Joseph Farnes
Third Sunday after
Pentecost
June 17th 2012
Year B
Ezekiel 17: 22-24
Psalm 92: 1-4, 11-14
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 4:26-34
Father's Day
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
Christ speaks through stories, miracles and signs. He
guides us through images and pictures and the occasional sermon. He
says little about the Kingdom of God directly; we get to piece it
together through his images and through his commandments. Jesus'
first disciples were lucky since he pulled them aside afterward and
explained what he said. We, on the other hand, rely on the witness of
the first disciples. We rely on reading Scripture, on coming together
week by week to break bread, and on the prayers. We have to look to
Scripture and tradition to help us make sense of the Kingdom of God.
Frequently all the talk about the Kingdom of God is
confusing. Jesus didn't make it easy to comprehend. Jesus didn't just
write out a booklet on “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective
Disciples” or a commentary on Scripture. He didn't write out a
political platform about the Kingdom or pen a memoir. Instead, Jesus
met with people and he loved them. He taught them and sent them out
to the world. He gave them rich images and stories to draw people
into the Kingdom of God.
How many parables start out “The Kingdom of God is
like...”? Jesus doesn't say outright what the Kingdom is. He
compares it to stuff we can know or imagine because it draws us into
the image. We have to set the scene -- we have to see the mustard
seed or see a farmer scattering seed which will grow. We have to
dream up that old woman searching for a lost coin or the father
welcoming back a son. By involving our imaginations, we start to see
little details. These little details flesh out the parables and give
them life. Sometimes we see a detail in our imagination that we
hadn't noticed before and we breathe in and say, “Ah ha!” In
fact, imagination is so important that St Ignatius of Loyola, founder
of the Jesuit order, included it as part of his Spiritual
Exercises. Our imagination can
be a vehicle for the Holy Spirit to make the parable or story more
real for us. We start to see ourselves in the story -- and we start
to understand what Jesus is telling us.
These images, parables and comparisons do have limits,
however. The mustard seed may grow up into the greatest of all
shrubs, but should we then compare the mustard seed to the sequoia
which is much, much bigger? No. By comparing the mustard shrub to a
sequoia we'll probably miss the fact that the Kingdom of God grows
from humble beginnings. The stories draw us in, but we should be
careful not to get lost or miss the bigger picture.
Similarly, we can't push the image and language of God
as Father too much or we risk talking about God as literally a father
-- and that literal view paints a picture of God as a bearded old man
sitting on a glorious throne. It suggests God is like the
stereotypical picture of a 1950's family: children romping in the
yard, the wife in the kitchen making a pot roast, and God walks in
from a long day in the office as a patent attorney. Yeah, that image
doesn't really make the Gospel much clearer. Let's look at the “God
the Father” language more closely.
In what way is God our father, then? God is our father
because God loves us dearly and because God calls us to be a holy
people, a nation of sons and daughters sanctified in the Spirit.
Jesus tells us to call God our Father because it shows how important
we are to God. Calling God 'father' is our way of showing how
important God is to us.
The richness of these parables and images is rooted in
our experience. For example, a good father shows us glimpses of God's
own love and guidance. A good father will pull us aside and explain
to us what we've done wrong and encourage us to be better because
we're capable of it. That experience helps us make sense of how God
is our Father. God wants us to live up to our fullest potential and
to use all our gifts.
On the other hand, if someone is a bad father, then we
see how God's love for us and our relationship with God are so
crucial. Our most important relationship is not with a person who
mistreats us but with God. Of course, dads and other human beings are
mixed: not just good and not just bad, so we have glimpses of both
God's fatherly goodness and our need to cultivate a good relationship
with God our Father.
Relationships are not frozen in time. They grow and
change and sometimes wither. Our relationships with our fathers --
and with our mothers and siblings and friends and children -- change
over time. The dad we saw as children changes as we ourselves change.
Imagine your father or a very close friend, spouse or
child. How has that relationship changed over time? What are the
habits and traits that you love, and are those the same things that
made you like this person in the beginning? How do you spend time
together now, and do you do the same things now that you used to do?
Is it necessarily wrong that things have changed? Of course not.
Let's imagine a positive father and child relationship.
It's a happy start. The daughter is born and crawls and walks, always
eager to see her daddy's face. She hears the back door opening and
flies in its direction, wondering if daddy brought home a present. As
a little kid, the daughter looks up to dad. Dad knows everything –
from why the sun goes up and down to why the grass grows. It doesn't
matter if dad is right in his facts because it all makes sense. Dad
keeps the monsters at bay and he somehow manages to make burned
hamburgers from the grill taste great. Dad keeps her safe, fed,
happy. Dad makes everything right.
As a teenager, the daughter now sees her dad
differently. His explanations no longer work. The sun does not rise
and set because it's racing against the moon. His explanation was
just silly and now it embarrasses her to think she ever believed him.
Now she's being asked to take on more and more responsibilities in
school and at home. Dad doesn't just provide everything like a
servant. She's struggling to decide who she is, and dad's advice is
unappreciated. Doesn't he understand how hard it is to be alive in
this world today? She doesn't know what she wants to be when she
grows up but she sure doesn't need dad telling her what to do. She
questions, she tests her boundaries. She looks at her dad and sees a
very different man than the one she saw as a kid.
As an adult, she now starts to see what dad was talking
about. Apparently he knew something after all! She starts to
sympathize with the guy; she now has a child of her own and she
dreads those teenage years. She's also juggling so many
responsibilities now. She has work, church, family. She wants to do
it all but can't. The energy and time and money just aren't there.
She has to make a special effort to pick up the phone and talk to her
dad, much less muster up the effort she needs to go visit him.
At this point, can we see how our relationship with God
can be like these stages? Sometimes we just trust in God and
everything seems right. Sometimes we question what we were taught and
have to struggle through doubt and fear. Sometimes it takes a whole
lot of effort just to remember God's there. None of these stages are
right or wrong, and none is better to another. They just are.
Our relationship with God changes over time. Sometimes it's easier to
trust. Sometimes that trust feels childish. Sometimes we question,
and sometimes we understand.
It's most important that we have a relationship with
God and that we nourish it. We spend time with God and let the
relationship grow and change. There's no way we can dictate what kind
of relationship we'll have with anyone; it is formed by the time we
spend with that person.
How, then, do we
maintain and develop a relationship with God? How do we spend time
with him? Franciscan priest Dan Horan talks about different ways we
keep in contact with God. He describes volunteer work, worship in the
church community, Scripture reflection, theological study, and
personal prayer as different ways of spending time with God and
getting to know him better. You set aside time for God and God's
people and God's work, and through that you start to see God in
different ways. The relationship changes as you change, and it
changes as you learn more about God and listen.
What does Scripture
say? What does the Prayer Book teach you? What do you see when
volunteering at the soup kitchen? When praying by yourself, what do
you feel the Spirit doing? How did it feel when we were listening to
the readings earlier today? You were spending time with God by
listening to St Paul and Ezekiel and hearing about their relationship
with God the Father. The Holy Spirit is working through them to tell
us more and more about God. Sometimes it feels like listening to one
of dad's stories over and over again, but sometimes you hear
something you hadn't heard before.
God wants to spend time with us. Let's make that
happen. Pick up the phone ... or, better yet, why not invite God to
dinner tonight? Like dear old dad, God doesn't want anything fancy
for Father's Day. He just wants to be with you.
Happy Father's Day!
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