Every year on Father\u2019s Day I am reminded of that wretched bygone statistic of a child\u2019s chances of being Christian in his adult years. It was something depressing. If the mother takes the child to church\u2013hauling him up out of bed, feeding him breakfast, shoving him in the car, and wrangling him in the pew\u2013she has something like only fifty percent chance of any of it sticking. (I\u2019m making up the numbers because I can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
And that is the material question. What is the Father anyway? The people arguing angrily with Jesus didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s, 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?<\/p>\n
But as I\u2019ve gotten to be the mother, and been married to a man who doesn\u2019t in any way fit the cultural stereotype, and considered my own father who didn\u2019t either, I can see, ever so dimly, why the Son, Jesus, was always pointing his finger and gaze at the Father.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t ever just be with him. They couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
So every Sunday we all, together as the church, mumble, or perhaps sing, with varying levels of beauty, \u201cOur Father\u201d. 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
A Happy Father\u2019s Day to fathers everywhere.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every year on Father\u2019s Day I am reminded of that wretched bygone statistic of a child\u2019s chances of being Christian in his adult years. It was something depressing. If the mother takes the child to church\u2013hauling him up out of bed, feeding him breakfast, shoving him in the car, and wrangling him in the pew\u2013she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,16,18],"tags":[23,48,51],"class_list":["post-4761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-alone","category-men-are-human","category-reading-the-bible","tag-anglicanism","tag-just-plain-spiritual","tag-life-with-men"],"yoast_head":"\n