Preached 6/21/09

Father’s Day / Exploring the Trinity

Trinity Series #1

Preached by Dr. Paul R. Smith

West Side Presbyterian Church

Contact: office@wspc.org

TO KNOW OUR FATHER

[Luke 15:11-32]

Introduction to the Scriptures: This is a parable of Jesus, one of our favorites I think, in Luke 15. This is about a son and his father. While there is much to explore within the parable – we could do several messages on it – I am not actually going to explore it in detail but I want to use it as Jesus so often uses parables, to illustrate a fundamental point in a vivid way. So let the whole story just speak to you as we read it together; and even though you know this story, you will hear new things as we walk through it again.

[Luke 15:11-32]

What a grand story. I could and I probably should end there the way Jesus did. But let’s reflect on it together.

Prayer for Illumination - Gracious God, as we examine your word, it is new every morning, along with your mercies. This word is new because it is living, your Spirit invests it with life, and we are so grateful that you share this word with us. You shared the Word which became flesh with us; you have shared yourself with us and share yourself with us again today as your Spirit moves among us. Free us from distractions, let us hear your voice and understand better who you are and who you are calling us to be, through Jesus Christ, our brother, our savior, and our Lord, AMEN.

Message

There is a movement afoot, in what I would consider to be rather shallow, politically-correct theological circles, to replace the Trinitarian terminology of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with non-gender terms like Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. The loss, should such a change be accomplished, would be, in my estimation, catastrophic. In the first place, God is not a Function. God is a Person. Only personal names can begin to carry the richness and diversity of the being of God, who indeed does create and redeem and sustain, but who is ultimately and finally a person. Secondly, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” are not arbitrary titles imposed by patriarchal male chauvinists, they are God’s names for himself. It seems somehow unwise to chide God for the names by which He has chosen to be identified.

While we do not suppose that any term applied to God can even begin to exhaust the being and nature it is intended to describe, nevertheless we must assume that God has chosen these names quite purposefully. Without denigrating wives or brothers or friends, God has nonetheless determined to tell us something tremendously significant about himself by accepting, first of all, the name “Father.”

Recent sociological research in our own culture has begun to revive a failing respect for the importance of fathers. Studies show the absence of strong and loving fathers has contributed enormously to the rise of juvenile delinquency and crime in our society. Both masculine and feminine identity in children is jeopardized by the absence of fathers. Statistically, children without fathers score lower in nearly every area of academic achievement. Even after they have grown up, divorce rates are significantly higher for persons whose fathers were either absent or uninvolved during their childhood. Girls with absentee fathers struggle to maintain healthy relationships with men. Boys with absentee fathers struggle to discipline themselves and control their aggressions. They are more likely to be abusive, and to have difficulty following through on commitments, keeping a job or keeping a marriage.

By contrast, a healthy relationship with one’s father builds a positive self-image which is tremendously essential in helping children become high achievers, as well as helping them handle failure without being defeated by it. Children with dependable and loving fathers are much more open to faith, and more willing to accept legitimate authority. Fathers seem also to be the key to helping children develop healthy social relationships. There’s a certain security in the love and the attention of the father as well as his example that allows children to branch out into the community, into what might otherwise be scary places and establish contact and build relationships with others. And the children of fathers who provide both discipline and love are more secure, more self-confident, and more successful at everything from work to marriage to parenting.

Now it makes us, today, uncomfortable to hear all that and, of course, there are certainly exceptions to it, but this is not really a subjective social commentary, it is based simply on the actual statistics. This is what happens in a culture where fathers are absent – missing in action. As a result, there are some who want to challenge the idea of referring to God as a father because fathers have failed to live up to our expectations for them in our culture, and if we compare God to a father, we are giving a false image. Failing fathers have given us a negative image of what a father is, and therefore will give a negative and distorted vision of who God is.

Now it is true, of course, that this does happen to our image of God. Studies have shown that the success or failure of our earthly fathers greatly influences the way we view our Heavenly Father. But it seems to me that this should be even greater incentive for coming to know God the Father for who He really is, not just our projection of Him from failing fathers in our own world. Whatever our earthly fathers have done, for better or for worse, God has gotten it right every time. He is always faithful, and in His faithfulness we can we begin to overcome the injuries that might have been done to us by our earthly parents. The fact that these statistics hold true in our society does not mean that we cannot work our way through if we come to recognize our true Father and begin to live our lives appropriately in relationship to Him.

