A Tale of Two "Snitties"

Sermon, June 4, 2000

Texts: Romans 8:12-21, Luke 15:11-32

Some of you in the Presbyterian Women may remember a riddle my wife loved to use in some of her speaking engagements. We originally received it in 1992 from an unmarried woman friend, Nancy, in her mid-thirties at the time. She wrote, "In a car there were four people: the Perfect Man, the Perfect Woman, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The car got a flat tire. Who got out to fix it?" The answer, of course, was the Perfect Woman...because the other three don't exist!

Now, Ann never, ever claimed perfection...far from it... but she loved to use that joke as a lead-in to telling her faith story, her testimony...how, as a young career woman in her mid-twenties she strove for that worldly "image" of perfection, only to find it elusively impossible to achieve, which ultimately led her to a life-saving, life-giving encounter with Jesus Christ through the ministry of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. For your information, I should add that our friend Nancy is now very happily married...in fact, as coincidence would have it, her courtship with her husband began when he offered to drive her to Washington D.C. on February 24, 1990, for our wedding...they now have two delightful children. If she were telling that story today, though, I would guess that Nancy might change that story somewhat and put two more people in that car...the perfect parent and the perfect child! They don't exist, either! Another person who may have "fit" as a non-existent entity in that car...the perfect Christian. There just isn't one; if there is, I have yet to meet him or her! Perfection is just not something we can reach this side of eternity. That doesn't mean we don't strive again and again for perfection, that we do our best to honor God in all we do and say, but the presence of sin is still there in every human life. Doubts, fears and mistrust of God can be and usually are ongoing realities in our lives. Temptation is still very, very powerful and real, although it takes various and different forms in our lives. And as a result, our confidence, our awareness, that we really are God's children can and does ebb and flow. We may even at times question whether or not we really are God's children.

It is one thing to be a child of God, it's often another thing to be sure that you are a child of God, to live in the confidence and enjoyment of the fact that you are indeed a child of God. I think this is what Paul is addressing in Romans 8 when he writes: "Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God....the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are indeed the children of God." There are few greater blessings in the Christian life than to know experientially what this verse means: to know and experience "the witness of the spirit with our spirits that we really are the children of God." God's love for us is not conditional upon how well we obey him. Friends, at the center of the Gospel stands, not our accomplishments, not our life's story, not our achievements, not our sins, not our efforts in obedience. At the center of the Gospel stands the saving activity of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. God is not some cosmic slave driver or task master, threatening to flog and punish us if we don't "do" all that is necessary, if we don't measure up. The drama is always, always about the Trinitarian work of God in accomplishing our salvation. Paul emphasizes that God has not given us a spirit of slavery and fear. "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave to fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship" that we may really know we are His children. God's love for us is not measured by our perfection, it is not given conditional upon how well we behave, it is not conditional upon how well we perform. In Jesus Christ, we are His children, and He is our Father...we may be good children, we may be bad children, but we are His children.

Paul goes on in verse 16, "By him we cry, 'Abba! Father!' The Spirit himself testifies (or, bears witness) with our spirit that we are children of God." Abba, here, is not the rock band...it is the Aramaic familiar term for father, denoting intimate familiarity...it is roughly equivalent to the English "dad." The next word in the text, "father", is the same word, only in Greek! It is the Greek familiar for father, also roughly equivalent to the English "dad." Aramaic and Greek are used here in repetition, as if to say that all who believe in Jesus Christ, whether Aramaic-speaking Jew or Greek-speaking Gentile, have this same spirit of sonship. Another little aside: The verb "cry" used here is a cry of pain and need, not a cry of joy and elation. The same Greek word is used to describe Jesus crying out on the cross. It is used again in Revelation 12:2, which describes a mother crying out in childbirth. "Abba, Father!" is a cry of anguish. It's not an illustration of a Christian enjoying spiritual tranquility or spiritual ecstasy. It is the picture of a child who is hurting or frightened or confused crying out from the core of his being, "Dad, dad!"

This last Friday I took my three children to the Roger Williams zoo. As a single parent, any outing with my three kids is an adventure, but Friday's was especially so, due to the new animated, audio-enhanced dinosaur exhibit at the zoo. Hannah was unfazed by it, Lydia had already seen it on a class field trip and was fine, but Stevie was terrified. He heard those sound effects emanating from the area and wanted nothing to do with it. Perhaps running through his mind was, "What kind of loving father would take me into a place like this?" Perhaps he reasoned that he had a choice to make...he could go with his father (and sisters) into the terrifying darkness of that exhibit, or he could stay all alone in the even more terrifying aloneness of the "zoo world" out there. By the way, I would have never left him there alone! I embellish to draw the analogy...there are those who, in fear or confusion or mistrust or misunderstanding, might choose to be apart from the Heavenly Father and be left spiritually isolated in this zoo of a world because they don't want to go where God is leading. Well, outside the entrance to that exhibit, in that moment of uncertainty, fright and need, Stevie knew who he was. If he knew nothing else, he knew he was my son, and he trusted me. I had to carry him, and he clung tighter than a vine, but he made it through the exhibit...albeit slowly, as I was pushing the stroller with one arm, holding him with the other, all the while having Lydia nearly wrapped around my left leg. It is obviously not a perfect illustration, but I do think it captures something of what Paul is saying here. In his moment of fear, confusion and near-anguish, if my son knew and understood nothing else, he knew in his spirit who he was. He was my son...and he wanted to be close to his Dad. In like manner, it's often at the dark points of our lowest and neediest and most confused and disoriented that the Holy Spirit within our souls inspires the almost primal cry, "Father, Father!"

