PRODIGAL SON 4

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dear family,

Thank you for your attention on Sunday as we looked at the second half of the parable that is commonly named “The Prodigal Son.” However, as we’ve noted, this story was introduced by Jesus like this: “There was a man who had two sons…” So it is a story made up of two equal accounts. The second son is not just a sub-text to the first. We’ve already noted that though silent, the elder brother was present at the beginning of the story. He witnessed what happened, he too received inheritance, but he failed to respond as any son would have been expected to, in discouraging the brother or intervening. He disappears for all the years that the younger son is gone. He too, though apparently in the outward geography of the father, though appearing to be functioning in the father’s house, is actually no less in a distant country of the heart. He is not in the town, where the reunion would have taken place. The sound of music and dancing, the sounds of another’s experience and testimony of deliverance fall on his soul. The code word “fatted calf” tells it all. This is as high as you can raise the restoration stakes of celebration. But this is as low as someone can respond to the joy of another’s restoration to the father.

Note the parallelism: another son coming towards his father’s house, equally bound, equally in need of restoration of his relationship with the father. The answer of the young boy to his question about what was going on is not quite as passive as it sounds: the brother “has come”. The nuance, so the textual scholars tell us, emphasizes the action of the father in bringing him back. The imperfect tense of v26 implies that the brother kept on asking the young man questions no doubt getting all the information available, so he would have known the state in which the other son arrived and all the responses of the father. The word for “safe and sound” is the same one used in the Greek translation of the OT for “Shalom”, which is the ultimate word for healing and wholeness. So we are left in no doubt about the extraordinary nature of the recovered relationship between the younger son and his father, the nature of the healing and deliverance. The immediate response of the older brother leaves us in no doubt about his equal estrangement from the father. “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.” Now we start seeing what is in him by what is coming out. There is indeed a deep root of entrenched anger and even hatred. The refusal to go in is another defiance against expected responsibilities, as tradition required the older son to be the one at the door to welcome guests. There is a root of rebellion here, and it’s been around for a long and unresolved time.

Let’s not beat about the bush here. What is the primary object of his anger? It is not the brother, but the father. He represents those who have clenched their fists at God for their own aggrieved reasons. There is then a repeat of what happened with the younger son. The father takes the initiative and comes after the son, who is now arguably acting worse than the younger one did. At least that exchange was private; this is public as the son stands in the open courtyard in his defiance and rage. This is another but different presentation of the pain of broken relationship between father and son. But despite the son refusing to be the son, the father refuses to stop being the father. He didn’t order his son’s compliance but pleaded. There is such poignancy in these pleadings. We know that the spirit of our father goes to great extents to strive with men and women: to persuade, to draw, to convince, to woo. But the same father who went after the first son, goes again after the enemy of grace. He wouldn’t come to where the father and his brother was, so note that the father went to him! This is pursuing paternal love and grace!

There is a tenderness and terrible vulnerability in the way that the father puts himself at the mercy of the son, and puts himself into his hands through this loving appeal that may be rejected to the heart-break of the father. What we witness is the elder son having his way with the father, as the crowd that crucified Jesus had their way with the Father’s heart not long after he told this story, and in the same way that we have our will when he is rejected by us through our disobedience and neglect, or when, in the terrifying words of the writer to the Hebrews, we harden our heart and sin, and treat the blood of Christ as an unholy thing, and trample underfoot the holy Son of the Father and thereby reject the Father.

You almost hold your breath as the elder son responds with such anger, disdain and accusation, to these pleadings of the father’s love. Even the prodigal at the beginning of the story at least addressed his father as “Father!” There was at least a modicum of social respect even if his heart was also in rebellion. Here there is nothing. The son goes straight into his tirade against the father. Commentators who understand the cultural background and setting here that Jesus’ listeners would be familiar with, have no words to describe the intensity of the shock, not just to public civility, but to familial honor that this outburst would carry. It is as heightened a level of insult as you could imagine. It would be grounds for any father having him beaten and thrown out for good. It is the ultimate dismissing, denying and degrading of a father’s authority. But in his anger he exposes himself: “I’ve been slaving for you.” Long before Paul wrote to the Romans or to the Galatians, the contrast between a slave and a true son is identified by Jesus. The two sons are equal in their estrangement from the heart of the father, whether through license or whether through legalism. Here is the tragedy of living in the father’s house but still as a slave. It also shows us some of the bad fruits of this bondage – the anger is of someone who is bound. Because of this spirit of a slave, contempt has come into his heart for his father. Trust has been affected. His entire perspective on life and others has been twisted so there is no discernment of the father’s heart. For example, he can only see the party as an insult because it seems to suggest the younger son’s worth and value, and isn’t he a scumbag? What about his, the elder son’s, worth? He has no way of discerning that it is first about the heart of the father, the joy of the father. It is the father’s party, not the son’s! (Have you noticed how joyless the legalist is, how joyless is one who is enslaved, how joyless is the one with unresolved anger?)

