Today we’re beginning a new series. We’ve entitled this series “Living in the Blessing.” The Blessing we are referring to is not that of some outward sign of health and wealth that we need to claim…. but rather something more foundational to life. It is the blessing that Jesus bore and came to bring to every life. It is that blessing of God as Father desires to give to every life who will return and choose life with Him.
A defining moment for all who saw Jesus emerge as the savior of the world came when he walked out to the Jordon river and the Spirit of God came upon him with a voice declaring ‘this is my son whom I love and with whom I am well pleased.’ That is the blessing out of which Jesus lived… and more profoundly… that is the blessing which he came for all to be reconciled to and enter. Over the next ten weeks we are going to engage how this blessing is what binds us together in community… how the challenges of staying centered in this blessing can be overcome by the patterns of life that we learn from Jesus… how the Holy Spirit empowers this blessing… and how we can develop lives that really are a blessing to others. Many of us would like others to experience us as a source of blessing… and of course that is what God is intending… so we are going to focus on how we can truly bless others.
But it all begins with engaging the blessing that God gives to life… as that Father of all life.
Time magazine recently had an article that noted something of the root of what effects us. It noted that two of the problems that have long been growing in the midst of all our progression as a culture… are crime and teenage pregnancy. Studies show that the most reliable predictor of these behaviors is not income. Nor race. It is the lack of a father’s love.
Bill Glass was a top player in the National Football League, playing on the 1964 champion Cleveland Browns and making the NFL Pro Bowl four times. In 1969, long before many began to minister to prison inmates…he began a ministry that invites professional athletes to speak to prisoners, following up with trained volunteers who commit themselves to building lasting relationships with juvenile inmates.
After three and a half decades… he knew intimately that the greatest issue in life… was the lack of a father’s love.
“I was in a prison in Texas recently where they've got 300 boys ages 10 to 15. These boys have committed every crime you can imagine. I asked the warden, "How many of these boys got a visit from their father in the past year?"
He said, "One, and he only stayed 15 minutes, got into a fight with his son, and stomped out mad."
He also describes… ‘On the day before Father's Day, I was in North Carolina in a juvenile prison. I ate lunch with three boys. I asked the first boy, "Is your dad coming to see you tomorrow on Father's Day?"
He said, "No, he's not coming."
"Why not?"
"He's in prison."
I asked the second boy the same question and got the same answer.
I asked the third one why his dad wasn't coming, and he said, "He got out of prison about nine months ago, and he's doing good, and I'm proud of my father. He's really going to be a good dad to me, and he's going to go straight."
I could tell he was protesting so strongly because something was still wrong. So I said, "How many times has he been here to see you since he got out nine months ago?"
He said, "He hasn't made it yet."
"Why not?"
"Well, he lives way, way away."
"Where does he live?"
"He lives in Durham."
Durham was only two hours away. I had come 1,500 miles to visit the boy. His dad couldn't come two hours.
The truth is that before this boy was cut off from society behind bars… he was cut off from life within…. In truth when our own existence is not living in relationship to the blessing of our ultimate Father who created us in his image …. we are all are cut off from life… locked up within our self-existence. They didn’t know the blessing of a father.
So what is this blessing that is so vital? The word ‘blessing’is often used to speak of something as simply being lucky or good. If someone has a great experience or a great family … we may say… ‘Wow, they are really blessed.’ But the most fundamental meaning does not refer to simply experiencing some good fortune… it is something more foundational than that… it refers to consecrating something to fulfill it’s divine will and greatest potential… to pass the power of that potential to another. The blessing of a life is that which affirms that it good… that one belongs … that one is bound to that which desires them and gives them a place and identity. .
The blessing of life is that which infuses my life with divine will… the deepest affirmation that I am fundamentally wanted… that I belong because I am bound in identity and intimacy with the source of all good that exists…. the Father of life.
The blessing we long to know and live in… is that which is reflected in the longing for a father’s affirmation and love.
Thomas Wolfe… an American novelist who wandered the world focused on themes life’s searching, wrote,
“The deepest search in life it seemed to me, the thing that in one way or another was central to all living was man’s search to find a father, not merely the father of his flesh, not merely the lost father of his youth, but the image of a strength and wisdom external and superior to his, to which the belief and power of his own life could be united.” [1]
Jesus describes this in one of the most well known parables… stories… which he tells to describe what he is bringing to bear.
Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)
> He is declaring what he is bringing to bear… namely the ‘kingdom of God’…saying in essence, what I have come to bring… what I have declared is at hand and now among you is THIS….and then he describes a story that is all about being restored by a father’s blessing. He wasn’t describing a nice story… but THE story… OUR story.
(READ TEXT vv. 11-24 … saving remainder for people to simply see… or possible reference the following week)
Luke 15:11-32 (NIV)
11 Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them. 13 "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. 17 "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' 20 So he got up and went to his father. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. 21 "The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' 22 "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.
