The Dad in the Driveway

The man stood in the driveway and watched. It was the last place he had seen his son.

The neighbors shook their heads. “He’s not being realistic” was one of the more tactful comments. “One of the stages of grief is denial,” said another.

“It’s been five years,” said a third. “I think he needs psychiatric help. Something inside him must have snapped.”

Every day, the man came to the driveway and stood for a long time. Sometimes he brought a lawn chair and paged through a photo album, talking to himself, sometimes weeping. The neighbors used to talk with him, but they got tired of hearing the same old stories.

“If you ever get lost, don’t wander around trying to find me,” he used to tell his children. “Just go back to the last place we were together, and that’s where I’ll be looking for you.” So he waited in his driveway, the last place he and his son were together.

“You were a good Dad,” one neighbor told him. “You did everything you could for your son. But he was an adult and made his own decisions. It’s not your fault.”

“I know that,” said the dad in the driveway. “But I still hope to see him. Maybe he’ll drive by, not sure he’ll be welcome, and I can greet him before he changes his mind and drives off.”

“Not much chance of that,” said the neighbor. “You let him have your retirement fund and he took off. For all we know, he went to Thailand. He made a fool out of you and he’s not coming back. Why would he even think he might be welcome?”

“Because he’s my son.”

Relationships gone awry

Throughout history and across the cultures, parents have poured their lives into their children. In some cultures, the polite greeting is not “how are you?” but “how is your family?” Life is good if the family is doing well.

The greatest human joys come from marriage and family. Many people consider their own life to be a success only if their children are happy and successful. As the parents grow older, they look to the young. As they die, they look forward to seeing their loved ones again. Even their hopes for the afterlife revolve around relationships.

Family relationships help make a person’s life satisfying—but when things go wrong, they also bring our greatest regrets and frustrations. When the people we spend the most time with, give the most to, and who know us best turn against us, we feel like we’ve failed. We try again, hoping that this time we’ll do a little better, have a little less conflict and a little more joy. We desperately want our relationships to succeed.

That’s because we were created to love and to be loved. “God is love,” the Bible tells us, and we were made “in the image of God.” God made us in such a way that our relationships can reflect what he is. That is why, whether we are rich or poor, life revolves around relationships. That is why, when family and friendships are doing well, life is good—and when our relationships turn sour, life is not so good. It’s our heritage.

Jesus used various illustrations to teach people about God. God is like this, he might say, or God is like a person who did such and so. But the stories he told were often quite odd. God is not quite what we expect him to be. (Of course! That’s why Jesus told the story in the first place, because we needed to learn something new.) God doesn’t do what a “normal” human father does. (Of course! Human fathers are not perfect. Jesus is trying to point out ways in which God is better than we expect.)

In one of Jesus’ stories about God, there is a character similar to “the dad in the driveway.” As you might suspect, I’m going to tell you that story and talk about what it tells us about God.

But I’ll warn you right up front that you might find it a bit hard to believe. Oh, you’ll see that this is indeed the way Jesus told the story, and this is the way that he portrayed God. But you might find it hard to believe that God is really as crazy as the dad in the driveway. When Jesus first told the story, I doubt that his audience believed him, either.

“Truth is stranger than fiction,” people say. Sometimes our perception of reality is so distorted that only a good story can help us grasp the truth. This is what Jesus did in his parables. He told an intriguing story to help us see God in a new way. I’ll let you decide whether it is too good to be true.

The setting of the story

The story is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15, and Luke tells us why Jesus told this story: “Tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (verses 1-2).

Tax collectors were the white-collar criminals of the first century: using the power of Roman soldiers to extort money from the Jewish people, skimming off a considerable percentage to make themselves wealthy, and draining the economy to send money to Rome. They were viewed as Mafiosi, or traitors—rich, but not respectable.

And “sinners” were all the common people who didn’t care much for religious rules. They were people who hung around the bar instead of going to church. As you might expect, the religious leaders didn’t care too much for them, either. And yet Jesus was spending all his time with the riffraff, instead of going to church committees, Bible studies and prayer meetings.[1]

“Birds of a feather flock together,” some said. “People are known by the company they keep. Jesus hangs around with them because he likes booze and cheap women.”

And because of criticism like this, Jesus told a parable. It’s a fairly famous story, but even people who think they know it sometimes miss the most important point. So we’ll quote it first and then circle around and come back for a closer look at some of its details.

It’s not something that actually happened, as far as we know—like the good storyteller he was, Jesus made up the details to illustrate his point. Storytelling was a common technique for teaching in Jesus’ day. To help us understand something about God, he used a human father to describe what God would do:

“There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”[2]

Inheritance customs are a little different today than in the first century, but we can still see the point. ^[3] The father represents God; the younger son represents people who waste their lives trying to get what they want their own way. So he says, “I want my inheritance right now, so I’ll just pretend that Dad is dead and start enjoying life!”

And the Dad, being somewhat spineless, lets him do it. God lets us do whatever stupid things we want to do.

