The Rev. Ronald E. Halvorsen
June 18, 2006
Biblical Texts: Psalm 23, Romans 8:35-39
"THE CHALLENGES OF FATHER'S DAY"

This morning, I would like to take you back to March of 1942. General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Melbourne, Australia following his escape from the advancing Japanese troops on the Philippine strongholds of Bataan and Corregidor. The sixty-two-year old general was accompanied by his wife Jean and their four-year old son, Arthur.

MacArthur adored his young son, but realized that his wartime activities made it difficult, if not impossible, to be a present and supportive father. This struggle was evident in a prayer he wrote for his son one night after supper:

"Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

Build me a son whose wishes will not take the place of deeds; a son who will know Thee-and to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.

Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail.

Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.

And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the weakness of true strength.

Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, "I have not lived in vain."

As the father of two boys, I have always loved this prayer. In fact, I have it framed and on the wall in our family room. It not only describes some wonderful qualities I want my sons to possess, but it reveals the awesome responsibility and difficulty of being a father. MacArthur, realizing his human shortcomings, had the wisdom to ask for God's help. He realized that the process of building a child is a joint effort between the parent and God.

Today is Fathers Day. It is a day set aside each year to honor one-half of the parental team that brought each one of us into this world and nurtured us. And although this sermon will concentrate on fathers, my comments will be essentially gender neutral-similar comments could be made about mothers. The challenges of Father's Day are also the challenges of Mother's Day.

As a child, I remember Father's Day as a time when my sister and I would decorate my father's easy chair with crape paper and ribbons. My mother would make a cake and a special meal, and we generally showered my father with accolades and no doubt gave him the obligatory tie. It was a time to be thankful for a loving and supportive father. And although my father died ten years ago, I have worn his watch, carried his wallet, and used some of his “Stetson” after shave lotion on special occasions ever since.

However, as we all know, Father's Day is far more complicated than this idyllic image. God has made all of us with a complex set of feelings and emotions and thus the image of fatherhood raises many challenging issues. This morning, I would like to talk about the challenges of Father's Day...and I would like to concentrate on three areas: the challenge of celebration in spite of loss, the challenge of forgiveness, and the challenge to strive to be the kind of father God wants us to be.

Without question, Father's Day is fundamentally a day of celebration. We celebrate the most basic, God-given human bond that is at the core of our being-that of parent and child. It is obvious that this community and this church in particular are blessed with an abundance of loving father-child relationships that are as good as God intended. This is the day to rejoice and give thanks for this gift from God! This is the day to reflect on how much your father has done for you, tell him that you love him, and if possible, give him a hug. For those among us who can do this, Father's Day is a very special and happy day. God wants us to celebrate!

For some of us, however, Father's Day can be a sad day due to the loss of our fathers or the loss of other men in our families who have been loving fathers...like our husbands, our sons, and our brothers. Thus, the first challenge I want to talk about today is the challenge of celebrating these men in our lives in spite of our loss. And the best advice I can give is to celebrate their lives by telling the stories of their lives. It is said that all sorrows can be borne if you can tell a story about them. A story can become a "holy container" in which we confront and overcome the pain of loss. By creating a story, healing takes place as we come to terms with the pain, accept it, and begin to transform it. God calls us to tell these stories...God challenges us to celebrate these men by telling the story of these lives so that we can move toward healing.

The second challenge of Father's Day is to forgive and begin to let go of past pain. Father's Day is a day to admit that our fathers were, or are, not perfect. We are all children of imperfect human fathers. These imperfections, of course, take many forms. On one end of the spectrum are seemingly-innocent comments and actions we all make and we all have experienced. They are not meant to be hurtful, but somehow they are and they tend to rob us of our self-esteem. I still vividly remember one night when I was sixteen and my father was trying to explain a geometry concept to me without much success. Finally, in desperation he shouted, "If you can't understand this, you will never go to college!" Now, in hindsight, I know he didn't mean to be hurtful, but I never forgot that comment. Fathers are imperfect and sometimes they say and do hurtful things that seem to bury themselves in our psyche.

Unfortunately, on the other end of the spectrum there are some who have been victimized by an emotionally or physically abusive father. Father's Day can be a very difficult day for people who have been abused by their father. And these imperfections of our fathers have led to a whole range of emotions which is often difficult, if not impossible, to dismiss on a day set aside for praise and celebration.

So in addition to Father's Day being a day of celebration, it is also a day to begin a process of forgiveness for an imperfect father. Forgiveness is the best remedy for resentment and anger and has been called a process of getting your heart right with God. We need to understand that when we forgive, we do not pretend that we haven't been hurt, and we do not say that our father's actions weren't wrong. We do, however, make a decision-a choice-to forgive and release the anger and resentment to God. By not doing so, our anger and resentment serve only to sap our physical, emotional, and spiritual strength and delay healing. By doing so, we can become a channel for God's love to our fathers and ourselves.

Some of you many may be saying that it would take a miracle to forgive my father for what he has done or not done. But, we need to remember that God is in the business of miracles and changing hearts. God challenges us to begin to forgive on Father's Day.

