First Presbyterian Church of
Telephone numbers: (310) 677-5133 Fax
(310) 330-8342
Electronic mail: PRESBYTS@SBCGLOBAL.NET
Father’s Day, Sunday, June 21, 2009
Elder: Bob Boone
Father’s
Day Sermon
Good morning and Happy Father’s Day.
Will you please join me in prayer on this glorious morning the Lord has made.
Opening Prayer
God our Father, in your wisdom and
love you made all things. Bless those fathers who have taken upon themselves,
the responsibility of parenting. Many can fulfill the biological side of
fatherhood, but far too many fail in the other aspects. Bless those who have
lost a spouse or child to illness or death or life’s circumstance who are
parenting their children or grandchildren alone. Often, being a ‘father’ has
nothing to do with gender or generation. Strengthen them by your love that they
may be and become the loving, caring persons they are meant to be. Grant this
through Christ our Lord. Amen
Introduction
As we have read in the Presbyts this
month, Father’s Day was first proposed by Mrs. John B. Dodd in 1909 to honor
her own father, a man who lost his wife in child birth and who had to raise
five children by himself on a rural farm. Mrs. Dodd praised her father for his
strength and selflessness. The First Father’s Day was observed in 1910 in
Spokane Washington. There may have been a similar observation in West Virginia
during the same year.
President Calvin Coolidge
recommended it as a national holiday in 1924. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson
made Father's Day a holiday to be celebrated on the third Sunday of June. The
holiday was not officially recognized until 1972, during the presidency of
Richard Nixon.
Today, when I talk about ‘Fathers’,
I will speak with the recognition that both genders and different generations
have assumed the role of ‘father’ for a child or grandchild at one time or
another.
Fatherhood: The Gift, The
Responsibility: Psalm 1. Luke 15
PERSONAL STORY
I remember taking my wife to hospital
to have our son thirty-six years ago as vividly as it was yesterday. I remember
when I was informed that my wife and newborn son were doing well.
Ecstatic doesn’t quite capture the feelings of the moment. At some point, the
‘new father effect kicked in’: “Things are going to be so different for my son
than they were for me. I would work hard to give him the solid
middle-class life that I didn’t have. Whereas my father worked long hours in a
factory and came home dead tired and without much energy to have anything to do
with me, I would be an integral part of my child life. I would teach him to
ride a bike, I would teach him to hike, I would teach him to fish. I would take
him to ballgames. Whereas my father had a sixth grade education and I received
my degrees from public universities, I would work as hard as possible to send
my son to the Ivy League. He would not have to work as janitor in college
as I did because I would work hard enough to free him from the financial
burdens I suffered in college. Anyone notice how many times that first person
singular pronoun “I’ was used? Like many new fathers, I saw my son as my
opportunity to relive my life, to claim some of the good things, which had been
denied to me, to achieve some of the lofty goals I had personally failed to
achieve. How egotistical! How Selfish. Although I loved my son, in reality I
was centering on me not him. It took a while for me to see that while David was
a gift to me as an earthly father, he truly belonged to a heavenly Father. And
I was under the duty, as a father, to live my life a certain way and to raise
this son to praise and honor that heavenly Father and follow his commands.
Jesus said we should not put new wine in old wineskins. In Deuteronomy
6:5, we read, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your
hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and
when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (vv. 6-7).
And it is by the tenderness of parents, and dutifulness of children, that God
ordinarily furnishes his church with a seed to serve him, and propagates
religion from age to age. In short, fathers are duty bound to both model
righteous behavior and they are to impart that behavior to their sons and daughters.
Psalm 1
Responsibility
According to commentary (A.A.
Anderson – The New Century Bible Commentary) In the Books of Psalms and
Proverbs the so-called Wisdom Literature, the phrase ‘blessed is the man’ is
always found in connection with people but never with reference to God because
this blessedness may have been regarded as a gift. Women and children are
included because, in the Israelite view, part of a man’s true happiness (verse
3) is his family – a good wife and many children – and so his blessings (or
gifts), as well as his responsibilities, attach to fatherhood, but are shared
by the whole family. Surely this family concept extends to a larger community,
including the church family. ‘The congregation or assembly of the
righteous’ (verse 5) seems to be an allusion to the worshipping
community.
