A dad was teaching his kids about the parable we heard this morning about the prodigal son. When he finished he asked his kids: Who do you think ended up with the most unhappy life? His six year old son scrunched up his face thinking hard on this for a moment. Then he looked up at dad with a confident smile and said: The fatted calf.
We know this story as the parable of the prodigal son because he gets most of the attention in this parable but, like that six year old, we really need to look at the details of this story if we really are to get to the center of it.
Jesus is using a real common experience to teach us something about our relationship to God as father; using this setting of a father who has to deal with two sons.
Take a look at the father’s situation. He is a dad who loves his kids, who has hopes and dreams for his kids.
The setting seems to illustrate that he is pretty well off, like a dad that has a successful business and dreams of the day that the sign over the business will say: Father and Sons; he wants them to carry on his legacy, be a part of his life, benefit and own what he has achieved for them. I think that is a normal and powerful part of fatherhood – the sense that your kids will carry on your legacy into the future.
I know that Gail and I were never able to have kids, and the idea that my legacy ends with my death has been a pretty difficult thing for me to contemplate.
The father character in the story of course represents God, God as father. The context of the story is focused on Israel as God’s son but I think that it is well within the Lord’s intent in this parable to consider the reality of God as our father.
It is central to who we are as Christians. We pray continually to God in the words Jesus told us to: Our father. We affirm this role and relationship in the Creeds: I believe in God the Father Almighty but how much time have we given to really consider this relationship?
Think about that reality, God is our father, not in a distant absentee sense but a dad, a father who is intimately involved with our well-being. That is the understanding of God when scripture refers to him as Abba; dad.
God loves us as a dad, and that is something that we normally, in our day to day existence, seldom consider I think. There is nothing good that he wants to withhold from us. He wants the best for us. He wants to keep us safe and secure.
When his children are in danger what father wouldn’t lay down his life for his kids to save them; he did even that
in Jesus? He has rescued his children from mortal danger, made them as new creations and reconciled them to himself. He has much to give them to make their life successful.
He wants us to participate in his life and his legacy. He wants us to join him as junior associates in his work in reconciling the world to himself, to join him and own our part in carrying on his work. He wants to hang out the sign over his business that reads: Fathers and Sons, and Daughters.
He has hopes and plans for us. He has an inheritance for us to receive. He desires us to be who he created us to be, that new creation, our identity and purpose anchored in him because he knows it’s there we will be most fulfilled, most happy, most successful.
i see Chris wood, and his Maggie and Michael; and my nephew Matt and his Lily, how they look at their little ones, how they touch and play with them. There is an intimate connection that is so very precious.
God wants that same relationship, that intimacy with his children, that dad will always be the “go to” guy for advice, comfort, direction. He wants to be there to celebrate our successes, pick us up out of the dust when we fail, he wants to be there, to be dad for us but we have to acknowledge him as dad, that he is our source of life, to acknowledge that what good we have comes from him, to acknowledge that he knows better and to submit to his tender authority as he guides us in the right way.
But there of course is the rub. Our children can reject that relationship; they can and do reject their fathers’ love, relationship, and authority and that takes us back to the parable; and to the two sons who are remarkably similar.
Consider if they were your sons. Both reject the love you have for them, the relationship you want to have with them. Both want what they want regardless of your direction and concern for their well-being. And both ultimately do what they want.
One runs away and ruins his life. How painful that experience; watching your child who you love, reject you and make one stupid decision after another bringing one painful and degrading consequence on another.
And the other child who seems to find no joy in his relationship to you, even though he is obedient and does what you ask him, you still feel the void in that relationship. You think that he is there just for what he gets out of the relationship, not that he loves you or respects you or wants to share in your legacy – he wants that for himself. He is waiting for the day to cross the word dad off of the dad and son sign.
Both have renounced at different levels their relationship to their dad. Both have relinquished their bonds of son-ship to their father.
The difference in these two has to do with recognizing just what they are losing and the willingness to be humble enough to admit their selfishness and self-centeredness, their pride and arrogance, and seek restoration of that relationship with their father. How dad yearns for that, to have his sons turn around and come back to him, and he has done everything to allow that relationship be restored.
One son comes to that place of course he has some life circumstances that may encourage that turn around maybe that is how hard times can be used in our lives and seeks restoration to the father.
The other literally can’t see what he is missing; he is fairly comfortable where he is. He views his son-ship as something he deserves, something he earned, not a gift his father gives to him.
His callous response to his brother’s return, and the recalcitrant response to his father’s invitation to share his joy at his brother’s return, reveals he does not share his father’s heart – he is not in his father’s business at all.
What about our relationship to God as father?
Do you identify with either of the sons we hear about this morning in your relationship to God your father?
Think about this for a moment.
Have you abandoned your relationship with him to do your own thing? Are you using all of what the father has given you for your own self-benefit? Is his fatherhood, his authority, his love, his hope, his will, his plan the point of reference for our lives? Is his business, your business?
Now, if you had to choose to be one of the sons in this parable, which would you choose?
The son who humbles himself and regains his relationship with the father? Or, the one who comes out second best to the fatted calf in the worst outcome category?
So, in the remaining weeks of Lent, what must we do in our lives, to live life with God as our dad? What do we need to do to restore that relationship or enhance that relationship? Do we need to turn around and start back to him? Dad is waiting.