The Prodigal Father

Father’s Day/Trinity Sunday

Luke 15: 11-32

 

In honor of Father’s Day, I would like for us all to take a short little quiz on famous fathers in film.  Now, before you get test anxiety, let me tell you that this quiz is designed for grade level 5, and it is multiple choice.

 

1.     Which father and daughter have both won Oscars?

a.      Bruce and Laura Dern

b.     Bruce and Gwyneth Paltrow

c.     John and Anjelica Huston

 

2.     Jon Voight is the father of which Oscar-winning actress?

a.      Angelina Jolie

b.     Melanie Griffith

c.     Jodie Foster

 

3.     On the TV series “Father Knows Best,” what did Robert Young’s Jim Anderson do for a living?

a.      Insurance salesman

b.     Lawyer

c.     Stockbroker

 

4.     Who played the father in the 1951 version of “Father of the Bride?”

a.      Cary Grant

b.     Spencer Tracy

c.     Humphrey Bogart

 

5.     Who played the father in the 1991 remake?

a.      Steve Martin

b.     Harrison Ford

c.     Jack Nicholson

 

  

Father’s Day was first observed on June 19, 1910 in Spokane Washington.  Sonora Smart of Washington State proposed the idea in 1909 after she had attended a Mother’s Day service.  Mrs. Dodd wanted to honor her own father, William Smart, who had been a Civil War veteran, who raised six children after his wife died in childbirth.

President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father’s Day in 1924.  But it took until 1966 to have the 3rd Sunday of June officially declared Father’s Day in the United States, by President Lyndon Johnson.

 

Today is also Trinity Sunday.  In the life of the early church there was no special feast or celebration to honor the Trinity, but for many years there were informal prayers and services that were created for the Trinity.  Pope Alexander II was petitioned in the 11th century to create a special feast day for the Trinity, but he refused, claiming that everyday the church honored the Trinity by saying the Gloria.  It wasn’t until the 14th century that Pope John XXII designated a feast for the entire church on the first Sunday after Pentecost to honor the Trinity.  But only then it was a secondary feast.  On July 24, 1911, Pope Pius X raised Trinity Sunday to a primary feast of the first class.

 

The Trinity is a primary image we use to describe and understand God.  It is a mysterious image.  We know we worship one God, yet we experience that God in three persons: as creator, savior, and comforter.  Or more traditionally as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Not only does this image help us describe who God has been and continues to be to us and all of creation, but it gives us a glimpse into the Godhead itself:  God the three-in-one is relational, diverse, and welcoming.

 

One of the core values that progressive Christians hold is inclusivity and a primary way we live that out is in our language and imagery for God.  To insist on using only one image for God is idolatry.  So we try to provide a variety of images for God in an attempt to balance the predominately male language the Christian church has used over the years to describe God.

 

As an Old Testament scholar and a Christian minister who has been sensitive to language and images used for God for 20 plus years, I am concerned.  I am concerned that in our efforts to be inclusive and diverse in our language for God we not loose the rich imagery of God as Father.  It is not a sin to call God Father.  It is a sin to insist that is the only thing we can call God.  It is a sin to judge other people who use different images and language for God.

 

The Bible uses many images to describe God:  rock, bread, water, eagle, lion, warrior, woman in child birth, mother, father, and the list could go on.  Jesus tells wonderful parables that paint pictures, images of God for us.  I think his most powerful imagery for God is found in a TRINITY OF PARABLES in Luke’s Gospel.  The parable of the prodigal son is the last of three parables in Luke chapter 15 that Jesus tells about the nature of God.  God is like a shepherd who leaves the 99 in the wilderness and goes out looking for the one who is lost; God is like a woman who diligently searches her house for a lost coin; God is like a father who runs out to meet a lost son. 

 

It’s interesting that all three of these parables are known by their negative rather than their positive features:  the lost sheep, not the found sheep; the lost coin, not the found coin; and the prodigal son, not the loving father.  The fact that they are remembered in this negative way is even more surprising when you notice that all three of the parables end with rejoicing.

