Father Imperfect

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 This morning we explored the value of fathers, and the balance that father figures (whether biological, male or female) can bring to our lives.  The text of the Sermon is below, or you can download a free MP3 of the sermon itself by clicking the link above.

Father’s Day has always seemed a bit of an add-on to me.  We all know of Mother’s Day – or Mothering Sunday as an old headmaster used to remind us.  Every year.  But Father’s Day?  Where did that come from?  

The history of these special days of family observance are remarkably easy to trace.   Mothering Sunday was first promoted in the US in the 1870s – and we can be proud it was a Unitarian, Julia Ward Howe, that started that ball rolling.  It was a day to recognise and celebrate Motherhood, and to call for peace in the world.

In the early 1900s, a separate, Mother’s Day, was promoted.  And in 1910 a woman named Sonara Smart promoted her idea for a Father’s Day to celebrate Fatherhood.  She was prompted to do so in support for her own father, William Jackson Smart who had raised six children single-handedly after Sonora’s mother had died young.

Sonora started by asking her local Ministers to preach a sermon on Fatherhood on her father’s birthday, the 5^th June, but she asked too late, and they moved it to the 3^rd Sunday in June to give the Ministers time to prepare.

It was a minor success in a small part of Smart’s home town – Spokane, Washington.  But only lasted a couple of years before it fell away.

However, Sonora Smart’s persistence was astonishing.  Her love for her late father was so great that she could not allow a day celebrating Fathers to disappear.  So she continued to promote the idea, enlisting the help of tobacco and sports companies to support her. 

I suspect the handkerchief and slippers companies were also pretty supportive.

  

The campaign gathered pace.  In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the 3^rd Sunday in June to be Father’s Day, and in 1972, President Nixon signed a law making the 3^rd Sunday a day of national observance.  For fathers.

The idea has of course spread far and wide since those humble beginnings, and the 3^rd Sunday on June is celebrated as Father’s Day across the world.

And the pipe and slippers companies still do very well out of it.

So, we honour Fathers.  Just like we honour Mothers.

But I’m not so sure we do.  A fascinating snippet I picked up this week was that Mother’s Day sees the largest number of telephone calls.  Father’s Day comes third.  After Christmas.

But, Father’s Day is the day when the most collect-call, or reverse-charges phone calls are made.

Typical.  Children will make sure they can call mum.  But will expect dad to pick up the bill when it’s his turn.

Perhaps there is more truth in this comment than first you might expect. 

I am, of course, talking in general terms here – we cannot make every exception for every father in the world – but this notion of fatherhood as being slightly separate, never so close as motherhood – yet often just as reliable and, if the reverse-call reference is anything to go by, reliable and ever-forgiving.

Just as we all have mothers, we all have fathers.  We cannot all be fathers.  But we all had one.

And I would be foolish to suggest that we all have perfectly wonderful memories or knowledge of our fathers.  That can never be the case.  Fathers are more likely to be away, or disappear completely.  But they don't all do that.  Most don't.  Fathers are human beings; fathers are as fragile and likely to do wrong as any other person in the world.  Fathers make mistakes.  Fathers can be bad, they can be good.  They can be rich, they can be poor.  Yet they are all fathers.

Fathers can be many things.  But rarely perfect.  If we’re honest.  As I said before, fathers are human – they are real.  And people are not, generally, perfect.

Yet religions for centuries, most obviously Christianity, have focussed on the figure of ‘Father’ as the most accurate description of God.  Well, for many Christians, at least one third of the most accurate description.

Father.  Our Father.  Dear Lord and Father.  God the Father.  Father of All.

These are the phrases that we hear so often in religious settings.

And for some, this is a problem.  Many who have grown up and had bad experiences of Christianity or other religions – usually because of a particular individual or denomination, rather than a more general problem with Christianity more generally – are turned away from the notion of God as Father.  The image upsets. 

I have every sympathy with those that see the exclusive use of ‘Father’ as a name as being in some way too male-focussed.  This world is a world of balance, a world of good and bad, male and female, light and dark, sun and moon.  Many twinsets – sets that complement one another by their similarity yet marked difference.

And, for me, the notion of the Fatherly element of God, or the all-that-is, or the Eternal Spirit, this Fatherly side is both necessary and balancing.  It helps me, as a male, to empathise with the Father-like qualities of God.  I need the motherly aspect of God – the great giver, the embracing mother’s love.  Yet I also need the father-like aspect.  I need the balance.