In all that we can consider in this story… we do well not to miss those first few words with which Jesus begins with…"There was a man who had two sons.”
[ The Defining Relationship ]
He is responding to the question of how it is that he could ‘welcome sinners and eat with them.” To this he begins with a description of a father with sons. This is not a God who left a rulebook for religious leaders to win at… but a God who had sons. To understand how God could ‘welcome sinners and eat with them’ one must understand that what is at hand is the bond of a father and his child.
One simple truth that is meant for every soul to hear… is that the father is in this story represents not a human Father… but GOD… HIS father.
Jesus saw that the issue of knowing the blessing of one’s life was not a social issue but a spiritual issue.
Human fatherhood is just a reflection of what exists first in God… a representation of God’s perfect fathering love for us.
One of the hardest parts of traveling is being away from my kids who are still young… especially when they were at their youngest. I recall Cate.. when just 22 months old… hard so I made cards for my wife to give them on the consecutive Saturdays while I was away. In one I placed a leftover passport photo for each one. When I spoke with my wife from oversees… she described Cate holding the picture in her little hand saying “Dada” as she walked around the house looking for me.
> We all have a picture… we’re all looking for our ultimate father… though often the picture is distorted.
We were created to bear the image of God as Father… but we broke the image…. and that brokenness has been passed along in countless tragic ways…
Many of us carry a picture inside that is confusing… a mixture of what we long for and what we experienced. Every human life is a mixture of some qualities that reflect their God-given nature… and some deep aspects of operating out of the brokenness of that image. Some of us have experienced father’s who were given to a…
• Performance orientation – as they felt they needed to validate their worth… they may have had a hard time accepting us apart from our accomplishments.
• Punitive nature – when someone is carrying a sense that someone must be punished for the wrongs in life… they can tend to become punitive in nature… verbally or physically… leaving us to navigate life in fear or walls to avoid what we fear.
• Passive nature –unlike slap in face where pain may be obvious and easily seen… passivity of human fathers can leave us simply feeling invisible… unvalued… abandoned.
• Pretty Good Fathers… helpful in reflecting and imparting something of God… but only in part.
Jesus came with good news… life giving news… you have an ultimate father who created you… the one who has eternally been his father… has the same love for every human life.
Jesus never saw lives hopelessly lost to what their human fathers could or couldn’t provide. He never began a father rehab program… but rather he came to establish the relationship that transcends all relationships.
It all begins in being rooted in relationship to God as our Father…"There was a man who had two sons.”
They were his own… not unrelated or unconnected… they were HIS SONS.. his children.
If you wonder if you are really loved… how God feels about you… hear what Jesus is saying… ‘a father had two sons… God looks at you as his child.
1 John 3:1 (NIV)
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
And even more intense… he has a son who is lost.
Lost because no one offered any sense of direction? No… lost because he chose to live outside the only relationship that could ground and honor his true nature.
[ The Departure ]
The younger son demands his inheritance… he wants what is the father’s … the inheritance he would gain because of his relationship as a child to the father… only he doesn’t want to live in relationship to the father. The inheritance comes with the father’s passing. Any Jewish person of the time… or nearly any culture of the time…. would have heard the implication – ‘the son wants the Father dead’… it’s a statement so horrific… a request so inherently offensive. The consequence was certain, set, and severe… the son would be killed or considered dead… cut off from life. Then comes the equally provocative part of the story… the father grants him the inheritance… he lets him have the goods… and to leave his love.
With that leaves for a distant country. When Jesus says, "and left for a distant country," he indicates much more than the desire of a young man to see more of the world. He is giving up his identity… his source of belonging… believing he can forge his own.
He didn’t simply leave a physical place… but a personal place.
As Henri Nouwen describes…
“Leaving home is … is a denial of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God holds me safe in an eternal embrace… that God has ‘fashioned me in secret, molded me in the depths of the earth and knitted me together in my mother's womb.’ Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one.”
This is precisely what is described in the account of our beginnings… in the opening book of the Scriptures called Genesis (which means beginnings.) In Genesis, God declares he is creating those who will bear his own image… and that everything is theirs to be stewards of… and he even blesses them as he calls them to and multiply and fill the earth. The one boundary…. Not to eat of the one tree which represents life outside His goodness. To pursue such they will die. But another voice comes along… ‘You won’t die… you will become like god… so declare your independence.’
But they accept the lie of the serpent that they will not die… but rather they will become free to be like God. They eat… and their eyes were opened and they were naked… uncovered… and ashamed. At that point, God finds them hiding… and they explain it is ‘because we were AFRAID.’ They had only known love when they remained within life in relationship with God… but now they have sought to declare and define their own existence and they are left uncovered… and living not in a state of love but fear.
