Text: Galatians 4:1-7; Luke 15:11-32
The two oldest statements of what Christians believe are the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed. They both begin basically the same; "We believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of heaven and earth." This is a simple statement meaning we place our trust in God, a God who has revealed himself through Jesus Christ as Father and who is almighty and Maker of heaven and earth. It should tweak our ears just a bit that the first thing we Christians have to say about God is that he is our Father. Indeed, that God is Father shapes everything else we have to say about God and creation, salvation, the Kingdom of God, the Church, the resurrection from the dead, and the world to come. When we Christians talk about God, we are talking about our Father, who art in heaven. We aren't just talking about the One who is the Maker of heaven and earth like he's some all-powerful clock-maker who set everything in motion to let it run on it's own. Rather, he is Father and he's very interested and involved in our lives.
The Christian faith is about the love of the Father and our coming to share in the relationship that Jesus has with his Father. That is the biggest of the big pictures that I can give you of the Christian faith. What Jesus has done for all of humanity is that he in, with, and through himself has given us access to the Father (Eph 3:18) in the Holy Spirit. As our reading from Galatians says we are now the adopted children of God. This means that what Jesus is by nature, we are and are becoming by grace the children of God the Father who willingly trust and obey him. The inheritance that is his, the kingdom of God, is also ours. We can now be in communion with and pray to God who is our Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
As God the Father's children, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us is changing us to be like Jesus, his only begotten Son, begotten not made, being of one Being with the Father. This change happens now in a change of heart and mind in us to want to be and to do what our Father wants of us and it will become complete after we have been raised from the dead into a new heaven and a new earth. This is what we mean by salvation. We have been saved by the Trinity's own initiative and action from the deathly implication of hearts and minds that are bent on self-destruction through doing and being what we want to be do and be. We were created to live in communion with the Trinity and one another but instead, like cancers we instinctively and by choice do what pleases us and this has broken the communion. From this brokenness, God the Father has saved us by sending his Son to become one of us. The very fact that God the Son has become human and how that played out in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth has healed humanity and he shares this healing with us now by including us in himself by giving us the Holy Spirit. As the Father's children we can now call out to the Father in devotion saying Abba or "dear Father" and sit in his presence and make requests of him and in grateful praise and adoration, we can worship God our Father. God the Father in his great love for us has given us access to his love through Jesus Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit and it's transformative, indeed healing, effect on us. That's the Christian faith in a nutshell. The Father loves us and has adopted us to be his own by bestowing his nature upon us and that heals us.
Now, saying that the Christian faith is really about the love of the Father may sound new to you. I think that many of us have been churched into a Christian faith that is defined by the conversion experience of the Prodigal Son as it is in the parable of The Prodigal Son. Here's this rebellious little snot wanting to break off from the family and go and make it on his own. So, he demands his inheritance (an act which in essence was wishing his father dead) and leaves for the far country. Yet, he winds up grossly wasting it all and after hitting rock bottom decides he'll just go make things right with his father. He has his little prayer of repentance all ready so that when he sees his father he can convince his father that he just might be sincere (which if you're really paying attention here, he's not. He's just looking for a guaranteed meal.) He goes home only to find that his father has all the while been watching for him. His father runs out to meet him and surprisingly, no interest in the little prayer of repentance nor with what the man has done with his inheritance. He's just happy his son has come home.
I have heard too many sermons from this parable based on how we are supposed to be like this prodigal son and come to our senses and come home when the parable really is about the love of the Father. The love of the Father is so great that he sees past the wasted life of the prodigal and the hypocrisy of the brother who stayed around. They are still one family. Too many sermons I have heard telling us to get right with God and come home so that we can enjoy his love when the fact of the matter is that Father never stops loving us and there is nothing we can do to earn it. We can blow it with respect to our inheritance but not with respect to God's love. The immeasurable love of the Father and our inclusion in it by his grace is what the Christian faith is about. No decision or repenting on our part could ever make us right with God. We are already right with God through Christ Jesus. We just have to show up for the inheritance, start living into this new reality. Too much of Christianity says you are not a Christian until you've had a conversion experience meaning you've come to your senses about the cruddy life you've been living and are now going to live so God can use you. That's not a conversion experience. Deciding to get it right with Jesus by cleaning up your act so you can go to heaven is not conversion. Please note that the Prodigal Son does not go home because he's realized his father's love for him. He goes home because he knows it's a guaranteed decent meal. He's not converted either. Conversion is God's work of grace in us that comes by way of his revealing his great love for us however that might happen. But most assuredly, that cross hanging up there is the proof of the Father's amazing love for us. God the Son became as we are and did what we could not do, which is live in perfect trust and obedience to the Father, and by his faith we are saved. He suffered betrayal and a horrible death to heal us. God the Son in all his power suffered our sin and our death and the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised raised him and humanity in him to new life, to a new existence with Christ's resurrection, a new life and existence we share in because he freely gives us his Spirit who helps us to hear and believe this Good News, the Good News that we now have access to the Father.
I'll get off that, and close with a thought about calling God Father. I am aware that in our day many have great difficulty associating God with the concept of father. There have been too many fathers who have failed and failed miserably and even maliciously at being a father. They have been so hurtful that many people are not able to associate the word father with any concept of love. On top of that, it's not a very inclusive term. There are many who think calling God Father only reinforces patriarchal systems that have plagued humanity from the beginning of time with the abuse of women. Yet, we do not confess God as Father to reinforce misogyny nor to ignore the pain that so many have suffered at the hands of a father or because of the absence of a father. We confess God as Father because Jesus did and Jesus did so to describe a particular kind of relationship he had with his God and Father, a relationship which he brings us into and by which we are healed. I am not a Fundamentalist. I have come a long way around on this. Needless to say, if we monkey with the names it changes the nature of the relationship God has brought us into with himself and each other. Calling God Great Spirit or Mother or Parent or Creator truly changes the nature of how we relate to God and ultimately how we wind up relating to each other. What we believe about God has a profound effect on how we live our lives. In the coming weeks I will say more on what Jesus meant by the word Father. It will help to understand what being a father was in his day and time and that will help us to understand why God has revealed himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
