God the Father

Matthew 7:9-11

Introduction

I have seen a real shift in attitudes toward days such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. For much of my time involved in churches, these days were lifted up as highpoints for the year. The reason for this is that we put mothers and fathers on a pedestal and we offer them the respect we believe they deserve. There are some churches that no longer recognize these days. The reasons include the fact that not every adult becomes a mother or father. More than that, we are more open about the fact that not every family looks like Leave It to Beaver. There can be families that are extremely dysfunctional and relationships can be strained because of the parents, the children, or both together. So when we celebrate Mother’s Day or Father’s Day with the assumption that every parent or every experience of a parent is amazing and joy-filled, there are some within the pews that are experiencing emotional pain.

My position has been to continue to acknowledge these days and to celebrate the healthy relationships, while at the same time recognizing and speaking out about the complexities.

Why do we as a church need to even wrestle with that? Why not leave that to the counsellors and family therapists? Part of the reason is that when the nature of God is shared with us in the Bible, it is shared partially in terms of parental images. This is done, to some extent because all of us, no matter our circumstances, have some understanding of a parent-child relationship. This gives us a window into the nature of God. And when we speak of God, we should acknowledge that Christians believe that God is a Trinity. What we mean by that is that God is three persons, and yet one God. This Trinity is composed of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We are starting a series on this, beginning with the Father. Is it odd to look at God the Father on Mother’s Day? I think you will find that Mother’s Day actually will give us good insight into our heavenly Father.

Parent and Child

One of the most common ways to address God is as Father. This is interesting as the Old Testament, while having some parental imagery, really does not use Father as a frequent way to refer to God. So why do we call God Father?

Part of this comes to Jesus’ relationship with God. Jesus refers to God as Father. Why? Because God is his Father. This is in two ways. The point of the virgin birth was that the one that caused Mary to become pregnant was God. This was not the mating of divine and human that we find in the myths. This was pregnancy by decree. Since God caused the pregnancy, God is the Father of Jesus. But the doctrine of the Trinity also teaches that there has been this eternal relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So the Father has always been in a father-relationship with the Son.

Beyond this, Jesus invites us enter into the relationship between Son and Father. While we are not children of the Heavenly Father in the same as Jesus, we are adopted into the family. As a father of children that are both biologically mine and adopted, I can say that being an adopted child is not second class. Jesus teaches us to look to God as our Father.

In the passage we are looking at, we see an example of this, as Jesus compares God as a human parent. Jesus calls upon the common experience of parents providing good things to their children rather than bad things. You might want to respond that this is not always true. We can think of all sorts of cases where the parents not only withheld the good, they actually abused their children. Not every parent is good. This is true but when Jesus speaks in parables, he is using the proverbial style of describing the most common scenario. It is not meant to cover every situation.

Something I noticed in this passage for the first time is that Jesus is not just speaking of human fathers as an example of what God the Father is like. I always assumed that Jesus was addressing fathers but he speaks of “who among you” which is not referring to any particular gender. Not only that, in that culture, who would a child normally ask for a piece of bread or fish? While it may sometimes have been the father, in most cases it would be the mother that would be giving things like that. That role may be more equally shared today but it would not have been Jesus’ day. When we seek to understand God, Jesus invites to look at both mothers and fathers in our life, especially when it is a healthy family. A mother and a father should want the best for their children and when the child asks for something, the child can trust that the parent has the best intentions.

Requesting of the Father

I mentioned that one part of our struggle in reading this passage is that we are aware of human parents who have not always given that which is good to their children. There is one other struggle we might have. We may feel as if God the Father has not always given the good. Jesus tells us: “how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” But have you always felt like the Father has only given good things to you? What about for other people you know? Can you think of examples of people who asked the Father to give something good but it seemed that they only received something bad? Of course we can look at prayer and say that God always answers and sometimes the answer is no. That’s fine when your prayer is to get financing for the nice new car or to get that dream job with the nice salary. But what happens when the no is the prayer for the life of your child?

There is a story in the Old Testament about King David. David had taken a woman named Bathsheba, even though she was married. She became pregnant David dealt with this by having her husband killed in battle. The baby became sick and David prayed and fasted. When the baby died, David put on nice clothes and ordered some food. To be honest, I do not get that reaction. I would be worse shape after the baby had died. Many parents have had to say goodbye to their children, whether as infants or adults. When we pray in these desperate moments, it feels like we ask the Father for a fish and he gives us a snake. How do we make sense of this?

I do not want to pretend to be able to explain why bad things happen. Job’s friends tried to do that and were strongly condemned by God. I cannot point at any particular bad thing and give the reason for its occurrence. But I do want to throw something out there. What if not every bad thing comes from God? Is it possible that bad things just happen, not just as a lesson or as a punishment or any other divine reason? Is it possible that we just live in a world where bad things happen? In other words, if we think of the teaching of Jesus and the parent who would never give a snake instead of a fish, is it not possible that the child could encounter a snake in some other way? 

I do not think this passage teaches that we will always get what we want. What the passage teaches is that when God promises to give something good, God is not going to replace that with something bad. God is a trustworthy parent.

Conclusion

God the Father. God is not just the Father of Jesus, God is our Heavenly Father as well. What kind of Father is God? Jesus points to a picture of when families are working well. Parents, both mothers and fathers can be trusted by their children. They ask for bread and get bread, they ask for a fish and get fish. We can trust God as our Father. That does not mean we will never be disappointed with God. Bad things will happen and we may feel the need to lash out. I got mad at my parents for things they were not responsible for and my children have gotten mad at me for things I have not been responsible for. It goes with the territory.

Like the children of any mother or father, we will not necessarily understand everything that happens or why our parents allows certain things to happen. But this is the thing about trust, it does not require complete information. Trust is about reaching out to our parents hand before see if it is a stone or bread.