Simply Fellowship — Episode 6: The Waiting Father
Welcome to Above All Love. This is Simply Fellowship — the Good News, quietly told.
This is a gentle space. No pressure, no performance. You don't have to have it together to be here. You don't have to be certain, or hopeful, or even very present today. You're welcome exactly as you are, wherever you are reading this.
If you need to read slowly, or stop and come back — that's completely fine. There's no right way to be here. Just be here.
We begin with a hymn verse. Read it slowly. You might want to sit with each line before moving on.
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou bidst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come. — Charlotte Elliott
Loving God,
Thank you that you do not wait for us to deserve welcome before you offer it.
Thank you that your arms are already open before we have finished our speeches, before we have explained ourselves, before we have made ourselves presentable.
Meet us today in the far country, if that is where we are — or in the long road home, or at the door.
Wherever we are on the journey, let us feel the movement of your love running toward us.
And if we have been standing in the field a long time, watching from a distance, finding it hard to go in — grant us the grace to step across the threshold.
Amen.
"I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants."
— Luke 15:18–19 (NKJV, for context)
But before we reach the son's rehearsed speech, we need to hear the older word that echoes underneath it. The prophet Hosea, writing from within a broken covenant — God's people far from home, scattered, faithless — hears God speak in a way that should not sound like God at all:
This is the heartbeat underneath the parable. The God who cannot let go. The Father who is undone by love. Not a cold sovereign distributing justice from a distance — but one whose heart turns within him at the thought of the lost child.
How can I give you up?It is not a rhetorical question. It is a cry. And it is the cry that sends the father running down the road.
Our reading today is from Luke chapter fifteen, verses eleven to twenty-four, from the Easy English Bible.
He came to himself.
That is the line Luke gives us, quietly, before anything else happens. The turning point in the story is not the speech, not the journey, not the reunion. It is an interior moment — something shifting in the mind of a young man sitting in the mud beside a pig trough, a long way from home. He came to himself.
Which suggests he had, for a time, been somewhere other than himself. Spent. Scattered. Unrecognisable, even to his own heart.
We know that feeling, perhaps. The seasons of life when we have lived so far outside the person we meant to be that coming back requires not just a journey but a recovery of self. The far country is not only a geography. It is a state of soul.
And yet — even in the far country, he remembered. He remembered his father's house. He remembered that there was bread enough, and more than enough. The memory of home is what makes homecoming possible. Even at the furthest reach of the wasted years, something in him still knew the way.
So he rehearses his speech. Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. It is a careful speech. Measured. Modest in its ambition. He is not asking to be received as a son — only to be given a place among the workers. To earn, in some small way, what cannot truly be earned back.
But the father is not listening to the speech.
The father has been watching the road. And when he sees the figure — still a long way off, still dusty and thin and uncertain — he does not wait. He does not compose himself. He does not arrange his dignity. He runs.
A father running in first-century Palestine is not a small thing. It is undignified by the standards of the time. It is the act of a man who has abandoned the performance of respectability because something more important than respectability is coming down the road. He runs, and he falls on his son's neck, and he kisses him before a single word has been spoken.
The speech still comes. The son begins his rehearsed lines. But notice: the father interrupts him. He does not let him get to the hired-servant part. He is already calling for the robe, the ring, the sandals, the feast. The son wanted to earn his way back in. The father refuses to let him.
This is the radicalism of the parable. It is not about second chances — as if the son had one more opportunity to prove himself. It is about a love that cannot be outrun, cannot be forfeited, cannot be earned or un-earned. The robe is given before any work is done. The ring — a sign of sonship, of belonging — is put on the finger of a boy who wanted to be a servant.
The celebration is not for what the son has done. It is for what has happened to him: He was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found.
That is the only criterion. Not the quality of the repentance. Not the adequacy of the speech. Not the length of the road back. The son was lost, and now is found — and that is enough to throw a party.
There is, of course, another son. Standing in the field. Hearing the music. Refusing to go in. Jesus leaves that story unfinished — we do not know if the older brother crosses the threshold. We do not know if the father's gentle words reach him. The parable ends with the door open, the feast going on, and a young man who has a choice to make.
Because this story is told to two kinds of people. To those who have been in the far country and are not sure they are welcome home — it says: the father is already running. And to those who have stayed close, and worked hard, and quietly accumulated a ledger of resentments — it says: everything I have is yours. Come in. The feast is not a threat to you. It is yours too.
The good news in this parable is not only that the lost are welcomed. It is that the welcome is excessive. Unreasonable. Running-down-the-road welcome. Best-robe welcome. Kill-the-fatted-calf welcome. The God of this story does not say: well done, you came back. He says: my son was dead and is alive.
Hosea heard this voice centuries before the parable was told: How can I give you up?
The answer, it turns out, is: I can't. I won't. I never could.
And somewhere down the road — still a long way off, still unsure of our welcome, still rehearsing our speeches — the father is already running.
These aren't questions that need answers. They're just things to hold and sit with. You might want to pause here, step away from the screen for a few minutes, and let them settle.
- I wonder what it felt like to come to himself — and what that moment of clarity was actually like, in the middle of the mud and the hunger?
- I wonder what the father was doing on all the days he watched the road, before his son came home?
- I wonder what the son expected when he finally saw his father — and what it felt like to be run to, rather than waited for?
- I wonder why the father interrupted the speech — and what the son felt when he realised the hired-servant part would never be needed?
- I wonder about the older son in the field, and whether his anger was entirely without reason, and what it would have cost him to go in?
- I wonder if there is a speech I have been rehearsing — something I believe I must say before I can be welcomed — and whether the Father is already at the door before I have finished it?
- I wonder what it would feel like to simply be found?
A Query — in the spirit of the Quaker tradition:
Close your eyes, or look out of a window.
There's no rush. Just rest for a moment.
Before you go — a quiet word.
If you have never followed Jesus, or if faith has felt, for a long time, like something that belongs to better people than you — this parable was not told about better people. It was told about a boy in a pig field who had made a thorough mess of things. The welcome in the story is not conditional on the quality of the mess you made, or how long you were away, or how far you travelled.
If you want to respond to that love today, you might simply say, in your own words or in the quiet of your heart:
I am coming to myself. I am remembering the way home. And I am willing to be surprised by who comes running to meet me.
And if you already walk with Jesus — if you have been welcomed home before and perhaps need welcoming again, or if you have been standing in the field for a long time, dutiful and faintly resentful — the father's words are for you too: You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
The feast is not a competition. The robe is not a threat. The door is open. The music is already playing.
Come in.
May you know today that you are not beyond the reach
of a love that runs down roads.
May something in you come to itself —
some forgotten corner that has been in the far country a long while —
and may it remember the way home.
May you find, on the road,
that the welcome is already moving toward you.
And may you receive, without earning,
the robe, the ring, and the feast —
and hear it said of you, in whatever language your heart speaks:
This one was lost, and is found.
Was dead, and is alive again.
Above all, love.
Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment
What sayest thou?