Fathering for Assorted Non-Fathers
“He was still a long way from home when his father saw him; his heart was filled with pity, and he ran, threw his arms around his son, and kissed him...”
June 21, 1981
In the little book To Dad, Richard and Helen Exley have collected a number of children’s definitions and descriptions of their dads in particular and fathers in general.
A little girl named Loni said: “My father rides the roller coaster with me, and when we come off, even though he is green, he says he had a good time.”
A certain Kevin responded: “When anything goes wrong, Dad is completely unbiased and blames me.”
I think Catherine had the right idea: “Fathers are always right, and even if they’re not right, they’re never actually wrong.”
Another little girl was very perceptive when she answered: “My dad’s bald, if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be half as loveable.”
I identified with this one, also: “A father is the one who helps you with your homework, even when he says he doesn’t know how to do it.”
Scott said: “My father is someone who makes me feel like Hank Aaron after hitting a single in my game.”
Finally, one child really got to the point: “Every child needs a log of love, attention and to know someone cares for them no matter what. Dads do that.”
Fathering is the target for today. Yet I need to be clear about what I mean. We are talking about what it means to be a literal – man with children – father to be sure. Further than that, fathering is really a matter of parenting, so although the word fathering is being used, parents, both mother and father variety, are included. Still, even this is not quite adequate. Parenting is not limited to those who have biological children or even adopted ones for that matter. Parenting is something that connects to how we who are a little older relate to those who are a little younger modelling, exampleing, and teaching them how to live and do this thing called life. One thing, among many thanks, the baptism service for children tries to get over is that every child needs a whole lot more loving and caring than any biological or adoptive parents can give. What’s why God created grandparents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, Sunday School teachers, scout masters, school teachers, and a few kind strangers along the way of life. Believe it or not, the caring of the olders for the youngers does not yet exhaust the fathering and parenting I’m talking about today. Fathering and parengin are ultimately issues of how we human beings break out of the self-interest with which we are born and reach out in care and concern for other human beings.
The problem is that fathering and caring do not come naturally. Not for fathers and mothers for their children, not for olders for youngers, not for one human for another, not for me for you, or you for me. We are born with a basic “I’m too busy with me to be bothered by you-ness.” That’s why the sermon is addressed to all of us non-fathers, whatever our gender or reproductive status might be. Fathering human caring for other humans, is a matter of on the job training; it is an acquired taste that doesn’t always taste so good. And so the basic non-father orneriness of us humans pushes us to the final yet primal dimension of fathering which is the ground of fathering and us. The fathering nature of God. The naddy-ness of the creator. You see, all the dimensions and levels of human fathering for us assorted non-fathers must be in relation and response to the fathering God if we have a chance at all.
What does the fathering of God or the parenthood of God mean? From the beginning humans have sensed that behind the reality we see is a reality, a power, that we don’t see by seems to keep things and us going. There is a power, a dynamism, an energy, that courses through the reality around us and that courses through the reality deep down inside us. Humans have called that unseen power that keeps things going. God. Since humans have long felt that the mystery of their life comes from this unseen reality of God and that this invisible reality has put things together so that in spite of a lot of obstacles visible reality supports this life, they have said God is like a father. Like a father who gives life and the means to sustain it to the child. For the most part, this father creator was depicted as a pretty distant and stern father, a tough king that demanded obedience.
The fathering of God means at least the human intuition that life comes from a parental power beyond ourselves. Yet to really be touched with the meaning of the fathering of God, we must go to Jesus. For this question of what God is like, like all ultimate questions and issues of life, we must finally begin with or end with Jesus.
