Upper Essex Baptist Church
Trinity Sunday
Father’s Day
Text:
Luke 15:11-32
11 Then Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later, the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, "How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands." ' 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' 22 But the father said to his slaves, "Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate. 25 "Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, "Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, "Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' 31 Then the father said to him, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.' "
“Just STOP!”
I could hear them in my voice: exhaustion, stress, anger, and impatience.
The words were directed at my daughter, Hannah, who is 7, and had just a few minutes earlier been told by her grandmother that she was not going to be able to read the promised book to her that night because it was already 10 O’clock, and we were all going to be getting up early the next day to move the family to Emmerton. Hannah’s Uncle Scott and Aunt Becky and cousins Breanna and Colin had come over to help us load the truck and spend some last few hours with us before the move.
I had spent the day driving a vanload up to the parsonage and then loading the truck. 5 hours of driving and 4 hours of sweating and straining to get furniture and boxes had taken it out of me.
The computer was set up in the room where the kids were sleeping, and I was in need of some dedicated time to compose my thoughts for this morning, and was sitting at the desk.
Hannah was disappointed as only a 7 year old can be when a promise to them is not kept. She was quietly crying and sitting on the bed. Unknown to me, her grandmother walked past the doorway to the bedroom, and she called out in a plaintive voice,
“Grana, where are you going?”
I whipped around and said,
“Just STOP! It is after 10, and you need to go to sleep! Please lay down! So STOP!”
I could hear in my voice how harsh I was sounding, how cold, how uncaring that she was probably crying in part because this was the last night that we were going to be living so close to Grana, with whom, by all counts, Hannah has a special relationship, a mutual admiration society, if you will, and Grana wasn’t going to be able to read to her one last time there.
*****
Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son is, very simply, the story that brought me back to Christ.
Steve Shoemaker, one of my former Pastors, has a sermon on the parable, in which he describes the homecoming scene differently from the way I had envisioned it in my mind:
The father lives not out in the wilderness, but on the edge of a town, at the end of Main Street. His son has to walk THROUGH town in order to get home. The younger son’s behavior has been an offense not only to the family but also to the village. He has broken the rules that help keep a community intact. The whole town probably condemned the boy. Their attitude was, “If he comes back, let him come back a beggar!”
In the parable, Jesus vividly describes how much the father loves the son. Rather than let him suffer the humiliation and abuse of the villagers, the father has compassion, and HE sprints to his son and hugs him and kisses him – the verb describes affectionate, repeated kissing, more like a mother greeting a long-lost child than a father’s formalized greeting.
The Father stepping into our place.
Taking on our humiliation, our abuse, and our shame. THAT is why Jesus did it. God takes it upon himself to reconcile the world TO himself through the cross.
God runs to us.
The gauntlet that we should have walked, all the shame and humiliation we so richly deserve, is taken and wiped away by the love of a sprinting, hugging, kissing father who wants nothing so much as to welcome us home.
The image of such a loving God is compelling enough to draw me closer every time I read this passage only if I put myself in the prodigal son’s position.
From either of the other two perspectives, the parable becomes a challenge.
There are at least two other stories going on in addition to the prodigal son’s, though. There is the older son’s story, and there is the father’s story.
Being an older brother myself, and having a younger brother who at one time in his life was prodigal in his own way, there for a while I was more than able to identify with the elder son in the parable. I was the one who’d been ‘the good son’. The judgmental, almost pharisaic way in which the elder son responds to the younger son’s return and the ensuing party was not that far removed from some of my own self-righteous thoughts and attitudes –this was before it was my turn to play the prodigal, and what subsequently brought me to the point of identifying so much more with HIM.
The other story is the father’s.
Father’s day is getting to be a tough holiday for me. I think I’m a pretty good son, now, again. I think I’m doing OK as a husband. As a brother, well, you can ask him. I’ll warn you, he’s got some stories to tell on me that to this day make me cringe to remember. My CURRENT relationship with my brother is something that I treasure. I love and respect him very, very much. When it comes to fathering, though, it’s a different story.
Nothing is more important. Nothing.
And nothing is more difficult.
And nothing has come harder.
Nothing will make as much of a difference to the people who mean the most to me than this business of being a father.
There’s a song that came out several years ago, by a contemporary Christian trio of singers, Phillips, Craig and Dean, entitled “I Want To Be Just Like You” the refrain (chorus?) goes like this:
Lord I want to be just like You
‘Cause he wants to be just like me
I want to be a holy example
For his innocent eyes to see
Help me be a living Bible, Lord
That my little boy can read
I want to be just like You
‘Cause he wants to be like me
I never get through a hearing of the song without pretty much dissolving into a puddle.