The Divine God knows what even a
reasonably intelligent father should know: Gifts
come with responsibilities. And those responsibilities must be spelled out
clearly and be understood by the receiver. When children request permission to
go on a trip, or do a night-over with friends, it is the responsibility of the
parent to get all the pertinent details and to admonish them to remember the
good habits and manners drilled into them over the years. When money is given,
it is the parents’ responsibility to counsel wise spending and the merits of
saving. When their children are ready to drive, wise parents make sure they
have had driver’s education and training, that insurance is in full effect;
that the car is mechanically sound, and that the young driver has a means of
immediate contact if necessary. Before we send our children out into a world
where God is often either not known or conveniently ignored, fathers must bring
their children up with the Lord so that they and their children may know God
and keep his commandments so that they may enjoy not just long life here on
earth if possible, but far more importantly, eternal life with the Father in
paradise.
The responsibility of the father is
spelled out in verses 1 and 2: do not walk in the counsel of the wicked, stand
in the way of sinners, nor sit with mockers. The righteous father will delight
in the law of the Lord and meditate on this law night and day. Once again, the
father must model the behavior God expects to be taught to the children. This
responsibility was not meant as a burdensome yoke, but the delight of the godly
man. The ‘law’ in Psalm 1 probably translates to the Hebrew torah. In
relation to the New Testament, the ‘law’, was not meant to be taken word for
word. It was meant to be both demanding and liberating. This law is not opposed
to grace; it presupposes both God’s Grace and His mercy. Jesus, in Matthew,
said He did not come to abolish but to fulfill the law.
Luke 15
In the modern colloquial, God never
‘leaves us hanging’. When we study his Word, we are given the map we need to
travel the road He wants us on. Luke 15 begins with three parables, which serve
as focus lessons for what we should keep in mind when earnestly attempting to
fulfill our fatherly responsibility in a way pleasing to God. The passages
center on the themes of neglect, direction, and unconditional love.
A. Direction
There is a story in many movie
westerns, which has an historical basis in fact: the on-going feud between
cattle ranchers and sheepherders. The ranchers did not want the sheep on their
range because they ate the grass down so low, the cattle couldn’t graze. In the
parable of the lost sheep, the sheep kept their heads down, eating, eating, and
eating. They were impervious anyone or anything around or above them. The lost
sheep, so focused on what was below, it wandered off. It became lost to the
safety and security of the herd and the shepherd. The shepherd had to seek out
this lost sheep. He had to carry him back to herd. And the whole community
celebrated.
Is it any surprise that our
children, focused on what is below to the oblivion of everything else,
sometimes wander off. What is their ‘pasture’? Consumerism? Their drive is to
acquire material things, they know the price of everything but the value of
nothing, is overwhelming. Or is it a culture in which the term ‘schoolboy’ or
‘school girl’ (someone trying to succeed academically) is actually a derogatory
term. Or one, which glamorizes young males as thugs, drug dealers, or pimps and
young women as, excuse the expression, ‘hootchies’ or even worse. Fathers are
duty bound to give their children direction in the way of a worthwhile life,
both in word and action, so that the child is found worthy in the eyes of God.
This is not just the responsibility of the parent but the entire worshipping
community. Last week eight young people were presented for the sacrament of
Baptism. Both the parent and the congregation
were questioned as to their willingness to carry out their God-given duties. Parent
– “In presenting your child for Baptism, do you confess your faith in Jesus
Christ as your Lord and Savior, and do you promise, in dependence on the grace of
God, to bring up your child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?”
Congregation – “You the people of the congregation in receiving this
child promise, with God’s help, to be his/her sponsor to the end that he/she
should confess Christ as his/her lord and savior and come at last to His
eternal kingdom. Jesus said, whoso shall receive one such little child in my
name receiveth me.”
B. Neglect
In the second parable, a woman
searches high and low for a lost coin. Upon finding it she is very happy and
shares this happiness with the community. There are many ways to lose a
material object but usually the number one culprit is neglect. Does this apply
only to material objects?
Businesses can lose customers
through neglect. Organizations can lose members through neglect. Churches (this
woman might be a metaphor for the church) can lose members through neglect.
Fathers can lose their children through neglect.
