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Sermon for Sunday June 15, 2008
“Family Matters – Open Hands, Arms and Heart?”
Luke 15:11-24
Back on May 4 I started out on the steps, right here. I had worshiped a couple of weeks prior to that in a church where the pastor started out on the steps. I suggested to you that I kind of liked his style. I had a feeling that it made people nervous, almost as nervous when I very occasionally walk out into the front rows of the sanctuary because you never know if I am going to ask a question to you.
We began talking about family matters, issues not only of the family but also the fact that family does matter. Family is the binding fabric of our society. I really believe that if the family crumbles so will society. In James MacDonald’s book, “Seven Words to Change Your Family,” he says that “family life is the bull’s eye of our existence. It’s not practice for anything –it’s the playing field, it’s the hub, it’s the main course.”
He is right and that gets kind of scary because so many of our families struggle in so many ways. On that May 4 I said that the Bible was the place for Christians to look for guidance as families, but when we look at the Bible we will also find dysfunctional families. God’s Word is not a book filled with examples of perfection; it is about a perfect God who has a heart for families and people and He must especially when we see some of the examples of family in the Bible.
I wondered with you if there was one healthy family in the Bible? It was tough to find one family in scripture that was totally healthy.
There is Adam. Adam had a son who was a murderer so his family wasn’t totally healthy. Noah? Noah was a righteous man, but in chapter 9 of Genesis he is drunk, loaded to the gills. His youngest son sees him without his clothes, Noah gets angry and he places a curse on his descendants. Something is not healthy when you place a curse on your son and the generations to follow. What about Abraham? God used Abraham, but Abraham lied and said his wife was his sister in order to save his own skin. The list goes on and on…Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Eli, Samuel and even the family of Jesus was not totally healthy. In John’s gospel we see quite a bit of tension between Jesus and his siblings.
Consequently one of the things we learn from scripture is that God uses families that are broken, flawed, families with jealously, hang ups, disappointing children, families with flaws, failures and skeletons in the closet. Wow, God uses families just like yours and mine to get His work done.
That is one of the things that make scripture so real to me. It does not white wash life. It hasn’t gone to plastic surgery or used holy boot to make things look better. The families walk across the pages of the Bible in raw reality, with all of life exposed for us to see. We can find ourselves in those family pages as well --- the names change, certainly the dates and situation, but we struggle with some the same issues --- children, husband/wife relationships, it’s all there.
“A want ad once appeared in a newspaper that read, “For sale: One 52 year old husband. Never remembers anniversaries, birthdays, or special days. Seldom holds hands, hugs, kisses, or says, ‘I love you.” Rarely is kind or tender. Will sell cheap – two cents. Call 555-0366. Will Dicker.”
Probably a lot of relationships have had those feelings with spouses and children. There are those of you this morning with sons, daughters, spouses who had gone a long way from home. God understands and identifies with you this morning. There is another family in the Bible that I believe we can also relate to. They were certainly not the healthiest, most functional family around, but Jesus uses the parable to teach us about how a father dealt with struggles and especially how God wants to deal with us as His children. I am taking a risk in saying this father was a good dad even though we know very little about him, but we do see how he dealt with his sons. What made him a good dad?
I like the way that Robert Browning has given insight to what may have made this father a good dad. He suggests that this father was a good father because he had open hands, open arms and an open heart.
He had open hands. He knew when to release his grip and let go. When his son came and asked for his inheritance so that he could leave home, he gave it to him and he let him go. According to Jewish customs, the younger son would receive one third of the inheritance. He had no concern about his father’s age. He just wanted what was his and he wanted it now. He wastes the money in wild living until we learn in verse 14 that he had soon blown the whole bundle and found himself in a pig sty.
I wonder how hard it was for this father to let his son go, knowing that he would not be making good decisions? Letting go is hard.
The hardest thing I have ever had to do was to leave our two boys in a motel over on Williamsburg Road as they got ready to go to Parris Island. I didn’t know what that would mean…but at that point and time, it was the hardest thing I have ever done.
Sometimes we let go and don’t seem to have any choice about the matter. They just wander away and our hearts break and that is where love must come in. The love we are to have for our children and spouses is a biblical kind of love…biblical love perseveres. Love doesn’t let go.
God’s love is like that. His love is a love “that will not let us go.” His love is a love that always hopes, always perseveres.
The father in the parable had open hands, but as we see he never stopped loving.
We discover that when we see his open arms when the prodigal boy decided that it was time to go home after squandering his inheritance. I love that verse, “When he was still a long way off…” how many times had the father looked over the horizon to see if, just perhaps, just maybe, just possibly, today might be the day when his boy would come home? Do you understand how he might have felt? You wait for a letter. For a telephone call, you yearn in your soul for a visit and sometimes they haven’t even left home but there is that emotional distance that makes them gone.
The prodigal boy decided it was time to come home. ‘But while he was still a long way off His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him.”
A father in that culture would not have run to his son but a father full of God’s love, a father full of joy and eagerness to receive his child back home will run.
There is nothing more affirming and welcoming than a hug. If a word is worthy a thousand words, a hug is worth a million. It communicates what words never can. A hug says that you don’t have to be perfect for someone to embrace you.
Can you imagine how that boy must have felt when his father hugged him? He had prepared a speech about his bad choices and he never got to give that speech in its entirety. Actually he was unable to say anything until his dad hugged and kissed him.
That tells me two things that I think are important. It tells me how hard it must have been for this father to let his son go. It also tells me that this father wanted to make sure that his son knew that nothing was more important than his well being. The problems that must be dealt with because this boy had made bad decisions would be dealt with in the right time and place. That time was not then nor was at the front door of the house. It was time to let a son know that home was still home and always would be.
A Spanish story says that a father and his son became estranged. The son ran away and the father had no idea where he was. He didn’t know where to begin to look. After months passed without communication, the father put an ad in a local newspaper in Madrid that read, “Son, meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your father.” At the appointed time, over 800 boys showed up hoping the request was from their father.
Open hands, open arms and an open heart. He loved his son at his best and his worst. He loved him when it was easy to do so and when it was hard. He loved him when he made bad decisions as well as good ones. He loved him and wanted everyone to know it.
It is easy to love lovely people isn’t it? It is easy to love our children when they have achieved their potential and when they have lived up to our expectations and made us proud.
But then there is that time they need us the most when they fail to achieve a goal or when they are reeling from foolish mistakes, when they feel no one loves them and they don’t even love themselves, they need to know – no matter what – parents will be there and love is unconditional.
In March of 1981 John Hinckley tried to assassinate President Reagan. In the book, Breaking Point, his parents described their first visit with their son after the shooting.
“What do you say the first time you see your son after he has done the unthinkable? ‘Why did you shoot the President, son?’ Of course you don’t. Instead, as we had done a number of times over the phone since Monday, we told John we loved him. No amount of anger or revulsion could change that and that we intended to see this thing through together.”
Sounds like something the prodigal’s father would say, doesn’t it?
In the midst of the dysfunctional a father with open hands, open arms and open heart. It is a model for parenting and for family life. At its best what we also find is God. The father is waiting for you and me today even when we are a long way off. He will run to us, embrace us and his first words to us will be, “welcome home, I’ve been waiting for you.’
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