WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 6/18/06 Fathers’ Day

Luke 15:11-32 “A Good Father”

What is a “good father”? Plenty of men today (and not a few mothers and children) would like to know! As Christians we naturally turn to the Bible for guidance, but if you look through the major figures in the Bible, to be honest it’s hard to find good examples. Abraham had plenty of faults as a husband and father; Isaac made plenty of mistakes, Jacob was worse. Joseph might have been adequate, but we know little about his fathering. Saul was a disaster, David even worse, Solomon the same.

What does all this mean, and where do we go for good examples? Perhaps it’s supposed to point us to the fact that God alone is the example of fatherhood we should follow. He is, after all (as Paul says in Ephesians 3) the one from whom all fatherhood comes. And perhaps this is also why Jesus’ parables about fathers are important, because they show us what kind of father God is.

1) The Waiting Father

The parable in Luke 15 that we often call “The Prodigal Son” or “The Lost Son” is, in fact, more about the father. Some have said it should be called “Two Lost Sons,” or better yet, “The Waiting Father.” Jesus told the story, as he did about the “lost sheep” and the “lost coin,” in the context of the criticisms leveled against him by the Pharisees for associating with “tax collectors and sinners.” Jesus wants his hearers to understand the joy that God experiences when a lost person is found. He wants us all to know that repentance is an occasion for joy.

Jesus wants to make abundantly clear that his welcoming and eating with repentant “tax collectors and sinners” is a picture of how God deals with his erring children. However far they wander, he is delighted when they return! The “good people” who criticize such things in fact show that they themselves are just as lost, if not more so, than the ones who have gone seriously astray!

So what does the father in the parable do that should teach us about God the Father? First of all, the father agrees to the uninformed, immature request of his younger son. Given that the son is evidently single, and that marriage typically occurred between 18 and 20, we are probably meant to picture a rebellious 17 year-old. He can and does demand his share of the inheritance ahead of his father’s death. It was not wise, but the father agrees to it. So, we are led to understand, God often gives us the foolish things we want, even though he knows we will live to regret it. Sometimes children just have to learn the hard way.

When the son liquidates his inheritance and quickly takes off with a pocket full of cash and not much else, we wonder what the father felt. Rejected? Angry? Ready to cut his son off for good? None of the above, according to Jesus. But it is only when the son has gone into the pits that we learn the true depths of the father’s feelings. When the son’s money and friends are gone, and he is reduced to hunger and then to degradation – a nice Jewish boy feeding pigs in a foreign land, and ready to share their feed – we are told he finally “comes to his senses.” The expression is precisely what the Bible elsewhere calls “repentance.” It means literally “turning” – and in its spiritual use it is a two-fold turning: both away from evil and towards God.

There is much for us to learn from that one phrase: that at times our lives can reach such a pit that the only way out is to “come to our senses” – to “recover our right minds,” to “step back and take a look” at what we have become or are becoming, and ask ourselves “why am I doing this?” Most of the time we don’t stop and think; we just go on and on doing what we do – these days at greater and greater speed – and when the feeling begins to grow inside of us that “surely life wasn’t meant to be like this,” it really is time to stop and think – to “come to our senses.”

We know what happened in the son’s mind and heart: “I would rather be my father’s servant that a starving pig-herder.” That’s a good decision. But it takes courage and humility to get to that point. It takes a willingness to say “Father, forgive me... I have sinned.” But what was happening in the father’s mind and heart all this time? The clue, of course, is in his reactions when his son returns. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.” The father was waiting, and the father was watching. He had never turned his back, never given up on his son, never disowned him. He had never lost hope that his son would return. As a father, he had faith that his son would one day be restored to him, and he waited for the day and watched for his son.

As a picture of God, it tells us that our Father in heaven never despairs of any of his children turning and coming home. Even when they are still “far from home” he sees them coming. Even before they can utter a word of confession or repentance or apology, he loves them and is filled with compassion for them. The Father’s love goes out ahead of the son’s actual return, and provides the welcome that the son does not expect and does not deserve. The father in the parable runs to meet his son – setting aside all ancient and oriental dignity, hoisting his cloak up over his bare legs, not letting status or ceremony stand between him and the son he loves. He shows his forgiveness immediately in an embrace and a kiss. The father takes all the initiative, and his son is unable even to utter his prepared speech of penitence.

