Everlasting Father

This Advent, the saints at The First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights are considering the words of the Prophet Isaiah, who spoke of one who would be a “wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.”  For centuries, followers of Jesus have considered Jesus to be the “fulfillment” of these words.  What did they mean in Isaiah’s time?  In Jesus’? And in our own?  In the third week of this series, our texts included Isaiah 9:2-7 and Mark 10:13-16.

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We have the privilege today of continuing to reflect on the words of Isaiah, uttered some 700 years before the birth of Jesus.  This prophetic utterance has captured the imaginations of God’s people for thousands of years as we celebrate the One who is a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.  How did Isaiah’s audience hear those phrases, and what do they mean in light of the life of Jesus?

Right off the bat, we see that today’s reading is a stretch.  How can Christians call Jesus the “everlasting Father”?  He’s the Son, right?  How can the Son be the Father?  That’s a great question… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

A foundational tenet in this series has been to affirm the fact that before the prophecy may or may not have made any sense in the life of Jesus, it had to be understood in its own time – to its original audience.  We’ve talked about the fact that in all likelihood, Isaiah was referring in these verses first to the Prince – Hezekiah.  How might the people in Jerusalem in 715 BCE understand the new king as “everlasting father”?  What are the implications for Isaiah’s immediate neighbors?

Well, for starters, we’ve got to remember that Isaiah was speaking into a culture that was clearly patriarchal.  The father was the symbol of the most important member of the family, clan, and tribe.  For Isaiah’s congregation and for centuries before it, the father was the most powerful and authoritative figure in a group.

The Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants, by Michelangelo (1511)

In that patriarchal context, then, we see that the people of Israel came to understand God as “Father”.  This is not to say that God is male, or indeed that God can be defined by gender.  Rather, the metaphor of God as “Father” fit nicely into the worldview of those among whom Scripture was first revealed.  Calling God “Father” was a way of saying that God is the most powerful, most authoritative presence in the family that was called Israel.

In Exodus 4, for instance, God sends Moses to Pharaoh and instructs Moses to say, “Israel is my firstborn…”  Later, after the people had left Egypt, Moses speaks of how God had related to the people of Israel: “…in the wilderness, you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son…” (Deuteronomy 1:31).  Hundreds of years after that, the Psalmist would declare “as a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him” (Psalm 103:13).  God’s role as the ultimate source of strength, protection, and provision is celebrated in Psalm 68:5-6:

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families,
he leads out the prisoners with singing;
but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

God is to be praised, the people of Israel said, because God protects the vulnerable and shelters those who are on the margins.

And because this is God’s nature, and because we understand that we are those who are made in the very image of God, we are not surprised when we hear the Torah and the prophets calling to the people of Israel to care for widows, orphans, and immigrants.  If that’s what God is about, then that’s what the people of God are about, too.  It’s the “family business”, if you will.  God, as Father, leads God’s people into the places where God dwells and to the people with whom God dwells

Now, given all that, what did Isaiah mean when he pointed to Hezekiah and said that he would be called “everlasting father?”  Walter Brueggemann points out that ancient Israel understood that a crucial task for the king, as leader of the nation, is to do fatherly tasks.[1]

You may recall last week that we referred to Psalm 72, which explicitly states that the king is to be God’s agent in the nation for administering justice, attending to the poor, and preserving the rights of the vulnerable.  Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah regularly admonish kings who fail to execute these responsibilities of the royal office. Ezekiel goes further, and condemns the whole lot of Israel’s rulers, saying

‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock?  You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock.  You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally…

‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: …I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. (Ezekiel 34, selected verses).

In fact, Prince Hezekiah’s dad was an abysmal failure in terms of caring for the people of God in a Godly manner.  Ahaz was a moral cesspool: he literally nailed the doors to the Temple of YHWH shut, he took gold and silver from the Temple to bribe the king of Assyria, he worshipped idols, and he even offered up some of his own children as human sacrifices.  When it came to following the edict of God to be a good king, Ahaz was an absolute dumpster fire.

The Prayer of Hezekiah, Artist Unknown, 1873 Woodcutting

So when Hezekiah was crowned king, the prophet Isaiah expressed his hope that the young prince would care for the people of God differently than did his father – that he would act in accordance with the Divine intentions.  As he does so, he adds the modifier “everlasting” to the word “father”, so that av becomes aviad.  This indicates that Isaiah anticipates that the new king will be a reliable leader in terms of caring for the people of God.  “Everlasting” implies that this change can become generational – for all time, even.