It is not surprising that the younger son moved away—he wanted to be away from his dad, to do stuff that his dad didn’t approve of, to be answerable only to himself. He did not just go to a neighboring country, but a distant one, which corresponds to the fact that many people stay as far away as possible from God or anyone who talks about God.

And enjoy life he did—it was just one party after another.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with having a good time. Jesus went to so many parties that he was accused of being a drunk (which he wasn’t). But Jesus let other people pay for the parties. The younger son in this parable was foolish enough to pay for them all himself, because he didn’t just go to parties, he lived for parties. So eventually all the money ran out.

Jesus didn’t make a list of evil things the kid did—he just says that he wasted all the money.[4] For this story, it doesn’t matter what he did wrong. The resources eventually run out whether or not we have done anything wrong. Life comes to an end no matter what we do.

So the boy was evicted from his apartment and his Corvette was repossessed and he ended up living on the street. He didn’t have enough money to buy food, and even panhandling didn’t work very well. Where were all his friends now? Gone—money couldn’t buy him love. And no one wanted to hire a partymeister.

Eventually the son got a job feeding pigs—from the perspective of first-century Jewish culture, probably the most disgusting job in the world.[5] An equivalent today might be cleaning out a big latrine with a small shovel.

There was no minimum wage in those days, and this guy didn’t even make enough to buy bread off the bargain shelf. The pigs have enough to eat, he observed after a while, but I don’t. If only my stomach could digest the stuff they eat! Jesus is emphasizing the son’s poverty, not his sin.

Eventually the son decided that it was better to eat humble pie than it was to go hungry, and he thought about going back to his dad. Dad hires all sorts of unskilled workers, he thought, and they at least get enough to eat. I’d be better off there than I am here.

He didn’t have much of a résumé—mismanaged funds, botched immigration attempt, failed in the school of hard knocks—so he would have to come up with a sob story. As he trudged toward home, he practiced his apology: “I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but could I at least have a job cleaning out the feedlot?” We have no way of knowing whether he was sincere.

With no food and no money, it was a miracle that he ever got home, but miracles happen in stories like this. While he was still a long way off, the dad saw him. And he pulled up his robe and started running down the street to hug his long-lost son. A very undignified thing to do, as you might know if you have ever tried to run in an ankle-length robe to hug someone who hasn’t bathed in 30 days. And he kissed him.

The son said, “Dad, I’m sorry. I messed up big time, and I don’t deserve any favors….”

And somehow the rest of the speech never got used. It seems that the dad cut him off. He called his personal assistant. “Bring some new clothes—underwear, shoes, the whole works—same size as me—and make it look sharp.” He called the bank: “Print some more checks for my account, and put my son’s name on them.”[6] He called the caterers: “Arrange a party at my place as quick as you can. Lots of food, a live band, decorations, the whole works. I’ll pay double the price if the party begins in one hour.”

It’s time to celebrate, he said. My son was dead, and now he’s alive! I was afraid that he would never come back, but he has! We are going to have a party!

Believe it or not

It reminds me of a story, supposedly from 18th century England. A woman had a son who joined the British Navy, and one day an officer and a clergyman came to her door. The mother of every kid in the military knows what it means for a chaplain to accompany the officer. She burst into tears, for she knew the news before they said it: The ship had gone down and everyone on board was lost.

She was beside herself in grief, and became so despondent that she was essentially bedridden. Even after two years, she was incapacitated by her grief.

One day she got a letter explaining that there had been a mistake. The ship had indeed gone down, and everyone with it, but one man had managed to escape to a nearby island, where he was eventually rescued by a fishing boat. That one survivor was her son, and he would be home in two weeks!

She rose from bed, filled with energy. There’s work to be done, she said. Clean the house, prepare the bedroom, make sure there is food in the pantry. There was joy in her heart as she prepared for her son’s return. He was dead, and now alive—and she had reason to live again.

She believed that her son was dead, but that did not make him dead. And when she believed he was alive, that did not make him alive. But her belief was all she had, and it made all the difference in the world to her. For her, perception was reality.

For the man in Jesus’ story, the son was dead as long as he was gone. The son had declared, by his actions, “I am not your son anymore. I am not part of this family at all. I am out of here.” But the father had hope, and he kept watching. The reason he saw his son “while he was still a long way off” is because he had been keeping his eyes on the horizon, ready to respond.

God is like that, Jesus is saying. We can walk away as far as we want, we can say as many hurtful things as we want, we can curse him as much as we want, and yet he will still be looking for us to come to our senses and return. He is the dad waiting in the driveway.

He’s not going to list all the bad stuff we’ve done, and he’s not going to present us with an invoice for all the opportunities we’ve wasted. He’s not even going to wait until we have walked all the way home—he is going to run out and greet us. A rather undignified thing for a God to do, but that’s the way he really is. He is more concerned about us than he is about what people consider his “dignity.”

