Before He Got to the Second Line

I have known a lot of men who could not take a coat off somebody until they had explained why they were cold.

It sounds like a small thing and it is not. You will see it at a breakdown on a county road in February. A man stood by a truck with his hands going numb, and somebody stops, and the first thing out of him is not thank you. It is the account: what he did wrong, what he should have checked, how long ago he meant to replace that hose. He will stand there in the cold delivering it while a perfectly good coat is being held out.

That is not pride, exactly. It is something more particular. It is the conviction that a man has to square himself before he can accept anything, because taking a kindness with the debt still outstanding feels like theft.

Now, here is what happens in the most famous homecoming there is.

The son has a speech. He wrote it in a pig field and it has two parts: an acknowledgement, and then a request to be taken on as a hired hand, which is the part where he squares himself. That second part is the whole point of the speech to him. It is how he gets to accept something without it being charity.

And he gets the first part out. And then look what the father does.

But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.Luke 15:22

The father does not answer the speech. He interrupts it, by talking to somebody else, and what he says has nothing to do with what the son said.

That is you at the truck.

You've got an account to deliver before you can receive anything, and you are standing in the cold delivering it, and there is a coat being held out about a foot from your hands.

Three things go on him and none of them were asked for

Read what is brought out, because every one of the three is a statement and the son requested none of them.

The best robe. Not a robe. The best one, which in that house means the father's own. It is put on him over the road dirt, and there is nothing said about washing first.

A ring on his hand. A signet ring in that world carried authority. It was how a household's business was sealed. Putting one on a man who has just spent an inheritance is not sentimentality, it is a public restoration of standing.

Shoes on his feet. Slaves and hired men went barefoot in that house. Shoes said son.

Every one of the three answers the request he never got to make, and answers it in the opposite direction. He was going to ask for the status of a hired hand. He gets robed, ringed and shod as a son, mid sentence, while the dirt is still on him.

You are being handed things you have not asked for and could not have earned, and the handing over is already under way while your account is unfinished, and I am not being generous with a parable: Luke 15:22 has all three brought out before the speech is done, in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying so who can get that into a man who cannot take a coat.

Notice also who the father speaks to. Not to the son. To the servants. The instruction goes over the top of the speech, which is the kindest possible way to end a speech that a man has spent days rehearsing and has now begun to deliver in front of people.

You have a welcome that does not require the account to be completed, and it never has, which is written into the interruption rather than into my long acquaintance with men who cannot receive, with the Spirit of God able to open a hand that pride and shame have kept shut together.

I want to say one plain thing from a lifetime of watching this. The hardest work of accepting a kindness is done by the person accepting it. Everybody thinks the generosity is the hard part. It is not. Sitting still while somebody puts a coat round you when you have not squared up is the hardest ordinary thing a person does.

This is being put on you now, over the dirt, before anything is settled, because Scripture puts the robe before the rest of the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that to a porch at golden hour.