It’s ironic that in the context of insulting and accusing his father he thinks he has never disobeyed him. But what about the fifth commandment that seems to have hit the dust in this explosion? Note the accusations: partiality and favoritism, injustice and neglect, lack of judgment and discernment. This is a litany of complaint, both about how he has been treated and how the father has dared to treat the other son. Essentially he argues his deserts; the father owes him, the father is his debtor and therefore his integrity and his authority and his honor are denied and derided, and consequently the father is defied. Other things then tumble out that betray his real state:

• “my friends”: this implies a self-consciousness of other relationships other than his father and family that are from another disconnected part of his life.
• “this son of yours”: not his “brother” because there is no recognition of a relationship, and this is yet another example of separation from the family. (Loss of fatherhood always produces this separation effect in relationship with others in the family – disunity in the body – finding a counterfeit fellowship – a counterfeit family – a counterfeit father)
• “with prostitutes”: this is particularly interesting because there is no word used earlier in the passage that implies immorality on the other son’s part. The word used implies financial recklessness with resources, and wastefulness. That is not to say he was not immoral, but it is to say that the only mention of sexual sin in this story was in the elder brother’s mouth and therefore in his mind. Did this “never disobeyed your commands” son betray more problems of an enslaved spirit than the younger prodigal? Did he envy the brother’s profligacy and possible sensual excesses? Was the fact that he hadn’t slept around have more to do with cowardice than righteousness? And while he and his friends may never actually have visited a brothel, did they share their mental pornography, or live in the brothels in their heads? It was not a heart-obedience but a religious compliance that he had manifested. (Don’t forget that Jesus’ audience here included prostitutes and Pharisees!)

The father’s response to this venom is as overwhelming and as consistent as the response to the younger son. The word “huios” has been used mostly for “son” up till now. But here the word he uses for son is “teknon” (beloved son) which is the same one Mary used to address Jesus when she found him in the temple: it is a sensitive mixture of heart concern but deep affection and love. Again, before the expositions of the epistles on sonship and slavery, it is Jesus in this story who puts in the mouth of the father the words of rebuttal to the slave designation of the son. The father’s answer is simply: no, you are the heir. So what Paul writes should sound familiar! “Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into your hearts, the spirit who calls out ‘Abba father’. So you are no longer a slave but a son: and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” (Gals. 4:4-7) The father assures him of the truth about who he is and what his holy rights are as a son, that he does not need to grasp and does not need to fear something will be taken or removed. The tragedy is to live as a slave and fail or refuse to avail yourself as a son, of all that is available in the father’s house. He could have had a fatted calf if he had wanted one. The fact is that the father had already given it to him by deed and title at the beginning of the story. His blame of the father was shameful, because unfounded, ungrounded, just wrong. The other thing that the father is so concerned to communicate is that he was always there and available. “My son, you are always with me.” It is the devil’s work to steal and rob and destroy the family of the father. There is no limit to demonic envy and hatred for the intimacy of the father and son/daughter relationship. You see this so deeply in the High Priestly prayer of Jesus in Jn. 17, another crucial passage for understanding the father-son relationship. You can hear echoes of this passage in it. Jesus keeps talking about himself being with the Father (“with you” vs.5) about the Father being in Him and he being “with them” (vs.12) The tragedy, as for many professing believers, is that proximity doesn’t necessarily translate into an experience of presence. Being in the field (as the elder son was) doesn’t mean intimacy.