As you may have read, Jerusalem Baptist Church, just down the road a ways from here, called me to be their Pastor last Sunday. Over the last 2 months, as we’ve been meeting with them and waiting to hear from them, in addition to carrying on with the Hispanic ministry for the association, I’ve been able to experience … and sometimes enjoy something that I’ve not had an abundance of over the last 3 years – free time with my children.
The rain we had over the last couple of weeks made it hard for the boys to have any outside play time, and either Caleb’s or Judson’s anxious and repeated requests of, “now can we go to the park daddy?” or, “now can you play with me daddy” would sometimes become too much to withstand, so the replies to emails got delayed, the sermon preparation got put off, and the papers I’m supposed to be working on for a couple of classes that I took at seminaries remained undone.
I wonder if the younger son in our passage had to ask more than once for his share of the inheritance. Since the context is a parable, it’s a purely hypothetical question, but it would be hard for me to imagine an actual father agreeing to the request on the first go-around. It brings to mind the commercials that are on TV now for the AARP, where the man walks into the office of the CEO of a huge insurance company and asks him to ‘fix’ the problem people in their 50’s and 60’s have in trying to get affordable health insurance after they’ve lost it, and the CEO pauses a moment and says “ok”. The other version of the commercial has a woman calling the President of the United States and after a minute or two on hold, reaching him, and asking him to fix the funding of Social Security, to which he answers ‘Of course’. The voice over comes on and says ‘if it were that easy, you wouldn’t need the AARP’.
Reading the passage and placing myself in the father’s position is sometimes a similar exercise in the study of the improbable. After all, the main point Jesus is trying to make in telling the parable is to try to help his hearers understand the nature of God and his kingdom. The father in the parable represents God. A tough act to follow, if there ever was one!
But I think Jesus intended for there to be more to it than just that description of God. There are layers in the parables that Jesus told that speak to us in different ways at different times in our lives. Not only was Jesus describing God’s Kingdom, he was describing how we are to act as a part of that Kingdom, and as a part of God’s bringing that Kingdom ever closer to reality in the world. We can’t get away from the implication that, as the father acted, so should we.
In short:
Be generous:
Our possessions, the things we own, are just that – things. They are not and never have been as important as the relationships we have with each other. That goes for blood relatives as well as brothers and sisters in Christ that we find in our respective communities of faith – our church families. How radical would it be to part with a third of your possessions at the request of a member – any member – of your family?
Be forgiving:
It is one of the most basic of Christian virtues and activities, and is one of the hallmarks of our faith, because it is through forgiveness of our sins that we become followers of Christ to begin with. To quote Steve again,
Forgiveness is the step of finally giving up your attempts to make the past different. The past cannot be changed; it can only be forgiven.
Be conciliatory:
Here is where we’re challenged to step in to settle arguments. To be peacemakers. Over the last week and a half I’ve been following with deepening sorrow and hope the tortured attempts between Israeli and Palestinian leaders to once again bring peace to the middle east. While that is an example on a national scale, it can be equally vexing and complicated a matter to try to bring estranged family members to reconciliation. Nevertheless, we’re called to try.
And lastly, be celebrative.
Tony Campolo tells of his being on a trip to speak and, unable to sleep, going to an all-night diner. He is approached by a couple of women there, who by the way they dress are obviously prostitutes, and they find out he’s a minister. He finds out it is one of the women’s birthday, and that she’s never had a birthday party in her life. Ever. They end up throwing her a birthday party, there in the diner, at 2 AM. In the middle of it, the woman asks Mr. Campolo what kind of God his church believes in, and his response to her is “one who throws birthday parties for prostitues at 2AM”
The father in the parable exemplifies these four attributes, and by implication, Jesus seems to be telling us,
“You’ve been like the younger son and the older son, try being like the father”.
*****
I asked Hannah to forgive me for being so short with her a few minutes later, as she was going to sleep. She looked at me and smiled and said ‘it’s ok daddy. Some people just do that’. I thanked her, and promised her that I would continue to work on not being so short tempered.
If you are here this morning and you feel like the prodigal son, your invitation is to have that change of heart, and turn, and begin the return to the father who will run to you and throw himself around your neck and welcome you home.
If you are here this morning and feel like the older son, hear the gospel of grace: God is saying, “All that I have is yours. Come join us! Your brother was dead and is alive now. How can we not be joyous and celebrate!?
If you are here this morning and long to be even a little bit, like the father in the parable, man or woman, your invitation is to follow Christ as your Lord and Savior, and let him mold you and shape you into that generous, forgiving, conciliatory and celebrative person that our Heavenly Father who loves us so wants us to be.
Let’s pray.
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