Your father's love is waiting...

[AI translation] I promised last Sunday that I would continue the story of the prodigal son and tell the joyful part of it, what happens and how it happens when a man from far away finds his way back home to the Father. The protagonist of the second part of the story is now not so much the boy who returns home, but the Father who welcomes him home and welcomes him back. In this part, the main character is not a prodigal son, but a prodigal Father, a mother who has wasted her love, her goodness, her mercy, her wealth on her undeserving child! Jesus is showing us the heart of our heavenly Father, giving us a glimpse into the innermost feelings and thoughts of God, as if to say: look into the heart of God, people, and see that this is how God thinks of you, how God feels about you! Every step the boy takes towards home is possible because some irresistible force is drawing him home.Last Sunday you heard the hymn, "Your Father's love is waiting for you, his comfort is waiting for you..." Oh, how true it is! Look what happens when that boy, tired, ragged, sighing heavily, stopping, approaches home? "And while he was yet afar off, his father saw him, and his heart fell upon him, and he ran and fell upon his neck, and kissed him." (verse 20) This was a welcome that the boy could not have been prepared for! Is this how they love him?! Is that how they waited?! For then his father stood at the gate all the time, watching the road to see if the one he was waiting for was coming. And he not only stood there, but he runs to meet him, He kisses him, kisses him, the bad boy, as if he, the father, had been to blame, And now he is happy that this debauched beggar returns with empty pockets... It is hard to understand how it is to love thus one who does not deserve it! But that's how he loves you and waits for you! See in this parable our heavenly Father, the Lord who came to earth after us, the Lord who redeemed Himself, who rushed to meet us with outstretched arms, as He proved Himself in the Christmas event, in the humiliation of Good Friday, in the Holy Spirit descending on Pentecost, and in every single sermon! Such is our Father, Who spares no sacrifice when it comes to loving someone back home! Yes: God has come after us, from heaven to earth, and so concretely, so bloodily real, as can be seen and felt in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ! And behold: however strong the instinct to escape from the nearness of God may be in man, even stronger is the Father's love that welcomes us home! As real as man's will to rush to his own destruction is, even more real is the Father's will to seek and keep what is lost. And even if it has become human nature to forget God again and again, it is still the nature of God that the Father loves man with all his heart. And however hard the boy's resistance may be, there is no force in the world harder, more tenacious, more irresistible, than the Father's saving purpose, that compassionate act, which is reflected in these words, 'And he arose and went to his father. And while he was yet afar off, his father saw him, and his heart was moved, and he ran and fell on his neck and kissed him."
This all-forgiving embrace of our Heavenly Father, this rushing towards us with open arms, also means that the decisive step is His towards us, not ours. If He did not draw us, we would never get home. If He didn't call us, we'd still be outside. If He did not seek us, we would never find Him. There is a very profound meaning in what Jesus says to this father in the story, "This my son is lost and found. The Father has found his son! It is so pretentious when a man says of himself: I am a God-seeker. Our God-seeking is not worth much! No, man does not seek God! A wallet, a pair of glasses, an espresso where you can get a good coffee, you look much more carefully... Our so-called search for God is nothing more than a careful avoidance of God, a search for ways to stay at a distance from Him. We are not so much seeking God as running from Him! So that we don't really have to meet...
Someone who could never come to a true decision of faith once said, "When God asks me in eternity where I have been in my life on earth, I will answer him: Do you know what God would say to this man? Maybe he would say: You knew I was always behind you, you knew I was always behind you, but you never wanted to turn around and repent.
He who seeks in earnest will find! Believe me, there is no such thing as a seeker of God, there is only a seeker of God! We are the lost - God is not lost! No one has to look for God. God is there! We are the ones to look for, because we are lost! Separation from Him, independence is what the Bible says: lost! It does not necessarily mean that we are lost, but that we are lost to God. For what we have not served Him with, what we have not used for His glory, is lost to Him! And then salvation, heaven, is lost for us! And this parable speaks of the very fact that God cannot be reconciled to this loss, to the loss of someone. He certainly claims, wants back, wants to get back what has been lost. That is our God! The whole of Luke's Gospel of Luke 15 speaks of this. Whether we have strayed like an unwise sheep; whether we have drifted away from Him through circumstances like a dropped coin; whether we have consciously and willingly separated ourselves from Him like the prodigal son, His wonderful heart wants to love us back to Himself. The most wicked man, who is perhaps no longer worthy of the name of man, is a greater treasure to God than our dearest child is to us. King David of the Bible had many children. Of the many, one was a traitor who sought his father's life outright. And it was the death of this son that almost broke David's paternal heart. Death had taken many of his sons from him, but he did not mourn over any of them as he did over the traitor Absalom.
