what he has been doing, because his is a house of jubilee. Not only does the father not account for the son’s debts; they no longer exist. Crazier still, they never have. The backwards math of the Christian faith is that the further you fall, the higher you rise, because all of us have fallen deeper than we can ever climb on our own. 

            So, I want to take you back to that walk up the hill at Lutherhaven fourteen years ago. That young man had descended deep into the depths of grief. And Lord knows I don’t know 1/10^th of a percent of it. The truth is I have no idea of the enormity of the burden he was carrying. But I do know this: We have a God who meets us in despair and raises us to eternity not to equal the playing field but with the stunning promise that the best is reserved for those who have fallen the furthest. That kid may well have gone on to be like that prodigal son—he certainly seemed on that track—and it feels even heavier to me because he didn’t have a father to come home to… not a father at least on this side of the veil.

             Yet, I also know that God promises us throughout scripture—and maybe nowhere more than in this story—that this boy did have a father to come home to, and it isn’t about the son’s faithfulness… and it isn’t about whether he says all the right words or even really believes any of this stuff at all—it is God who sees him far off—as it says in Luke 15:20: “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.”

The father ran to him! Our God meets us not when we come back, but when we are still far off, still expecting the worst, and it is there that God stuns us with grace—this echo of jubilee—a promise that we are not enough; we never have been; and yet, we are through the God who made us and pursues us despite our doubts.

>            I want to wrap up with a hard word followed a good one. First, the hard word: You can never guarantee that a person who desperately needs to hear about grace will ever get it through their thick skull. Many of us will spend our entire lives sprinting away from the God who we fear will judge us for who we are, even though this very God has no record of the debt we owe. It is often easier to live in a world of ledgers than it is to imagine that God has set us free.

            But here’s the good news: God is not going to stop pursuing you. Even if you never get it. Even if you are a lifelong Lutheran—but like so many of us Lutherans you cannot actually believe that you are worth a darn thing, because we are a people of simple pleasures, who like sipping on coffee that is just weak enough to leave us wanting, lest we might enjoy ourselves a bit too much by adding enough grounds to make coffee properly. It is in our blood to be suspicious of joy. This is how I know that God is not a Lutheran.

At the end of the day—at the end of your life—when you have spent all your precious moments running from grace in search of self-sufficiency—whatever your personal weakness is: thirsting either for power, or money, or a legacy, or simply trying to save yourself—when the race is over and your time on earth is done, God will catch you, because—like the prodigal son—none of us ever fully return. Like that boy who lost his father, none of us behave the way we should. Like the prodigal’s brother, all of us hold other people up to an impossible standard that leaves them wanting. All of that is noise. The father is the party planner, and he has decided exactly who is invited and exactly how lavish the meal will be, and he has proclaimed that the only requirement for entry is that you are a child of God. That is it!

Because children of God are welcomed home—always. No exceptions. This is why the program director at Lutherhaven that summer, Rebecca Smith, would give us a simple order again and again that went like this. “Just love on your campers.” Because you don’t know what they carry. Just love on your campers. Because some of them get none at home. Just love on your campers. Because that is what God does for us.

Personally, I think this isn’t a bad maxim for the rest of our lives as well. The father is throwing the most lavish party for the most poorly-behaved child. Why? Because he loves him. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that.