The second half of the story now ends on the same note exactly that the first one did: with the father’s joy at the dead son being alive, at the lost son being found. But it doesn’t actually end. What do I mean? This is a carefully structured story. Each half is meant to have eight stanzas and they careful parallel each other. But the second half has only seven stanzas. It finishes open-ended. There is a missing stanza which can only be filled in, only be completed by us. It is an inconclusive ending. The brother is still standing outside the door. Did he go in? He is left standing outside the door of the father’s house. Where are you in your relationship with your Father? Are you inside, or on the outside? If the latter, what keeps you there? What is the source of your resistance, of your reticence, of your rejection? Why are you angry at him? Are we submitting to the father’s ring and robe job or is there a part of us that is standing outside the door, for whatever reason, from unresolved anger to feeling hard done by, from being enslaved and bound, for whatever reason, whether self-inflicted, other-inflicted, or devil inflicted? What is our response to a fresh invitation from the father to live in his house on his terms and at his expense? The pride of both sons needed to be broken by an encounter with grace. One humbled himself and submitted himself again to the father’s gracious ministrations. The other one…I don’t know. But this story of the father and his sons, this story of the father’s love and grace and patience and forgiveness, invites us to choose how our stories will continue and how they will end. What is your response to the father’s invitation? How will your story end?

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

http://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)

PRODIGAL SON 3

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dearest family,

I didn’t get quite as far as I wanted to on Sunday but enough is enough! The parable of the two sons, or more accurately, of the father, is such a rich seam of truth in the mouth of Jesus, the perfect Son of the glorious Father. One of the features of the story that we dwelt on was the prodigal’s incompletion of his rehearsed speech. Why did he not present the “hired-hand plan”? What kind of reasons could be given? Was it simply that he was interrupted by his father, otherwise he would have presented all of it? Or was something else going on? The last word of his truncated speech was “son” at which point the father’s heart seems to leap with a cosmic divine “YES!” and the father’s speech now flows spontaneously, unrehearsed. Let the contrast between what they each said sink in to your heart: “I am no longer worthy to be called your son…” (the son), “This son of mine was dead and is alive again…” (the father). I asked you whose perspective you would rather have on your life?

I don’t think that the speech ended early because the son made a calculated decision to do so. The loving, receiving, accepting, welcoming, rejoicing actions of the father brought the revelation of who he the son, truly was, with the equal revelation of who his father was. And what was he? A dead son, who realizes it at last as he is smothered in the embrace of the father, and wetted with the kisses of his mouth. There was no way he could become a live son any other way than this way, being raised again to life by the love of the father. His father didn’t leave him on the hook. It doesn’t even appear as if the confession mattered that much to the father. Don’t get me wrong, I believe everything scripture teaches about the necessity of our confession. But here is a wrench for your theology which may just suggest how huge the compassion and desire of the father is for us, that He seems to run through all the check-points of how you’re meant to approach him according to dutiful penitent custom. What is clear, by his interruption of the rehearsed off-by-heart speech is that his love cannot wait until the ending of the liturgy of confession. He has to have the son now! The son’s confession is almost ignored, certainly cut short, definitely interrupted. The father’s forgiveness preceded the confession. Don’t forget the father had died too. In claiming the inheritance the son had essentially told him to drop dead, to live now as if dead, and of course, in taking the inheritance he took the father’s living, his means of support. Out of his death came the forgiveness, way before the son’s realization of his need for it. Are you getting echoes of the gospel here, of the Father who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself? I’m thinking of Titus 3:4 “When the kindness and love of God appeared…he saved us…because of his mercy…” Does not Romans 2:4 say that it is “God’s kindness that leads to repentance…” Whether we come sinning or sinned against in our brokenness, it seems his fatherly passions and kindness ignore the litany of our worthlessness. We cannot even get the words out. He’s throwing out instructions to ministering spirits left and right and in two sentences, fewer words than the son had planned for the confession, the father has planned a celebration. As one observer has put it: “The father simply sees this corpse of a son coming down the road and, because raising dead sons to life and throwing fabulous parties for them is his favorite way of spending an afternoon, he proceeds straight to hugs and kisses and resurrection.”

