“You can’t go home again.” This phrase, the title of a Thomas Wolfe novel, tells a sad story. It tells the truth about the way of all flesh. When you leave home, in some sense you leave it for good. When you come back for a visit, it has changed. The tree in the front yard has been cut down. You have changed. You have grown. But even if you never leave home, if you stay in the same place, home will leave you. Things will change. People are born and people die. Buildings burn and relationships change. Home as you remember it from your childhood doesn’t exist any more. 

While there is this tragic, sad side to going home, there is a joyful side as well. Home may not be the same after you leave, but there is nothing like coming home, receiving a warm welcome, and having your favorite food sitting on the dining room table and everyone glad to see you.   

In this parable, the younger son, the so-called prodigal son, doesn’t expect to be able to come home again. He knows everything he has done. He asked his father for his share of his inheritance before his dad was even dead. He gathered everything he had so he wouldn’t ever have to come back. And he left. He went to a far country. We don’t know why he did this. Was there a problem he wanted to run away from, or did he just have a restless spirit or a traveling bone? But things did not go so well in the far country. He squandered everything in dissolute living. He partied, he lived for the moment. But the moment was soon gone, and he was left with nothing. Then a famine hit that land, and he was left with nothing in a land with nothing. So he fed pigs. When this younger son realized that the pigs were eating better than he was, he decided to go home. Not to return to reclaim his role as his father’s son. But to become a hired hand. He knew he couldn’t go home again in the full sense. He just hoped he could live in the shadow of home. So he began the long journey home. I bet his imagination was running wild about what would happen.   

That wouldn’t be an easy journey, would it? At some point, all of us have probably had to make a similar trip. We know we’ve made a mistake that would be disappointing. Maybe we’ve broken something very valuable or made a bad grade on a report card, or we’ve made a decision that would be hard on our parents. We’ve dreaded how they would react. And if we had siblings, we might have dreaded their reaction more. 

Well, the prodigal son had plenty to dread on his return trip. Maybe more than we imagine from just reading the text. Kenneth Bailey is a scholar of Middle Eastern culture who has been in dialog with Muslims about this parable. Muslims have said to him that this parable proves God can forgive without a cross. Bailey says that a wealthy Middle Eastern farmer would not have lived out in the country, as we might assume, but in a village. Maybe at the end of the main road. According to Bailey, you’ve got to walk through the village to get to the home. So the scene is not of just two people, the prodigal son and his father, meeting in an open field. The scene is not an intimate moment between father and son. 

So perhaps the son is not just worried about his father’s reaction, but about the entire village. He knows he is going to have to walk down the gauntlet of people on both sides of the road who don’t understand what he did—how he disgraced his father and turned his back on his family. Perhaps this prodigal imagines what they will say about him. He’s a bad seed—what a disgrace, how can he show his face here again? It’s an intimidating prospect—to run the gauntlet. 

Have you ever run a gauntlet like that? Maybe if you played football or basketball and the cheerleaders formed one for you. The one I know of best is at the end of 5-Ks and 10-Ks, and especially marathons. How long the gauntlet is depends on how many runners there are in the race. But it can be a wonderful experience. After miles and miles of pain and lonely streets, you see all the people gathered there. Family and friends await, hundreds of people cheer. And you see exhausted runners pick up the pace, some almost sprinting to the finish line. People say it is their favorite part of the race. Unless you are having a bad race. 

I recently ran the Cowtown Marathon a few Saturdays ago, and it did not go well. My foot ached, my legs throbbed, and I wanted to quit. I looked forward to the finish line, but not the gauntlet. I knew other runners would be picking up the pace, and I just couldn’t. I imagined Elizabeth’s face full of disappointment that she had to wait 45 extra minutes for me to finish. I dreaded that gauntlet. For good reason, as it turns out. As I neared the finish line, I was getting passed on both sides by everyone, it felt like—men and women, young and old. The cheers of the crowd felt like jeers. And one particular woman really bothered me. She sprinted past me, giving me an encouraging “You can do it!” on her way. I learned from her tank top that her name was Sue. It was her birthday, and she was “fifty-five and fabulous.” Running the gauntlet can feel wonderful or absolutely dreadful. It depends on where you are with things. 