Biblical scholarship detective work has turned up something as it has studied the ancient languages and practices of Jesus’ day. Scholars have discovered that Jesus used a special term for God that no one had ever before applied to him. Jesus addressed God as “Abba” which was the name little children called their fathers in Jesus’ day. Like “daddy” or “dada” is often the first word a child speaks along with “mama,” children in Jesus’ time and place began with “imma” for their mothers and “abba” for their father. People had long addressed God as “father” with the formal word giving proper distance and respect. But the shocking thing Jesus did was to literally call God not “Father” but “Daddy.” Jesus knew God and wanted to reveal God to others not just as a formal, demanding, judging “Father,” but he wanted to say that first and deepest God loves you like a Daddy, not a punishing Father, but a Daddy who loves, hugs, and hurts with you.
With the story of the shocking love of the father for the bombed-out son in the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus communicates what God is like for us and what we ought to be like for each other and ourselves. And to get over what God is like and what we are to be like: Jesus uses a father. Experiencing the fathering love of God for us mysteriously empowers us to care for each other in that parental way. Also, remember that Jesus was shocking people then because he was depicting God not as FORMAL FATHER but loving, hugging Daddy. Ashe was pushing people to understand better what God was like, he was also pushing them beyond their harsh non-fathering ways to the fathering daddiness with each other that all of us still languish for when we fail to give or get it. Let’s look at what Jesus’ father in the parable teaches us about God and ourselves.
1. The father in the parable teaches us about FEELINGS. We might not have caught the significance of the Father running to his son. In Jesus’ day no formal father would run to a child. A part of the Palestinian child-parent protocol was that the child came to the parent not the parent to the child. This held forth for dutiful, obedient children. This son here was anything but dutiful. He had disgraced his father. He couldn’t wait for the old man to die to get his part of the inheritance. He goes away working for a Gentile feeding pigs which a good Jew would not even eat. According to the law of that day, the boy was legally dead. He had given up all rights to sonship because he a Jew lived as a gentile. Yet his father, full of feelings, ran, grabbed him, hugged him, and kissed him.
God is like that, Jesus was saying. He isn’t afraid to show his feelings for his children, among whom are you and me. God isn’t out to say I told you so or to make you feel guilty forever. He loves us and wants us to feel that love.
To be sure, we are talking about many levels of fathering today. But especially do I think it crucial that we men types learn to have the guts to show our feelings more than we do. We have begun to hear more and more about it being okay, healthy, and helpful for men to show their emotions, even cry. But we still haven’t come far enough. What a gift it is when a man shows his children and other children that it's okay to shed a tear, okay to say “I’m sorry,” or “I was wrong,” or “I need a hug.” If we can teach our children that it is okay to appropriately express their feelings, then we may save them and us from an ulcer or premature heart attack. Women, don’t let anyone intimidate you or tease you if you have the strength to show your emotions. Tell them, living those average seven extra years that the tight lipped John Waybe machos don’t get is worth crying about.
2. The father in the parable teaches us about FAILURE AND FORGIVENESS. “You’re a Big Boy Now” is a grade B movie I saw on the late, late show years ago. It is the story of a young man, about 19 or 20, who has trouble growing up with a super overprotective mother who stays on hsi case most of the time. In one semi-funny scene, she is letting him have it for something and says: “Don’t you feel guilty for what you are putting me through?” He answers: “Mother, with you I always feel guilty.”
Some people have gotten the idea that God is some heavenly parent who delights in making us feel guilty - a kind of celestial party pooper who spoils any good time. Preachers have gotten a lot of mileage with the God of guilt. And don’t misunderstand me, guilt is one of God’s gifts to change us. Yet, perhaps you are like me, on most days I don’t need help from God or anyone else to make me guilty. I do a good job with my own self-inflicted guilt for what I have done or failed to do. On most days, most husbands and wives don’t need a spouse to point out their failures. Likewise, on most days even our children don’t need the parental guilt fairy. What we need is some relief from the guilt we feel already, guilt that stifles, depresses, and saps out strength.
