God, the loving father

10th Sunday after Pentecost
Readings: Hosea 11:1-11,  Psalm 107:1-9,43,  Colossians 3:1-11,  Luke 12:13-21

First of all, regarding today’s Gospel, the point is - our security rests in God – nothing else: not jobs, not retirement accounts, not, as in this passage, barns. Somebody else will get all your stuff when you die anyway, so it’s a waste to spend your whole life collecting it. God is our security, so invest your energy and resources how God directs.

Moving right along, now we’ll take a look at the passage from Hosea. Last week, Fr. John discussed praying to God as our Father. In Hosea, the prophet shows some of God’s view of that relationship – how he responds to his children when they’re giving him grief. He gets angry at them for acting like idiots, but at the same time, he loves them.
Does this dynamic sound familiar to you? Now listen to what Deuteronomy recommends for parents dealing with unruly kids:

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him….

sound like anything you’ve said about your kids? or your parents or teachers said about you?
Here’s the course of action prescribed:

then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’

So what happens?

Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. (Dt 21:18-21)

Wow.

That seems a little severe. It’s hard to imagine a parent demanding the death penalty for their own child. Folks do demand the death penalty for other people’s children, but somehow that seems different…

Saying, “I’d like to wring his little neck!” is one thing, but we don’t condone actually doing it. We’re horrified at news stories reporting that a parent beat or shook a child to death. Sometimes anger can boil up to the point it’s not wise to punish your kid right then – you have to reason with yourself and talk yourself down to deal with the situation more calmly.

This seems to be part of what’s going on in God’s internal conversation. “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?...My heart recoils within me…” He’s angry, but really, he doesn’t want to destroy his people. He starts mentally re-playing memories – bending over them as they took their first lurching steps, hanging onto his fingers – “…it was I who taught Ephraim to walk...”
He thinks about how he took care of them, though they wouldn’t remember it. “I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them… I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” You probably don’t remember much about when you were a baby – or even when you were two or three years old, but your parents probably do. If you’re a parent, you probably remember a lot of little details about your children when they were small. They were totally helpless, so you had to do everything for them – which they don’t remember at all. But this bonded you to your children in a very powerful way; when you invest so much in a person, when you love them so completely, it’s hard uproot that love, no matter what happens later.

Sometimes, you really have to rely on the strength of that bond to remind yourself that you DO love your kids, because they can do things that may make you doubt it at times. You also have to remind yourself what you believe is right and not simply react according to how you feel at any given moment.

God is in some sense the same way, as Hosea portrays him – his children can make him so furious at times, he wants to beat the snot out of them, but he reminds himself that that’s not the kind of father he is. He thinks about when they were little - scooping them up in his arms and cuddling them to his cheek, and he reminds himself – that is who I am. I am a loving father. I'm not going to destroy them.

So even though his kids are rebellious and stubborn and don’t listen – even though they are “bent on turning away” he doesn’t take hold of them and drag them off to be executed. His choice in this is not based on the actions or behavior of the kids – but based on who HE is as the parent. It’s a difficult thing, I imagine, to not let your kids’ behavior drive your reaction to them. They can probably push your buttons better than anyone else, and it must take a huge effort at times to keep your cool and be deliberate in how you respond. I’ve heard several parents repeat the principle of trying never to discipline their children while they are angry, and this seems like a very wise rule.

There’s a saying attributed to Macarius the Great, one of the desert fathers of early monasticism

If you reprove someone, you yourself get carried away by anger and you are satisfying your own passion; do not lose yourself, therefore, in order to save another. (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers p. 131)

God does not lose himself in his anger at his children. He won’t allow our behavior to dictate his. Who God is as a father is not dependent on how his children are acting at any given moment – and this is a good thing, because we can be sweet one minute and vicious the next. Regardless of the kind of children we are, God has decided the kind of father he will be.

I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

As God’s children, we can rest secure in his decision to love us. This is not to say he won’t get angry and will never punish anyone. He may get mad, but his love is what’s essential, what’s central to any response he makes – that’s who he is, who he chooses to be, and you are not powerful enough to make him forget that, no matter what you do. Keep this in mind when confessing your sins and asking God’s forgiveness. He’s been working to redeem your mistakes even when you were ignoring him – so he’ll certainly be willing to get you back on the right track as soon as you want to go that way.

In the service of Reconciliation, the person seeking forgiveness says, “I have wandered far in a land that is waste.” and then talks about detours and wrong turns they’ve made.

Today’s Psalm talks about people’s similar experience.

Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to an inhabited town; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he led them by a straight way, until they reached an inhabited town.

And at the end, the Psalmist says,

Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

Steadfast love is love that stands fast, not moved or changed. God’s love for us is steadfast. So, the point is not perfect children; the point is a loving father.

Amen.