A “respectable” God, people might think, would wait for us to grovel in the dirt, to eat another piece or two of humble pie, to beg and plead and promise and say “sorry” a little more. But God isn’t like that, Jesus is saying, because he looks on us with love and compassion. He knows we are tired of going hungry while the pigs get fat. He knows we are tired of working hard and getting little, of being friends with people who turn their backs when we need help, of struggling to the top of the corporate ladder only to find that we have won nothing more than a plastic decoder ring from a cereal box.

“There has got to be more to life than this,” and indeed there is. In all the good things of life—food, sex, money, friends, beautiful sunsets and stories of courage—God has given us the whiff of a life that’s much better, the aroma that tells us there’s something good going on in the kitchen. And he invites us in. We can believe it’s there, or we can wander the world looking for it somewhere else—whether we believe it or not makes a huge difference to whether we find it. Our belief, or our refusal, doesn’t change the reality, but it changes our perception of reality.

God is already in the driveway, waiting for you to come home. Whether you believe it or not does not change God’s love for you. Jesus urges us to believe that God is waiting, not to wag his finger at all our misdeeds, but to embrace us, to kiss us, to welcome us home and throw a party. He rejoices for every son or daughter who comes back home.

But wait—there’s more!

The story began with “a man who had two sons.” So far we have heard from only one of them. That other son is an important part of the story. The younger son corresponds to people who try to run away from God; the older son represents a different sort of problem. In fact, he pictures the very people Jesus was talking to—the people who complained that he was spending too much time with traitors and sinners. The older son corresponds to the “good” people, the self-assured and the up-tight religious leaders. We’ll let Jesus finish his story:

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes[7] comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

So it seems that big brother had been running the family business while the dad sat in the driveway. So after putting in a long day at the office, he came home and saw cars filling the driveway and lining both sides of the street. The party was in full gear. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Your brother came home and your dad is throwing a party to end all parties.”

“You have got to be kidding! My brother is nothing but a crook. He’s probably come back to steal some more. I’m not going to celebrate until he’s paid it all back.”

The dad, who loved and cherished this son as much as the other one, came out of the celebration to urge him to come into it. But the son protested: “I have no reason to celebrate. I’ve been busting my butt for you and don’t have a thing to show for it. And now this embezzler has arrived to take away even the little that I have, and you invite him in! He wasted everything he took from you, and if you let him, he’ll waste everything that you have left, too. If you reward him for bad behavior, he’s going to do it again.”

“Son, you say that you always obeyed me. So why aren’t you doing what I want right now? He is not just my son—he is your brother, and isn’t it worse to waste a relationship than it is to waste money? What better use of money is there than to celebrate a relationship that was lost, and now is restored—a life that was wasted, and now reclaimed? Now there is hope—for him—and for you. Are you going to waste the opportunity to gain your brother, or are you going to stay outside in your self-centered world?”

And so the parable ends, leaving us with a question: Will the older brother join the party? Will the religious leaders begin to see why Jesus spent his time with people who needed to change their ways? And will good Christian people, who think they have always obeyed the Father, celebrate when the less-desirable folks show up?

There’s another question, too: Will the younger brother straighten out his life? Will the father give him more money, and if so, will he waste it?

We do not know. Jesus didn’t seem to think that mattered enough to include it. The point he was making is that the Father doesn’t need an excuse to unreservedly forgive us, embrace us and include us in the surpassing joy of being his child. We don’t need to jump through hoops to be accepted; the Father never stopped loving us in the first place. He never stops waiting for us to come home.

For the younger brother, perhaps it seemed too good to be true. For the older brother, perhaps it seemed too easy to be good.

And perhaps the younger brothers of this world think it’s not true primarily because of the way that us older brothers act. If the older brother had tried to describe the father’s love, he would have given a rather distorted picture. But Jesus gives us a picture of God as a father who parties out of the sheer joy of his children coming home.

The party has begun. Will you join it?

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[1] Jesus did go to “church,” and sometimes he gave the sermon, but the religious leaders usually didn’t like what he had to say (Luke 4:28-30).

[2] Luke 15, verses 11-24.

[3] In some Jewish families, the oldest son would get twice as much as other sons, but Jesus does not mention details like that because they have nothing to do with the point he wants to make. Similarly, Jesus says nothing about how the father got enough cash for his younger son without selling off the farm.

[4] The common name of the story is “the parable of the prodigal son,” but most people nowadays think that “prodigal” means “rebellious” or something like that. It actually means wasteful or overly generous; it is related to the English word prodigious.

[5] I suppose that some people still think it’s pretty disgusting, but my favorite aunt owned a pig farm and I thought it was pretty normal. A feedlot for cattle smelled pretty much the same to me.

[6] In the parable, the father called for “a ring on his finger.” This was not merely a piece of jewelry—it was a signet ring or stamp used to authorize financial commitments. As you might notice, I am now transposing the story into a modern setting.

[7] If the younger son was in a far country, how did the older son know how he spent the money? He seems to be making accusations without knowing the facts.