Isaiah 43.1-7
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. 4 Because you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. 5 Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; 6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up’, and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth— 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.’
Luke 3.15-17, 21-22
15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened,22and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
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I will never forget that moment the end of the film The Empire Strikes Back; the hero of the film, Luke Skywalker is fighting the black masked armoured caped figure of Darth Vader. They’re fighting in a gas refinery and you can see as the battle goes on, Luke is losing, he becomes more desperate and Darth Vader gets more angry. They’re swinging their lightsabers ferociously. Eventually in one brutal moment, Vader slashes Luke’s right arm clean off. A conversation ensues and Luke says that he was told that Vader killed his Father.
Then the big reveal, vader says ‘no, I am your father.’
And the devastated NOOOOO echoes all around as a devastated Luke screams in disbelief as he finds out his heritage.
Now, I don’t know about you but that is not the way that I want my lineage to be revealed. Imagine finding out that one of the most evil men in the galaxy is your dad. Yet despite this, Luke seems to be able to see the Good that is in him. He perceives that all is not lost and he can in face save his father; and eventually he does.
Now this Is interesting, and it got me thinking about how we perceive people, and how that affects our relationship with them. Relationships with fathers and father figures, indeed parent figures in general can be complicated, for some of us there may now have been any relationship at all.
There is something that I have noticed it in my own life, the way that I perceive God, is very similar to the way that I perceive my own Dad. I think God reacts to things in the same way that my Dad does. If I ask for something in prayer, I expect a similar response or have the expectation that it will be similar to something my dad would say. This makes sense when we think about it as God in the New Testament is shown to be a Father, (or at least a Father figure). This therefore can have a profound impact on how we relate to him.
If our father’s were tyrannical, never had a good word to say to us then we are going to think that about God. God will become somebody to be feared, hated and despised, somebody to be obeyed out of fear, or grudging respect alone, then we are not doing to perceive God in a good way.
I don’t think this is a good way to relate to God and I know that deep down we all know it as well. But it can be so hard to break free of our conceptions.
And this has real world consequences, indeed it can have a huge impact on how we read the bible, (scripture). That metaphor that John the Baptist uses in our passage about the winnowing fork and the wheat and the chaff, how the former is collected into barns whilst the latter is thrown onto the fire; the way we perceive that I believe will be directly influenced by the way that we perceive God as our father. If loving and caring, we will understand that God is just and he is judge, but that he also loves us deeply, and would never cast a person away unless they decided to reject God forever for he cherishes everyone and to case somebody aside would be a last resort. If the opposite, then God becomes a brutal tyrant, then we will expect that that would be the first thing that God will do.
So, why am I going on about this? I’m going on about this because this is so essential to the way that we perceive God the Father in the right way.
Now who do we look to see the right way of doing things? We look to Jesus of course and how he related to God the Father we need to perceive him the way that Jesus perceived him. We need to perceive him the way that we see at the end our our passage. Or indeed in the reading from Isaiah. Quoting again from that passage
“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour”
You can see the love that God has from his people here. I am the Holy One of Israel, you’re saviour, I have called you my name, you are mine. These are great words of affirmation from the Lord when his people were going through a time of trial. But they are great words that I think apply to all of us as well
These are great words to meditate on daily.
Looking to our Gospel passage now:
Jesus is baptised along with all of the other people. The Son of God himself, meets us where we are at and received the baptism that we need for salvation. He places himself with us, he deeply identifies with us and with our condition. That suggests that God is inherently for us, he meets us where we’re at, in the middle of all of our mess and all of our difficulties. And then there is the moment of baptism itself the heavens open and, the Spirit descents and the Father says:
‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
That is the way that we need to perceive God as our father.
You are my beloved child, with you I am well pleased?
How many times have we been told that in our lives, I suspect not as many as any of us would like. But here we have the Lord of the universe saying it to us, he affirms us deeply with his love. He cherishes every one of us. He wants a relationship with every one of us. If you get time to look elsewhere in the bible this week I invite you to have a look at the parable of the prodigal son. There we will see what God is like.
These negative perceptions that we have of God as father, simply aren’t true. And I’m telling myself this just as much as I’m telling anybody else, they are not true. God is not, a bureaucrat or a dictator, not an administrator nor a foreman, or a slave driver, or a meanie or a bully or Darth Vader or anything else like that. He’s a Father. And a good Father at that, a kind and loving Father who loves us all deeply and dearly.
In the book of James the writer says that ‘God is love.’
‘God is love.’
He is ‘love’ itself, the very definition of it!
My invitation this week is for us to meditate on this and know in our hearts just how deeply loved we are.
Amen
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