The Father Who Ran

The Pharisees were grumbling again. "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them!" Jesus had already told them about a lost sheep and a lost coin, so he told a third story, and this time the lost thing was a son.

"There was a man who had two sons," Jesus said. "The younger one said, 'Father, give me my share of everything now.'"

(A son was supposed to get his share when his father died. Asking for it early was nearly the same as saying, "I wish you were gone already.")

So the father divided everything between them. The younger one soon went off to a far country and wasted every coin on wild living. Then the money ran out, and a famine came.

He went to work for a farmer there, who sent him out to feed pigs. (God's people were not even allowed to eat pork, so this was as low as a job could go.) He was so hungry he wanted the pigs' bean pods.

At last he came to his senses. "My father's hired workers have more bread than they can eat, and here I am, starving! I'll go home and say, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I don't deserve to be called your son. Make me one of your hired workers.'"

So he got up and started for home.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and his heart filled up with love, and he ran. He threw his arms around that pig-smelling boy and kissed him.

"Father," the son began, "I have sinned against heaven and against you. I don't deserve to be called your son..."

He never got to the part about the hired workers.

"Quick!" the father called to the servants. "Bring the best robe! A ring for his finger, sandals for his feet! Kill the calf we've been fattening, and let's have a feast! This son of mine was dead, and he is alive again. He was lost, and now he is found!"

The older son was coming in from the field when he heard music and dancing. A servant told him, "Your brother is home, and your father has killed the fattened calf!"

The older brother went red and would not go in. So his father came out and begged him to come in.

"Look!" the son burst out. "All these years I've worked like a slave for you and never once disobeyed. You never gave me even a goat for a party with my friends. But this son of yours wasted your money, and you kill the fattened calf for him!"

"My son," the father said, "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to be glad. Your brother was dead and is alive again. He was lost, and now he is found."

There Jesus stopped. (Did the older brother go in? Jesus didn't say. The grumblers stood right in front of him, and the father in the story was still outside, asking.)

Jesus had made that father up, along with the robe and the ring and the calf.

But the one telling it went out after people for real. He ate at tax collectors' tables. He went to the Pharisees' suppers too, and kept asking them in.

On his last night with his friends, Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father."

"Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father," Jesus answered.

The father running down the road, the father outside begging the angry son to come in: Jesus was showing the grumblers God. Before long he would stretch out his arms on a cross, for the son who ran away and for the son who would not come in.