You’ve got to get this. The son was kissed before he confessed. There was no negotiation here of his forgiveness and acceptance and restoration: no probation, no trial periods. No wonder penance is so attractive to the flesh that refuses to surrender to the kiss of the father. How can we defy grace with our offers of possible paybacks? We bring nothing with us but our brokenness! Of course we can understand the son’s attempts to manage his own recovery, to try and work the “hired hand” approach. The response of the father seems so indiscriminately gracious that it almost appears indecent, not true discipleship, too loose, too unwise, too unguarded, too naïve - to go straight from the forgiveness of this wastrel to the party? But we need to be shocked once in a while by the outrageousness of God’s grace to us, that we have got so used to confining to our polite theological formulations. Surely a probationary period before the public party would be wise? This would have fit in well with the son’s original “hired servant” idea.

It’s not that repentance is not required, or that coming to one’s senses is not necessary, or that coming to the father is unimportant – it’s just that they are all overwhelmed by the robe and the ring, the sandals and the fatted calf. The robe was the reinstatement of the father’s status and identity to the son. It was most likely one of his best personal robes. Slaves were bare-footed, the sons wore shoes – only free men wore shoes. The ring was the signet of authority to do business as the son of the father. So here is the son, decked out as a son with all the rights of a son. You should know that for a disgraced son like this one, Jewish communities had a very different kind of ceremony to the one the father gave here. Scholars of the customs of the time tell us that it was called the “kezazah” (the cutting off) in which he would have been officially rejected for what he had done. A life-time excommunication and the branding of “REJECTED” would be his sentence. The returning son well might have feared this was what he was walking into. The father’s answer is not banishment but an over-the-top celebration of welcome to which the whole community would be invited – thus the whole calf and not just a few pieces of steak on the barbecue. This is outrageous extravagance but this was the Father that Jesus knew. And speaking of that fatted calf…. It can slip by without notice in our hurry to get to enjoy it at the party. But it is yet another death in a parable full of deaths. Some see this as the image of the sacraments (admittedly it is a calf slain and not a lamb slain) – but the sole purpose of the fatted calf was to die that others may have joy in the father’s house. There is none the less the idea of “blood covenant” in relationship whenever an animal was killed for friends. The refrain is the same: life out of death is what happens when you come to the father’s house.

And another thought about that fattened calf. It was waiting fattened. There was full provision in the father’s house. He had all that was needed for restitution and restoration and reconciliation. He wasn’t caught short. There was no waiting period till joy and deliverance could be really celebrated. But as we were saying, the returning dead-now raised son is given all the rights of the son without even the righteousness of sonship being demanded, without him proving he can be righteous and worthy. His last true self-description was “unworthy”. Some wise and discerning person put it this way: “Reformation is the fruit of restoration, not the price.”

It was because of the father’s compassion that the son was received not because of his confession. This celebration wasn’t the father’s response to the speech. As we’ve established, the speech as rehearsed wasn’t even repentance. We already know how he intended to say it, with what intentions and limited hopes. What cut the speech short? The moment of true revelation and repentance when it was clear that it wasn’t about squandered money but about this broken relationship that could only be restored by the gifts of the father yet again. An 11th century Arabic commentary puts the reason for the “hired hand” bit of the speech being cut off most succinctly: “He did not say this. We say that he did not say this because of what he saw of his father’s love.” It was the outpouring of a heart that, days without number, had been filled with feelings of longing for the lost son. It wasn’t that his rehearsed repentance made the way for him to be received. The love that received him secured his repentance. So he wasn’t even received because of his confession but because of the father’s great love and grace. O what manner of love the father has lavished on us that we should be called the children of God! Being a hired servant was what the son knew best to be, apart from his father’s grace. But hear me: the love of the father will not allow us to be or become what we are not. In any case, his idea that by working he was somehow going to be able to earn to pay back, or save to recover what was lost, was unattainable, impossible. It turns out that just as the father was always the father, so the son, despite all that had happened to disfigure his identity or appear to disbar his sonship, was still a son, was always a son, and would continue to be loved and treated as such.

There is so little acknowledgement of the crucial relationship between our understanding and experience of freedom and our experience of fatherhood. Our freedom is a consequence of our assurance about fatherhood. It is not enough to understand it only in terms of the working of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit reveals Jesus, who in turn is showing us the Father. Neither the Spirit nor Jesus act independently of the will or work of the Father. The charisma is the father’s before it is the Spirit’s. It was the gifts of the father to the prodigal that recovered for him his freedom as a son: like the ring which now gave him the freedom to exercise his authority in the father’s name.

