Fathers

Midweek Evensong

The Fifth Week after Epiphany

A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to St Mark:

And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again; and again, as his custom was, he taught them …

And they were bringing children to him, that he might touch them; and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

For a young Martin Luther, the problem with having faith in God as our Father was that his own father proved to be stern, judgmental, and aloof. He certainly did not approve of his son running off from the family business to become a monk. If our fathers are our models for God, and our fathers don’t seem much to like us, what then does that tell us of God?

Everything changed for Luther when he had children of his own. He hadn’t expected to get married, hadn’t anticipated children. Rather, it was Katie who insisted, Katie who chose him. And so the former monk and former nun raised their half-dozen daughters and sons within a former monastery. And Luther was enraptured of his children. Indeed, he seems wonderstruck.

He did not realize, had not comprehended, the depth of love that wells up within a parent, nor the depth of sorrow. He thought that God was like his father, and that his father didn’t love him. But now Luther himself was the dad, and he knew that if he, a lowly sinner, could love his kids so much, then how great, how vast, how infinite must be the love of God for all His wayward children.

There is a shift in life, when we become the parents, when we cease to be the centers of our own little worlds, and our hearts suddenly go running about outside of our bodies on little legs of their own. It hurts so badly, so wonderfully. And that’s how much our God loves us. That’s how much He cares for us. That’s why He can never let us go, why He loves us all the way to hell and back. For who among us would not lay down their life for their own beloved child?

And yes, I know that there are many ways to be a father, to be a mother. Jesus Himself had no children, not in the usual way. I’m simply saying that to live as children of God, to claim God as our own Father, is an astonishing assertion. It is all about love and grace and provision that death itself cannot sever. We all make mistakes; every father fathers wrong. But to have God as our Father in Heaven is to be loved so deeply, so powerfully, that we cannot hope to comprehend it.

In our Gospel reading this evening, people are bringing their children to Christ, that He might touch them, He might bless them. Because they have found in Jesus something inexpressible, some holy transcendence beyond understanding. And their first thought, their first instinct, is to say, “Share this with my children! I can’t even say what You are, but I want them to have You, and You to have them.” They have encountered something wondrous, and they thrust their children forth.

What a witness that is! What a knee-jerk, gut-check, raw act of primal faith. Here is something good—give it to my child!

And those around Him say, “What are you doing? This isn’t a daycare. Get those kids out of here.” Because they’re trying to protect His dignity, you see, the honor due His office as a rabbi and a prophet. But He says to them, “No, no. Suffer the little children to come unto Me; for to such as these belong the Kingdom of Heaven. Indeed, you too must receive Me as a little child, or you shall not be able to enter the Kingdom.”

Now, this is not, as we might imagine, some sort of aw-shucks Hallmark moment. Offspring in the ancient world were simply not romanticized, nor did childhood as we know it exist. That’s more a product of the Victorian era. Children in the Roman Empire were either viewed as subhuman when young—quite literally disposable, if perchance you’ve ever read Oedipus Rex—or as tiny little adults with what we would consider to have been outsized responsibilities.

In general, one’s societal value was based on one’s usefulness to said society. If you didn’t contribute much, you weren’t worth much. And who contributes less than a child? This is not to say that parents did not love their children; of course they did, and mourned terribly when they were lost. But kids were the lowest of the low in the pecking order, the most vulnerable of human beings. And these are the ones whom Jesus claims, and says that we must be like them. How peculiar. How scandalous, even.

He does not mean, of course, that we should be childish—ignorant, self-centered, unproductive—but that we must be childlike: guileless, trusting, faithful, honest; children not simply of men but of God. God loves us as a father loves his son, as a mother loves her daughter. It is not a love that we can earn, nor of which we can prove ourselves particularly worthy. It is simply a fact, a given, a gift. God loves us, period. That’s the relationship.

And we are to trust this, to know this, to live in that light. As parents encountering Jesus thrust their children in His arms, so God, whenever we encounter what is beautiful, good, and true, holds us out to delight in it, to delight in Him. To be a child of God is to know the universe, and life, and existence itself as a gift, as a work of art, despite its fallen state: an act of delight and of superabundant joy.

Trust in that love of God, that goodness of God—if not for who you are, then for who God is. He is Father, He is Mother, He is Brother, He is King. He is in fact the very Spirit of life flowing through you, in your lungs and mind and veins. To live graciously in that love is to enter the Kingdom of God, as a child, as His child. There is your truest, fondest home. There shall we dwell for eternity.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.