Coming Home

Coming Home

A pastor in inner-city Chicago described a Sunday service in which a man who had been absent from the church for seven years walked in during the worship. He had struggled with addiction, been imprisoned, and lost everything. He slipped into the back row. After the service the pastor found him and said nothing—just put his arms around the man and held him. The man wept. The congregation found out and a celebration broke out in the lobby — people who had been praying for him for years. The pastor said: 'There was more joy in that lobby than any baptism service we had ever held. Because there was so much more cost behind it.'

The parable of the prodigal son ends not with a tearful private reunion but with a party: music, dancing, celebration. The older son's complaint reveals the father's exuberance was scandalous even to those who should have understood it. But the father's logic is irrefutable: 'He was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' Death to life. Lost to found. These are not small transitions requiring polite acknowledgment. They are resurrections requiring celebration. The father's party is a picture of heaven's response to every sinner who returns home. Heaven parties when we come home. The question the parable leaves with the reader — particularly older brothers who resent the cost of grace for others — is: will you join the party?