In the fifth message in this series we will begin to look at the elder son and see what further insights we have of the heart of the father. In the meantime, live as an obedient and loving son and daughter of your Father.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

http://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)

PRODIGAL SON 2

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dearest family,

One of the things I mentioned by way of introduction on Sunday, (for the main message you will have to download it), for pastoral reasons, was that it is important to acknowledge and understand that there are many people, by no means everyone, who find it more challenging to internalize teaching and truth about the fatherhood of God because of difficulties and disappointments, problems and pains, irreconciled or unhealed experiences and memories in relation to their natural father. Within that range, there are some whose experience was chronic neglect, but there are others whose lives were violated and abused. There are some who had no experience of fathering at all, or because of early divorce, little meaningful formation from lovingly present fathering. However, as we shall continue to see, especially when we come to deal with a biblical understanding of what our spiritual sonship and daughterhood means, such experiences, for any who have had them, or are still dealing with the fall-out, can in no way relegate you to a lesser experience of God’s fatherhood; they cannot limit the immediacy with which you relate to God’s fathering; they cannot interfere with your desires and capacities to be a healthy son or daughter of our Father. The enemy of our souls will sponsor any lie about you or any lie about who God is, or possibly can be to you.

Those who had a better experience of fathering than you, are not ahead of you in the line when it comes to the attentiveness of your heavenly father, and they cannot thereby be assumed to be able to know the father better than you. This is an easy lie to believe, especially by those who had to contend with fathers who clearly showed favoritism to one child more than another, or responded emotionally differently to them than to other siblings, or lived under the shadow of not being wanted. Our heavenly Father has no favorites and we are not competing for his attention. Regardless of our human experiences of fathering, we are all equally sons and daughters with no diminishment of our expectations of God’s fathering because of any past deficit.

In his wonderful and seminal text on the character of God, entitled “Knowing God”, Jim Packer nails it on the head. “I have heard it seriously argued that the thought of divine fatherhood can mean nothing to those whose human father was inadequate, lacking wisdom, affection or both, nor to those many more whose misfortune it was to have a fatherless upbringing…But this is silly. For in the first place, it is not true to say that in the realm of personal relations positive concepts cannot be formed by contrast… Many young people get married with a resolve not to make the mess of their marriage that they saw their parents make: can this not be a positive ideal? Of course it can. Similarly, the thought of our maker becoming our perfect parent – faithful in love and care, generous and thoughtful, interested in all we do, respecting our individuality, skillful in training us, wise in guidance, always available, helping to find ourselves in maturity, integrity and uprightness – is a thought which can have meaning for everybody…” By that he means regardless of previous experience of human fathering, whether present and awful, or just absent and therefore awful.

But the most important and powerful thing we can say about this has to do with the fact that God has not left it to us, based on our experience of human fathering, to try and work out what his fathering is like, or how we will be qualified to relate to it. We have not been left to try and work out what his fatherhood is like by deducing it from our human experience. That would favor some and not others and would not be just. The bottom line is that our Father has completely and conclusively and convincingly revealed the total meaning of what his fathering of us is all about, through his relationship with his Son Jesus Christ and through the experience and example of Jesus’ responsive relationship to him. When we come into relationship with the Father through the Son Jesus Christ, we have accessed the true and trustable source of all fathering. Do you remember what Paul said to the Ephesians (3:14)? “I kneel before the Father from whom his whole family in heaven and earth derives its name.” There is nothing about your human experience of fathering that has the final power, though it may try and exercise some temporary power through sadness or bitterness, or unforgiveness, or anger, or despair, or hopelessness – it does not have the ultimate power to hinder your relationship with your heavenly father, because, like Jesus, you are God’s one and only too.

