I’m not a pastor. I’m not some “spiritual head” of some family, biological or spiritual or otherwise. I’m not a father.
Or am I?
I recently read Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son for my new online book club with Your Other Brothers, and this book broke me. Wrecked me from one section to the next. I suppose that makes the book meaningful, one of my all-time favorites; it certainly wasn’t a joyride, though.
It’s easy to read Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son and identify with one son or the other. Who among us hasn’t “prodigaled” in some manner, short- or long-term?
Maybe we haven’t run away from home and completely forsaken the father like the younger son, taken his inheritance and essentially wished his own father dead.
But we’ve all strayed for a time. We’ve all looked at things we shouldn’t or said things we shouldn’t or otherwise let our bodies and minds be our masters for certain seasons.
We’ve given into our inclinations. Our wills. Our ways or, well, the highways.
I’ve certainly been the prodigal son for many seasons of my life. Bouts with pornography or digital promiscuity. General apathy for Scripture or prayer or worship or any time spent with the Father.
But I never seem to wander too far. I always seem to come right back. Please don’t take that for a pat on my own back; I deem it as grace chasing me down, whether I like it or not.
I do like it. This grace. Though I don’t deserve it.
I just wonder why I have it but so many others seemingly do not.
Temporary prodigal seasons aside, I’ve most associated with the older son in the story. And apparently I’m not alone. Turns out the vast majority of our book club also identified with the older son. The dutiful son. The joyless son. The “I deserve more” son.
Yes, that’s me. That’s me to a tee.
I rarely got in trouble at school or at home. I was valedictorian of my high school and got Dean’s List every semester of college. I completed all my assignments and tasks on time and always “tended the fields,” so to speak.
I’m the oldest child in my biological family, and I feel a deep-seated sense of responsibility that comes with the territory; I can’t escape it across my whole life.
I do what I’m told. I don’t argue. I play by the rules.
Which makes it so aggravating when others do not. I despise these rule-breakers. These wild, irresponsible ones. I cannot grasp how someone refuses to do the obvious right thing.
Stop complaining about your lot in life and follow the Father, dammit.
Nouwen’s words about the older son hit me harder and harder as I read: a son shrouded in his own self-righteousness, so much so that he couldn’t even bring himself to enter his father’s house for the party of the century — all because it was in his younger brother’s honor.
The irresponsible brother. The reckless one. The forever marked and undeserving one.
I realize this next statement may come across as incredibly self-righteous (I am the older son, after all), but here goes nothing: I feel a persistent judgmental attitude toward people who abandon their faith and their convictions. The modern-day prodigals in our midst.
When pastors no longer profess faith in any sort of the divine. When worship artists renounce the lyrics they once penned. When friends I’ve deeply treasured as gifts from the Almighty walk away from Jesus.
I get sad. I’ve wept. And then I’ve gotten angry. How could they do this? Betray us? Betray me? Betray God, most of all? Why — why would they willingly walk away from His open arms? From home?
It’d be one thing if this sort of thing happened once or twice in a lifetime from my vantage as the older brother. But the prodigals keep prodigal-ing. One younger brother after another for the last 5-6 years, and it gets more unbearable every time. It doesn’t stop.
God, make it stop. Can’t You do something? Anything??
And yet Nouwen makes Christ’s parable clear: the father will not force his love on his children. Will not restrict anyone at home with him as the vast horizon beckons.
And yet I do feel kinda restricted. Can I say that? Am I allowed to confess such a thing?
Did the older brother in the story feel so duty-bound that he could have never possibly left? Was there ever a chance of his leaving, even if he’d “wanted” to?
Nouwen makes clear his belief that the older son was just as “lost” as the younger — a prodigal in his own right. A man so lost in his dogoodery that all sense of delight and joy and belonging had been warped from his outlook. So warped that he couldn’t even bring himself to the party despite his father’s pleas.
“All I have is yours,” the father reminds his son, urges him; and yet all he has apparently isn’t enough.
The plot twist of the book is Nouwen’s charge that we aren’t merely to identify with the lost younger son or the lost older son. But we are to identify with the founding father. Becoming more like him as we walk this road.
We are to be ones who create home for other people. Ones who keep them safe and warm. Ones who always welcome them in. Even — especially — after they leave.
We are called to look to the horizon and watch for those who’ve run away. We’re to be ones who receive the long lost returning home at long last. The ones with wide open arms. The ones who throw the best parties.
After many years of being the older son, I feel this charge to be the father like never before. And I feel utterly inept to do so.
For the last five years I’ve been building up this little community called Your Other Brothers. A not-so-little-anymore place — dare I say a refuge, a home — for fellow Jesus-followers who also experience homosexuality. For five years now, our community has grown from a dozen or two folks to a couple hundred around the world. Untold thousands more in podcast downloads and website hits.
While I couldn’t have ever launched this site without a lot of help, I’ve taken more of the reins of this community in recent years. I continue to get a lot of help, of course, for which I’m so grateful.
But it increasingly feels like if I were to die in a car accident tomorrow, this thing would crumble to the ground. Who would take over the farm? Who would tend the fields? Who would welcome the lost in search of home?
For all intents and purposes, I feel like a father who can never die. Certainly an older brother who can never leave. How could I? How could I ever abandon this refuge, this vital home for so many?
My duty makes it unbearable when people — friends I’ve called “brothers” — leave this home I’ve created. It’s hard not to take it as a personal assault. Like I’m doing something wrong. Or like I’m wrong. Even though plenty of people have gone out of their way to assure me they’re “just in a different place” now.
No hard feelings. But goodbye.
It’s gut-wrenching. It kills me. These brothers-no-longer who go away to these so-called different places, again and again and again — while I remain at home, some older brother / now father hybrid.
How the hell does the father survive the heartache of this story? His own flesh and blood abandoning him, wishing him dead? How does he wake up day after day, week after week, month after month, a regular spot at the table now void?
And how does he possibly run to his returning son “from a long way off”? With what strength left is the father even running?
I’ve never personally experienced a prodigal’s return to my life. I don’t know how I’d respond. But I can’t imagine running to him from a long way off is in my top-5 possibilities of an automatic response.
God, give me the grace. I’m only human. And I’m just so worn.
I feel called to be the father — more than ever, I do — and yet it’s the most daunting undertaking I could ever fathom facing.
I’m weary of leaders running away. I’m weary of friends and brothers running away. I’m weary of growing a home while setting one less seat at the table, one after the other, stuck at home while all my younger brothers get to go out and be wild for a while, maybe the rest of their days.
I don’t particularly want to run away with the restless ones. But I also don’t want to extend myself to brothers and sons only to feel the blows of separation that may never heal this side of eternity.
Beyond the older brother, I’m now weary of being a father who cannot force his love on anyone. A brother tending to the fields, a father looking to the horizon. Weary of wondering whether I could ever properly welcome such a prodigal home.