The first people to hear Isaiah voice these prophecies, then, could envision a long period of peace, tranquility, and justice.  And, to be fair, Hezekiah did all right in this regard, for the most part.  He reopened the Temple that his father had closed, restored worship, and led spiritual revivals.  He is known as a king who walked faithfully with God, for the most part.  Unfortunately, his son Manasseh was another story, but that’s a sermon for a different day.

I hope that gives us an idea of what the folks in the Old Testament thought when they considered the concept of God as their Father, and as they considered kings who were called to lead according to God’s purpose.

We return then, to the sticky question hinted at in the beginning of this message.  How in the world can we apply the title “everlasting father” to Jesus? This is particularly difficult for Christians as we hold to the notion of a triune God, the Divine whom we encounter as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the context of the trinity, we know Jesus as the Son.  How can he be the Father, too?

So, there is a theological answer to that and a practical answer to that.

Theologically, we rely on a concept known as perichoresis, which literally means “rotation” or “spinning”.  This doctrine refers to the fact that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all dwell within one another.  If God is eternal, and if God is One, then surely all three of these members of the Godhead must occupy the same space.  That is a way of saying that we can’t see one without seeing the other two.  Where Jesus is, God is.  Where the Spirit is, Jesus is.  St. Augustine, a church leader in Northern Africa several centuries after Jesus, put it this way: “Each are in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all are one.”[2]  Another author, Douglas Kelly, defines the doctrine of perichoresis in this way, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit inhere in one another and coexist, entirely, and perfectly in one another, so that where one is, the others are, and what one is involved in doing, the others are also involved in doing”.[3]  So we can say that Jesus fills the office of the Father because while they are different persons, they are both fully divine.

The doctrine of the Trinity is sticky and mysterious, and I’m not sure if offering a single paragraph to it in the midst of a longer sermon is helpful, but, well, here we are.  Fortunately, we don’t have to rely only on theological constructs.  We can look at what Jesus did.  Jesus fulfilled the Fatherly mandate that was given to Hezekiah, didn’t he? He fed the hungry, welcomed the outcast, and blessed perhaps the most vulnerable in the population (the children).  Moreover, even as he was dying on the cross, he instructed Mary and John to move in together and to form a new family.  As John put it, “To all who did accept him and believe in him he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

Bless the Children, Alix Beaujour (Contemporary)

Beyond that, consider Jesus’ promise to the disciples at the Last Supper.  As he anticipated his own death, he looked at this frightened group of followers and said, “I will not leave you orphaned.”  He knew that they feared that his death would leave them vulnerable and weak, and so he promised to connect them with himself and the Father through the Holy Spirit.  In promising and creating a family, isn’t Jesus acting as a Father here?

So what relevance does any of this have to those of us alive, not in 715 BCE or 33 AD, but in 2023?  How do we, as followers of Jesus, think of him in the context of titles like Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace?

I need you to hear this, you who feel as though you are right now somehow “orphaned” or left behind or abandoned… You who are vulnerable, spent, and weary… You who fear that you may have been forgotten… You who know demons with names like anxiety and depression and loneliness… You who worry that you won’t ever have enough and that you can never be enough…

Hear this: God’s intention from the beginning has been for all of God’s children – including you – to know sustenance, to know peace, to know protection.  The ancient Israelites understood, in their culture, these to be the “fatherly” tasks of God.  The reality is that all the fullness of God longs to dwell in and with the creation in abundance.  God, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is here.  God, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is for you.  You are created for community… you are not abandoned… neither your weariness nor your depression nor your anxiety is permitted to define you.  You are enough, by the presence of God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  You were meant for peace and sufficiency and love.  You deserve those things.

And if that’s not you?  I mean, if you find yourself in a pretty good place right now, thanks very much… if you feel empowered and protected and resourced… fantastic!  If that’s you, then you need to remember that you are the body of Christ.  That means that when we hear that Jesus is everlasting Father, that it is now up to us to continue to be about the business with which old Hezekiah was charged.  We – the Body of Christ – are the ones who hold space for the grieving, extend welcome to those who have fled trouble or trauma, provide sustenance for those who are at risk, offer protection to the vulnerable, and serve as family for the lonely.

Seriously – if that’s what Jesus was about, and if we are Jesus’ body on earth in the present age, what makes us think we can do any different?  This is, as I have suggested, the family business.  May we participate in it, and perpetuate it in joy, gratitude, and perseverance.  Thanks be to God, who has created us, made us a family, and offered us a part in this wonderful ministry.  Amen.

[1] Names for the Messiah (Westminster/John Knox, 2016) p. 39

[2]  On the Trinity, 6.10.

[3] Systematic Theology Course Study Guide, quoted https://theblessedrebellion.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/doctrine-of-trinitarian-perichoresis-pt-1/#_ftn3