Long Way Gone (27 page)

Beyond the stage, they were calling for an encore. “Is he any good?”

Jubal nodded and frowned at the same time. “Better than you.” A few seconds passed. He looked confused. “You can't hear him?”

I removed the notebook from the small of my back, handed it to him, and began walking back out onstage.

“What am I supposed to do with this? Ask him if he wants a cheeseburger?”

I smiled. “You'll figure it out.”

We returned to the stage, where Jubal leaned against his stool and timidly picked up his guitar. While I spoke to the audience, his head rotated on a swivel and his attention was focused on the choir. Blondie was sitting in the front row. Leaning back. Feet crossed in front of him. Arms crossed. A smug, satisfied look.

My fingers touched the strings and I began playing a song I'd only rehearsed for Daley. I played remembering my father's admonition that the great players are great because of the notes they choose not to play.
Once through the intro, I leaned toward the microphone, then thought better of it. The same was true for too many words.

Daley and the choir picked up on the melody and began humming. Big-Big filled the air beneath us with chords. Between the visitor in the choir and the song I was now playing, which he'd never heard, Jubal was lost. Over the last year, as we'd learned and transposed songs from one key to another, I'd taught him the Nashville Number System. It was a fun exercise to begin a song in one key, modulate on the fly, and finish in a second or third. He'd gotten pretty good at it. I whispered around the mike, “Key of E. One, six, five, four.”

Jubal started strumming and watched me for the changes.

Jubal had several musical gifts. One of which was the rhythm in his strum hand. He did unconsciously what some studied for years, never to perfect. I spoke into the mike but kept my eyes on him. “Folks, he's never heard this song before.” Applause rose up beneath me. “Your career will be fun to watch.”

I loved to hear that kid play.

I turned to the audience. “When I think back over my life, several images flood my mind. If you know my story, our story, you know that around this time last year in a concert at the Falls I had a bit of a health scare.”

Up front, Mary laughed out loud. “You think!”

“Well, you would too, if somebody had tried to drown you in subfreezing water.” I nodded behind me toward Big-Big.

“I don't pretend to understand all of what happened. But I do know this—this right here is just prelude. Dress rehearsal. The intro. One of these days each one of us is going to get called up and given the chance to join our voices in a song we've never heard, yet one we've known our whole lives.

“My dad used to give a sermon about how we were custom-made for music. How each of us is a walking instrument. I used to laugh at him and his ridiculous ideas, his animated theatrics, but now not so much. Dad was right. He was right about most everything. He loved to sing
at the top of his lungs most anywhere. Didn't care a lick what others thought. We'd be walking down the aisle at the grocery store and he'd start singing “Frère Jacques” with the same emotional intensity as an aria from Handel's
Messiah
. I'd stand next to him and want to hide my face. Let a crack in the earth open and swallow me. But Dad just kept on singing.”

I stood and nodded for Jubal to follow. Strumming louder, I said, “One of these days I'll get to sing with my father again. Get to hear his beautiful voice. Between here and there, we get to make music of our own. With that in mind, here's a new song. It's simple. Nothing fancy. Four chords and a bridge. I don't even think it has a title. I wrote it for us to sing together. To put our voices on a pedestal. Not just mine. So stand. Sing with me. Loud as you want.” I glanced over my shoulder where Andy had projected the words on the screen. “This is a love song for my father . . .”

The End

I
imagine he stunk. Clothes tattered. Hair matted. Beard stained. One shoe missing. Fingernails bit to the quick. The once-high chin now drags his chest. His eyes scour the ground—afraid to make eye contact lest he bump into a creditor. One missing front tooth. Another cracked. A puffy, purple shadow rests beneath his right eye. The chest full of gold chains are gone. Sold. Gambled. Stolen. And the ring his father gave him? Pawned weeks ago.

This silent and passive ending had a boisterous and in-your-face beginning. Not uncommon. It sounded like this: “I want what I want, when I want it, because I want it and I want it right now.” His friends poured gasoline on the fire and he was soon spitting flames. Full of himself, he went to his father. Stared down his nose. Disdain spread across his lips. Always thought his father such a little man. He spouted, “I want my share. Now!” Given the culture, his demand was unconscionable. Sort of like saying, “You are dead to me. I want nothing more to do with you and your silly, pathetic life. I'll take what's mine. From this moment, you're no longer my father and don't ever speak to me again.”

Amazingly, the father granted his request.

Pockets full, he turned his back and, surrounded by a fair-weather posse, walked away. Laughing. Skipping. Slapping backs. Sucking courage from a brown bag. Glorious sin on the horizon.

Behind him, the father stood on the porch, cheeks wet, a piercing pain in his chest.

The distance increased. Time passed. The boy lived it up. Drunk whatever. Smoked whatever. Bought whatever. Slept with whomever. Whenever. Wherever. He was a man with no control over his spirit. A city broken down without walls. A poor fund manager, and unwise in every way, his prodigal living was short-lived. Highlife led to no life.