One of the key phrases of the NT is simply the one that says: “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The common beginning of just about every epistle in the NT is a greeting from “God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” Everyone who was addressed, whether they were being commended as the Thessalonians were, or condemned as some of the Corinthians were, they were all equally being loved and disciplined as sons and daughters of the Father. If I have the time we could do a message just on the fatherhood greetings and openings of every epistle. Paul packs so much teaching about Father into his opening words. Sometimes he just dwells on the fathering of God because that is what the folk he is writing to need to know most, like the Corinthians for example: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles..” (2Cors.1:3)

The reason the emphasis is always on the fact that God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is because this is always reminding us about the sure and unchangeable benchmark and experience that God as Father had with his Son Jesus, and intends for everyone of his children, no exceptions, no exclusions. Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” Let the Holy Spirit work that, sink that deep into your spirit. Father’s undiluted love for Jesus is your equal portion as a son and daughter. The enemy will sponsor every possibility of worthlessness, self-condemnation, self-pity, self-condemnation that makes a special case of our pain that somehow we are the exception to God’s fathering. The enemy is merciless in binding people to their emotional convictions that they are the last of the litter, the family runt, the unwanted, the unloved, the unliked, the unparentable, the unlovely. We need to take authority over it and be loosed from its power and freed from the wretched orphanage of the spirit that it forces people to live in, when they should be living as free sons and daughters n the father’s house.

Pastorally yours

Stuart

http://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)

PRODIGAL SON 1

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dear family,

In our “Finding Father” series I have decided to go straight to Jesus’ parable that we know, for right or wrong, as “The Prodigal Son.” I have long argued that if there is any prodigality in this story it is the outrageously prodigal demonstration of the Father’s love and grace for the son. The prodigality of the Father’s reception of the son far outweighs the prodigality of the son’s rejection of the Father. We didn’t really get into it on Sunday because I was suggesting that there were some background things we needed to know in order to respond responsibly to the story. So I threw out some introductory comments that will help you to orient to it.

1. The history of commentary on this parable tends to get pre-occupied with what the allegorical meanings are, but specifically, who the two sons represent. Much of that discussion is influenced by how this parable was actually used in preaching and teaching in the early centuries of the church. Who were the Older and Younger? Righteous and sinner? Israel and heathen? Legalist and lover? But what cannot be disputed is that the only unifying factor in the story is the Father, and it is the nature of fatherhood in the parable that invites us to understand something about true sonship. Furthermore, the choice we are presented is not simply about which son we are like or want to be like. That is not good enough because frankly, as someone has rightly observed, “this narrative presents neither son as a model uniformly to be followed or avoided.” It is also not good enough, for does not a true son ultimately want to be like the father? So maybe the real choice we are being asked to make here is simply to be like the father. I liked the way one person put it: “Henri Nouwen wrote a book called Return of the Prodigal. The book is about his meditations as he viewed the painting by Rembrandt about this story. He tells how he came to identify with the prodigal son. He shared with a friend about his reflections and the friend questioned whether Nouwen was not actually more like the older brother. As Nouwen reflected more on this story he began to realize that he was indeed all too much like the older son in the story. He began to question which one he more identified with, the prodigal or the older son. He eventually concluded he identified with both.” Then the writer adds this: “At the end of Nouwen’s book he articulates a discovery that I too came to realize. He had been asking which son he was most like. In doing so, he was missing an essential piece to the story. The story is not about the sons. The story is about the father! Furthermore, there is an implicit invitation in the parable. That invitation is to take on the character of the father! We easily identify with the sons, but the call is to be like the father.” What you can take some strength from, is that this story is Jesus talking about HIS Father. It is as incredible a source, an access for insight as any in scripture of what the Father is like – of what his relationship with his sons is like. The key to this story is to watch the Father, not just the sons. Listen to the Father, not just the sons. It’s less about the son who returns to the Father, than the Father who receives the son. No less than twelve times the Father is mentioned – he is the premier character here.

2. Another thing: this story serves to remind us that when we come to deal with the fatherhood-sonship issue here, we cannot confuse a biblical father with a 21st century one. It is presented in a very specific cultural context and fatherhood’s meanings and values and roles are founded on a different set of pre-suppositions than those that govern present attitudes and perceptions. For example: this is not a context of gender equality as we understand it today. One observer has put it like this: "In the patriarchal societies of antiquity, the father figure is endowed with two particular characteristics. On the one hand, the father rules as head of the household and the person to whom most respect is due, having absolute authority over his family. On the other hand, he has the responsibility of guarding, supporting, and helping the other members. Both these characteristics are also present when a deity is described or addressed as father.” We have to know this if we’re to understand the nature of the son’s sin against the father.

