Dad’s Dignity Destroyed

By Josh Olds

You can almost hear the thought repeating itself over and over in the son’s head. Father, I’ve sinned against you and against God. I don’t deserve to be your son, but let me be a hired servant. Fear and trepidation mount as he gets closer to the community he’s been excommunicated from. Would they kill him for returning?

You’ll remember where we’re at in Jesus’ story here. This punk kid has told Daddy dearest to drop dead and hand over the cash. Going against every cultural expectation and demand, the father accedes to the son’s wishes. The son spends the money in extravagant living and loses everything. Then he makes the decision to return to his father and earn his forgiveness. He’ll pay his father back everything he’s lost.

Jesus is the middle of the most mind-blowing, plot-twisting story imaginable. Neither the Pharisees nor the commoners can even guess what’s about to come. Is the son killed? Culture would demand it and call it righteous. But Jesus has been challenging culture throughout this whole story.

Before the son can even enter the town, the father sees him in the distance and runs to him, kissing him passionately and offering forgiveness. Middle Eastern men do not run. To run requires hiking up one’s garment, to hike up one’s garments means to expose one’s legs. And, in what is probably the only commonality between Amish women and Jewish men – to expose one’s legs was seen as deeply disgraceful.

But the father runs through the town, abandoning all dignity because his lost son has returned! The villagers may have stones in hand, but under the protection of the father the son is safe. Forgiveness, something the son was going to attempt to earn, is offered freely as the father disgraces himself for the sake of his son.

Jesus weaves His stories and ties them together with a single thread. The main character is disgraced. The shepherd was near the bottom rung of Jewish society. Women were even lower. The only regal figure, the father, loses all his dignity when he runs out to his son.

And yet Jesus compared all these characters to God. And in doing so He’s making a stunning statement about God. When you’re lost, and your relationship with God is broken, God will run after you and lose His dignity in order to restore the relationship. And right there, we’ve gotten to the heart of who Jesus is – God, divested of His dignity, the full expression of the Father in terms the people could understand.

All of it – the shepherd, the lover, the running father – all point to a God who stripped Himself of His dignity in order to provide salvation. He laid aside all form of deity to make Himself knowable to man. He exchanged the throne for the cross. The God who spoke in Story was the God who lost his dignity, all in order to save you and I.

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