 

But let’s be clear.  Fatherhood, father-like qualities, are not necessarily the same as ‘male’ qualities.  Fathers are males that have changed.

Fatherhood, like motherhood, brings a change to an individual.  The true notion of becoming a father – and by this I mean all those who have taken a fatherly role, whether biologically or not – fatherhood is a transition.

And not just because you can’t go out so much.  And your dream of a two-seat sports-car is put on hold for another 25 years, at least.  But suddenly you are a father.  You have changed.  You haven’t had nine months of physical awareness of this growing child.  But here it is now.  He or she is right in front of you.  You are a dad – and it all becomes a frightening and beautiful reality in a remarkably short space of time.

I can speak as a father.  I remember that sudden moment.  I am a father.  It became real.  There was a small baby – none too pleased to be in the outside world – none too pleased to be separated from mother – and not particularly pleased to be picked up by me. 

And she was not particularly happy until she was safely snuggled back against mother.  Yet dad, me, although not welcomed with open arms, was smitten.

 

It is this relational aspect of fatherhood that I see in the connecting Spirit that I know as God.  Our relationship with each other and the world around us needs a little bit of fatherhood in it.

I don’t for one second want to suggest that my children do not now, several years after that trauma of appearing in the big, wide world, think of me in the same way.  They do not scream for mother when I am there – they are even quite nice to me.  Sometimes.

Yet in our relationships with others, with the all-that-is, with the green Earth in which we make our home.  In these relationships we need to recognise that we will not always be the centre.  Fathers are not always Mothers.  Fathers are not seen as the bountiful centre of plenty. 

Fathers, in a stereo-typical way, provide that separateness we all need.  Yet that ever-loving presence in the face of unconscious rejection.  The father who loves the new-born with eyes only for mother.  Or the father who knows he will only get a call on Father’s Day if he agrees to pay for it.  This is not, thankfully, the full extent of the relationship between most children and their fathers.  But these are the moments we need sometimes to reflect upon.

And it is this notion of Fatherhood that can work in understanding the Christian notion of a Father God – a term first introduced by Jesus rather than the Jewish tradition from which he came.

God the Father is the recognition of a God, or a Spirit, or a binding ‘something’, or a set of necessary relationships between people.  The Father is that something that will always be there to support despite our rejections, our misdeeds, our forgetfulness.  The bond of love in this world is still there.  The bond amongst individuals, in communities, to the world.  The father-and-child like bond to one another and to God is a vital and necessary element of our lives.

And by analogy – real flesh-and-blood fathers are quite important too.  They too are the people that changed their status and their approach to life in a very short space of time.  No real build up, no flesh and blood growth.  Just the presence of one on whom we can hope to rely on, and to trust.

However, as I mentioned before.  They are human.  They are and they were and always have been human. 

They make mistakes.  They are sometimes not ready for the burden life suddenly places on them.

And it is this imperfection – the twist that can imply that the Father is not perfect in reality.  That the notion of God the Father is also not perfect in reality.  That God, the oneness to which we all belong, however you might consider it.  That oneness might, like me, might have His own frailties and imperfections. 

The ancient Jewish writers of Genesis suggested we were all made in the image of our God – and for me that suggests there is nothing truly perfect – in this world or any other.

John O ‘Donohue, in the second reading, the memory of his father Paddy, remembered the glowing wonder that a strong and loving father becomes in memory.  And that is wonderful. 

Often, that image of the perfect, caring father can come only when we’ve understood the truth. 

From our first reading, we remember John  Philip Newell’s timely reminder that the early Jewish scriptures, in talking of men and women being made in the image of God, can only lead to a greater depth of reflection upon the mystery and frailty of the human condition. 

To know we.  To know that fathers – our fathers - are the mirror image of the ‘all-that-is’ is both comforting, and a little confusing.

We all need fathers.  We’ve all had fathers.  We’ve all had father figures, biological or not, male or female, but people we’ve seen as father-like rather than mother-like.  And without them, we would have been missing a vital balance in our formative and ongoing lives.

Sonora Smart was on to something when she wanted to remind the world that fathers were worthy of their own day of observance.

Fathers are not mothers.  And that’s what makes them special in themselves.

