Interrupted by grace
One of my favorite verses in the Bible (and that always seems weird to say because it’s the Bible — every verse is from God and ranking them just seems wrong) is Luke 15:21.
The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” (Luke 15:21 NIV)
It isn’t my favorite because of what it says, but because of what it doesn’t say. Some context will help us here.
The son has taken his inheritance from a father who is still alive. It was the ancient way of saying that the son wished the father was dead. Not only did he take the inheritance, but he squandered it all. Not on a sound investment scheme that coincided with an unforeseen economic downturn, but on wild living. Basically, he partied all of his money away. He picked up the tab for nights that he couldn’t even remember until he finally got stuck with a bill he couldn’t pay.
Penniless and friendless, he got a job hanging out with pigs. Unfortunately, even looking out for pigs didn’t get his attention right away, but at some point he found himself holding the pig slop inches from his mouth. That’s when the Bible says he came to his senses. One translation says it was at that moment that he finally came to himself. In other words, he finally remembered who he was, and craving pig food wasn’t it.
He decided to return home and started practicing what he would say to his father. Luke 15:18-19 show us the speech that he had prepared. It included a confession (“I have sinned”), a concession (“I’m no longer worthy to be called your son”), and a correction (“So treat me as one of your servants”).
Speech prepared, he sets off to deliver it to his father and hopes for the best. His father sees him and runs to him and as the orchestra music swells to a crescendo, the son begins to speak. My favorite verse, the one I quoted earlier, records what he said. It also highlights something so life-giving that it’s a shame we overlook it when we tell the story.
He never got to finish his speech.
The father, overcome with the sight and smell of his long-lost son, interrupted him before he could offer the final solution for how they would interact going forward. The father had heard enough and wouldn’t all another word to be spoken until he had restored the son as a son. There would be no talk of anything less than full sonship. The robe, the ring, the feast of a fatted calf would all highlight that a son had come home, not a slave.
Paul writes about this in his letter to the Galatians and I love the way The Passion Translation says it:
[Tweet “Stop trying to figure out what to say to a God who doesn’t need your words to celebrate your return.”]“Now we’re no longer living like slaves under the law, but we enjoy being God’s very own sons and daughters! And because we’re his, we can access everything our Father has —for we are heirs because of what God has done! (Galatians 4:7 TPT, emphasis mine)
Grace interrupts. It doesn’t allow us to finish our memorized speeches that have been crafted to show how sorry we are. I don’t know where you are today or what your pig slop looks like, but I do know this: stop trying to figure out what to say to a God who doesn’t need your words to celebrate your return.
Simply return, and let grace overtake you.
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It took me years of being raised in a church to realize that talking to God doesn’t have to be pompous and proper. It just needs to happen. I can remember many times I would get somewhere in silence and say, “Dear God . . . ” and then I would get stuck because I couldn’t think of fancy enough words to say that would be worthy of his majesty. In fact, I was so relieved when the gift of tongues overcame me one time in worship because I truly felt the groans and utterances meant more than any words I could have ever conjured.
It’s a lesson that can take us years to learn – but how freeing it is when we get it and allow our heart to speak what our mouths don’t know what to say.