In any case, if we wish to know the God who has revealed himself to us in scripture as well as in history, we shall have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that He, not we, chose this image of Father in order to make himself known to us and to make known the essential things about His being and His nature. I rather imagine God knew what He was doing and that He chose purposefully. He was quite aware of the failings of fathers, a whole lot of failing fathers are represented in the stories in the Bible, but God chose nevertheless to reveal himself as a father so that we might learn from it and so that we might be healed from our own wounds. It is only after we have come to know the Father, that we are later introduced to the Son, and finally to the Holy Spirit. Thus if you and I are to come to know God as He desires to be known, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we begin where He began. That is where we are today looking at God as Father.

Of course, in the very beginning, He introduced himself to us as Creator. Some time later we learned He was also Law-giver. Those terms revealed His transcen-dence and His sovereignty. We might have drawn the conclusion that He is distant and aloof, but as He begins to reveal himself to us personally, He reveals himself as a father who is neither distant nor aloof. Early on we find Him in conversation with those whom He identifies as His children. And, yes, He is still all of who God is. He is still el shaddai, God Almighty; He is still yahweh, the Source of all being.

He begins in the Old Testament, first of all to David (2 Samuel 7:14) and then to Solomon (1 Chronicles 28:6) to reveal himself as a father. He says “I will be a father to you.” David apparently learns that lesson well, for subsequently he refers to God in Psalm 68 as “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,” who “sets the (solitary) [those who are alone, those who experience broken relation-ships] in families,” He puts us together in a family of which He is the father. Clearly this is a reference to the very issue that troubled us at the beginning, the importance of recognizing the fatherhood of God, particularly in the light of the shortcomings of earthly fathers. He is a “father to the fatherless.” He’s the one who fills in the blanks when our own fathers have been unable or unwilling to live up to and to fulfill their job description.

Furthermore, out of his own rich experience with God, David later writes in Psalm 103, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” David was reassured by the fact that God knew he was vulnerable; that he was ultimately dust. David had reason to appreciate God’s compassion because he himself was quite an inadequate father and he himself was a prodigal son. Throughout the Scriptures, any reference to God as Father speaks of His unfailing compassion and care for His children, something all of us need whether we have received it from our earthly parents or not.

The earliest and most direct reference to God as Father surprisingly falls in Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming Messiah, who reveals the heart of God in those memorable terms, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” We recite this at Christmas every year, but think about what it reveals about the character of God. The reference not only introduces the Mighty God, it introduces the Everlasting Father in relationship to His Son, the Prince of Peace, identifying them together, and then the Wonderful Counselor as well, which is how Jesus introduced us to the Holy Spirit. The “three-in-oneness” of the Mighty God begins to become evident to us in those terms. It is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, revealed in a variety of ways. This is the true character of God, who is at His core a singular God, but as Trinity, He is also about relationship. There are few terms that could express relationship as well as the term Father.

Now all these references we have mentioned so far are found in the Old Testament, but it was Jesus who began in the New Testament to call God “our Father,” always emphasizing the warmth and the strength and the intimacy of a personal relationship which He was inviting us to enjoy with God the Father. “Father” is the title He chooses more often than any other title to refer to God. Early on He taught His disciples to pray, as we pray every Sunday, “Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name.” He encouraged them to get to know the Father personally; He reminded them of the Father’s desire to reward them for appropriate conduct; He told them the Father was the source of every good gift they would ever receive; He assured them of the Father’s concern about the details of their lives, the Father, after all, who saw every sparrow fall would certainly be alert to any concerns in their lives; He promised them a Father who would care for their needs, was committed to see that they had the basics, food and shelter and security, then, of course, beyond that and embracing all that, they would have the love that the Father alone could give.

At the end of His life Jesus told them, (John 16:27ff.), “the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.” He is talking about His relationship with the Father, and then He goes on to say this, in John 20:17: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,” He is saying, Understand God is not just my Father, He is your Father as well. You need to know that and relate to Him as Father.

