God the Father on Father’s Day

Every year on Father’s Day I am reminded of that wretched bygone statistic of a child’s chances of being Christian in his adult years. It was something depressing. If the mother takes the child to church–hauling him up out of bed, feeding him breakfast, shoving him in the car, and wrangling him in the pew–she has something like only fifty percent chance of any of it sticking. (I’m making up the numbers because I can’t at all remember what study it was or when it came out). But if the father joins the mother, or even goes to the trouble all by himself, the chances leap up to eighty percent or something.

I always felt the study was unfair, and probably flawed, and how can you even know the impact of your faith on your child, and shouldn’t the mother weigh in as more influential. After all, I, the mother, gave birth, and nurtured the child along, and, well, what is the father anyway.

And that is the material question. What is the Father anyway? The people arguing angrily with Jesus didn’t want to hear about him or his Father. They wanted God, the Father, to benevolently approve of all their supposedly righteous works and be on board with their plans for him. Those plans did not include the Son revealing to them the image of the Father and his redemption of humanity from sin.

Much later, for the western Christian sitting in her smooth, expensive pew, it can be just as unsettling to have to refer to God as Father, when what the westerner knows more than anything is that men are a big let down. The father is a bumbling fool who needs the mother, both his own and his child’s, to swoop in and save him from his forgetful selfishness. How can God be a Father when fathers are really all just grown up children?

But as I’ve gotten to be the mother, and been married to a man who doesn’t in any way fit the cultural stereotype, and considered my own father who didn’t either, I can see, ever so dimly, why the Son, Jesus, was always pointing his finger and gaze at the Father.

Because however hard I work and however much I chatter into the ear of my child, Matt has only to enter the room and be there and the children are different people. His mere presence is enough for them to be comfortable and attentive. His words, however many they are, go a lot farther than mine into the ear and heart of the child.

This is a great and perilous mystery. The people of Israel called God their Father, and understood him to be the source of their lives. They could approach his holy presence with sacrifices and praise, but they couldn’t ever just be with him. They couldn’t rest awhile in the strength of this presence. They had to always be sacrificing for the forgiveness of their sins. Jesus, tumbled down on his knees, pleading with the Father to spare him from having to be that very sacrifice, suffered the loss of his Father’s perfect intimacy, his sure and restful presence, so that we, each of us, could be brought all the way in to be with the Father and rest there, not just a while, but world without end amen.

So every Sunday we all, together as the church, mumble, or perhaps sing, with varying levels of beauty, “Our Father”. We go on and ask our Father for the most basic needs of the soul and body to be cared for. We, sometimes very poorly, sit there, knowing that though we can’t see him, yet through the work of the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit, he is there. His presence is enough for us. And his Word goes the far distance to bring us close, and keep us safe.

A Happy Father’s Day to fathers everywhere.