Reflections
The God Who Won’t Let Go
The Parable of the Prodigal Son, or as I have come to call it, the Parable of the Compassionate Parent, is found only in the Gospel of Luke, and so, unlike many of the other parables of Jesus, we encounter it only once in the lectionary cycle. Three years ago, before Toronto was even a twinkle in my eye, I was scheduled to preach on this set of readings, and the new pastor at the Lutheran Church where I was working at the time recommended a book by Henri Nouwen with which I was not familiar: The Return of the Prodigal Son. The book was written after Nouwen had left his teaching position at Harvard and had come to Toronto to serve as Chaplain to the L’Arche community here.