The God Who Isn’t Fair
St. Luke 15:11-32
June 20, 2021 anno Domini
Micah the prophet asks, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity?” Micah wasn’t looking for an answer. He knew the answer. There is no God like the God of Scripture. Every other god of every other religion acts the same way – the way that you and I would act. There is no other God who pardons iniquity. There is no other god like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
That’s because forgiveness requires love and love is a risky business for a God to get into. Love costs you. Love doesn’t pay big dividends. Love expects you to stay married when you would rather divorce. Love means staying up through the night with a sick child and visiting your husband with dementia and loving your unloveable dad. But above all love requires you to bury sins instead of resurrecting them – even the ones that keep popping up on their own.
Who wouldn’t want a God who pardons iniquity? Who loves in that risky, costly, sacrificial way? Well, you don’t – that’s who. The parable in the Gospel reading from Luke teaches us that. Luke 15 begins with a group unhappy with a forgiving god. (Read Luke 15:2)
Why don’t the Pharisees and Scribes want Jesus to eat with sinners and tax collectors? Because it’s not fair. That’s the problem with forgiveness and the God of the Bible. He’s not fair. He forgave that younger son. Not only does dad welcome him back, but treats him, well, like a son. Meanwhile the older boy, let’s call him Joshua, he’s been working hard, slaving away for his dad, and what’s his dad given him, not even a goat for when his friends bought a keg of beer after harvest to throw a party.
Joshua didn’t want a forgiving father. He wanted a fair father because he thought fairness would work in his favor. In the same way the Pharisees thought Jesus should be fair – they were the religious leaders, they deserved God’s attention, but there was Jesus, sitting on the patio at Jimmy’s Pour House, where everybody could see Him and He is eating with sinners.
The younger brother in the parable – let’s call him Benjamin, didn’t deserve anything from his father. Not after what He did. He wanted his inheritance early. He couldn’t wait for dear old dad to die. He didn’t want the old man telling him what to do. He wanted freedom. He wanted to find himself. He wanted to take a year off after High School and travel the world on daddy’s dime (actually, on daddy’s death).
Learn from Benjamin – if you want freedom from God you’ll be enslaved to sin and death. If your goal is to find yourself you’ll lose yourself. In seeking what you want you wish God dead and He’ll gladly die to you. Watch what you wish for! God loves you so much He’ll never force anything on you. If you want to kill Him to get all His stuff for yourself, He’ll let you. He let Adam and Eve sin and make themselves gods. Humans have been standing in God’s place ever since and look how that turning out – under human power all we have is division, anger, sorrow, suffering, and death.
Let’s imagine for a moment that the father in the parable is fair. That He is the dad older son Joshua wants–a good and fair man. When young Benjamin comes to his senses in the pig pen, when he realizes his father is good, that he treats his servants better than Ben himself is being treated, he decides to go home and appeal to his father’s fairness. Ben know he doesn’t deserve to be a son. Perhaps he could be a slave and earn back all that he lost. That might be fair, but it would not be fatherly, because all fathers derive their fatherhood from God.
That’s why a good father isn’t a fair father. A good father is a man who risks love, who’s willing to sacrifice, who lays down his life for his wife and children. A good father does the most foolish thing you could ever do – forgive.
Most people approach God like Ben did in the text, with a deal. (Read 15:18-19) If you must work your way back to God all you will be is a slave and He will be your master. The God of Holy Scripture did not create you for slavery, not to Himself, and not to the sin, death, and hell that rule the lives of sinners.
The father in the parable does not make deals. He forgives. (Read vs. 22-24) He forgives the son for wishing him dead, for squandering the inheritance, and for hoping his dad would be fair. Nothing is more insulting to God than asking Him to be fair – fair would be no Jesus, no forgiveness, no place for you in His family.
God loves in this way. He forgives. Forgiveness is not treating a person like he deserves. That means forgiveness costs the forgiver. God has been hurt. If He was fair He’d take that out on you. He’d turn His back on earth, let the Devil have your soul, and let your body burn in hell for all eternity. Instead, He takes it out on Jesus. He turned His back on Jesus. He let His Son suffer hell’s torment and let the devil win the battle at the cross. Evil won the day when Jesus was arrested, convicted, and crucified. Men, like the Pharisees killed God for not being fair. God used that evil and that death for the greatest good.
Forgiveness cost the Father in heaven His Son. Ironically, the father in the parable might lose his firstborn son because he forgave his second born son. The business of forgiveness is a risky business. Forgiveness can be taken advantage of. Forgiving might offend your family. Forgiving another person will get you called weird, stupid, foolish. Forgiveness will cost you.
The older son wanted a fair father, not a forgiving father, but a fair father isn’t a father. He is a judge and harsh master. What child deserves what a father does for him or her? Which of us deserves what God has done for us? If you want a fair god become a Muslim or a Mormon or any of host of fair religions. Do your works, be a slave to your God, and in the end you’ll get your reward. The Devil is fair. He’ll give you exactly what you deserve. What you need is the God who loves by forgiving. Who isn’t fair but foolish. What you need is a God who will receive sinners and eat with you. What you need is a God who won’t leave you dead like you deserve, but will forgive so you live. That’s the God you’ll find in Scripture. That’s the Father who forgives you, through the working of the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus. Amen.