Jesus and his F/father Ps 89:19-37; Isa 63:15-64:9; Gal 4:1-7; Luke 2:41-52

Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMx5dzU2REE

Someone can only pray “Father!” (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6), by a revelation[1] given by the Spirit of Jesus, which is always a healing event. God’s timing is always perfect, someone said to me on Friday, “such and such came to see you, and you turned his life inside out and upside down because you talked to him about the Father.” Following on from last week, not only do I spiritually grieve at the absence of the name of “Jesus” in many contemporary prayers which deny the Son of God his glory, I mourn when titles like “Merciful/Gracious/Holy/Living/Loving…God” are used in ways that exclude references to God the Father[2]. In the debates over the deity of Jesus in the Early Church, Jesus was always recognised as the eternal Son of God because God is essentially and eternally Father. This sounds simply enough, but what does it mean? This sermon needs to speak about the human father of Jesus, Joseph, before his heavenly Father.

A Human father[3]

We don’t know a lot about Joseph. He is introduced as, Mary’s “husband Joseph, a just man and unwilling to put her (the pregnant Mary) to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matt 1:19). This is best interpreted that Joseph refused to assume that Mary was guilty of adultery, but was mercifully willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that she had become pregnant, in Old Testament terms, by being raped out in the countryside (Deut 25:25-27) and so was personally innocent of wrongdoing[4]. After this we read how Joseph had various visitations of angels in dreams, telling him that Mary had supernaturally conceived (Matt 1:20), and that he should later take the family to safety in Egypt, then return (Matt 2:13, 19). There is no sign of hesitation on Joseph’s behalf in response to the Word, he leaves behind residence and employment to care for his new family[5]. Joseph is plainly a man of the Spirit who obeys the word of the Lord. It therefore strikes us as strange that in the Gospels there is no recorded words of the legal human father of the Lord. Perhaps our reading from Luke today can give us some insights into this.

Mary and Joseph both assume the 12-year-old Jesus is in the caravan heading back to Galilee after the Passover feast in Jerusalem. They search for him there and in Jerusalem and after three days[6] find him dialoguing with the teachers in the Temple. Whereas “his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.[7]”” (Luke 2:48) Jesus does not respond to her emotional plea and takes the dramatic and theological centre of the scene by declaring, ““Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”” (Luke 2:49). These are the first recorded words of Jesus and make it clear that obedience to the heavenly Father is his absolute first priority[8].

The text goes on to record “he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.” (Luke 2:51); no doubt the Lord did this because honouring father and mother is the 5^th of the Ten Commandments. This little verse however is far more powerful than we might first imagine. Who was it that was submissive to his human/legal father and biological mother? However godly Joseph might have been, he certainly was not a perfect man. Jesus, the Son of God, exercised limitless humility in submissive to parental authority[9]. We Aussies, however, are secret rebels[10][11]. Our first point of obedience must be to follow the example of Christ. We can never obey father, mother, spouse, boss, government…if that involves disobedience to God.

This story if the last we hear of Joseph in the Gospels, but I think it is reasonable to surmise something else about his life. He is manifestly dead by the time Jesus begins his public ministry[12]. Which raises the question, “Why didn’t Jesus heal his father of the condition that led to his death?”  Whilst Joseph as a man of faith would have submitted willingly to death, the answer to our question has to be that Jesus could do no miracles until the Spirit and Word of the Father came upon him at his baptism (Luke 3:21-22). Until the coming of the kingdom of God with power upon him as the Son of God, Jesus would have to live in the midst of the power of the curse upon sinners declared by God from Genesis on (Gen 2:17). The Lord must have grieved over his powerlessness[13] to save his beloved father Joseph from death.