Here we sense something of God's paternal love. What David could not do for his wicked son to save him from the danger of the end, "Would that I had died for thee," God did for His lost son. This is how Paul says it in his letter to the Romans. (Rom 5:8) So if we are in any way lost to God, we now have the gracious message that He is not lost to us! Witness the broken body and shed blood, the signs of which God is in the habit of distributing to us here at this table. It is the measure of the greatness of the divine love that is doing all it can to reclaim our lost existence. So God waits, so God comes to you! Who can still resist such love, as can be seen on this table at the communion table!
And look, there is even more than that, this Mother Superior does here in this story. In this anticipated, happy moment of encounter, when the boy is about to say the words of apology he had so beautifully thought out on the way home: the father interrupts him. The words are trapped inside him, he can barely speak, his father is already making arrangements: bring the most beautiful dress, cut off the bull, put a ring on his finger, let us eat, let us have fun! He acts as if nothing had ever disturbed the peace and joy of the family, he does not throw up in the boy's face what is past is past! From the first moment he comes home, he restores him to his full rights as a child, as if he had never been out of them... All this is but a beautiful series of pictures illustrating what the Bible calls forgiveness of sins! This is how God forgives! Only God can forgive! How true it is that in the book of the prophet Isaiah we read: "I have blotted out your iniquities like a cloud, and your sins like a cloud; return to me, for I have redeemed you" (Isa 44:22).
Such is the power of the blood of Christ! So complete is forgiveness for you that you can relate to God and He relates to you as if you had never offended Him, as if you had always remained with Him - Yes: that is how He thinks of you, that is how He is waiting for you to come home, with such complete forgiveness! Isn't it true that He makes the decisive step - He has already made it for us. It remains for us only to come to the decision which the boy in the story expressed in this way. "I will go up to my Father and say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. And now I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants" (Lk 15:18-19). Yes, but that's just enough, because to repent, to confess and confess sin: that's the most painful thing in the world! Luther was right when he said that the most painful and sweetest word in the Bible is repentance. It is bitter because my whole being, my human nature, my sense of self, my pride, protests against it. Oh, how terribly difficult it is to get to the point where one can honestly say in the depths of one's soul, "I have sinned! I am not worthy!" It's so hard that sometimes one commits suicide before admitting one's sin to oneself. For this is to accept the greatest shame, this is humiliation, this is the renunciation of all excuses, this is the total surrender of oneself! Yes: it is! But not weakness, but the greatest victory: the conquest of self!
Do you know why there are so few true believers in the Church? It is because very few souls have truly come to the decisive realization that "I have sinned, I am not worthy". Because very few people can truly say, with shame before God, with repentance, that I am to blame: not my circumstances, not the age that has treated me unjustly, not the people who hurt me, not my family that does not understand me, not my friends who have led me astray, not my nature that I have inherited. All of that may have been wrong too, but the bottom line is that I sinned against heaven and against people! Against my people and against my church, against my family and against my enemies. I have sinned! I am not worthy, I deserve no more good, not even as much good as I have! But difficult as this step is, without it there is no true homecoming. True Christianity begins with repentance! It is with a call to repentance that the Christian message was launched into the world. John the Baptist cried out into the wilderness, "Repent your sins, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! This was literally Jesus' first word to the world! To all people today! The missionary sermons of the apostles always culminate in the call to bring your sins to the Lord. This is what God is calling us to do with this Word. The newness that Jesus brought into this world, the beauty, the purity, the joy - always begins so profoundly today.
I know that I cannot lead anyone to repentance. I can't convince anyone of their sins, because it's not even possible with logical arguments, human power and persuasion. Only the love of God can bring me to repentance! But see, you have heard how the Father thinks of you and waits for you. Jesus did not say a word to Zacchaeus about all the wickedness that was in this wicked man's soul, but went and sat down at the table with him. He just showed him how much he loved him, and suddenly Zacchaeus could take it no longer, he began to confess, he poured out his soul!
You too can confess in silent prayer, or in confessional, intimate spiritual conversation, you can tell all that is weighing on your soul and throw all your sins, your failures, your transgressions into the all-consuming great fire of God's love! And then all at once that which was so bitter: oh, how sweet it becomes, for there is no truer joy than the forgiveness of sins won in true repentance! Behold, the biblical story ends like this: they began to rejoice! It is only with the return home that the joyful life really begins, a life whose most ordinary days are enlightened by the solemnity and joy of being at home. The life in which others notice that you solve old problems more serenely, carry old crosses with comfort, there are fewer complaints, more gratitude, you can forgive more quickly, love more tenderly, serve more willingly... Now begins the life that is now useful to God and to men: blessing!
"Your Father's love is waiting, your comfort is waiting,
Come from the far country, O come home!"
Amen
Date: 22 November 1959.