Let us strip this day of its pipe and slippers memories.  Let us celebrate fatherhood in all its earthly and heavenly wonder.

Happy Father’s Day.

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JUBILEE

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Across the UK this weekend, there are celebrations for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.  Whether you support the institution of monarchy, or you are a republican, or just not sure, there is no escaping the event.  In our Service today, we used this opportunity to reflect on the way events such as the Jubilee provide the snapshots of our lives as we might wish to remember them.  The text of the Sermon is below, or you can download a free MP3 of it by clicking the link above.

 

Jubilee.

A Diamond Jubilee

A continued thread of monarchy for the last sixty years.

There are around 60 million people living in the UK, and 50 million of those, over 80%, were born after the Queen came to the throne.  The vast majority of people have known no other Sovereign.

However, the reality is that all of us can trace a large proportion of our lives to points over the last 60 years.

Whether a supporter of the monarchy or not, and there will of course be a variety of views on this, there can be no denying that the Queen provides a recognisable reference point to us all.  My children recognise pictures of Queen Elizabeth.  So do my parents.  And so did my grandparents.  And my great-grandparents (my children’s great-great grandparents).  All have lived a part, or all, of their lives in a time when Elizabeth was Queen.

And it is this constancy, this connection to the past, to the notion of Britain as it once was, that perhaps drives the overwhelming affection and support that the Queen receives – as a person, if not always as an institution.

In 1968, the American sociologist Robert Bellah published a paper in Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  The paper set out Bellah’s proposition that, as adherence to Christianity faded in the United States, there had developed in its place a Civil Religion.  This new kind of ‘religion’, Bellah argued, was popular in origin.  It came from the people.  It united people despite their diversity, and was about an idea, rather than the Divine.

The example Bellah worked his ideas through was a Civil Religion that saw America, the notion of a State, as being worthy of religious–style worship.  The rituals are around Memorial Day and Veterans Day.  Thanksgiving Day.  These are the events and occasions that unite the civil population, no matter what their private religious belief.  Civil Religion is a non-religion.  It is a notion of statehood that binds a nation.

Is this perhaps what we are seeing in the UK?  Is the Civil Religion here, if such a thing exists, centred on rituals and ceremonies featuring the Royal Family?  A binding together of the nations through certain symbols; symbols that are given a new meaning – often ignoring some of the more uncomfortable issues that might be simmering underneath.

Whilst it would be wrong to suggest that the entire population of the UK is celebrating today - there are of course many who will not smile in the face of monarchy – it is also the case that many more will be using today as an opportunity to reflect on who we are.  The Royal Jubilee provides the opportunity to meet with friends, with family, with neighbours, with strangers. It is a time of unity in diversity.

What might this mean?

It is certainly the case that, at times, this Civil Religion shares a mixed relationship with spiritual religion.  It can even appear comical.  If you watch the news at Christmas, you will always see the news story about the Royals attending the morning service at the church in Sandringham.  There is always a big crowd to watch.  The crowd doesn’t appear to want to visit the church.  On the day that Christians and others celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the nation watches a crowd, who are watching the Royal Family, who are attending the church service.  It’s a strange world we live in.

The other great events the nation watches, in this celebration of civil royal religion are also often linked to traditional religion – or its ceremonies at least.  Royal Weddings.  Royal births and Baptisms.  Royal funerals.  State occasions.  Family events being made open to the nation as congregation.  We are all invited to the family event.  We are all a part of this larger family.

It is perhaps these events that we are really celebrating.  A wedding to watch without worrying if the happy couple are doing the right thing.  Or whether you’ve upstaged the Bride’s mother.  Or sat in the right place in the church.  All these things might be on our minds if we knew the couple.  But we don’t.  We can just celebrate with the global family all tuning in to watch. 

A funeral without being too upset, since we didn’t actually know the person who died.

A Diamond Jubilee

Sixty years of monarchy and public rites of passage.

Perhaps, deep inside, this is an element of our fascination, and our determination to use this occasion as a celebration.

Rites of Passage are, by their very nature, important milestones in our lives.  We measure time by key events – and Births (including the party on each anniversary of our birth), Weddings and Funerals are those measures that seem to be most important.  For some faiths, events such as Bar Mitzvahs, Confirmation, First Communion, will provide equally important milestones. 

