THE FATHER RUNS TO YOU

Transcript

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Hello everyone. This is Pastor Dean Thompson with a word of hope. The father runs to you. And she arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Luke chapter fifteen verse twenty. Jesus told a parable to make a single point that the Father will not wait for the prodigal to arrive. He runs. To understand how astonishing this is, we have to slow down at the village gate. In first century Middle Eastern culture, an elderly patriarch did not run. To run was undignified. It required hitching up the long robe, bearing the legs, sprinting like a child or a slave. Kenneth Bailey, who spent decades among Middle Eastern villagers, villages studying these parables, observed that no respectable father would have done this. The custom would have been to remain in the house and let the wayward son walk the long, shaming way home through the village its himself, where neighbors who knew his disgrace would cheer. But this father runs. He runs because he sees the boy a great way off. That phrase carries weight. The father has been watching through every season of the prodigal's rebellion. While the village had moved on, the father had not. He was waiting at the window. The instant figure appears on the horizon. The instant the figure appears on the horizon, he was out the door. He runs because of compassion. The Greek splagnitzomai is one of the most physical words in the New Testament. It's come from splant splant. The inner organs, intestines, viscera, the gut. Compassion in Greek is not a polite sentiment, it is a feeling that doubles you over. The father does not feel sorry for his son, he feels it in his body. He runs to absorb the shame. By reaching the boy first, the father takes upon himself the village's shaming gaze. He shields his son from the gauntlet of contempt. The kiss, the verbio, repeated and fervent, is a public declaration. This one is mine. And notice the careful detail. The prodigal had rehearsed the speech Make me as one of thy hired servant. But he never gets to deliver the first line about being a hired servant. The father interrupts him. The relationship is restored before the speech is finished. The robe, the ring, the shoes, the feast, all of it is not earned. It is given. Henry Newen, gazing at Rembrandt's painting of this scene in the Hermitage, called it the homecoming we are all after. Tim Keller observed that there are two ways to be lost the way of the younger son, rebellion, and the way of the older son, self righteousness. Both need the father's welcome. Both need the same grace. Whatever you have done, however far you have wandered, the road home is shorter than you think. The father is already running. Oh God our Father, we have wandered, but we are coming home. Run close, please. Welcome us. We are yours. Amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters.