Welcomed Back Home With Wide Open Arms

[Note: Today’s guest blogger is Kateri Boucher. Kateri writes: Kateri Boucher is so grateful to have grown up in the Spiritus Christi community. She now lives in Detroit, Michigan (Waawiiyaatanong), and is a seminary student and Postulant for Priesthood in the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan. Thank you, Kateri!]

Note: The Prodigal Son story (from Luke 15) was featured in last Sunday’s blog post, and will be featured again today in alignment with the Episcopal lectionary that I follow. As my dad wrote in his reflection last week, “I am not sure that we can hear this story enough.” 

And now, fittingly, I have to start with a little shout-out to my dad… 

I have a very distinct memory from one of my early years of driving. I had driven my dad’s mini-van to a youth group event at DUPC, and was reveling in the freedom of being able to get to and from church without rides from my parents. I parked in that back parking lot behind the church, which, as you may know, is quite narrow. Getting in was fine, but on the way out… Not so much. 

I found myself backing up too close to a yellow metal pole, and suddenly heard the gut-wrenching screeeeech of metal on metal. Panicking, I tried to go the opposite direction to get out, but instead succeeded in pulling the car even further against the pole. By the time I managed to drive out of the lot a few minutes later, I’d given my dad’s car what we might call an “extreme makeover” – covering one side of it with fresh yellow scrapes that stretched practically from bumper to bumper. And I felt awful. 

I called my dad, near-tears, and explained what had happened. He paused for a moment and I held my breath, expecting to be met with frustration or disappointment. But to my surprise, he didn’t express any of that (at least not aloud to me!). He simply said, “Well… We live and we learn.” 

Tears came tumbling out as I felt the grace in my dad’s words. 

Yes, the car would need repairs. Yes, there were certainly lessons to be learned. But this mistake didn’t have to be the end of the story; I was allowed to change and grow. Even after all these years, I still come back to that moment sometimes, remembering the power of being met with such love and forgiveness when I felt so ashamed about what I’d done. 

And I often think of this moment when I re-read the story of the Prodigal Son. 

Although we don’t hear many details about it, I can only imagine how it must’ve felt for the “tax collectors and sinners” to join the crowds gathering around Jesus as he preached. At this point, he’d become somewhat of a minor celebrity, with word of his miracles and authority spreading across the towns in Galilee. Even the Pharisees and other religious elites were coming out to hear what this holy man had to say. And I imagine these elites had no problem showing up to the crowds, assuming themselves worthy and maybe even entitled to proximity with Jesus. After all, they were the “real” spiritual authorities in the land – of course they had a right to be in the middle of any spiritual action! 

But those who were considered “sinners” may not have felt so sure of their place. Whether they felt they had done anything wrong or not, their status as “sinners” would have kept them relegated to the margins of religious and social life, viewed as irredeemable and unworthy of proximity to holiness. I imagine them approaching Jesus with uncertainty, caution, fear, or shame – maybe hanging on the outskirts of the crowd, just close enough to hear, or keeping their head down for fear of being seen. 

I imagine it already felt like a vulnerability, a risk, just to show up and try to hear this man speak. And then it gets worse: the Pharisees start grumbling, probably a little too loudly, about all the sinners in the crowd, admonishing Jesus for associating with such lowlifes. 

In the moment before Jesus responds, I imagine the “sinners” holding their breaths. What would he say? Would their deepest fears be confirmed? Would they be called out as disgraceful, unworthy, beyond redemption? 

But no. Jesus doesn’t do any of that. Instead, he tells these three parables, culminating in the story of the Prodigal Son. I imagine the “sinners” standing on the outskirts of the gathering, and Jesus looking right at them across the crowds as he says, “But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around his son and kissed him.” 

I imagine tears coming to their eyes as they realized the implications of this story on their own lives. This son, the “sinner” of the story, was not found to be irredeemable at all, but was welcomed back home with wide open arms. Their mistakes did not have to be the end of their story; they were allowed to come home, to return, to learn and change and grow.

In our culture today, where rampant shame runs alongside structures of mass incarceration and punishment, any mistake we make can feel like the end of the story. We may feel ourselves to be irredeemable or unworthy of love, and the social structures around us may even reinforce this message. But Jesus’s words cut straight through these fears. No matter what mistakes we have made, no matter how far we have gone from home, we are never too far to return. There is one who is always waiting to welcome us back with open arms. They may throw us a big party and invite all the neighbors. Or they may just look at us with a wry smile and shrug, saying, “Well… We live and we learn.”