 

The thing we remember most about our parable for today is the lost son.  That is often the focus of preachers and teachers of this text.  But Jesus is pretty clear that the main character is the father.  He begins the parable by saying, “Their was a man who had two sons…” 

 

The focus of the younger son in this parable has also shaped our thinking of the word ‘prodigal.’  Based on this parable, in my mind, prodigal means wayward, wandering, lost.  But I looked up prodigal in Webster’s unabridged online dictionary and these were the definitions I encountered:

 

Prodigal : (1) recklessly extravagant; (2) characterized by wasteful expenditure: lavish; (3) yielding abundantly: luxuriant.

 

I’m confused here.  It seems my old definition of prodigal describes what is happening to the image of God as father—it is becoming lost.  While the dictionary definition of prodigal more accurately describes the action of the father in this parable!  So I would like to offer a friendly, extravagant amendment to the way we refer to this parable:  The Prodigal Father.

 

Why?  Because the Father is

·        extravagant in his forgiveness of his younger son,

·        lavish with rejoicing over the return of one son,

·        luxuriant with love for both sons.

 

          If we were to have read on in our parable for today, we would have heard about the older brother who resented the grace and forgiveness extended to his younger brother.  Luke tells us that when he heard about the party he refused to go in.  The father came out and pleaded with him, but the older son said, “Listen, 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. But when this son of yours comes back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes; you killed the fatted calf for him!  Then the father said, “Son you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  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.”

 

A lot of us are like the older brother.  As Christians, we don’t want to deny anyone the opportunity for forgiveness.  But we want them to pay for it, just like we did.  We say to the Prodigal Father:  Let the wayward ones return, with bread and water, not a banquet.  In sackcloth, not wearing a new robe!  Wearing ashes, not a new ring.  In tears, not in merriment.  Kneeling, not dancing.  And if we aren’t the older brother feeling this, we might be the neighbor next door wondering if we are going to attend that party.

 

You know, we could also call this story the parable of the Prodigal Gospel.  A gospel of grace that is extravagant, lavish and luxuriant.  And what is ironic about this kind of gospel and this kind of God is that kind of grace often offends.  Like the father in the parable, God’s extravagant grace is seen as reckless, or a wasteful expenditure on people that WE think should receive grace by our standards, not God’s.

 

Roman Catholic priest, Father Henri Nouwen, studied the parable of the prodigal for three years.  His guide into the spiritual lessons of this parable was the famous painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son, by the Dutch artist, Rembrandt.

 

Nouwen also studied the life of the artist that produced this painting.  Rembrandt himself had lived the lives of the younger rebellious son, the resentful older brother, and the aged, wise father.  At the age of 30 he painted a self-portrait with his wife Saskia, as the lost son in a brothel.  He is pictured with his left hand around the waist of his wife and his right hand holding up a half empty glass.  It will be the same man, 30 years later who will paint the story of the return of the prodigal son, and use his own face for the graceful father.

 

This painting, and the parable capture in a freeze frame for us a powerful image of God:  a compassionate father.  Nouwen says,

 

“It could easily have been called ‘The Welcome of the Compassionate Father.’  The parable is in truth a ‘Parable of the Father’s Love.  Looking at the way in which Rembrandt portrays the father, there came to me a whole new interior understanding of tenderness, mercy and forgiveness.  Seldom if ever, has God’s immense, compassionate love been expressed in such a poignant way.

         

Everything comes together here:  Rembrandt’s story, humanity’s story, and God’s story.  Here, both the human and the divine, the fragile and the powerful, the old and the eternally young are fully expressed.

 

Here is the God I want to believe in:  a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders.  His only desire is to bless.”

 

That is the comfort of this parable.  The challenge of the parable is that as lost sons and daughters who have experienced God’s extravagant grace, we grow into adulthood to be like this parent.  Happy Father’s Day.