Third Sunday after Trinity
June 16th, Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Our Loving Father Luke
15:11-32
Sermon Audio available HERE.
Happy Fathers’ Day! Although these don’t seem like great days for
fatherhood. When did it all start going
sideways? Many still celebrate godly
fatherhood, but other influential voices deride or reject it. Instead, our culture more and more celebrates
perversion. Our families are on the
ropes. Biologically impossible ideas are
touted as the most beautiful displays of bravery. There is a full-scale war against the way
that God has ordered His Creation, and millions of souls are being crushed, in
the name of progress. We need more
fathers and mothers with the relationships, the wisdom and the courage to
protect their children from the madness.
When did it all start going sideways? I recently heard a woman, a social and
political commentator. She expounded
with both compassion and hard-nosed clarity about the lies and the danger of
the transgender movement. Women and
girls are exposed on playing fields and in locker rooms, in college dorms,
prisons and military barracks, exposed to biologically intact men who are
pretending to be women. It’s unfair, and
dangerous. Children who mention the
slightest confusion about their identity are given dangerous hormone treatments
and even surgeries that do irreversible harm to their bodies. The woman I was listening to plainly, and, given
the current climate, bravely stated that these things were bad, were dangerous,
and must be resisted, for the good of ourselves, and of our neighbors.
And yet, the woman who said this is
“married” to another woman. And the
speaker was in her third trimester; she and the woman who is her “spouse” are
about to celebrate the birth of their first child. Except of course, the child is not
“theirs.” The child is the fruit of some
kind of interaction between this woman and some man, the father of this child who
presumably will play no part in his or her raising. It is just as false, biblically and
biologically, to say that two women or two men can have children as it is to
insist that men can become women or women can become men. This commentator is living a lie, in the same
way as a disciple of the transgender contagion.
Will her baby ever know his or her father? Who knows?
What will be the negative effects of growing up without a dad? Well, we actually have dozens of studies that
track the disastrous impact of absentee fathers.
When did it all start going sideways? Long before today’s insanities, we Americans
embraced sexual promiscuity, abortion on demand, and no-fault divorce. We have made a mess of things. But on this Father’s Day, we should consider
just how foundational the denigration of fatherhood has been to the decline of
our society.
Certainly the modern feminist movement is a
key factor. Women are of course just as
valuable and important as men, equally made in God’s image. And it is true that some men have often ignored
this fact. Worse, sometimes men twist
the order of creation to justify the subjugation of women. These have been continuous problems, ever
since Satan sought to drive a wedge between the first man and the first
woman. To devalue or mistreat women,
individually or categorically, is sin.
God loves women. Men, and especially
fathers, should do the same.
But the feminist movement didn’t seek to
correct the situation, it sought revenge.
Feminism needed an enemy, and “men” were the obvious foil. Because we male descendants of Adam are so
prone to shirking our duties and taking the easy way out. Like Adam did. “What’s that, you say, a serpent is talking
to my wife, trying to confuse her about what God has said? Oh well, no big deal, I’ll just stand over
here, say nothing. Man, I’m hungry. I hope somebody offers me something to
eat.”
Whatever it has done, modern feminism has
run down the value of men, and demanded boys behave like girls supposedly
behave. Men and women were created for
each other, to love and support each
other. Feminism declares that men are
the problem. Hold the door for a
lady? Defend a woman who is being harassed? Signs of patriarchy and condescension, we are
told. So, unsurprisingly, men by and
large stopped doing it.
And why wouldn’t a man growing up during the
last 50 years stop trying to be a good guy?
Sex is available without commitment, and video games came along to fill
our spare time, the time we don’t spend hearing and meditating on God’s Word,
or trying to build a life and a family with our wife.
Being a faithful husband and father who
loves and cares for his wife and family, this is the highest earthly calling
any man can receive. No man does it even
close to perfectly. But the value of an
imperfect dad, truly trying to love and care for wife and children, cannot be
overestimated.
When a culture holds up the ideal of
fatherhood, then men will strive toward it, and society will be better. Boys and young men should be taught the manliness
and joy of honoring women, finding a wife, and raising a family. But instead we have been upholding the wrong
ideals for 5 or 6 decades now. Sleeping
with as many women as possible is celebrated.
Infidelity, shirking responsibility and absentee fatherhood are promoted
in our culture. The damage is
profound.
The state of fatherhood seems grim. But we will not give up hope. Instead, we will give thanks. For on this Father’s Day, God’s Word for us
is the parable of the Loving Father.
Those who have attacked traditional fatherhood, knowingly or
unknowingly, have been foot soldiers in a diabolical attack that seeks to
separate human beings from God the Father.
But God the Father will not have it.