The parable says that the son “came to his senses” in the pigpen. He knew what a sap he had been a long time before he got home. He was even willing to admit it and take the lecture from the old man. What he was not prepared for was what he got: a father that was a lot more willing to forgive him than he was willing to forgive himself. That’s the kind of father God is, Jesus says. Not the stern formal father with the whip but the forgiving Daddy that knows when we have punished ourselves enough. I think most of us would be surprised how much more fun we would be to live with for others and ourselves if we would let God help forgive ourselves and release all that fretted away energy for being the new person with each other God wants us to be.
It is pretty scary to give up our guilt security blankets and throw away the excuses the guilt gives us for not doing any better with our lives. That’s why the heavenly fathering Daddy needs a lot of earthly fathers to work to make each other feel better, not worse about ourselves. Even the cocky, conceited, braggart needs it. The person who comes across as thinking too much of himself is usually covering for his real feeling of not being good enough. He or she thinks the may convince themselves if they can convince you that they are on top of things because of their achievements and designer attire. Any dummy can be a guilt giver, but it takes a real heavenly father on earth to make another human feel good about himself or herself.
3. The father in the parable teaches about what REAL HELP THAT HELPS is like in life. When our three-year-old was almost a one-year-old, I got a call at the office from his mother. She said to come home quickly because Andrew had pulled some hot coffee over on him. I slammed the phone and quickly left thinking: “That’s too bad. He’ll need some ointment and some hugging.” Driving home, I thought it coincidental that a rescue unit pulled in front of me was going in my direction. I wondered if someone I knew had had a heart attack or accident. It was not until I turned on our street that I felt sick to see the rescue truck in front of our house. It hit me then: Andrew really was hurt. A few minutes later, an ambulance was called. Andrew with his mother left in it. And I was further and further in the distance driving behind the ambulance. It was a fifteen minute drive to the hospital that seemed like two hours to me. He had what turned out to be second degree burns on his chest. He was wrapped up like a mummy for a month or so. And he healed virtually scar-free. But I didn't know that then. All I knew was that my child was hurt, and although I would gladly have taken the pain for him, I could not. I knew that he was hurting and confused. I wondered how many times in his life that he would be further burned if not physically then relationally and emotionally. In that moment of prenatal powerlessness I realized that the only help we humans can be for one another is to be with each other in pain that we cannot save the other from.
That day I came to understand the suffering love of God in a way I had never known before. I came to understand what Jesus was saying about the fathering of God in a way I never understood before. As much as the father loved the son, he could not live his life for him and he would not take his freedom away. All the father could do was to be ready with the bandages, the hugs, and forgiveness when the son returned. It occurred to me that if a very imperfect human father like me hurt to the quick because my child hurt, then how much more unwordably deeper our heavenly father huts when we hurt. How much more he rushes to be with us when we are bruised by the painful and wonderful freedom of the life he has given to us.
WIth the parable and the experience with my own son’s injury, I came to, I think, a deeper understanding of the nature of God. No parent ever helped a child by trying to make all their decisions for them or attempting to keep them in a painprof bubble. The father of the son in the parable couldn’t and we can’t. And even if God could, he doesn’t. He does not take away our humanity and freedom by living for us. He is Immanuel - God with us - God with us in the painful joy and joyful pain of life.
The main way I have experienced this God who is with me in the depths of life’s pain and in the heights of its joy has been through fathering humans who have risked being with me and keeping on keeping on with me. There are few things, if any, in life or death that a person cannot bear if they experience God and his earth fathers with them and supporting them. I think fathering and caring for other humans really boils down to the willingness to stick with each other in circumstances when you can't fully control either one: the people or the circumstances.
Jesus revealed the unseen reality that keeps seen reality going as a caring Daddy-father. That God does not condone us when we hurt ourselves or others. Yet that daddy-God knows that what we need most to change us is not condemnation and punishment but one who cares enough to unabashedly show feelings of love and forgiveness for us even when unloveable and not particularly forgivable. Jesus revealed a heavenly father who loves and respects us too much to live our lives for us but is inseparably with us in the intensities and blahs of life.
This world needs a lot of feeling, forgiving, with-ness fathering. God help me be with you and you be with me. Amen.