First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
March 25, 2001
IS YOUR GOD TOO SMALL?
Isaac Butterworth
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 (NRSV)
1/ Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2/ And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3/ So he told them this parable: ... 11b/ “There was a man who had two sons. 12/ The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13/ A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14/ When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15/ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16/ He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17/ But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18/ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19/ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ 20/ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21/ Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22/ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23/ And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24/ for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25/ “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26/ He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27/ He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28/ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29/ But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31/ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32/ But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ”
Some of you will know the name of J.B. Phillips, an Anglican bishop who wrote a number of books. One of his most popular books was a paraphrase of the New Testament. One of his other books was entitled Your God Is Too Small. In that book, Phillips exposed the views of God that we all hold to that are woefully inadequate. For example, there is the the “cosmic policeman,” a view of God in which he is standing just around the corner, waiting for us to slip up and break the rules. Or, there is the “indulgent old man,” a little senile but very friendly. Or the “frantic manager.” In this view, God’s got sweat on his brow because the world is in such a mess, and he is trying to hold it all together. It is likely that every single one of us here this morning has a conception of God that is, at least to some degree, skewed. Our views of God may be distorted because of our background, or our experiences, or perhaps simply because of our ignorance. And we don’t realize that we are actually worshiping an idol. Much of our lives and much of our time are spent worshiping a figment of our own imaginations, and what we fail to realize is that God exists independently of our views of him. The God who is there exists as he is regardless of our woefully inadequate ways of thinking about him. And our goal as Christians ought to be to bring our understanding of God in line with the truth of who he really is.
Or, he may do it for us. I believe that is one way of reading Jesus’ parable in Luke 15. Often called “the parable of the prodigal (or, wasteful) son,” it is really about two sons and the very different, but equally inadequate, ideas they had about their father.
Now, it’s always good to read a Bible story in its context, and that would prove very helpful in this case. You will notice that Jesus told this story because some very righteous people were upset with him. It seems that he had been hanging out with the wrong kind of people -- tax collectors, who were little more than traitors in collusion with the Roman occupation army, and sinners, the kind of people who didn’t get to church often...and what they did with the rest of their time might better be left unsaid. The religious folk were scandalized by the company that Jesus kept, and Luke says that they “were grumbling” about it. So, Jesus told this story.
In it, we have “two sons.” The younger son is the rebellious one. He tells his father that he wants his inheritance early. One commentator says that this is the same thing as telling his father he wishes he were dead. “Give me what is mine,” he says, and you don’t have to read between the lines to see just how self-centered this young man is.
The father complies. He gives his son what would have been his in the will, and the boy leaves. He gets as far away from home as he can, to “a distant country,” the text says, and “and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.” No doubt, he made a number of so-called friends in that far away place, people who, we would say, saw him coming and were only too happy to help him spend his recently acquired wealth. Of course, when his money is gone, so are his friends, and so is his confidence.
It gets so bad that he thinks about going home. I can only imagine how humiliating that must seem to him. But, as psychologist Abraham Maslow has pointed out, our motivational needs dwell on a hierarchical ladder of sorts, and the need for survival precedes even the ego’s needs. So the younger son makes his plans to go home.
He will not come back as a son. He will offer himself as a laborer, hoping to become one of his father’s “hired hands.” No doubt, in his own mind, the fact that he is his father’s son will be in his favor, but his own brand of prudence warns him not to presume too much. So, he composes a speech which he hopes will gain his father’s esteem, and he rehearses what he will say when he gets home. “Father,” the speech goes, “I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”
When he arrives home, he is surprised by two things. Maybe Jesus’ listeners were, too. One is that his father has been waiting for him, looking for him even. Jesus says, “But while he was still far off, his father saw him and...ran” to him. This is unexpected. The son has assumed that he will be received coolly at best, that somehow he will have to get his father’s attention. He may be lucky -- or, so he has thought -- if the father will even see him.
So, here is the first explosion of the boy’s image of his father, and, maybe it shows us the fallacy of our notion of God. Undoubtedly, the father in the parable represents God, and, if we think of God as distancing himself from us and our needs, even if we have lived offensive lives, we begin to see that our “God” may be too small.
Add to the father’s vigil of longing the fact that he ran toward his son “and put his arms around him and kissed him,” and what do you have? A second surprising moment for the boy and a second blast to any notion of God as rigid, cold, and uncompassionate toward sinners.
Now, remember Jesus’ listeners. He is telling this parable for their benefit. In their mind, no sinner is safe with God. In Jesus’ mind, there is no safer place for a sinner to be than in the presence of God.
Maybe you need to hear this today. Perhaps you have been fearful that, if you get too close to God, he will in some way diminish you, humiliate you, or punish you. If so, perhaps you can now see that your view of God -- like the younger son’s view of his father -- is really inaccurate. Not only does the father welcome his son back home, but he throws a party. The boy starts his speech, but he never gets to finish it. His father interrupts him and calls out to the servants, “Quickly,” he says, “bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” There will be none of this “treat me as one of your hired hands” business. This boy is a son, and the father will treat him like one. And God will treat you and me, not like strangers of whom he has no knowledge and for whom he has no affection, but like his children, like his own sons and daughters.
Now, what about the older son? Is he glad to see his brother safe at home? No way. When he finds out that his father has made such an occasion out of welcoming the boy back, he is incensed. All he can think about is how unfair it is. His brother has never had anything but contempt for his father. Rebellious from the start, he has repeatedly disobeyed the old man, and, when he got his inheritance, what did he do with it? He consumed it on wild living; he “devoured” it with his wastefulness.
You can see how contemptuous the older son is toward his brother, and he finds it unintelligible, incomprehensible, inexplicable, that his father does not regard the boy the same way. He is astounded, in fact. And what is even more disconcerting is that his father would treat his brother so favorably when he, the older of the two, had been so loyal, so consistent, so obedient, so deserving.... And the father had never, never, not once, thrown him a party.
And then it becomes plain. Do you see? It is easy to figure out that the heart of the younger boy -- the rebellious one -- is far away from his father. Anyone can tell that. But now it becomes clear that the heart of the older boy -- the compliant one, the obedient son -- his heart is likewise far away from the father. Neither one of them understands the father’s heart! Both of them have an inadequate, inaccurate view of their dad.
You cannot miss the fact that Jesus’ listeners are a lot like the older son. They are outwardly righteous, consistently obedient, thoroughly religious. But they do not understand the ways of God. If they did, they would rejoice that Jesus keeps company with sinners, the people that to all appearances need God most. But their view of God, which “dwarfs” him to fit their own preconceptions, proves that, for all their outward display, inwardly they too are in a “distant country,” at least when it comes to God.
What about you and me? Are our standards for others higher than God’s. Are we more discriminating than he is? And, if so, what does that say about us?
Is our God too small? Do we labor under misconceptions about what he is really like? Someone once wrote that, thousands of years ago, God created us in his image, and it seems that, in these modern times, we have returned the favor. Isn’t it time that we seek to be more like God and give up trying to make him more like us?
