It’s Father’s Day, and I want to spend a little bit of time looking into the Scripture that was just read, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, to see what we can see about the nature of God the Father.
We know that Father’s Day is a day of mixed significance to people.
For some Father’s Day is a problem because their dad’s were either not there at all, or were emotionally absent, abusive or worse. Some really don’t want to remember Father’s Day, because it’s just a source of pain.
But regardless of our relationship with our own fathers, there is a wonderful reality to ponder: that God chooses to have a relationship like that of a Father with us, with you and me.
The difference perhaps is that God’s fatherhood is perfect, not lacking on any level. So that’s why we’re going to spend time mining what this passage has to say about God as our Father in heaven.
As we begin to look at the story of the Prodigal Son, we are really looking through a window at much of the human story, perhaps we will see ourselves in the attitudes and actions of the son in this story.
And what I notice first in the story is the son asking for his inheritance, which is, sadly, very much like the son saying: “I wish you were dead, dad. Give me my money”.
As I see the son and watch the father’s response, one thing that’s clear is that the father, and thus God, is really not at all what you would call a controlling person.
The response of God to us wanting to do our own thing, even in complete defiance of Him, is to not refuse us.
It is not to contain us, to control us, to condemn us, to reject us.
The son in the story for all intents and purposes rejects the father. Like I said, asking for your inheritance before it is due is no different than wishing your parents dead.
There are those who say that the idea of God NOT being controlling and rather allowing free will is irresponsible, that it’s even a flaw that proves that God is not perfect.
That if free will is the cause of humans doing terrible things...think Hitler, think 9/11, think of any story you’ve read in the paper in the past week where anyone did anything bad to anyone else...
There are those who think that the “free-will defense” of God proves a flaw in God.
But let me ask you, because the story we’re looking at is a tiny example of God’s relationship with all of humanity, is the father’s willingness to let his son go, with the inheritance, wrong?
Should the father have said ‘no’ and thrown his son into a cell for disrespecting him, in order to contain him?
Some may say that would be the right thing to do. But this father said ‘yes’ to his son, and allowed his son to NOT sit in a cell just resenting his father and learning nothing about the world or himself.
This father said ‘yes’ to his son, and he allowed the son to experience what life is like.
He allowed the son to, as the story progresses, personally grasp what it’s like to be out of relationship, out of earshot, of the father, and then to do his own thing. Interesting.
So in the story, the son enjoys life...for a while. The narrative wraps up the son’s experience away from the father in just a few words, but we know there was more to the story.
It wraps up the son’s journey thus far in a way that captures the real gist of it. It says that after he got his inheritance he: “set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living”. A few words covering a multitude of mistakes, of sins.
Then...then we’re given a picture of the son’s best thinking in the moment, now that he’s blown his inheritance. Not only had he wasted all his money,
but his best thinking, when he began to be in need, was to hire himself out to a farmer in that country.
Now, he had been a son, a son of privilege, a son who belonged, a son who was loved by his father. Now he’s a hired hand to a stranger.
He gets to feed pigs. In our culture, that’s not such a big deal. In the Jewish culture that Jesus was in, and to the audience who was listening, this was the lowest kind of degradation of a person. Pigs are unclean animals in that culture.
To be the one who fed the pigs, that’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. And as he’s feeding these animals their food, he’s so starved that pig food is starting to look attractive.
But he’s so far down the ladder that he’s not even allowed to eat pig food. No one gives him anything.
This is a picture of a man coming to the end of himself. It’s a picture of a person who has reaped what he has sown.
It’s a picture of a person who is at a place a total desperation and deprivation. And it’s only after he’s been in the situation for a while that...what happens?...a light bulb goes off in his head.
The story says: 17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father”.
So the son, grasping that he has utterly blown it, finally having regained a bit of good judgment, he begins to map out his strategy...how he’s going to apologize.
He hopes...he hopes that maybe, just maybe, his dad will let him work for him. ‘I don’t merit being a son anymore. But can I just be someone who works for you?’
He knew his dad’s character and that, unlike the stranger he worked for in the foreign country, his father was a just employer. A kind boss.
So the son got up and went home to his father, still reciting his speech in his head. I can imagine how he felt, now that he was thinking clearly.
Now that he realized just how far he had sunk, how distant he had made himself from the father. How alienated and estranged and utterly silly he would have felt.
And while he’s feeling this way, as he’s approaching home, while he’s still just a speck in the distance, his father sees him.
You know the way you can recognize someone by their gate? By the way they walk, even if they’re in a crowd or far away?
The father knew the son’s walk. The father knew the son even from a long way off. And what does he do?
On the first sighting of his son, at the first sign that the son is coming home, what does he do?
Does he burn with anger? No.
Does he stand in judgment? No.
Does he [cross arms] withhold himself from the son? No.
Does he demand an explanation? Does he demand some lengthy speech to make sure that the son really knows what he did wrong and that he really pays for what he did wrong? Absolutely none of it.
Rather on the first sign of his son’s return, the father is FILLED WITH COMPASSION. Now I want us to understand that word here.
