Abba, Father, by Your Spirit help us to know we are Your beloved children, and to show this in our lives, that Your Kingdom may come and will be done, in Jesus Name. Amen.
Father's Day. If a recent survey is correct, then today 63% of us fathers will have received a card, while 32% will spend time with our family to mark the occasion. Over recent years, the Church has been seeking to encourage the celebration of this day. To quote Bishop John: "Let's celebrate Father's Day in our churches, honouring those fathers who have shown us something of God's love, praying for fathers to be given strength in their crucial role and remembering that God, who is our Father in heaven, loves us more than we can grasp."
Amen to that. For it is surely good to give thanks for those father figures whose lives and examples have helped us to glimpse something of the nature of our Heavenly Father. And to reflect on how Jesus - though not Himself a biological father - shows us the Father-heart of God for His wayward and wounded children. The Father who seeks us out. The Father who sets us free. The Father who sends us out to share with others what He has done for us.
First, the Father who seeks us out. There is the story of a Quaker family who lived in Pennsylvania. Against the father's wishes, the son Jonathan ran off and enlisted in the cause of the North during the American Civil War. Time passed and no word from Jonathan. One night, the father had a dream that his son had been wounded in action, was in distress, and needed the care of a father. So the father left the farm, and discovered where the troops might be. He made his way to the scene of action. He asked the commander about his son. The commander replied that there had been heavy action earlier in the day and many had fallen wounded. Some had been cared for, but others were still left out in the trenches. But he gave permission to the father to go and try to find his son. It was now almost dark, so the father lit a lantern, and the light fell across the wounded young men, some calling for help, many too seriously wounded to cry for assistance. The task seemed impossible. How could he find his son among all those wounded and dying? He began calling loudly, "Jonathan Smythe, your father is looking for you." Then he would walk a little way and call again, "Jonathan Smythe, your father is looking for you." A groan could be heard here and there. More than one soldier said, "I wish that were my father." He kept diligently at his search. Then, at last, he heard a very faint, barely audible reply, "Father, over here. I knew you would find me."
Our Heavenly Father seeks out His wayward and wounded children. He keeps calling out for them, but who will hear His call and respond? So often, they ignore, or reject His call. As the prophet Isaiah puts it in today's first reading: "I said, 'Here I am, here I am', to a nation that did not call on my name. I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices" (Isaiah 65 1,2).
The Father who seeks us out. Why? Because He loves us, and wants to set us free. Free from what? Free from what today's collect describes as "the tyranny of sin." As Mary reminded us last Sunday morning, it is sin that cuts us off from our Heavenly Father, sin that comes between us and one another, sin that destroys so much that is good. Sin whose root cause is us saying "Shove off, God - I'm in charge - Not you."
Sin affects, and infects, us, and our world, in so many ways. None of us is immune. Yet, as today's Gospel reminds us, it need not be so. In Jesus, our Heavenly Father draws near to free His children from whatever it is that enslaves them. That is what the story of the Gerasene demoniac is all about. Jesus and His disciples had just come through a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Having survived that frightening storm, the disciples must have been relieved to set foot on solid ground. But, as they got out of the boat, now they were encountering a different kind of storm ... yet another scary experience. The beginning of Luke's narrative sounds like a horror-story. A wild-eyed madman comes running and shrieking out of the tomb. He is convinced that he is being held captive by a whole legion of demons, who are pulling and jerking him in every direction. This is an eerie, grim, frightening situation.
What would you have done in that situation? This was a perilous place, a bloodcurdling moment … a powerful, dangerous, berserk man screaming and yelling. I think I would have prayed for the gift of translocation - 'beam me up Scotty' - or else run for my life.
But not Jesus. We're told that Jesus stood His ground and faced the madman. Undaunted, unafraid, Jesus remained calm before this human storm, just as He had done before the wind and the waves on the lake. And He dealt with this wild tormented man, just as he had done with the natural elements shortly before - with the same quiet authority.
Note the different responses made to Jesus in Luke's account - the response of the demons, the response of the man, and the response of his neighbours. The demons recognized Jesus' authority and had to obey His command. However the man and his neighbours could choose their response. And that response was a mixed one, a mixture of attraction and repulsion, of wanting to be near Jesus, and yet also wanting to be left alone by Him.
And that is still the case, isn't it? The Father who seeks us out, who comes to set us free in His Son Jesus Christ, gives us the freedom to choose how we respond to Him. If you and I choose to welcome Him, and allow Him to transform our lives, then He will free us from the tyranny of sin - from whatever destructive forces are at work in our lives. And - like the Gerasene demoniac, we will come to know the healing power of Jesus Christ, His power to bring peace to troubled souls, power to change lives, power to give us a new beginning, a new start, a new birth. For our Heavenly Father wants us to know the glorious liberty of being His children.
The Father who seeks us out, is the Father who sets us free. And our Father God sends His children, out to share with others what He has done for us. Think again of how the story of the Gerasene demoniac ends. Luke tells us that "The
man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, 'Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.' So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him" (Luke 8. 38, 39).
Like the disciples, the man was given a preaching ministry by Jesus. What He had freely received, so he was now to share freely with others, as a new witness to the saving power of God. And his message was this: What God does, Jesus does. That God - as we shall say in the prayer after communion - the Father of all, meets us in his Son to bring us home.
On this Father's Day, whatever our experience of father-figures has been, may you and I be assured of this fact: That in Jesus, we are invited to know the One who is our loving Heavenly Father. The Father who seeks us out. The Father who sets us free. The Father who sends us out to share with others what He has done for us.
Truths of which we are reminded in today's collect: Almighty God, you have broken the tyranny of sin, and have sent the Spirit of your Son into our hearts whereby we call you Father: give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service, that we and all creation may be brought to the glorious liberty of the children of God; through Jesus Christ, your Son our Lord. Amen.
John Barr
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