Father’s Day
Cycle B
Today is Father’s Day, and so I would like to talk
about fathers. I don't usually preach on a secular holiday, but I think it is appropriate to do so today because we will hear God
referred to as father many times in this Mass and in every Mass. We will also
all pray the Our Father together. When we were baptized we heard that as
disciples we would call God our father in the midst of the Church. And so today
is about much more than honoring our own fathers. It is also about recognizing
and celebrating the image of God as our father.
Why do we call God father? Doesn’t that limit God?
Isn’t that sexist and exclusionary? The Episcopal Church just last week began a
movement to begin calling God mother. Does it matter if we image God as male or
female, mother or father? Actually, it does.
We call God father because that is how God has chosen
to reveal himself to his people. As Christians, we trust Jesus and believe him
to be who he says he is. Jesus himself called God father. Actually, he often
called him not father but daddy. Abba. He said that no one knows the father but
the son, and no one knows the son but the father, and anyone to whom the father
chooses to reveal him.
So we believe Jesus knew what he was talking about.
Jesus didn’t call God father because he was raised in a patriarchal society
where women were inferior. Give Jesus more credit than that. Jesus busted out
of his culture all the time. Jesus called God his father because he knows the
nature of God better than anyone. He knew that the image of father most closely
described the true attributes of the creator, and he knew his disciples would
understand those attributes.
In Jesus’ day, the father was everything to a family.
He was the provider and protector, the one who could continue the line of
descendants to build up the family. He had all the rights and privileges and
held total control over the lives and property of the family. He was actually
like a king in his rights and responsibilities. And it was the role of the
father that held the society together. The father was the center of the family
and therefore was due great respect. So much so that there is even a
commandment to honor your father and your mother. The Jews did not see this as
an image of repression but as an image of strength, stability and love.
The insight Jesus gave us into the nature of God is of
a strong, loving, compassionate, forgiving father. Isn’t that a good thing? If
you think about it, isn’t that the nature of Jesus as well? Whenever he modeled
those behaviors wasn’t he showing us what the father is like? He told Philip,
“When you see me you see the father,” and “The Father and I are one.”
Jesus, even though he had no biological children,
often acted as a father. We see Jesus imaging a father in today’s gospel. I
love this image. Dad is sleeping on the couch after a long, hard day. The kids
are causing chaos around him but he is oblivious to it all, until a fight
breaks out and they run to Dad to act as referee. “Daddy, wake up, Johnny hit
me. Tell him to stop!” And so Dad gets up, rebukes the chaos and it obeys him.
Quiet ensues, Dad mutters something to the kids like, “Why can’t you guys get
along?” and goes back to sleep.
The disciples turned to Jesus in their fear and he set
things right. A good father is like that. Fathers are supposed to be in control.
From the time we were little, Dad has been the one who protects us. Dad rights
the wrongs. Dad is a strong figure, someone who is loving yet firm. For me, Dad
was the one who calmed the storm. Dad was the one person who I could count on
to do what was right, to be that pillar of strength.
You don’t have to be a man to give a strong witness to
the fatherhood of God. Many of you have assumed the roles of both father and
mother in single parent households. It is important that you have a healthy image
of what a father should be. Even if your own father has failed to live up to
the ideal, you always have the perfect father in heaven. Even if you fail to
live up to your mission as a child of God, you still have Jesus to emulate and
follow.
By focusing on God as your father you can become a
better son or daughter. By focusing on Jesus as the son you can become a better
child of God and a better disciple. We ourselves serve more than just one role,
don’t we? Whether we are male or female, sometimes we are called to live the
attributes of a father, sometimes those of a mother, and sometimes we live as
children. What’s wrong with that? If we know that about ourselves why do we get
hung up on one single image of God, so that if that image is challenged in any way
we feel threatened?
We have multiple images of ourselves, just like we
should have multiple images of God. God is neither male nor female, yet God has
chosen to reveal himself to humanity throughout the millennia primarily as
Father. So, is it safe to say that being father is not necessarily male or
female? God has not set himself up as an oppressive male authority figure. Some
have given him that image. God wants us to relate to him in a healthy image
that is extremely close to each one of us personally.
Studies show the deep influence a father has on a
person’s life. Some of that influence is positive and some is negative, but
there is no denying how important a father is in the development of each of us
as children. We carry the effects of our fathers’ relationship with us
throughout our entire lives.
Why should imaging God as Father take away from you as
a woman or as a single man? What does it take away from you to see yourself
with the attributes of God as father? How does it diminish you? Why can’t we
let it add to us, rather than sticking ourselves in a box of labels?
I understand that for some people it is painful and
difficult to image God as father because their relationship with their own
father has been less than stellar. Not all fathers are pillars of the
community. Not all fathers treat their families as they should. Some are
violent and abusive. None of us live up to the image and example of our heavenly
father. Being a father has been the most difficult role of my life, and one
I’ve failed in more than succeeded. But that doesn’t mean I give up and choose
to stop trying to be a good dad.
Just because we fail to live up to our role as father
does not take away from that aspect of God. To diminish the image of God as
father just because our own fathers, or we ourselves, fall far short can lead
us to bitterness and despair. That would be like saying that Jesus was the
perfect human being so that makes me less human. In fact, the opposite is true.
Because something or someone is good does not make us less so. It’s not zero
sum, you win, I lose. God gives us the image of the perfect father so that we
can see our own value in that role.
Our image of God as father says less about God than it
does about us and our relationship with God and with our families. Whenever
Jesus spoke of the father he always spoke in terms of his and our relationship
with the father. It was always about us. It was always, “My father” or “Your
heavenly father.” We image God as father because that makes us children of God.
It tells us what our roles are and how we are to relate to one another. We will
never be our parents. In that relationship we will always be the children. We
will never be God. We will always be his children, and so we should not try to
be God. And yet we so often set ourselves up as God, don’t we?
It’s good that we have days set aside to recognize and
celebrate our fathers and mothers. Not because they are perfect, but because
they can be perfected, and because we are all called to live as father and
mother, and we too can be perfected. We celebrate the traits and attributes that
make them, and us, holy. Because isn’t that what fatherhood is all about? Holiness?
Loving as God loves? Providing the strength and stability our families need,
our society needs? Calming the storm when those around us are afraid? It is
when we are holy that we are truly fathers, living the image of God to the world.
