Images of God (Fourth Sunday in Lent)

Sermon Reflections

Sermons on YouTube…

For the last couple of years – rather than flying – I’ve been taking Phoenix in the car and driving out to Colorado for my annual ski “boondoggle”, which is both for vacation and a continuing ed event. It is a long drive, and this past year, there was some bad weather to deal with. But in general, I often find that long drives give me time to decompress, and I generally enjoy the change of scenery and the experience of being able to get out and be someplace different for a while.

But there are spots where it gets really tedious and boring. And that includes driving across Missouri and Kansas on I-70. Some of you may have driven that route as well, and if so, I’m sorry! It’s long, and boring and you often feel like you’ll never get through it.

But to keep you from being too bored, there are folks who have placed “religious” billboards every few miles, and since there’s really nothing else out there, you can’t help but notice them. And every time I see them, I get more and more irritated with their “theology”.

It isn’t that the sayings themselves are totally wrong. It’s just that they portray an image of God that’s kind of disturbing. For example, I saw signs that said:

  • “Jesus IS real!” (I think Jesus is real, too, but these signs made it feel like Jesus is a menacing figure who’s coming to get you…)
  • “After you die, you WILL meet God” (I think that, too, but to me it’s a promise, not a threat…)
  • “If you die tonight, will you end up in heaven of HELL?!” (Which kind of implies that God is happy to send you to hell, unless….)

Now perhaps the folks who put up those signs and others like them might say I’m totally misreading the implications. But as I rode along and read those signs, I thought to myself, “If I didn’t know anything about this Jesus guy, I’d want nothing to do with him!” Because as I read the implications and the image of God that the signs were conveying, it sounded as though God was a kind of mafia boss who essentially was saying, “hey, you got a nice little life going on here. It’d be a shame if you ended up burning in hell for all eternity…”

And is that really the right image of God? Is that who God is? Is that who Jesus is?

I remember one of my New Testament professors in seminary talking about all the ways you could envision Jesus if you edited the various things Jesus said and did… (he could seem mild and friendly or stern and angry.)  And this professor had literally written books analyzing Jesus! But in the midst of that discussion, he said to us, “Everyone of us has an image of who Jesus is, whether they’re consciously aware of it or not. And you can’t operate without one.”

So what’s your image of Jesus? Who is God to you? Because your image of who God is conditions your image of yourself and your relationship to God. So is God:

  • The mafia boss who’s watching closely to see if it’s time to smite you …?
  • A distant reality, who really doesn’t have anything to do with you right now … (but someday after you die, maybe you’ll get to see Grandma again)?
  • A friend who walks with you and cares about what’s happening right now…?

I raise these questions, not just because they’re important for each of us, but because the reason Jesus tells parables is to give us an image of who God really is. They’re intended to imply characteristics of God even more surely than those billboards were.

And even though we tend to call today’s parable the parable of the prodigal son, it’s really not about the son. It’s about the father. And in looking at the father, Jesus intends to inform our image of the being and character of God.

So what does Jesus want us to learn about God’s character from this parable? Well, the beauty of parables is that there are many things to learn, but I’d like to suggest three really important characteristics of God that Jesus conveys through this parable:

  • God is a realist – the father doesn’t welcome the son home because he’s too naïve to believe what the son has been up to (when the older son tells the father what the younger son has been doing, the father doesn’t dismiss it as “fake news” or pretend it really isn’t that bad); instead, the father loves the son in spite of his imperfections, and frankly without any delusion that the younger son will now be totally changed… (there was a really good video portrayal of this many years ago at a Group Workcamp we were at…)
  • God wants to have a real relationship with us – and a real relationship can’t be forced, or coerced, through threats. This is why the father waits patiently for the son to return. He doesn’t send threatening letters, or even lecture him about the obvious consequences of his actions. He’s looking for a renewed and restored relationship, and that can only happen when the son is ready for it. And so God’s patience isn’t about enabling bad behavior, or about biding time until he can punish somebody. It’s about nurturing and restoring relationships with people…
  • God also includes the melodramatic, obnoxious older son – the story doesn’t end with the return of the younger son. The story ends with the father pleading with the older son (not forcing the older son), to come in and join the party. The older son didn’t want to associate with “them” – that is, the younger son and the people who liked him. Honestly, the younger son probably didn’t care to associate with “them” either (that is, the older son and his buddies). But the father wants them both included. And in our polarized society, that should remind us that God is intent on including all the people we think of as “them”. So whoever you consider to be the “us” in your life, it means that God wants and includes you – but God also wants to include whoever you think of as “them” as well. It means that God loves and includes even the people who put up obnoxious, and in my opinion, heretical billboards about God. Even them!

Often, we’re tempted to read the parables and make them about us. That is, who should we be, how should we behave and what should we do? Certainly, there are lessons to be learned there as well. But in the end, the parables aren’t about us. They’re about who God is, and who God intends to be in our lives.

And so as you read and consider this parable and others, think about the images of who God is. Let those images form the relationship that you have with God. And maybe most of all, trust the images of God that Jesus gives you in parables, instead of the images you get from billboards!

Amen.