And so we rejoice in our Gospel this
morning. For we see the truth about God
the Father, His loving heart, and His great work of salvation. When we know who and how God the Father is,
we begin to understand the true honor, value and power of good fathering. Ultimately, only the love of God the Father,
revealed in Jesus His Son, can help us reverse the trend towards failed
fathers, ever more broken families, and an ever feebler society.
The value of good earthly fathers for our
world is discovered in the remarkable selflessness of the Loving Father. He loves, no matter what. We in the 21st century can grasp
the exceptional heart of the father in Jesus’ parable. He never loses his focus on loving his two
sons. If we step back into the culture
of 1st century Israel, where the honor and authority of the head of
the household was perhaps the
most important value in life, then his attitude and behavior towards his
ungrateful progeny is that much more remarkable. Human conceptions of honor demanded that
fathers maintain their dignity and achieve authority through stern expectations
and swift punishment. But not the loving
father.
The younger son wishes his dad were dead,
wants him only for his money. The older
son reveals an angry, sullen heart that begrudges the father’s generosity to
others. Still today, and especially two
thousand years ago, very few people would think badly of the father if he
should disown his sons. They both
deserve it.
But no.
For the father in our parable, as for God the Father, to live is to love. Pride of self, material things and wealth are
nothing compared to relationships. Hope
for reconciliation is the unfailing beat of the Father’s heart. And the greater truth is that what the loving
father did for his two sons is just a shadow of what God has done for all of
us. God has loved the world in this way:
despite seeing the coming destruction of fatherhood, marriage and family,
despite the pain and tears that would flow from Eden, God, before time began,
resolved to fix it, so He could have us and every sinner back in His
household. God loved the world in this
way: He sent His only-begotten Son, not to condemn the world, despite what we
deserve. No, the Father sent the Son to
save the world. Because God is
love.
Justice is the other side of the coin of
love. Evil and injury and sin are truly
horrible and must be corrected, must be put right. So, restoring the guilty required
punishment. But, not wanting to let that
punishment fall on us, God’s Son, Jesus, came to take responsibility for the
hatred and dissolution of the prodigal, the younger son. We all know this guy: utterly selfish, always
and only seeking pleasure, oblivious to all his parents had done for him. We all know sons, and daughters, like this
guy. Maybe some of us have been this guy
in our lives. Jesus went to the Cross to
pay his debt, and the debt of every ungrateful child, including your debt.
And Jesus did not stop with the younger
son. The older son is all too familiar
to us as well. Outwardly he was a good boy. But inwardly he was angry and resentful,
toward parents, and especially toward any sibling who seems to be getting
spoiled. Such a bitter heart is a sign
of unbelief, a sign that one rejects the God who is loving and merciful, the
God who freely blesses people, as He sees fit.
Jesus made the way for all such bitter hearts to be made sweet and
whole, by draining the bitter cup of the Father’s wrath against all human
sin.
Jesus paid for it all at Calvary. Finishing His atoning work on the Cross was also
the final act in His perfect fulfillment of the First Commandment, also done
for us, in our place. God justly expects
that we love Him and obey Him, as His creatures, as His children. The Son of God has lived in perfect love and
harmony with the Father and the Holy Spirit, from eternity. Now, as a man, as a human being, Jesus, God’s
Son has perfectly obeyed and loved His Father, in our place. Just like His suffering, His life of
divine-human good works was also lived and done for us, to be credited to us,
by faith.
It is easy enough to see ourselves in Jesus’
parable. Which character we are depends
on the day. Which son are you more like
today, the thoughtless pleasure seeker, or the angry child, pouting over the
blessings of others?
Regardless of which sinner we are more like
today, we can also find our new identity in the parable. When the love of the father breaks through to
reveal who God the Father truly is, how He truly thinks of and treats us, this unexpected
Truth changes us. The embrace for the
filthy prodigal returning home, that welcoming embrace is for you. The best robe, washed in the blood of Jesus,
is for you. The grand celebration over
his return is for you.
Likewise, when your foolish pride leads you
to reject and avoid God, to be angry at His mercy toward others, He nevertheless
comes out to seek you. In love the
Father seeks you out and invites you to come into the party, reminding you that
life from death for sinners is exactly what God the Father wants to celebrate
with everyone, everywhere. Including
you.
See the Father for who He is, and
rejoice! See the Father for who He is,
in the gift of Jesus, for you. See the
Father for who He is, and you will appreciate the family He has placed you in,
the roles in life, the vocations, the identity, He has chosen for you. Are you a father, mother, son, daughter,
husband, wife, child? Rejoice, for when
you were placed into an earthly family, however imperfect it is, you can be
sure that it is God who has placed you there.
He is also preparing your forever place, in His house, in and through
Jesus Christ your Savior.
A happy Fathers’ Day, indeed, Amen.
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