Sermon: The Loving Father

Text: Luke 15: 11b-32

Date: March 18, 2007

By: Kendall H. Brown

A power point presentation accompanied this sermon. Placement of the slides is marked by notes in parenthesis>

(Slide – Nouwen)This morning I am leaning heavily on a book intitled “Return of the Prodigal Son” by Henri Nouwen. Nouwen, through his writing has been a spiritual mentor and guide to me since the mid seventies when I first encountered his work. He has served in those roles to thousands of others - both Catholic and Protestant. His book, “The Wounded Healer” helped me to understand and define the core of ministry. His book, “Reaching Out” is a classic study of spirituality and hospitality, which has helped me shape my vision of what a congregation is.

Nouwen was born in the Netherlands in 1932. He received his doctorate in psychology and was ordained a Catholic Priest. He held teaching positions (slide – HN teaching) at Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. His last position was serving as Pastor in a community called “Daybreak” near Toronto. Daybreak is one of 130 similar communities which provide a home for serverly mentally handicapped children. Nouwen died in 1996.

(slide HN with child) Nouwen took some time off after his last universty position and before becoming pastor at Daybreak. It was during this period that he wrote “Return of the Prodigal Son” to which we turn this morning. His book is a reflection on Rembrant’s painting, “The return of the Prodigal Son.”

(slide Hermitage/Catherine) The Empress Catherine II of Russia purchased this painting in the 18^th century. It was one or many Rembrandt’s that she acquired for the Dutch and Flemish room at the Hermitage. The painting itself is very large – 8 feet in height. It’s dimension adds to its majesty in a way that we can only imagine as we explore its meaning this morning.

First a quick overview of the painting. (slide – Rembrandt’s “Return”) Like many of Rembrandt’s paintings, the picture has two distinct areas” one of light - and one of darkness. The distinction between light and darkness places the subjects in the same picture - but in very different space. The son is bathed in the most light – which seems to emmanate from the father himself – as you can see here. The darkness reveals four figures. Here the picture is lightened (slide – lightened painting) that you might discern the fourth figure – a woman – in the upper left hand corner. The placement of the figures in dark and light raises the first question for us as we view this picture today. Jesus’ parable calls for us to see ourselves in the story. Where do you see yourself in this picture?

We are all in the same picture. But what space do we occupy? There are the son and father, who are basking in the warmth of grace and love. There are the observers. They watch grace performed. Have they ever been on the stage? Do they know the embrace of the Father in their hearts? Are you an observer? Are you on the stage? Do you walk in darkness or in the light? What is the light? This picture sums up the whole Gospel so well. Such is the genius of Rembrandt. The light is the unconditional love of God – that emmanates from God.

Nouwen encountered the depth of Rembrandt’s work after resigning from his last teaching position and before becoming a pastor at Daybreak. At this point in his career he already had a world wide reputation as a spiritual guide. Yet the painting led him to realize the shortness of his own spiritual journey and of new lands yet to explore. He realized that as a teacher he had spent years pointing others to the light. Nevertheless, he was still an observer. Nouwen hit the dark night of his own soul – and realized his need to receive the embrace of the father himself to which he had spent a career guiding others. Do you point others to the father’s embrace? Does your heart know the embrace of a loving God’s arms?

Let us study the father in the picture (slide – father detail) in a little more detail for a moment. This painting was one of Rembrandt’s last paintings before his death at the age of 63, which in his days was a great achievement in length of days. The father is a self portrait (slide two sides Rembrandt/Father) by Rembrandt. As Rembrandt aged himself, he became sensitive to the issues and realities of aging. Those sensitivities emerged in his paintings. Here is his painting of(slide – Simeon) Simeon and the Chist child. This painting was done in 1669 the year of Rembrandt’s death and is thought to be his last picture. It is unfinished and can be found today in the Stockholm Museum of Art. The old man Simeon is holding the Christ Child.

Notice Simeon’s eyes. In Luke 2:26, it is written that Simeon would not see death until he had seen the Lord. God had found such favor with him. But is death something that we see? Is death something that we mortals perceive with our outer eyes or our inner eyes. Pay attention to Simeon’s eyes. They have the look of a blind man’s eyes. (slide: Simeon/Father – detail of eyes) If you look closely at the father in the other picture you will see the same eyes. Both are the eyes of very old men whose sight has failed. Rembrandt’s paintings project the thought that with age and failing sight with our outer eyes we come to see more clearly with our inner eyes. For Rembrandt the aging process was also a maturing process. (Slide: Whole pic again) The light in the whole picture reveals not only what we are to see with the outer eye but also, and more importantly, what we are to see with our inner eye – in fact, can only see with the inner eye.

Another note about the father in this picture. Notice the hands. (Slide – detail hands) There is a distinct difference in Rembrandt’s painting between the two hands. The Father’s left hand (on our right) is rougher and more solid. The right hand is slimmer and smoother. It isn’t only a father’s love that the aging eye’s of the artist sees and paints. The son is embraced by a parental love that includes both the feminine as well as the masculine. Rembrandt recognized in 1667 something about God’s wholeness and completeness that still escapes many today who can only affirm a God in part – and masculine at that.

This picture(Slide – Jewish Wedding) is Rembrandt’s “The Jewish Wedding” painted in 1666. It is believed that the model for the bride in this picture also modeled the feminine right hand of the father in the return of the prodigal son. Let us now turn to another person in the picture. (Slide – brother) Here we see the tall man on the right hand side and in the darkness. He is the complete opposite of the father. Ther first opposite to be noticed is that Rembrandtian thing of light and dark positioning. The man is believed to be the son by many although Rembrandt himself never identified the four observers in the darkness. Sometimes with art the important thing is what the viewer sees. For me, I see the son in this man. His body is rigid, maybe frigid is a better word. The father’s body has a graceful fluidity. The son’s robes are held close. The father’s robes are open and inviting. The father’s arms and hands are open and embracing. The son’s are held closely to his chest.

