A sermon for Father's Day

Happy Father's Day!

What an incredible reading for a day like this, it makes me wonder if the people who designed the lectionary did it on purpose!

"For I have come to set a man against his father,

... Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me;" let's put THAT on a greeting card and sell it.

Whenever we come across a passage like this, it feels important to me to name that there really are all kinds of passages of scripture that taste bitter in our mouths, from the Old Testament, from the Gospels, from the Epistles, and it can feel easy to want to reject them or toss them to the side so that we do not have to face them. And we can name I think that there ARE PLENTY passages that we act really cagey about-- there's the stuff in the Torah advising us against eating pork or wearing clothes of mixed fabrics, and as somebody who loves bacon and doesn't always read the clothing labels, I feel like I gotta own up to it. We really don't practice the Sabbath. We really don't practice the Jubilee! If we were to sell all of our belongings and give the money to the poor, I think Christ Lutheran would end up looking really different than it does today.

I guess I say all this to say that there might be an important difference for us, in the way we practice our faith, between taking scripture seriously and taking scripture literally. We might recognize that after all that stuff about pork got said in the Hebrew bible, Jesus says some stuff like "well it isn't what goes into the mouth that makes us unclean but what comes out of it!" or after all the instruction about the sabbath, Jesus checkmates a couple of religious leaders about their legalistic approach to it "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath" though perhaps we all could stand to be a little more careful to watch what comes out of our mouths and to take time off more seriously.

But so, when we're faced with a Father's Day reading like this one, what I want to do is figure out how to take it seriously without allowing it to work against the rest of what we think scripture is trying to tell us and teach us.

Family really matters. The love between parents and children matters a lot, so much that it is the basis of the metaphor for the relationship between Jesus and God, it is the way that Incarnation is born into the world, through Mary, a mother, it is the way we call God a Father and Jesus a son. We recognize how important those relationships are, and it means that we already know something about who Jesus is as soon as he arrives. Families are not the only way love is ever shown, but they're an important one, and a common one. And one of the themes throughout scripture -- throughout the Gospels -- is the people of God tracing out for themselves bigger and more expansive definitions of family than simply what they inherit.

The Gospel of Matthew situates Jesus in a family lineage of 42 generations family between Abraham and Joseph, that includes Joseph although he technically had no role to play in Jesus's birth. Jesus goes back home early in his ministry, rejected in his hometown, and says of his disciples, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." And in this long passage from Matthew, Jesus is framing up for his disciples what the work of discipleship will cost them, or frankly, what a cruel world it is that he is sending them out to work in: namely, that the world is full of people who betray one another, people who are mean to one another, people who are looking to hurt one another for who knows what reasons-- does any of this sound familiar to today?

This is the world that we find ourselves exercising this ministry in, and it is a tall order that we are called to fill: of love and care, of fellowship and community, of friendship and family and community concern and thoughtfulness and patience. It matters sooooo much that you love your own family and that you are loved by your family. And, this whole thing only works -- this Christian project only works -- if you are not only looking out for your own family. You get to be a father to more children than just your own, you get to be a child to more parents than just your own, you get to look out into the world and see it full of brothers and sisters and cousins and wonder what it would mean if they saw you the same way. What a world that would be, wouldn't it?

I don't really believe that God desires to usurp or hoard our love. The love we have for God -- that God asks of us and desires of us -- is always pointed back at the people with whom we live in community. Jesus said on different occasions: "If you love me keep my commandments," or "If you love me feed my sheep," or "so as you did it unto the least of these you did it unto me!" The love we have for God is also always meant to be shown-- in patience, in generosity, in mercy, in acts of care and compassion-- is meant to be shown in our families, in our communities, and to anyone whom we might encounter in the world. That Fatherly love, that familial love, that love of a child to a parent and a parent to a child, a brother to a brother, a neighbor to a neighbor, that love is what holds God's creation together, and holds the church together. And it is always a nice occasion when we get to celebrate that kind of love. Amen.