Psalm 146 The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.
Exodus 20:1-17 Honor your father and your mother.
Luke 7:11-17 I say to you, rise!
I.
Where’s Dad? I asked myself as I rummaged through boxes of photos some years ago. The exercise of maintaining neat photo albums having been abandoned by my parents years before they died, we inherited shoe boxes of black and white snap shots, along with faded color photos of family activities.
Being an only child, there are an inordinate number of photos of me at all stages, from crib girggling to graduate school graduation. There I am on a white farm horse…and hugging a collie dog…and chasing chickens. There are early movies, too, of me and friends at early birthday parties, blowing out candles, eating cake, playing the usual childhood games. There I am going off what might have been my first day of kindergarten.
There are many pictures of my mother, too. There she is as a young, beautiful woman, more of her all dressed up in middle years and later. There are still more of her presiding over elaborately decorated Christmas dinner tables and standing on the top of Pike’s Peak. There she is again with her favorite brother.
But where’s my father? There are very few photos of him, and most of those are ones I took with my little brownie camera or later, with more sophisticated equipment as he was holding- with my mother- their first grandchild.
‘Come to think about it, Dad was often late to most of my school events too- plays and concerts and wrestling matches…especially when it was raining. I would get a bit angry sometimes because he would often miss the best parts of my performances. Mom was always there on time; why couldn’t my father plan ahead better and be there then too? Didn’t he care? And, sometimes, he wasn’t there at all. Mumbled later something about his boss not letting him get away from the office on time.
And, looking at those photos reminds me about how my father often wasn’t around much on Saturdays and how he brought a big briefcase home with him each night and ‘said he couldn’t play after dinner, or help much with my homework, because he had his homework for the office. He wasn’t much fun anyhow. He didn’t know much about tennis or golf or baseball or the other things that other kids dads did with them. And when he did throw a baseball with me, his shoulder got sore pretty quick and he had to stop.
Memories…misunderstandings…regrets… They all come out on a day like this, especially now that he’s no longer around… to hug.
And that he could do pretty good! What fun it was when I was a little guy to be swept up in his strong arms for a big hug. I used to wait at the front door for him to get home each night just for that hug. He hugged my mom pretty good too.
When I was a young adult, he gave me a hug I will never forget. One time, I had done something pretty bad, seriously disappointing him, when I came back home, slowing driving into the city from where I had been living, he met me with a gentle hug of forgiveness and support. Then, he refused to discuss very much what had happened, even refrained from scolding. No, he just rolled up his sleeves and offered me whatever help he could give to enable me to rise up…dig myself out of my own mess and begin again. I guess he figured that I had already beat up myself enough over the matter.
Though I had dishonored my family, Dad demonstrated his steady love and faith in me, empowering me to believe in myself.
II.
Jesus repeatedly demonstrates such love as coming, not from human origins, but as a reflection of God’s stubborn love for us all. In today’s reading from Luke, we have but one example. In previous verses, Luke shows Jesus under pressure to prove his authority. In a village near Nazareth, he encounters a desperate situation. A widow’s only son has died. This is a catastrophe for a widow. She will have no legal inheritance and be dependent upon charity (Deut. 26:12; 27:19). Jesus is touched viscerally, according to the strong Greek that is used. He touches the coffin, an act that violated Jewish purity laws (Numbers 19:11) and utters words that come from beyond the deepest depths, Young man, I say to you, rise!
Rise! Be empowered! Live and fulfill your Creator’s highest hopes for your time in this earth. Be the most you can be, not for yourself, not for your own comfort or self-aggrandizement, but or the building of God’s realm on earth; for justice, peace, joy for all people; for hope; for the healing of the earth! Or, to paraphrase the ancient writer of the 146th Psalm, Be bowed down no longer!
Human father, and mothers’ highest calling as parents is to bring life to their young, empowering them through shear, determined love to survive and thrive no matter what! Obviously, this is a complex task that requires great strength, emotional reserve and shear endurance. And above all, faith in the One who created us all in the first place.
For the truth is that we all are crippled. And this Father’s Day, we see much evidence that so very many fathers and mothers are so very disabled. In our society, welfare parents face near insurmountable odds. Fathers and mothers who serve in Iraq and return with post-traumatic stress syndrome or physical injuries are fighting several battles at once. Many marriages are seriously challenged. Nearly half of the children in America are being raised in single parent homes.
In truth, no parent is ever fully capable and prepared to be a father or a mother. We might even take classes to get ready but when we are presented with that little one, or that foster child, or that teen adoptee, it’s a whole other story! If the old saying is true that there is no atheist in a foxhole, it may be equally true about all parents in the middle of many nights at many stages of a child’s development- not just in the crying baby stage; our hearts go out to the parents of the teens killed in graduation auto accidents this weekend.
Finally, there are those times when we a all forced to their knees- sometimes in prayers of gratitude and wonder at the accomplishments of our children; sometimes in fear and desperation for their safety and future.
III.
Father’s Day, then, is a time to remember that we are called to empower our children. And the way we empowerment happens is by allowing ourselves to be used as God’s channel. Jesus’ power to raise the widow’s son did not come from Jesus himself, but from God working through him. So it is with us.
Father’s Day also is a time to be reminded, as the Ten Commandmends do so well, to honor our father and mother. For to do so is to honor God. Honoring may not be so easy. As we said on Mother’s Day, honoring may involve a great deal of forgiveness for incompetent parenting. Or for parents who were too ill or too distant or distracted to parent well. We may have had a father who was abusive in the most awful ways, or one who left the family, perhaps to this day not heard from; or one who was alcoholic or unfaithful or… (you fill in the blank).
To honor fathers and mothers is to remember that they had everything to do with our coming into this world. We need to love them for that. But loving does not mean we must like them or continue to subject ourselves to their abusiveness. However, it does mean that we are called to remain open to the possible miracle of reunion, reconciliation, forgiveness. Such things occasionally happen. And when they do, God can is likely to be vividly present.
In may case, my Dad? We’ll as time went on, I figured out why he wasn’t in most of the photos! ( I can be a slow learner.) He was the one taking the pictures! And why he did know how to play most sports? As a farm boy before coming to the city as an adult, and as with most farm kids of the early 1900’s, he had no time to learn sports because he and his siblings worked on the farm all the time, milking and plowing and haying. He worked late into the night and on weekends as a business man not because he wanted to but because he had to. Without a college degree, he always was several steps behind his peers and the first the to fired in mergers. And he was out work more than I realized. His sore arm throwing ball with me? He was an older dad, nearly 40 when I was born. By then, he already had arthritis in that shoulder from years of hard work farming.
So, here’s to my dad and to all of our fathers… to the ones who empowered us… and to the ones who tried but failed… And here’s to the our children…that they may one day understand us a bit better and give us the benefit of the doubt when we deserve it!
Amen.