Before the dawn of the digital camera, and the incessant taking of photographs of everything, we often used to record only key anniversaries.  Anyone looking at my photos of my parents when they were growing up would assume they were always in their best clothes at a party, with a church in the background.  Or opening presents.  Because those are the occasions on which the photo was taken.

In our first reading today, Kathleen McTigue spoke of the way in which we remember life through a series of snapshots.  She wrote first of the woman with the failing eyesight, keen to grab an image to help discover where she has been.  Kathleen went on to liken this to the way in which we all use mental, and physical, snapshots of people and event to help us remember events and loved ones.  We all generally like to cast our minds back to a happy moment – a time of good news – to make the mental milestone of our lives.  Snapshots.  Short, grabbed moments of time – seconds frozen for decades.  Yet memories that stay with us for a long time.  Perhaps, for as long as we shall live.

And often, these memories, these snapshots, form our own memories of life. 

Who remembers where they were when Princess Elizabeth became Queen?

Who remembers watching the Coronation on the television?

Who remembers Prince Charles being invested as Prince of Wales?

Princess Anne’s Wedding to Captain Mark Phillips

The 1977 Silver Jubilee Street Party – I admit that is my first Royal memory.

Charles and Diana, 1981

Prince Andrew and Sarah Fergusson

The Golden Jubilee, 2002

The Wedding of Kate and William, last year

And now, the Diamond Jubilee.

Whether we support the institution of monarchy is irrelevant  - these moments, whether you like them or not, are markers of our lives.  Markers of our community. 

And anything that brings people together in joy, in celebration, and in co-operative sharing, think of the street-party organisers, is a good thing.  The value of happiness and community is a vital boost to ourselves. 

And to our souls.

For a joyous moment of two on the path through the bewildering complexity of life itself is surely something we must be grateful for.  We grapple daily with pressures of life, of pain, of confusion.  Yet we can all too easily lose sight of these oases of hope and support.  I cannot ignore an opportunity to speak to a stranger at a time of happiness.  A time shared in joy is a wonderful thing.

In our second reading, the Letter from Life, David Blanchard wrote to Emily and Julia to warn them of the unexpected and unexplainable elements of their lives ahead.  Yet he made a very poignant remark.  He said:

“The ages have determined that it’s very important to feel very passionate about the most important parts of life, and come to reckon with the pain of loss, than to sacrifice the deepest feelings you can know.  You don’t get to have one without the other”

And I believe David is trying, with that comment, to be clear that the memories of life are not always so great.  That the milestones are not always good news ones.

In sixty years a lot has happened.

We have all lost loved ones in that time.  The natural rhythms of life and death are such that the world and its people cannot be the same after sixty years.

And it is again the notion of milestones and family and community moments that both bring us together, and leave us feeling isolated and alone. 

Yet these are times that feed us.  Times that again bring us together in community and occasion. 

From the Civil Religion aspect, we remember the dead from conflict, at our Remembrance Day.

No-one will forget where they were when Diana was buried.

A nation mourns for those it never knew, as well as those it did. 

This reflection on the sadness of the loss of someone we never knew is, I believe, a critical factor in our development as spiritual beings.  If we are able to recognise the value, worth and dignity of all human beings, no matter from whence they came, in class, colour, religion, age, sexuality.  It matters not.  We grieve as a nation.  We grieve as a community.  We demonstrate that everyone is important.

John Donne, 17^th Century poet and one time vicar of St Nicks, was right when he suggested,

Each man’s death diminishes me

For I am involved in mankind

Therefore send not to ask

For whom the bell tolls

It tolls for thee

Each death is a death that affects us all.

And, conversely, I firmly believe, each joyous moment is a joyous moment which might be shared and celebrated.

Our lives are a series of snapshots.  We cannot predict where our lives will go, and in what direction the lives of our loved ones might go also.

Yet we know that our lives are marked by a series of events that become frozen in time.  These precious moments of life – be they celebrations or times of mourning – these are the moments by which we share our lives with others.

This weekend we remember, with the entire country and a large part of the world, sixty years of political, social and environmental change.  Yet we also remember sixty years of change as a congregation, with communities of friends, with our own families.  For some, there are memories across the entire sixty years.  For others, we play only a part in that history.

Our paths through life are confusing and daunting enough.  Let us take heart from the wave of goodwill spreading through the real people around us at this time.  Let us hope to make this a milestone that people remember in 60 years time with love and with affection.