Dimensions of Fatherhood

The language of fatherhood we are familiar with contains various limitations that make its literal use unsuitable for spiritual understanding[14]. For example, whilst a human being may or may not become a father at a certain point in time[15], God’s Fatherhood is eternal. Whilst Jesus would have said “Abba” first to Joseph[16], the Fatherhood of God in Christ’s life cannot be limited to anything in this creation[17]. When the Lord is praying in John 17 he says, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (v.5). Jesus was always precise in his speaking of God the Father. Often, he speaks of “my Father” (Luke 2:49), or of the “heavenly Father” (Matt 5:48 etc.). When he says, in introducing the Lord’s Prayer, “our Father” he is speaking to the disciples about their shared life as the children of God, he is not bracketing his relationships with God his natural Father with their adopted sonship. Quite contrary to most of our experiences of natural fathers, Jesus’ relationship with his father can be summarised by a single word, intimacy[18]. In John 17 he uses the closest possible language, “you, Father, are in me, and I in you” (v.21). It is in this passage that he addresses God uniquely ways as, “Holy Father” and “Righteous Father” (vv.11, 25). Tell me, who wouldn’t want such a Father? This is John’s equivalent of Gethsemane, where Jesus prays, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.” (Mark 14:36). If God is such a wonderful Father, why is the world in such a mess? The answer is contained in Jesus most famous parable about a father and his sons. In this story the older son never feels loved (Luke 15:25-32), and the younger son rebels and leaves the household, until he remembers the truth of his father’s care even for servants (Luke 15:11-17)[19]. Sin means a choice to abandon and deface the image of God and as an attack of his holiness and righteousness it brings every form of darkness and suffering into the world[20]. The index of feeling other than a son of God is a lack of spiritual authority[21] to please him and to be what he has called us to be. This deep inner inferiority[22] is more than healed because of what the one true Son of God has done on our behalf.

The Cross and the Father

Jesus total reference point for his identity[23] was the Father. So, when Peter confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”, Jesus was overwhelmed with excitement testifying, ““Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.” (Matt 16:16-17)[24]. However, when Peter later tried to stop Jesus going to the cross he acted like a demonically controlled person attacking the heart of the Father-Son relationship[25].  Since sin always attack the submission of sonship[26], atoning for sin must take on a very specific character. The anguished cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) is a cry unique in nature[27] and dimensions. To cover our sin (John 1:29; 2 Cor 5:21) the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of God in the heart of Jesus (Eph 3:18-19) must shrink down to nothing. If “the deepest well of human insecurity” (Misha Ketchell) is the question[28] “Is God a Father, and what sort of a Father is he?”, the answer Jesus is constrained to give over, momentarily, and against every fibre of his being is that God is not a Holy and Righteous Father for there seems to be for him no inheritance in or from God[29]. To cover our sin the sinless Son must be abandoned up[30] to evil by the Father[31]. For the holy and righteous Jesus (Mark 1:24; Acts 3:14), this means a total loss of identity[32].

The submission of the Son of God to death (Phil 2:7) moved the pagan soldiers at the foot of the cross to be “filled with awe” and testify to Jesus, “Truly this was the Son of God!”[33]” (Matt 27:54). This must have been their share of a miraculous presence similar to what God the Father spoke to me so clearly in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site where Jesus was crucified, some years ago “this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”[34]  Having taken away all our orphaned humanity in himself, now, by resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:4) Jesus’ sonship has begun to flood the world (Eph 1:23) and will in the End fill the universe with the revelation of God as Father[35].

Conclusion

The death and resurrection of Jesus reveals the all-sufficiency of the Father to heal every wound any fatherlike figure has ever delivered to us. After emerging from the tomb Jesus passed this message on through Mary Magdalene, “go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17). In passing into the eternal glory of God Jesus has attained for us complete access to God as our Father. As I tried to say last week, in the Son, we are together in the heart of the Father (John 1:18), at the top and summit of all being, at the very centre of God inside the final explanation of who we are, why we are here and having arrived at our final destiny. Some years ago, I wrote to the then archbishop about the failure of the diocesan prayer coordinator to address God as “Father” in the diocesan prayer diary. Leaving aside complex questions[36], how does the human Jesus pray to today in heaven?[37] With all authority (Matt 28:18) he prays “Father!” Is this our liberty and authority in prayer (Rom 8:21)? Through Jesus and with the help of the Spirit every child of God can enjoy the blood-bought privilege of communing with God as “Father”.