Finally, in addition to being challenged to celebrate in spite of loss and to forgive on Father's Day, it is also a day when we are challenged to strive to be a better father. Fathering is a privilege given by God and it can only be done effectively with God's example and support. We fathers need to see God as a role model and a constant resource. God the Father is not only the incomparable model of effective fatherhood, but our faith in God transforms us. And this transformation empowers us to be more loving, effective fathers and the relationship with our children is strengthened. Thus, God not only desires a father-child relationship with us, He also models what a healthy fatherhood should be and walks with us to "build the child" that Douglas MacArthur prayed for. Fatherhood need not be a task we take on relying solely on our own human capabilities.

So what are the basic qualities of God that God desires in human fathers. Obviously, there are many but this morning I would like to discuss two: (1) the God of unconditional love and acceptance, and (2) the God of comfort and support.

In our Romans reading today, Paul writes that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-9). Thus, fundamental to our relationship with God is that God's love and acceptance cannot be earned or lost. In a similar fashion, we fathers need to make our children feel accepted and loved in spite of mistakes they make. Love should not be based on anything the child does or does not do. Since they are created in the image of God, they possess infinite value and dignity. Unearned love and love that cannot be taken away should be the basis of a fatherly relationship as it is with our relationship with God. Fundamental to our theology is that God may not always approve of our actions, but God never stops loving us.

How might we demonstrate this unconditional love and acceptance? We can start by hugging our children, no matter how old they are. As near as I can determine, I didn't hug my father between the ages of twelve and forty-eight-we shook hand instead. Whoever started the custom of shaking hands with you dad? Fortunately, for the last two years of his life, my dad and I shared a hug.

We also need to delight in our child's uniqueness, effort, and personal worth rather than concentrate on their performance. We need to show that performance doesn't increase or decrease our love for them.

There is the story of a father who gave his son's Little League baseball coach coupons for ice cream that were to be distributed to the team. The coach gladly accepted the gift and told the father that the team would get the coupons after their first win. But the father told the coach that he wanted the kids to have the ice cream after the first loss-he didn't want to acknowledge their success as much as their effort. Unconditional love and acceptance-the first quality of God that God wants fathers to emulate.

Secondly, God wants us to comfort and support our children in life's trials and difficulties. In Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians, he describes a God who "consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction" (2Cor 1:4). Like God, we fathers need to respond to our children's' trials not with impatience and indignation, but with comfort and support. We worship a God who comforts us even when we deserve it the least and when we are slogging through a mess of our own making. God supports us when we are weak and comforts us when we fall. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "He tends his flock like a shepherd, he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart" (Isaiah 40:11). We need to emulate this with our children.

The Twenty-third Psalm gives a wonderful metaphor of God's comfort and support even when discipline is necessary: "Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me." The shepherd's staff was used as an instrument of comfort and support, lifting newborns, drawing lambs closer, and guiding sheep through dangerous or difficult routes. The rod, on the other hand, was an instrument of defense and discipline; it was used to deter or subdue attackers and for correcting wayward or recalcitrant members of the flock. Both the rod and the staff are used by a compassionate and supportive Shepherd and Father.

As fathers, we can't stop our children from making mistakes; we can't protect them from disappointment and harm; and we can't fix everything that goes wrong in their lives. But, we can help them correct mistakes; we can be with them while they hurt; and we can cheer them on when they succeed and lift them up when they fail.

The 1992 Olympics in Barcelona featured one of the most memorable moments of sports history.

Derek Redmond of Great Britain was on the way to fulfilling a lifetime dream, that of winning a gold medal in the Olympics. He had earned a spot in the semifinals of the 400-meter race, and as the gun sounded to start the race, Derek got off to a great start. He was running the race of his life, and the finish line was in sight, when suddenly he felt a stab of pain in his right leg. He pitched face-first to the track with a torn hamstring. The race was over for Derek.

He struggled to his feet before the medical team could reach him. Though every runner had passed him, he began hopping forward, tears of pain and disappointment streaking his face, determined to finish the race. Suddenly, a man plowed through the security guards on the sidelines and ran onto the track. He raced up to Derek and hugged him. "You don't have to do this," Jim Redmond told his weeping son. "Yes, I do," Derek answered. "Well, then," his father said, "we're going to finish this together." Derek's father gripped his son around the shoulders, and they faced the finish line, resolutely waving off the security men, and limped and hopped together all the way to the finish line. A son's determination coupled with a fathers comfort and support.

How many times have we stayed on the sidelines when our children have hurt with disappointment? How often have we wished that we had said, "We're going to finish this together?"

Father's Day is a day to celebrate and give thanks to God for the gift of a loving father. Father's Day is also a day of challenges. We are challenged to celebrate in spite of the pain of loss and remember with great pride the men in our lives who have been loving fathers-we need to tell their stories! We need to allow the miracle of forgiveness to enter our lives and ease the pain caused by an imperfect father. We need to choose to give our anger and resentment up to God. And finally, we are challenged to strive to become the type of fathers that God intended. We need to emulate the love, acceptance, comfort, and support of God and pass that on to our children.

In a broader sense, this is a day when God celebrates with us the mountain top experiences related to fatherhood and walks with us through the painful valley experiences related to fatherhood. It is a day when God challenges us to extract the very best aspects of a parental relationship and celebrate them in spite of loss and human frailty. And when this happens, we, like Douglas MacArthur, will dare to whisper, "I have not lived in vain." Amen.