The apostle Paul picked up on this theologically, pointing out that in essence you and I are adopted into the family of the Father, becoming brothers with Jesus Christ – the only begotten Son – joint-heirs along with Him of the entire estate. That is appropriate in light of the parable we just read about a Father who wanted to share his estate with his sons. God the Father says, you are brothers of my Son Jesus, and I want to share my estate with you. I am always with you, I always love you, everything I have is yours.

This idea of God as Father is a concrete image to reveal something essential about God that may be beyond our imagining in any other way, a God who wants us to know that fundamentally He is a personal God, who is about relationship, and who desires a personal relationship with His children. Understand that: it is the heart of the Christian message. We can know all kinds of things about who God is as Creator of the universe, about His power and His sovereignty, but He says, No, but I want you to know you’re my family; you are my children, and I love you.

You and I are used to the term “Father.” We use it regularly in worship and in our private prayers. It is really no longer a shock to us to recognize that God wants to be known as Father. But imagine the shock to those who first heard it! It would have been presumptuous to think you could refer to God in terms of intimacy. Early on He revealed that He would maintain standards of conduct for all of them. He was, after all, huge and distant, holy and powerful, the power behind the whole universe. He would reward those served Him, He would punish those who did not. He was holy and infinite. He might prove to be a refiner’s fire – who could face that? This God is terrifying! We might be inclined to shrink back from Him in fear. But God says, No, I am all that, but understand I am also your Father, and as your Father I love you with all that I am. This was certainly not something we could have anticipated.

We would have no reason to believe that the God of all power and glory would prefer to be known as “Father,” or that even, as Jesus said, we might call Him Abba, “Papa,” a term of intimacy. Such a suggestion of intimacy and personal care would be preposterous for us to presume. But it begins to show us a God who is not only absolute and transcendent as we know, but also a God who is actively and personally related to His world. He approaches us as any good father might approach his home and his family. Here we find a God who has not only brought us into being, but who subsequently became intimately involved in our daily lives, loving us, nurturing us, admonishing us when necessary, encouraging us, disciplining us, caring for us, all the things a good father would do, granting us security, watching over us and making sure we have all that we need. Indeed, much as an earthly child is stamped with his or her father’s DNA, we are stamped with our Heavenly Father’s image! What a remarkable relationship with the God of all creation, that we should know Him as “Father!”

When we call God “Father,” therefore, we say something essential about God as He has revealed himself to us in the Scriptures and in history. We tell of His relationship to us – not only as creator, but as one who is committed to our care, who is a natural authority over us, yes, who is transcendent and powerful, but at the same time loving.

But we must be careful here. Once we have identified God as Father, it is true, as some have pointed out, that there is a great risk that we will begin with our human fathers to project an image onto our Heavenly Father, and we might therefore misunderstand Him. That of course would be to get it backwards, and that is our problem with referring to God as Father. Human fathers need to take their cue from God the Father, not the other way around. My own father was a wonderful man who, I am sure, loved me. He was also very quiet, a very reserved man. He rarely expressed his feelings or emotions, he very seldom ever said “I love you,” or “I am proud of you.” I must confess that as I look at God I bring that baggage with me, as all of us bring a certain amount of baggage with us from our own childhood. And I begin to wonder of God . . . does he really care? He says once in a while that He does, but is He really listening? Does He know what is going on in my life? Would He ever tell me that He loves me? Would He ever tell me that He’s proud of me?

But you see I cannot begin with my earthly father to find out what God the Father is about. I begin with my heavenly Father to find out what all fathers, all parents are about. I must not let my own father give me a distorted idea of God. Rather I must allow God to show me the nature of a true father. I must go first to my Heavenly Father and there learn what He actually says, there learn what He actually does. And of course it is in that image that I find out what a father should be, what I should be with my own children and grandchildren.

Now everything we have said so far about God as Father has come directly from His own Word, from His revelation of himself in history. We have not been talking here about some sort of theological doctrines, we have not concocted our own image of God – “I’d like to think of God as a father.” That’s not what it has been. We have simply looked at God and said, “Ah, so this is how you want to be known! You want to be known as a father.”