Perhaps a quote from Milan Kundera in the book, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, might help. He says “for there is nothing heavier than compassion.
“Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
The word compassion actually means “to suffer with another”.
The father feels this, this compassion for his son. You see, not only did he recognize his son’s gate from afar off, but he saw the limp in his son’s walk. He saw the effects of the contortion of his walk, from his son’s starvation.
We carry in our bodies our histories. We carry with us our wounds, our fears born from experience, we carry with us tension. We carry with us the burdens of life.
The prodigal son’s father recognized his son, and he also recognized his son’s wounds. And he is filled, filled, filled with compassion.
The son, no doubt really surprised by his father’s unexpected reaction...the father’s thrown his arms around the son and is smothering him with kisses.
The son is still kinda stuck in the words he had planned to say, and he starts to recite his speech to his father: [act like I’m being smothered in hugs] ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
What does the father do? What does the father say? He’s clearly not listening to his son in that moment. He’s on a different planet. He tells his servants to bring the best robe and a ring and sandals on his feet.
He tells the servants to bring the best calf, to prepare a feast and a celebration. The father can’t contain his joy at the return of his son.
I can imagine the servants standing around for a bit, looking perplexed, wondering what the commotion is all about.
And the father explains: 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
So they began to celebrate. Zoom. Off the servants go. They get it now. They see the reason for the father’s great joy.
Now there’s more to the story. While this is going on, there is a son, the older brother, who has always stuck around the father and done the right thing.
And he’s steaming angry, and he stands in judgment of the son, refusing to enter into the celebration.
Oddly, the condemnation the prodigal son expected from his father, he gets instead from his older brother.
And the older brother also stands in judgment of the father. “I’ve always done what is right. I’ve slaved for you all these years, and you’ve never so much as given me a little goat to celebrate with my friends.
“But this idiot brother of mine blows his inheritance with prostitutes and you throw a party? What gives?”.
The father tries to explain: 31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
But that’s the end of the story. It’s left to our imagination to figure out how the older brother fared. It’s clear though that he doesn’t understand the father. He resents the son who has returned, and he resents the father’s open acceptance of his fallen son.
At the very least, the older brother in the story is a character that cautions us about being caught up in self-righteousness.
Getting caught up in feeling that we have to work to earn God’s favour, in being trapped and joyless in a sense of duty and obligation toward God.
There’s a far better way to relate to God. And I think it begins by grasping at a heart level the joy of the father in the story of the prodigal son.
It’s by affirming, saying yes deep in our spirits to the fatherhood of God, the deep compassion of God toward all people.
It’s by appreciating the way in which He grants us freedom, the freedom to choose right from wrong, good from bad, generosity toward others vs selfishness.
He gives us that freedom, and sometimes, as the old hymn says, we’re ‘prone to wander’ from under His care.
But then – and this is remarkable to me – he doesn’t turn His back on us. He has compassion upon us, He suffers with us the pain and consequences of our wayward actions.
He doesn’t seek to control us, but He does want us to choose to love Him, to choose to follow Him, to choose to live according to His way, the principals we find in the Word of God and in the mouth of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World.
He wants us to choose to love Him, and when we don’t, either in the ways we behave or in our outright rejection of Him, He still has compassion on us.
He knows your name. he recognizes your gate from afar. He sees and responds to the wounds we bear. He sees us from afar and He wants us to return.
That’s the ultimate reason why He gives us freedom to wander…so that we can have the freedom to choose Him.
Like it or not, God wants your uncoerced, unforced, unfeigned love.
He wants you to choose to freely love Him.
He wants you to choose to be with Him – now, and then in a way that’s vitally connected to ‘now’, for all eternity.
You know, even as Jesus told this story, He knew that it would be Him that would be the way back to the Father.
He knew, even as He narrated the journey of the Prodigal Son, that He would be the One to restore us to God, to reconcile us to the Father by laying down His life for us.
He would be the Lamb slain, the ransom paid, the sacrifice given, willingly, in the ultimate act of love, as the supreme evidence of the love of the Father.
You likely have heard the Scripture: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life".
It was Jesus who spoke those words, even as he anticipated his own suffering, suffering with a purpose.
Suffering that would result in the Christ Himself being the bridge between God the Father and his creation, humanity, that had been estranged from him.
And really, that is why we celebrate. That is why followers of Christ world-wide spend time gathering together every Sunday, to remember the love of the Father.
To remember the sacrifice of the Son. And to remember the gift of the Holy Spirit, given by the Father and the Son in order to lead you and me to faith in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us.
God’s Father-heart is a giving heart. It is a gracious heart. It is a merciful heart. It is a heart that is long-suffering.
It is a heart that endures rejection, scorn, unbelief, hatred even. It is a heart that risks being misunderstood and maligned in order to bring healing to the nations.
May each of us here today, whether or not we belong to the church that gathers here, choose to embrace the Father-heart of God.
May we say "yes" to the love expressed in the willing sacrifice of Jesus, his life given to bring us home.
May we live and proclaim, as truly grateful, truly joyful people, the beauty and mystery of the love of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
