The Return of the Prodigal - October 18
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 25; PM Psalm 9, 15; Jer. 44:1-14; 1 Cor. 15:30-41; Matt. 11:16-24
This past month, I have found myself returning to a book that has been meaningful at two other junctures in life. In my Tuesday readings group, we are exploring Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. It is a series of reflections based on Nouwen’s own life and his time at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg in reflection with Rembrandt’s painting based on the story of the Bible about the prodigal. This is the story where the younger brother returns from a life of squandering away all that he had, and the older brother is upset in the father’s welcome and loving embrace (Luke 15:11-32).
One of the gifts of Nouwen’s series of reflections is his ability to weave his life through each of the characters in the story and to help the reader reflect on their own place in the story at different points in their life. He begins with the youngest son, the prodigal who squanders everything and returns home to this boundless grace of God’s compassionate love. Some of the same words spoke an important truth into my life when I first read this book fifteen years ago today as those underlined words come to life again. “Leaving home is not a historical event bound to time and place but a denial of spiritual reality that we belong to God with every part of our being.” And we leave looking for affirmation, or justification to wander with a profound sense of loneliness. This is the easiest metaphor in the book.
In the second part of the book, Nouwen moves to reflect on the older brother, the one who stayed back. He aptly recognizes in words that strike me more today that the story is also about the leaving of the older son, that while he is still on the farm, is unable to root out his resentment, that has become too deeply anchored so that he has also left home. The older son is standing outside of the circle of love, refusing to enter back into the gift of the father.
In the final section, Nouwen helps the reader to learn to embrace the father as a way of being and to see our own capacity to love, to celebrate, and enter the joy that God’s love has invited others into. While a logical progression to make, it’s amazing how easy it is to see ourselves as the brothers and ignore our own agency to be the one who receives homecoming.
When we selected this book for my Tuesday reading class, I was looking for a classic that might have broad appeal. Maybe God’s hand was a little more intentional than my own random selection. I wonder how much of this next chapter of pandemic will be focused on homecoming. As we welcome others back into our lives, the risk of resentment, as warranted as it might feel, and an ignorance to see our capacity to receive others as the greatest gift that can be offered, the story of the prodigal can give us much to consider.
I hear the story underneath Psalm 25, read this morning in Morning Prayer. There is a beckoning call for God to lead us and teach us, and for us to remember god’s love and compassion that extend far beyond “the sins of my youth and my transgressions… for the sake of [God’s] goodness. The shift that Nouwen’s reflection offers us, and by extension, into the reading of Psalm 25, is the movement of focus from God’s welcoming home, to see ourselves as the ones who can extend God’s same welcome to others. Will others know God’s compassion and love as everlasting, if that is not practiced by us? Maybe. But we certainly don’t want to get in the way!
My hope over the next year is that we find ourselves in a place or welcoming people back into our lives with the same compassion that God extends each of us.
Faithfully,
John+
Questions for Self-Reflection: What stories of homecoming come to mind after today’s reflection? What does post-pandemic homecoming mean to you?
Daily Challenge: Read the story of the Prodigal in Luke’s Gospel. Name all of the places you see yourself in the story. Consider where you want to see yourself in the story and what it would take to get there.