But this takes us back to the essential reason that the first person in the Trinity is called “Father” in the Scriptures. This is very revealing. This is not just a general image of a father, it specifically relates to the Trinity. And the first person in the Trinity is not called Father because He matches some of our ideal expectations for fathers. He is called Father, why? Because He is one. He is the father of His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. And there we learn something fundamental and mysterious about God himself, but wonderful in what it reveals. It is in this relationship between the Father and His eternally begotten Son that the whole idea of fatherhood emerges for us. So we look first of all to that relationship. It is for this reason that we can be confident of how God desires to relate to us and how greatly concerned He is about everything in our lives.

Popular religion tends to view God the Father as stern and distant and authoritarian, while we view Jesus as loving and gracious and accepting. You hear that constantly in conversations. We say it ourselves: “Oh yes, the God of the Old Testament – He is pretty stern and aloof; but Jesus, at least, He’s welcoming and warm and gracious.” But what we find when we actually read the Bible is that love and grace begins with the Father who loves His Son Jesus Christ, and that Son, in turn, reflects that grace and incarnates it for us. Jesus says, I don’t do anything, I don’t say anything that I have not learned from my Father. I’m not revealing anything new about the character of God; you are just seeing who He is in a tangible way as you see what I am doing in your midst. The grace and truth which Jesus revealed, is a grace and a truth that originated with the Father.

If we miss this point, that the real love and the real compassion begins with the Father, as the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann has observed, we will begin to think of God as authoritarian and aloof; and we won’t know how to relate to Him. This distorted idea, he suggests, has given birth to the world’s authoritarian and patriarchal approach to God and to religion. We see it mostly in the monotheistic religions, but this is not the God we meet as Father on the pages of scripture. God the Father is always motivated, first of all, by His love for His Son, and then His love for His creation which He tells us He gave His Son as a gift. Remarkably, Jesus even points out that in the end the Father is not going to be our judge. Have you thought about that? In the end, the Father is not going to be our judge – rather it is our brother, who has walked through the same issues we have, who has been tempted as we have, He is the one who is going to stand as our judge. The Father, we are learning, like the father of the prodigal son in our story, is going to be there with open arms to receive us if we will turn to Him. Brothers love each other, but there is a special measure to a father’s love that is incomprehensible if we haven’t seen the way our heavenly Father loves His Son and loves us.

The first person of the Trinity, therefore, reveals himself as God the Father, not because He is the First Cause, but primarily because He is, as scripture says, the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Thus fatherhood is first of all a personal relationship; it’s not a position, it’s not an office, it’s not a rank. While fatherhood carries authority, this becomes a very different sort of authority than that exercised by earthly kings or tyrants. For this is an authority which loves absolutely and commits itself without reserve to the good of the one loved – even at infinite personal cost. I will give anything. I will give my life itself for my children. You would, you know. If you even have a spark of reflection of God’s love for us, you would give up your very life itself. That is the love we encounter in the Father.

It is fascinating to note, by the way, that while this authoritarian monotheism that I mentioned tends to result from a distorted understanding of fathers and their roles, the other major group of religions, pantheism, probably results from a distorted view of our mothers and their fruitfulness. The pantheist, you understand, sees the whole universe as mother, giving birth to her various children. No doubt that stands as the opposite pole to the authoritarian father. But those are two extremes. And what we find in our God, who is above and beyond gender in His fascinating multiplicity and singularity, is that God disciplines us as a Father; God loves and comforts us, Isaiah says, as a Mother; God bears fruit through His Spirit; God loves us, His children, as a parent; and God comes alongside us in Jesus as a brother. All of this is contained in the fundamental character of who God is, and what a privilege it is to know a God like that! How could we have expected it?

The apostle John, in the first of several letters which he wrote late in life, exults in this (the words that called us to worship today): “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! [Can you imagine it?!] And that is what we are!” [1 John 3:1-2]

Not only that, we are going to come one day to reflect that more fully in our relationship to each other.

It is to make this whole, wonderful concept of God as our Father perfectly clear, that Jesus leaves us, as He so often does, with a vivid image of God the Father, and He tells the story of the Prodigal Son. We call it the Prodigal Son; we ought to call it the parable of the Loving Father, because that is what it is fundamentally about. We have looked at it in depth before, but review it with me for a moment. You know the story. The younger son demands his inheritance, and then willfully proceeds to squander all those things he has received. When he has nothing left, facing the possibility of death itself, he finally returns to his father’s home. “Well, it’s about time,” we say, quite without sympathy; “Of course! You have lost everything else.” He’s hopeful at least he might know the security of one of his father’s slaves. But the father will have none of it. Overjoyed at his son’s return, he does something no self-respecting authoritarian, Middle Eastern father – or Western father for that matter – would be likely to do. He rushes out to meet his long-lost son as soon as he sees him, lavishes his gifts upon him, re-establishes him as his son, and proceeds to call for a grand celebration.