The father’s joy at the return of his errant son is so great that he says two things have to be done immediately: first a robe, a ring and shoes are to be brought. The lost one is restored to the symbols, the status, the dignity, the authority of a son of the family. He will not be dressed as a servant or treated like one. He is restored, fully, as a son. So, we are to understand, God fully restores to his favor and to his family those who return penitent to him. This, we know, is how Jesus treated “tax collectors and sinners” who came to him. This, we need to learn, is how the church of Jesus Christ must treat those who return penitent to faith, restoring them to full status and authority in the family of faith.

The second thing the father says must be done immediately is to celebrate! “Kill the fatted calf and let us feast.” So there was music and dancing and noise, and everyone joined in – except the older brother! He has not even noticed his brother’s return – he was not looking out for him – and he has been “slaving in the fields.” He resents the lavish reception for his wastrel brother. He has been “the good son,” and he can’t stand the welcome given to a “sinner.” He is angry that his own “good behavior” has never been rewarded this way.

The older son has had many friends and sympathizers through the years: the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, and ever since, who think they have been good and ought to be rewarded by God; who think “good behavior” is the mark of God’s children; who have “served” and “slaved” all their lives for God and think this is what faith is all about; who deeply resent all the talk of grace and forgiveness they hear around evangelical circles. There are people in our churches who don’t like grace – they don’t think they need it, and they don’t think anyone else deserves it. They object to the gospel of Jesus Christ!

But notice that the father in the parable is as kind and loving to the older son as he is to the younger one. He goes outside to plead with him to come in. He speaks gently to him, and responds to his anger and resentment with love. He reminds his son that all he has is at his disposal, and always has been. He steers the resentful son who refers to “that son of yours” back to the fact that he is “your brother.” The father tells him it is right, it is appropriate, it is necessary, to celebrate the younger brother’s “return from the dead”! And so the parable ends, leaving the hearers and us with the tense question: will the older brother go in and celebrate? Will we?

2) We Fathers

So how should we measure ourselves against the father of the parable, or against the implied qualities of God our Father in heaven? I suspect that there are things here that go right against the grain of our culture and some of our perceptions of good fatherhood.

Would we give our teenage children what they asked for, even if we knew it might well turn out badly? Or are we totally protective parents, who try our utmost to shield our children from mistakes, and from the world? If we are controlling, are we really reflecting our guilt about our own younger days? Are we just trying to stop our children from being like us? It won’t work! At what age are we ready to treat our children as adults? When will we respect them as persons, treat their opinions and emotions as valid, encourage their independence – at age 16, 18, 21... 30, 40?

If they leave home, physically or emotionally, do we give up on them, or do we wait, patiently, hopefully, lovingly, prayerfully, faithfully? Have we experienced the workings of God’s grace in us well enough to trust our children to it as well? Are we ready to give God time to work in them, as he has in us? Or are we afraid that one step off the right track will lead our children into a lifetime of disaster, and we can’t afford to let that happen. Do we trust God with our children?

And if (or perhaps when) they mess up, what reception will they get from us when they want to return? Anger? Retribution? A warm welcome? Will we take them in again? If so, under what conditions? “As long as you behave and live by our rules, or else you’re out of here”? – that’s the modern “tough love” approach? Or would we fully restore them to the status of loved family members? And what if (I hear someone asking), they mess up again? Throw them out? Or forgive them, over and over? Doesn’t that, in modern terms, make us “enablers”? “How often should I forgive my brother who sins against me – up to seven times?” they asked Jesus. “Up to seventy times seven,” said Jesus. Was Jesus “an enabler”? Or did he know more about grace and love and restoration and redemption than we ever will?

What if we have “good” and “bad” children? Do we favor one over the other? Do we play favorites because we like the way one reflects us? Are we ready to love unconditionally, or only when we get the kind of rewards we want from our children? And this doesn’t just apply to being the father of a 17 year-old; your children may be 30 or 45 or 60. How do you treat them? Does it in any way reflect the gracious way God your Father treats you?

Being a father isn’t easy, and apparently never has been. That is why we all need God’s grace, God’s strength, God’s forgiveness, God’s love, God’s example, God’s guidance and protection, to help us to discover that even as we are his “much-loved children,” we can become “good fathers” to our own children.

Let us pray...