To make matters worse, famine entered the story. Once the sugar daddy had been picked clean, the posse stampeded.

Broke, hungry, alone, and ashamed—but not quite humbled—he “joined” himself to another. Said another way, he sold himself as a slave. Don't miss this—he's a Jewish boy going to work for a Gentile farmer raising pigs. This is apostasy. He could not have been any more unclean. There were laws about this, and he had broken all of them.

Standing in that pen, surrounded by manure, maggots, and swarming flies, holding the slop bucket, he stands just one final rung from the bottom.

We pick up the story in Luke 15. Thirty pounds lighter, it's easy to count his ribs. He is staring into the bucket with a raised eyebrow, watering mouth, and thinking,
That's not so bad. I could probably get that down.
The New English Translation speaks of “carob pods”—sort of a bean-looking thing with the consistency of shoe leather (v. 16). One of the only fruit-producing plants to actually produce fruit in that area during times of famine. It's a last resort—even for the pigs.

Can you see him scratching his head? Staring around to see who might be watching? This is where he steps off the ladder. Feet on the bottom—of the bottom. He has “attempted to pull fire into his bosom,” and it is here that we see the third-degree burns. Not only has he sinned and fallen short, gone his own way, astray, he has missed the target entirely. To quote Isaiah, his righteousness is as “filthy rags.” By “rags,” Isaiah means used menstrual cloths. Let me spell this out. Left to our own devices—like our prodigal—the best that we can produce, absent a right relationship with the Father, is no better than a bunch of used feminine products. That may offend you, but that's Isaiah's point. Everything about the prodigal is offensive, and he is paying the price of his offense.

But notice what finds him. There in that muck and mire, sour stench, poor choices, and sin piled high, something swims past the reason-filter of his mind and into the still-tender, yet-to-be-calloused places of his heart. And it's not condemnation and finger-pointing shame. It's the memory of his dad. The love of the father.

Of all places for love to find him. (If you could see me, I am fist-pumping.)

Someone once asked me, “When is gone too far gone?” Here's my answer in a nutshell: There is no place on Planet Earth that the love of the Father—the blood of Jesus—can't reach. “His arm is not so short that it cannot save.” This side of the grave, no one—and I don't care who they are or what sin or sins they have or are committing—is too far gone.

“But . . .” You raise a finger and shake your head in protest. “You don't know what I've done.” You're right. I don't. What I do know is that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That means at our worst, most offensive, suffering the consequences of our own shame and defiant choices, a long way from home, Jesus poured out His soul unto the death. Paul to the prodigals in Corinth said this: “He made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.” If ever God drove a stake in the ground, it's that.

Scripture doesn't say it, but I think our prodigal ate the pods. A guess, yes, but it may well be an educated guess because Scripture does say, “When he came to himself . . .” What better than the bitter, nasty aftertaste of the pod to shake some sense into him.

I love what happens next. So subtle yet so world-rocking. He turns around. Note: he is turning his back toward his sin and setting his face toward his father. Isaiah talked about this too. He called it “setting his face like a flint.” Look up
repentance
in the dictionary and you will see a picture of this. The humbled prodigal manages a hesitant jog at first. Then a chin-raising trot. Lungs taking in air. When he reaches the hill a mile out from the farm, he is sprinting. Arms flinging sweat, a trail of dust in his wake. If you listen closely, you can hear the beginning of
a sound emitting from his belly. Low. Guttural. It is the sound of pain leaving his body.

And here's my favorite picture in this story. It's the father. Still standing on the porch. Yet to leave his post. One hand shading his eyes. Scanning the horizon. Searching for any sign of movement.

Something atop the hill catches his eye. He squints. Leans. The space between his eyes narrows. The father exits the porch as if shot out of a canon. This picture always gets me. Son running to father. Father running to son.

Having closed the distance, the son falls at his father's feet. He is groveling. Face to toes. Snot mixing with tears. He can't even look at him. “Father, I have sinned . . .”

The father will have none of this. Scripture says the father “ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” A more accurate translation is “covered his face in kisses.” Pause here: I need this picture maybe more than all the rest: the father kissing the son of squalor who willfully betrayed him. Gave him the finger. How many times have I done this?

I cannot count.

The son protests, arm's length; he has yet to make eye contact. “But, Dad, I'm not worthy—”

The father waves him off, orders his servants, “Clothe my son! Bring me a ring! Carve the steaks! Raise the tent!” Servants scatter. The son stands in disbelief. “But, Abba . . .” The son has come undone. “You don't know what all I've done. I'm unclean. Please forgive—”

The father gently places his index finger under his son's chin and lifts it. Eye to eye. He thumbs away a tear. Holds his face in both hands. “You, my son . . . are my son. Once dead, now alive. All is forgiven.”

