Phoenix Jubilee

A Short Note on The Prodigal Son.

My favorite personal midrash comes from Luke 15: 20. After the whole story of the wasteful son is told, and he's shamed, having spent his inheritance of wealth that he rudely demanded from a loving father, he makes his way out of sleeping with the pigs and humbly returns home.

Verse 20:

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.

This indicates to me (and certainly others have noted it before), that every day since the boy left with the inheritance, every day after the father was rudely treated (to ask for your inheritance early in this culture was to effectively say to your dad, “I wish you were dead.”) the father would go out, and every day watch for his son.

Waiting.

Hoping.

And the moment he sees him, the moment his son crests over the hill looking out over the yellow spears of wheat and the rolling greenery of a land cultivated for familial provision-

The father sees the child.

He runs.

He runs and runs, almost toppling head over tiptoe, all the way to this child who wished him dead, and he embraces the boy and he kisses him and he robes him in the finest robe, puts a signet ring on his finger, reclaiming that which was lost. He slaughters the best and fattest calf. And those are the actions of a man whose heart, which had fallen into perilous dismay, rises.

Catastrophe undone. A phoenix jubilee.

He does this marvelous, graceful action. An action I never truly understood until I had children.

He does this because a father's love is a wholly pursuant thing. Forever embracing. Forever patient. Forever hopeful, over the love of that thing he loves best.