So imagine the scene. The prodigal is walking up the road that enters the village. He sees his father’s house, but he sees all the people outside, sweeping off their porches. Whispers are exchanged; people are called out from inside the houses. Everyone stares at him. They look at him with surprise, saying, “Can you believe he would come back?” with disappointment, “What a scoundrel” and with anger, “What nerve, showing back up here.” Maybe he wants to turn around. 

But then he catches a glimpse of his father. He expects him to stay in front of the house, but instead he begins to run toward him, bounding through the village. All of a sudden, no one is looking at the son with surprise and judgment because they are looking at the father. He’s making a fool of himself. No one is thinking of the shame of the son, but of the father. The father reaches the son, embraces him, kisses him, and welcomes him. According to Kenneth Bailey, that’s where the cross is in this parable. The father takes on the shame of the son, running the gauntlet in his place. 

The son says, “I’m not worthy to be called your son.” And the father says, “Nonsense. Bring out a robe and the family ring.” In this very public way, the father welcomes home his younger son. Apparently the village joins in the joy of the father as they dance to music and feast on the fatted calf. 

The story is not over. In recent years Christians have turned with renewed attention to the older brother. The one who never left home, who worked hard in the fields, who always obeyed his father and who never had a party thrown for him. When he hears the sounds of the party, it isn’t music to his ears. It sounds like betrayal. It is unfair. And though he hasn’t wandered miles away, he refuses to come home because home isn’t what it should be. 

Surely this was embarrassing, too. Everyone’s at the party except the older brother. His absence is conspicuous. So the father goes out once again, this time to his other son. You can feel the heaviness of the moment. The older brother says, “I’ve done everything right, but this wasteful son of yours has come back, and he gets a party.” Notice that the brother says, “this son of yours.” The father says to this son, “Dear child, all I have is yours. But we have to celebrate because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life. He was lost and is found.” In other words, the father says, “I have enough love for you, too. Come home. This is your brother who has come home, your flesh and blood. Celebrate with us.”   

At the center of this parable is the father of the two brothers. The father goes out to both of his sons—one in a public and powerful way, running through the village with wild abandon. The other is a quiet moment of tender pleading and reassuring. In their own way, both sons leave home. And in ways appropriate to them both, the father invites them both back.

That’s the good news in this parable. Because in our way every last one of has left home—our home in God. Paul says, “All have sinned and fall short.” Isaiah says, “We all like sheep have gone astray.” We may have wandered a long way from home, and there is a vast distance between us. Or we might have gone just a few steps, but the distance in our heart is great. God goes out to us all. Maybe in a great, public way, visible to everyone. Or maybe in the stillness of a quiet place. God comes to us all. 

Of course we have a part to play in coming home. The younger son had to come to his senses, turn toward home and confess his wrongdoing, not to mention to face the possible embarrassment and shame involved in returning. The elder son, if he’s going back home, will have to set aside his judgments and be willing to go to the party that isn’t for him. 

But neither of these parts would be enough if it weren’t for the father, who was willing to be a public spectacle to accept and protect his youngest son. And who was willing to plead and face the anger of his older son. 

That’s the way it is for us. We all have a part to play in returning home. We confess our sins and yield to God’s embrace. But this is nothing we can deserve or claim on our own. Even if we’ve observed a strict Lenten season, taking time for prayer and confession, fasting from food or something else, this doesn’t guarantee our welcome home. It might prepare us to accept our welcome more, but it will not guarantee it. Our welcome is in God’s hands. It is only God, God’s abounding steadfast love and mercy, that causes this. It is only God, this God who runs out to us, who is willing to look bad to welcome us home and who takes a break from the party to invite us face to face.           

Actually, the Gospel is better than the parable. Because the father searches out only the older son, not the younger one. He waits for him but doesn’t search for him. But according to the Gospel, God entered the far country in Jesus Christ, seeking us out in our hunger and misery. God went to the far country to bring us back. Not only does the God run to us with wild abandon and plead with us in the quiet dark, but Jesus went into the far country to sit beside us in our difficult places. 

So wherever you are, if you are coming in from a long trip, God runs to you. In Jesus Christ, God runs the gauntlet for you. If you are not far from the door, God pleads with you. Come home. “You can’t go home again?” With you and me, impossible. But with God … even this is possible.