Meanwhile there’s the older brother – some of us find we identify too much with him – who had not declared his independence from his father, but who had, nonetheless, worked with a grudging and selfish spirit which had distanced him from his father. Keep in mind, the father’s ultimate gift was himself. And the son at home was rejecting the presence of his father just as his younger brother had done. He becomes resentful. He sees his father’s easy forgiveness, his restoration of his brother as being too soft, as being unjust. All too often, we share the elder son’s spirit. We think the father should demand that the prodigal pay for his sins. Sometimes we are even willing to admit the same concerning our own sins. If the Father is truly just, we ought to be paying for our sins. Who is this God who is offering some kind of grace? How can we believe in that?

But the father refuses to apologize for his generosity and his grace. He simply says, “This is my son. I love him.” To the prodigal he says, “I love you; I’m so glad you’re back.” It is important to see, however, that the father not only refuses to apologize for welcoming his prodigal son back, he extends that very same grace to the elder son. This self-righteous son would not come in, so the father went out. “I’ll go to you just like I went to your brother.” But unlike the prodigal, the elder brother had not recognized his own selfish spirit; he had not recognized the gifts that his father wanted to give him. We are left not knowing whether the elder brother ever did come to his senses. We know the younger brother did, and what it took was simply coming back and letting the father give him himself. It is entirely possible that the elder brother will miss out on the joy of the celebration, not because he has done bad things, not because his father has withheld something from him, but simply because he has refused to let his father be a father to him and love him with all his heart.

So finally we come down to our own application , don’t we? God offers each one of us His grace just as the father offered his grace to both of his sons. We don’t deserve it. We can’t earn it. We don’t deserve to be called his son or daughter. We don’t live up to his generosity. We in fact squander the things that he gives us. We do a lot of sulking and whining and demanding our own way. We abuse the resources that He does give us, and likely never notice until we have thoroughly squandered them.

But the moment we turn our faces back toward Him, He offers us His forgiveness and His embrace. Then, astonishingly, He even says, I’ll tell you what. Let’s kill the fatted calf; let’s have a celebration, because you, my son, my daughter, you’ve returned so that I could love you, so I could share with you my heart, the heart that brought you into being in the first place. He didn’t have to do that. He might have been distant and aloof when we found ourselves on our faces in the mud. He might have said, “Well, you got yourself into this mess; you get yourself out.” But He didn’t do that. Instead He says, “You don’t understand! I just love you!

That is the essence of being a father. Yes, everything belongs to me. Yes, I hold all authority over you, but I am not asking you to be my slave. On the contrary, everything I do is to serve you! The only thing I ask is that you let me love you.” I think it is good to recognize that Jesus is the one who took us beyond His own relationship with the Father to tell us this parable. We might be tempted to think, “Sure, God loves His only-begotten Son Jesus. Jesus was perfect.” Our parents probably loved the perfect siblings too, but how could they love us? But Jesus tells this parable and says: “No, no, no. He makes no distinction. He loves all of His children. You just have to be willing to receive His love.” Can I invite you today to receive the Father’s love?

Closing prayer - I do thank you for letting us know you as Father. We have had some good experiences and some bad experiences with our own fathers. Those of us who are fathers have sometimes gotten it right and sometimes gotten it quite wrong. We have often disappointed the people around us. Remarkably, they often still continue to love us. But at the heart of it all is that in you we can see what real love is. We can see what it means to persevere, to love someone who is not particularly lovable, to love in spite of all circumstances just because it is your nature to love. We need to receive that love. When we receive it, Father, we pray that you might transform us so that we can begin to reflect that same love. So we come back to you like the prodigal, or like the elder brother if he ever came to that moment of repentance. We come back to you and we say, Yes, we do seek your forgiveness. Mostly, we seek you, your face, which we have glimpsed in Christ Jesus, our brother, your only-begotten Son, in whose name we pray, AMEN.