U2 Song: "The First Time"

Some departures happen in defiance. Others happen in silence. “The First Time” is the Prodigal Son’s story, not retold, but re-felt. U2’s song gives voice to what the parable in Luke 15 leaves unsaid: the inner tremble of the one who walks away from everything he was ever given.

The structure of the song follows a gentle descent through love freely offered. First a lover, then a brother, finally a father. (There is Trinitarian imagery seen here too.) Each offers a gift. Each represents a dimension of grace. The lover shows him color, music, hope. The brother runs after him, chases him down when he is lost. The father opens up the riches of a kingdom and says, without condition, “This is yours.”

And yet he leaves.

This is what makes the song so piercing. The narrator doesn't walk away because he wasn’t loved. He walks away precisely because he was. That is the quiet tragedy of the song. He knows exactly what he is walking away from. He even names it: “For the first time, I feel love.” We take what we have for granted.

But he throws away the key.

Jesus’ parable ends with a homecoming. This song doesn’t. That makes it unsettling, but also honest. The Prodigal didn’t return the moment he ran out of money. He wandered. He tasted emptiness. He came to his senses slowly, after much loss. “The First Time” is set somewhere in that in-between space, after the leaving, before the turning. The ache of love recognized but not yet received.

In that way, the song becomes a kind of prayer. Not the prayer of someone asking for forgiveness, but the prayer of someone still on the road away from home. It captures the fear of being loved too much. The unease of grace. The strange burden of freedom.

And it leaves us with a question the parable itself invites us to ask: Will he come back?

We don’t know. But the Father still waits. We wait…