Our gospel lesson is the shortened version of Jesus’ commission to the twelve as he sends them out to do missionary work. As he continues with their instructions he tells them, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,”[1] and then he warns them that those who follow him are likely to face all sorts of terrible strife, including bitterness and enmity within families.
“Brother will betray brother to death,” he says, “and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”[2]
It’s an odd lesson, I suppose, for Father’s Day, but of course Father’s Day isn’t on the church calendar and the Lectionary doesn’t take it into account. It’s simply a coincidence that this lesson about discord between fathers and sons should come up this morning, just as it’s a coincidence that the Old Testament lesson about the promise of a child to the elderly and barren couple Abraham and Sarah should be in the Lectionary rota today.
As that story continues, you know, Sarah laughs at the idea that she (at the age of 90) would become pregnant by Abraham (who was 100 and – as both Paul in last week’s Epistle lesson from Romans[3] and the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says – “as good as dead”[4]). But that is exactly what does, indeed, happen. She gives birth to a son whom she and Abraham name Isaac because, as Sarah says, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”[5] Isaac’s name in Hebrew, Yitschaq, means “he laughs.”
Lutheran seminary professor Kathryn Schifferdecker says of this episode that it proves there is humor and comedy in the bible,
. . . [not] comedy in the sense of stand-up routines or canned laugh tracks, but comedy as something so extraordinarily good that it’s hard to believe, something so out-of-the-ordinary that we laugh until the tears stream down. It’s what Frederick Buechner calls “high comedy”: “the high comedy of Christ that is as close to tears as the high comedy of Buster Keaton or Marcel Marceau or Edith Bunker is close to tears – but glad tears at last, not sad tears, tears at the hilarious unexpectedness of things rather than at their tragic expectedness.”[6]
That is the very contrast these two lessons on Father’s Day present us: the “hilarious unexpectedness” and the “tragic expectedness” of life, both of which are so often present in the always serious, sometimes heartbreaking, and often uproarious business of parenthood.
A few years ago I discovered the work of the late essayist and poet Brian Doyle. In 2014 in The Christian Century magazine, Doyle published a poem entitled The poem about what it’s about. It speaks to me about how both of today’s lessons illuminate our relationship with God:
Here’s my question. What if there was a poem
That didn’t know what it was about until it got
To the end of itself? So that the poet’s job isn’t
To play with imagery and cadence and metrical
Toys in order to make a point, but rather to just
Keep going in order to find out that the poem is
About how hard it is to watch your kids get hurt
By things they can’t manage and you cannot fix.
If I had been the boss of this poem I would have
Made it so they can manage things, or I could be
The quiet fixer I always wanted to be as a father;
But that’s not what the poem wanted to be about,
It turns out. This poem is just like your daughter:
No one knows what’s going to happen, and there
Will be pain, and you can’t fix everything, and it
Hurts to watch, and you are terrified even as you
Try to stay calm and cool and pretend to manage.
Some poems you can leave when they thrash too
Much but kids are not those sorts of poems. They
Have to keep writing themselves, and it turns out
You are not allowed to edit. You’re not in charge
At all—a major bummer. I guess there’s a lesson
Here about literature, about how you have to sing
Without knowing the score . . . something like that.
All you can do is sing wildly and hope it’ll finish
So joyous and refreshing that you gape with awe.[7]
I think that is the best poem about fatherhood . . . ever . . . because I know from personal experience how absolutely accurate Doyle is when he writes that in parenting (and in so many other aspects of life) there are times when “there will be pain, and you can’t fix” it and “it hurts . . . and you are terrified,” and all you can do is “try to stay calm and cool and pretend to manage.” Being a father, being a parent is the case-in-point that proves again and again how correct St. Paul was in writing that we accept our “sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”[8] It is the case-in-point that proves Jesus’ words that even when there is strife between father and child, “The one who endures to the end will be saved.”[9]
This is why fatherhood is the primary Christian metaphor for God’s relationship to us. As Paul wrote to the Romans:
All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For . . . [we] have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ . . . .[10]
And as John wrote:
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. * * * Beloved, we are God’s children now.[11]
The Prophet Zephaniah wrote of God: “He will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.”[12] Just as our poet, Brian Doyle, said in his poem, “All [a father] can do is sing wildly and hope it’ll finish so joyous and refreshing that you gape with awe.” That is God’s hope and promise for us, that everything, all the hilarious unexpectedness and all the tragic expectedness, will “finish so joyous and refreshing” that we will all gape with awe. Those who endure to the end will be saved, and we will all laugh with Sarah. Amen.
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This homily was first offered by the Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 18, 2023, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston was rector, and again (in the form published here) on the Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 18, 2023, to the people of Harcourt Parish, Gambier, Ohio, where Fr. Funston was supply preacher during that parish’s rector’s sabbatical.
The lessons on both occasions were from Proper 6A (Track 1) of the Revised Common Lectionary: Genesis 18:1-15; Psalm 116:1,10-17; Romans 5:1-8; and St. Matthew 9:35-10:23. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)
The illustration is “Sarah Laughing,” a woodcut by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld from Die Bibel in Bildern: 240 Darstellungen, erfunden und auf Holz gezeichnet published in 1899.)
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Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text.
[1] Matthew 10:16 (NRSV)
[2] Matthew 10:21-22 (NRSV)
[3] Romans 4:19
[4] Hebrews 11:12
[5] Genesis 21:6 (NRSV)
[6] Kathryn M. Schifferdecker, Commentary on Genesis 18:1-15, Working Preacher, citing Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale (Harper & Row, New York:1977), p. 61
[7] Brian Doyle, The poem about what it’s about, The Christian Century, Vol. 131, No.16, August 6, 2014
[8] Romans 5:3-5 (NRSV)
[9] Matthew 10:22 (NRSV)
[10] Romans 8:14-17 (NRSV)
[11] 1 John 3:1-2 (NRSV)
[12] Zephaniah 3:17-18 z(NRSV)
Nice sermon. Thanks