3. This is a parable, not an allegory, so the father is not exactly God but certainly functions as an image of God’s fathering and thus there is much similitude. We need to note, by way of introduction, that men spoke of God as a Father before Jesus. God was referred to as “pan-pater” which is essentially the universal father, the ultimate origin. Commentators have pointed out that for Platonists and stoics, human reason was the rational seed that had its origin in the divine, so the idea of God’s fatherhood in this sense became a theme of western philosophy. The problem with this is that though it may be right in at least pointing to the existence of God, it is dead wrong on the fatherhood bit, since God can only be the Father of those who are truly His children. God is not the father of all. Jesus himself said that the devil was the father of some!

4. Jesus’ personal address to “Father” cannot be understood in relation to any precedents in pagan or Greek traditions but only within the OT context of Israel’s faith. However, you are probably thinking, rightly, that there is not that much in the OT about the fatherhood of God. You’d be right. But you would or should probably be puzzled by that, coming from a NT perspective where there are hundreds of references to God as Father. There are probably only about 10 in the OT. (Get CD to hear references and comments.) Why is this? Why does there seem to be a lesser emphasis on fatherhood in the OT? There is a very good reason for it. Other pagan religions surrounding the Israelites employed the “father” idea for their gods because they believed, especially the fertility religions, that their gods were capable of physical generation and conducted natural relationships with people. Obviously, given the temptations to the Israelites, which we know they succumbed to more than once, the prophets were concerned that Israel’s view of God’s fatherhood not be misinterpreted in these pagan terms and for this reason God’s transcendence is clearly established. He is indeed the Creator but He also is the Judge and you cannot have a familiar slap-happy relationship with him, an extension of natural relationships. This is why the distinctions between the true God of Israel and the false gods are established in the way that relationship is based not on natural bonds but on a God-initiated covenant. The emphasis is on election, not generation, on the choice of will, not on natural affinity. But even though the references to fatherhood are few, what we see, as the history of salvation continues to unfold in the OT, is very interesting. You can see it in Isaiah 63:16: "But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name." In other words, God the Father truly emerges in the context of his saving, rescuing, redeeming actions.

5. ‘So what?’ you may ask. Well, it is precisely against this background of God’s covenant love that seeks to redeem, that Jesus uses the word “Abba.” There is no way that this word can be diluted to a sentimental expression of love or an indulgent expression of emotional need. It is utterly rooted in a very costly plan of salvation. Do you remember the context in which Jesus used it most poignantly? Gethsemane. His acknowledgement of God as Abba is integral to his acceptance of the necessity of death on the cross for your redemption and mine.
• The unpacking of knowing God as Abba is done in Gethsemane. Yes, there could have been a sensational power-display, an amazing miracle, twelve legions of angels, but that was not the point. To use the name Abba was not to ask for anything primarily, but to express and demonstrate a willingness to do the will of the Father. As Son of God, there were no exemptions, no special privileges for Jesus. He accepted the obligation of full obedience to the will of the Father. It was not a legal obedience, nor was he forced to surrender. He responded to the character of the Father, a response of love, to love. It was therefore into the Father’s hands that he could commit his spirit. (Lk. 23:46)
• This is so important in our understanding, for as for Jesus, so for us. God’s fatherhood presents us with, to quote a wise saint, “absolute demand and ultimate succor.” In the need for the recovery of the Father’s relationship, we cannot ignore the acceptance of the Father’s requirements. In the need for the Father’s comfort, we cannot avoid the Father’s commands. In the need for the Father’s delight in us, we cannot refuse the Father’s discipline of us. In the need for the Father’s help, we cannot evade his holiness. What can we learn from all this, and why is Jesus’ use of Abba in Gethsemane so important? We can only understand the fatherhood of God truly in the context of the obedience of his Son – the saving, redeeming work of Jesus Christ. Many will want the feelings of succor of the Father without wanting the sanctifying work of Father’s Spirit. Essential to being a son or daughter is to be like the Father.

Hopefully these introductory comments will help to orient you as we come to look at this parable over the next couple of sessions. As I said on Sunday, you don’t have to wait till the messages to come running to Father!

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

http://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)