If you're the parent or loved one of a prodigal, let me bolster your hope with this: the Father has yet to leave His post. His eyes still scan the horizon. And no darkness, no matter how dark, can hide the prodigal. Job said it this way: “For He [the Father] looks to the ends of the earth, and sees under the whole heavens.” This hasn't all of a sudden changed in 2016. It's not like God's eyesight has grown dim.

And despite the prodigal's total and complete depravity, the father is not interested in making him or her a slave. Even though that's His right. The Father is about total restoration. A complete returning to son-ship. An heir with all rights and privileges thereof.

Maybe you're the prodigal. Surrounded by pigs and staring at the pods. Let me say this to you—I don't care what you've done, where you've gone, where you are, or who you've become, the truth is this: the sanctifying, redeeming, justifying, snatching-back-out-of-the-hand-of-the-devil blood of Jesus reaches to the far ends of the earth.

To think otherwise makes a mockery of the atoning blood of Jesus.

Don't believe me? This is Paul, speaking to the Romans. Like us, they'd ventured a long way from God. Earlier, Paul called them “God haters.” He could do this because he knew a thing or two about hating God. He had held people's jackets while they bashed Stephen's brains out. He'd dragged Christians from their homes and executed them in front of their families. To these Romans and fellow prodigals, he said, “Our old man was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.” See those words “
done away with
?” That means cut away. Disconnected from you. A yoke lifted off your shoulders. Permanently.

Oftentimes Paul said things two or three times. To reinforce his point. He said, “If God is for us, who can be against us? . . . Who shall bring a charge against God's elect?

It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.”

The question is not whether we are guilty. That's a given. We are. Welcome to earth. The question is who stands between us and our guilt. Paul continued, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Paul paused here, and I think it's these words that
echo out across eternity. That reach me here today as if they just left his lips. “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:31–34, 35–37, 38–39).

If you unpack this, nothing is excluded from this list. No exceptions.

Don't think I'm letting you or me off the hook. I'm not. Such unmerited grace is conditional. It requires something of you and me.

The requirement is that we turn back. Pivot on our heels and put one foot in front of the other.

If you're really broken, surrounded by the wreckage of your own mess, asking, “How?” you may need this spelled out: This means you are not your abortion. Not your affair. Not the reason for your prison sentence. Not the needle holes in your arm. Not the empty bottles next to your bed. Not the shame you see in the mirror. If I'm speaking to you, and you feel as if I've written this just for you . . . let me welcome you to the human race. You're officially one of us.

I am not suggesting that turning around frees you from consequences. Or even pain. You may still go to jail. May carry some scars. May well be infected with HIV and your wife may still leave you and take the kids. But none of this prevents your return to the Father, and neither the sin that brought you here nor the consequences you face determine your eternal identity or the Father's desire to heal your very broken heart and wrap you in His arms.

If you remain unconvinced, the writer of Hebrews offered this encouragement: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a host of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.” The Charles Martin translation reads like this: “Drop the bucket and run.” Think about it: There is a host in heaven cheering you on. Pulling for you. Screaming at the top of their lungs. If you're wondering what kind of sound that might be, the word
host
is described by Daniel as ten thousand by ten thousand. That's a hundred million.

I can hear the rebuttal. “Yeah, but, Charles, you don't know . . .” Stop. Scripture promises us that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” When I read that, my eye focuses on the word
everyone
. And if you're one of those people who wonder how Scripture written two thousand years ago could still be true today, Jesus answered that when He said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” When I read that, my eye focuses on the word,
never
.

“So,” you ask with a disbelieving finger in the air, “Charles, are you seriously telling me that there is no place I can go that's too far gone?” I've just spent three hundred pages and a year of my life attempting to say that very thing. Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you.

I don't care what the shameful voices in your head tell you, or the deafening lies that the memories whisper. I don't care if you're reading this from a prison cell staring at decades in the face, or from the plush comfort of first class staring out over the shimmering face of the Pacific. We're all broken, all walk with a limp. Here is the truth about you and me: even when in a far-off country, wasted life, stripped bare, smeared, squandered, nothing but scar tissue and shameful, self-inflicted wounds, the love of the Father finds the son and daughter.

He finds us.

This inconceivable, mind-shattering, heart-mending, I-don't-deserve--it reality is the singular thought out of which this book bubbled up. This crazy idea that no matter what, we can always come home. That me and my shipwrecked life and my lifetime of baggage and bad decisions didn't and doesn't disqualify me from Him. Paul said: “Nothing separates us.” Charles Martin says, “No gone is too far gone.” They mean the same thing. There's hope for the broken, and this is true even if it's our own choices that broke us. Our hope, the very anchor of our souls, is standing on the porch. And His eyes are stretching out through time and space and they are singularly focused on you. On me.