The father and the elder son have much in common. They wear the same robes of wealth and respectability. They both have beards. Yet they are worlds apart. In a way there are two prodigal sons in the story. The elder son is in his own far country without ever leaving home. The light of grace that can be found in his father and the light of grace that his brother found cannot be found in him. In that light is a home, a place where the elder son cannot be at home.

Returning to the parable we are told that the father reached out just as much to his elder son as he did to his younger son. In fact, the father in Jesus’ parable does more for his elder son than he does for his younger. For the younger son he waited and watched. But for the older son the father actually traveled to the far country of the elder son to reach out to him after the younger son returned. As the parable says, “He went to his elder son and told him that all he (the father) had would be the elder son’s.” He only watched and waited for the younger. He actually went into his elder son’s far country to embrace him with his love. In Rembrandt’s painting there is a huge physical space between the elder and the father in deep contrast to the closeness of the younger son. In the parable the embracing father works to close that space with both of his sons. Both sons are lost and now are found. Both are found by the parable, but the parable does not tell us the final outcome. Did the elder son’s heart open up? Did the younger son stay around?

Let us now turn to the figure in the picture without whom we would not have the story – the younger son. This figure is a fascinating subject. (slide – prodigal detail) Rembrandt has given him all of the signs of destitution. His clothes are tattered undergarments. Long gone for him are the elegant robes of his father and brother. Look at the bare sole of his foot - beaten and scarred – the result of a very rough journey to and from a far country. He is bald or shaven, his hair and beard – proud marks of manhood have been stripped from him.

Here is another depiction of the son in the far country by Rembrandt. (slide – Rembrandt and Saskia) In this painting Rembrandt has also given us another self portrait. He is living the life of debauchery. Notice the Sword that the son is wearing. I’ll say more about that later. In this picture the son is living it up in the far country.

In the parable, the son had left home and was living in a far country long before he asked his father for his due and took off. Consider the request for his portion of the inheritance. Asking his father for his inheritance was the same thing as saying to his father “I wish that you were dead.” Stop to think about it. Before the son asked his Dad for his due in advance he must have mulled it over. Without a doubt he probably weighed the thought that if his father died he would get his money. But his father was strong and healthy and not ready to die for some time. What a nasty son. His depravity was far more than outer matters of hearty party. His depravity was also an inner matter of having no heart at all.

But those things are now behind us in the story. Now he is home, and where is home? Look at the picture again. (slide: details father/son) The son’s ear is resting on his father’s chest. Home is wherever we can hear the beating heart of God beating for us. The elder son who stayed put isn’t really at home at all – we hope that he gets there after his father seeks him out and invites him back. We hope that the elder son will also be able to hear the heart that beats for him just as much as it does for his brother – just as much as it does for you and me.

Look some more at the younger son. His face is that of a baby. Like the christ child in the arms of Simeon, the younger son in the arms of his father is tenderly embraced by a loving parent who embraces each son with arms of love. Is that a picture that we only observe? Are we able to sttep into that picture? In order to enter the kingdom one must become like a child.

At this point I became struck by the intertwining themes of three pictures that I worked with for this message. (Slide Simeon/Father) Rembrandt’s two paintings – Simeon and the Loving Father and then that picture (Slide all three) we saw earlier of Nouwen holding one of his parishioners at Daybreak. In all three pictures a child is embraced by a father. Nouwen found in his ministry with children the fulfillment of an emptiness in his heart. Rembrandt obiously found in the Prodigal’s father his own self – he used himself for his model. These three pictures together remind us that when we embrace the child – any child – we embrace the Christ child.

(Slide – father and son) Notice that on the son in the picture there is one item that stands out. He has one thing left. That is his sword. The sword was probably given to him by the father. In Rembrandt’s time, a gift of a sword from the father would have been a customary gift to a departing son. In this picture, the sword stands for something that the son never lost. No matter how far into the far country the son traveled, he could not lose his sonship. That would be with him forever no matter how much he despised or shamed it. The 23^rd Psalm reads: God’s goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Our sonships and daughtership, like god’s goodness and mercy, are always with us, even when we are in the darkness – the darkness of the observers in the painting – whatever that darkness might be for us.

One more note about this painting and what this painting is about. If we were not so familiar with the prodigal son story and if Rembrandt had not labeled his painting the return of the prodigal – this painting could be a depiction of the return of Jesus to God after the ascension. The son is torn and beaten and his clothes are tattered. Jesus was torn and beaten and all his clothes were stripped away. The son traveled to the far country – Jesus traveled to a far country as described in Philippians 2, “though he was in the form of God, {he} did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross.”

The elder son left home out of disobedience.

Jesus left home out of obedience.

Then as we read further in Phillipians, “God exalted him and bestowed upon him the name which is above every name.”

The prodigal’s father exalted him. Out of the same love, God exalts Jesus. The picture could easily be that of the beaten Jesus returning to his father, too.

When we put Jesus himself into the painting we immerse ourselves in another dimension of truth that is present in the images. Jesus has been in the far country as much as the son. And no matter how far any of us might be, the picture tells us that like the younger son, we can never lose the sword, our inheritance of being of and from God, who waits and watches for those who wander, and who seeks out those who are do all the right things but are still in darkness and lost.

The parable and painting are all about returning home. Jesus said, (John !4:23 ) “If anyone loves me, and keeps my word, my Father will love that one, and we will come to that one and make our home there.”

Home is where the heart is. Home is where we can lay our ears to God’s chest and hear God’s heart beating for us.

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