As the Scriptures later would explain… ‘nothing is made perfect in fear’ (1 John 4:18-21) [2]
They are deceived…and exploited. In the original description of Adam and Eve…the serpent slips away… leaving them just where he wanted them… facing the consequences of their own separation from God. In seeking to become more than human we became less than human… in believing we should seek to exist apart from relationship with God… we are lost… and left to a life that will reduce us and exploit because there is a need that all have that is never met and we will try to find it in ways that will never satisfy.
[ The Consequences ]
And this is what Jesus describes in the story he tells of our lives… the younger son walked away… he chose life without the Father…. only to find that he wasn’t free… he was lost… outside of life… what he thought was independence was isolation. Here Jesus is revealing that the idea of ‘becoming our own person’ has a deceptive dimension. We cannot find ourselves in ourselves.
True freedom is never found in autonomy.
All of this describes a deceptive dynamic that can run through us all. We become fooled into believing that there is a life of self-determination that lies outside living in relationship to the sovereign control of a good father. So we pursue what tries to be construed as freedom… freedom from control... where we expect we are our own person.
Here is the deep deception that… the truth is that we always were given freedom. The most shocking statement in this story is not simply what the son says he wants… but that the father gave him the inheritance and let him go. God who is ultimately and sovereignly in control… grants to us the freedom to leave. What we thought was our freedom to a world of control…is really our freedom to the consequences of such control. There is one existence created… it was good.. and if we leave… we are simply outside. Notice how the father describes the son’s process in verse 24 – “…this son of mine was dead and is alive again. We are not the ultimate source of life…. so to leave that source is to leave life.
The younger son… discovers that life in the ‘distant country’ ultimately degrades him.
His life is exploited… used… because apart from the source of love… we bare reduced to what we have… and one day the external stuff runs out… in this case his money ran out. In the same way, the friends of the younger son… appears to leave him to face his own consequences.
14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
As the money he thought was worth so much proves limited… and attention of others proves limited… he is left with nothing. He hired himself out. He is left feeding pigs… in fact he realizes that the pigs are eating better than he who has to care for them… which any Jewish hearer would hear as the greatest loss of dignity imaginable.
Apart from our home with the father, we are never truly at home… we are always living outside of our true nature / identity / dignity.
[ The Turning ]
17 "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' 20 So he got up and went to his father.
This is the pivotal moment in what Jesus is describing. It is captured in that little phrase… “When he came to his senses…”
He realizes that the distant country does not offer what he really needs… but also that what he had back at home is what he really needs. As he develops how he will have to address his position in order to find a place back at home… Jesus describes how he recognizes that he had sinned… done great wrong in denying the father his place in his life… and that he did not deserve to be his son… to be his child. So he presumes he is only in the position to be considered a servant.
The Father does not even engage the request… because the son understands the reality of his condition (undeservedness) and now will discover that this is not the posture of a servant but a son…. Undeserved love… unconditional value is exactly what SONS are blessed with.
(The deep root of deserving is of course what the older son represents… as he declares his deservedness…. And the father is sad because that older son has never really entered the home…. It is religion rather than relationship. He has never accepted the blessing.)
In truth, two sons are lost…two sons are outside of the home… with ONE NEED… to accept the undeserved blessing of their Father.
Next week… we will focus on the blessing itself… how the father throws a celebration and what he bestows upon the son. The whole point of Jesus’ story was to describe what was at hand … what God was making REAL in himself. Today, I want us to hear the turning that begins to lead us to that place.
The life of blessing begins with laying down the autonomy and come and enter the life of a child who embraces the role of God as the Father of our life. It is not with the outward obedience that is still declaring one’s deservedness and self determination… but rather restoring the place of the Father in our lives. His blessing flows from His role. Living in the Blessing begins with choosing a life in which we love that Father who loves us… and out of which we seek his ways.
CLOSING QUESTION: Do you realize what is at stake? … the choice that we have?... It is the recognition that reality is this: there is a father who has children… no other reality. The power to be defined by the Father… is the power to truly live above all the powers of this world.
This is what Jesus imparts… his relationship with the Father. It was the bond we were meant to know. Next week we will focus on the nature of the Father’s love and how the blessing on Jesus is extended to us… but it flows in relationship. Jesus embraced his sonship.
It is the very reality of being the beloved son that the enemy went after.
In the garden… it was the very reality which Jesus held onto…. ‘Father… Abba daddy…not my will but yours be done.’
It was his identity… he embraced that he was and would live in the light of the Father who loved him.
It is this identity that we must choose… and claim.
Closing Prayer
NOTES:
1. Thomas Wolfe was an American novelist who in his short and tragic life (1900-1939) was preoccupied with themes of lost youth, memory, transience and an insatiable wandering. He was a wanderer who in his brief life made seven voyages to Europe and compulsively explored that continent. He would never own a home or a piece of land. He rarely lived in an apartment for more than a year and more commonly for just a few months. (Thomas Wolfe: Study of a Wanderer by Jon A. Shaw)
2. 1 John 4:18-21 (NIV)
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