Neglect can come in many forms, but
it boils down simply to this: I am too busy with my life to be bothered with
yours.” Both the ‘dead-beat dad’ and over-indulgent father can be neglectful of
their children. It’s pretty easy to see with the former, who fails to provide
the basic necessities his children require. When the child brings home
‘unsatisfactory’ designations in work habits and cooperation from school but
still gets the new Ipod or Iphone or X-box, that’s neglect. What lesson is
being taught: no matter how you behave, there are no consequences?
When the child brings home Ds and Fs
as grades and the father fails to immediately arrange an appointment at the
child’s school to see how he can work with school to help that child succeed
academically – that’s neglect.
C. Unconditional Love
What do people who commit murder,
robbery, manslaughter, rape, sodomy, larceny, arson, mayhem, and burglary all
have in common? Before I give you the answer, consider that these crimes were
capital felonies under English common law, which is the basis for the U.S.
legal system, and were considered so serious they could lead to the death
penalty. What do the perpetrators of these crimes have in common? They have
God’s unconditional love. God abhors the sin but never stops loving the sinner.
He gives us every opportunity to turn from our sins and certain death to his
service and eternal life. God wants us to know that reconciliation with Him is
always possible, regardless of what we have done or how far we have fallen.
The third parable of Luke 15 is the
well-known story of the prodigal son. This headstrong son insists on having his
inheritance early. He leaves his father’s home and immediately begins to waste
his money and his life. Near starvation, he admits to his sins against God and
his father. To stave off starvation, he is forced to return to his father and
beg for the job of a hired worker.
To the dismay of his older brother,
the father not only accepts his son back but also dresses him well and orders a
feast. “For this son of mine was dead but now he is alive; he was lost but now
he has been found.” This is clearly a startling example of the unconditional
love we should give to our children as the Good Lord showers on us.
There is another powerful lesson in
this parable, that of reconciliation. This father does no wrong to his son, but
he still becomes estranged from him. Fathers can do all the right things and
still lose their children. The important lesson is how the father acts when the
possibility of reconciliation with his lost son arises. He doesn’t rub the
young man’s nose in his wastrel life nor batter him with recriminations for
whatever sins he may have committed. He accepts his son back with love and joy
and showers him with gifts. He holds a feast so the whole community can
celebrate the return. We fathers must always be ready to reconcile with our
children who stray from the proper path, when possible, as our Heavenly Father
is ever ready to reconcile with us when we turn away from sinful lives and
toward His Grace and Glory. We as a worshipping congregation should also be
ready to enthusiastically be part of such a reconciliation.
Closing Prayer
Most gracious Heavenly Father,
We thank You for our earthly
fathers, those to whom You have entrusted the responsibility to provide loving
protection of their families and guidance of their children. We thank You,
also, for a worshipful congregation, whose spiritual fatherhood is so vital to
the faith of your people.
May our earthly fathers imitate the
manly courage of Abraham, Jesse and Joseph, and all the holy fathers of the
past in providing wise counsel to the children You have given to their care.
And may your holy Word guide our spiritual fathers, the worshipping community.
Give them valiant faith in the face of confusion and conflict, hope in time of
trouble and sorrow, and steadfast love for you, for their families, and for all
your people throughout the world.
Assist all fathers of families, all
spiritual fathers, and all Christian men, that through your Grace they may
steadily grow in holiness and in knowledge and understanding of your Truth. May
they generously impart this knowledge to those who rely on them. May they learn
and use your lessons regarding neglect, direction, unconditional love, and
reconciliation.
As You, our Heavenly Father, so
loved the world, sending your only Son to be our Savior and Redeemer, we ask
You to help all men to imitate His fatherly gentleness and mercy toward those
who are weak; His humility, perfect obedience to your Will, and fearless
witness to your Truth. May their lives be examples to all of heroic
faithfulness to You.
We ask your blessing on all those to
whom You have entrusted fatherhood. May your Holy Spirit constantly inspire
them with justice and mercy, wisdom and strength, fidelity and self-giving
love. May they receive your Grace abundantly in this earthly life, and may they
look forward to eternal joy in your presence in the life to come.
We ask this through Jesus Christ,
your Son and Our Lord, AMEN.