In that cry, "Abba, Father," Paul says, is the evidence that the Spirit works alongside your spirit and assures you that you really are a child of God. In Jesus Christ we are God's children. And God wants sons and daughters, not slaves! Don't get me wrong, God does desire our faithful service; in fact, Paul even opens his letter to the Roman church by identifying himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. However, God is not interested in being a slave driver or task master, having people serve him grudgingly out of fear of punishment or abandonment...He doesn't want slaves who are compelled by fear to serve; He wants sons, He wants daughters who delight in serving Him, who serve Him out of gratitude and joy and love ... and who go on to discover in that gratitude-motivated service the deepest joy life has to offer. Our overriding motivation to serve God should never be fear or duty, although elements of both do come into play...our overriding motivation to serve God should be gratitude for the grace that enables us to be His children.

Again, the Heavenly Father wants sons and daughters, not slaves. In our Gospel lesson this morning there is a very familiar parable Jesus uses to drive this point home. The parable in Luke 15, which we will be looking at for the next few weeks, is somewhat misleadingly known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This parable is really about TWO sons, it is as much about the dutiful but sullen son who stayed home as it is about the rebellious, "gotta-be-me" son who left and squandered a large portion of the family estate. To give some quick background: All three parables in Luke 15 are addressed to two specific audiences (see verse 1-3)...the sinners and the Pharisees -- (In February I talked about these two audiences often encountered in the Gospels: The first group was those who observed the standards of the Pharisees, which included the Pharisees themselves as well as the teachers of the law mentioned here and elsewhere. These were those who sought to follow the Pharisaic rules of behavior which included some six hundred and thirteen specific laws about the Ten Commandments alone. The other party was normally classified as the "sinners." There is some question among Biblical scholars as to who was included in this "sinner" category; that's one reason this term is in quotation marks in the NIV text. The generally accepted consensus is that the "sinner" category more than likely groups together all those who regularly violated or could not keep up with the Pharisaic rules of conduct. The tax collectors are especially noted in Luke 15:1; they were probably the most unpopular and disreputable of the "sinners." They were often considered as those who had sold out to the occupying Romans). It is most likely Jesus meant for one audience to see themselves in the one son, and the other to see themselves in the other son. With apologies to Charles Dickens, the parable really is A Tale of Two "Snitties;" both of these sons are in a snit, a state of agitation, with their father and both act out in very different ways. Both these sons are sons of the same father, and this father wants his sons as sons, not servants.

We'll go into this in more detail next time, but the first son, after blowing a good portion of the family inheritance, after coming to the end of his rope and coming to his senses, decides to come back home and offer himself as a servant. Perhaps he thought that after all he had done, the best he could hope for was to be a hired hand in his father's home, perhaps he thought he no longer deserved to be called "son." But the father won't have anything to do with that; he wants a son. When the father sees the boy returning home, he runs out to greet him, welcomes him with an exuberant embrace, puts the family robe around him, places a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet and gives a feast to celebrate the occasion of his son's return! The father went to all this overwhelming, gracious extravagance to convince his son that he didn't want the boy to live in his home as a hired servant, but as a son ... in loving fellowship with the father.

As we read later, the other son fairly explodes. Rather than seeing the fatted calf as an expression of the father's joy and a cause for household celebration, he saw the fatted calf as a reward to the wayward brother! In so many words, he says to the father, "Look! All these years I have been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders, and I never got a party. I didn't even get a goat!" What's wrong with this picture? This sullen son is demonstrating the spirit and attitude of a slave, not a son. The one son left the house and was rebellious and estranged from the father, but the older son is estranged and rebellious while dutifully staying in the home. He may have remained at home and obeyed the rules, but his words display an attitude of disrespect and dutiful coldness toward his father, seeing him as nothing but a task master! Both sons broke the father's heart. Both sons have a broken relationship with the father. One seems more obviously so to us, but the audience to whom Jesus spoke know there is a major problem with both boys. Again, God wants sons, not slaves. His love is not conditional upon how well or how poorly we serve...to return to Nancy's riddle, there are no perfect men or women or, for that matter, children! The Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of sonship, wishes to bring us out of the spirit of the elder brother into the welcome of the Heavenly Father.

We will continue with our look at this parable next week.