"I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son: treat me like one of your hired hands.' " (Luke 15:18-19.)
Yet the father called him "son." The father treated him so, even before the son had reached home and confessed. For the father ran to the son, far off, to embrace and kiss him: overtures of love and signs of peace, father to son. The father knew well what the son had done to him in leaving, but he did not start with the question whether the son was worthy or not. The father started with the relationship: parent and child. The father started with the son as son, as child, beloved in intimate and incontrovertible familial relationship, before any performance or achievement of the child. On this basis the father, rising from his sorrow and loss, went to the son to assure him of home.
So it is with God, with us as God’s children. We have life from the beginning entirely as gift. Then when we depart from God, from this gift, for the trough of a far country, God, grieved and aggrieved, yet comes to embrace and kiss us, to clothe us with riches of love and peace, parent to child, renewed and restored; the sacrifice, worthwhile. And thus we have life in the end entirely as gift, as grace, as festival beyond measure.
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