Coming home

Have you ever experienced ‘coming home’?  Or coming back to the place that you always feel at home after a long time apart.  It could be studying or working abroad and coming home once a year.

Today’s gospel contains a core message of the teaching of Jesus, which we know as the story of the Prodigal Son.  It could also be called the story of the Forgiving Father.  My personal title for this parable would be the story of ‘coming home’.  In itself, ‘coming home’ is not only carrying the meaning for this particular passage of Luke, but also it is a summary of the whole gospel or the purpose of Jesus’s mission – the mission of inviting people to ‘come home’ with God.

Please notice how today’s gospel begins, all the outcasts – the tax collectors and the sinners – of his day gathered around Jesus, and he welcomed them, and he sat down to eat with them.  It was when the religious leaders complained about this that Jesus responded with this ‘coming home’ story.  It was a very strong, a very brave, and a very clear response, that left them in no doubt about where he stood regarding such people.

The Prodigal Son – the younger brother got it wrong, very wrong.  To this day, the Jews consider pigs as unclean.  For this young man to end up feeding pigs was bad enough, but to end up sharing their food with them was the lowest degree.  This man had really hit rock bottom, and, in human terms, there was no hope or future for him.  There was one thing that saved him.  He remembered, he remembered what it used to be like.  This set in motion a whole line of thought that brought him to his senses.  In other words, he opened his eyes and saw, he opened his ears and heard, he reached out his hand and touched his surroundings, and he smelt the stench of the situation in which he was.  In other words, he came to his senses.  He headed for home, for the only place where he had ever experienced love.  The love was still there, and his father rushed out to meet him.  No condemnation, no lectures, no scolding, just the whole world was in the warm hug.  The son had prepared a speech, but he had only begun when his words were swallowed in his father’s embrace.  A festive meal was prepared, he was dressed in the finest clothes, and, very significantly, his father ordered that he be given new sandals.  The new journey begins with these new sandals.

And then there was the second son in whom I would like to challenge you, if you were the second son; what would you do?

The gospel is a message to all of us to come home; to come home is to come to truth, to love, to forgive, to allow for being forgiven, to belong to the family of God.  Coming home to God is to experience his hug, his welcoming and his gentleness.  Let us turn this around – it doesn’t matter who you are, just come home.

By Fr Trac Nguyen