Luke 15:20 While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.
Jesus' parable of the lost son in Luke chapter 15 can be read in a larger context than the redemption of the individual. In this parable Jesus has retold the story of the whole human race, and promised nothing less than hope for the world. In the parable, the younger brother goes off into a distant country expecting a better life but is disappointed. He begins to long for home, remembering the food in his father's house. So do we all.
"Home" exercises a powerful influence over human life. Many people have fond memories of times, people and places we called home. However, if we ever have an opportunity to get back to those places, we are usually disappointed. Home is a powerful and elusive concept.
"Home," Robert Frost famously said, "is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." The younger brother, however, knows that a successful return is not inevitable. Why? His sins have created a barrier and he does not know how that wall can be breached. He knows he might be rejected and stay in exile.
Jesus had not come to simply deliver one nation from political oppression, but to save all of us from sin, evil and death itself. He came to bring the human race "Home." He came and experienced the exile that we deserved. Unlike the founder of any other major faith, Jesus holds out hope for ordinary human life. There will be a homecoming. Our future is not an ethereal, impersonal form of consciousness. We will not float through the air, but rather will eat, embrace, sing, laugh and dance in the kingdom of God, in degrees of power, glory and joy that we can't at present imagine.
Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living "east of Eden," always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the Father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be brought into the feast.
The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller, pgs. 90-104
