June 19 - Trinity Sunday, Year A (RCL)
A couple of weeks ago
I went shopping for a Father’s Day Card.
It wasn’t for my Father;
in Australia, Father’s Day
is in September.
It was for my brother, and I was shopping with the able help of my four-and-a-half year old nephew.
His eyes
went straight to one card, with a picture of a monkey on it.
“Dear Daddy,”
it read,
“Happy Father’s Day
from your little monkey.”
It wasn’t for him. He is a quiet, thoughtful child,
obsessed with Ancient Egypt and pirates.
No, it was for his 17 month old little brother,
who has red hair and a temperament to match.
It was a good choice
of card.
My nephew eventually chose another one from himself,
a typical card with tools or something on it.
It wasn’t quite as appropriate as his brother's,
but no less heartfelt.
We went home, and with great secrecy, hid it between the pages of a pirate book,
and hopefully by now
he will have remembered it and given it to his Daddy.
Today is Father’s Day,
and most of us
will be thinking of our fathers, living and dead, and
for those of us who are fathers,
our children and grandchildren.
But today is also another celebration.
It’s one of those things
that doesn’t happen all that often.
But today it does.
As well as Father’s Day,
today is also
Trinity Sunday.
Trinity Sunday
is one of the big days in the church’s year, almost as big as Christmas and Easter and Pentecost.
It’s the day we celebrate
God,
the whole of God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Now, my guess is, that most of us didn’t come to church
thinking about Trinity Sunday.
What’s on our minds
is Father’s Day.
But it’s actually quite appropriate to celebrate Trinity Sunday on Father’s Day,
because it’s the one time of the year
that we focus on God
as our Father.
Often in church
we refer to God
as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We get that language from the bible,
from places like the end of the Gospel according to Matthew that we read today,
where Jesus tells the eleven remaining apostles
to go make disciples,
baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
We think that’s perfectly normal.
All of us were baptized that way;
all of us
grew up hearing God referred to like that.
We talk about what we believe in the Creed
by saying,
“We believe in God, the Father Almighty”
We believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son
our Lord.
We believe in the Holy Spirit...”
We get blessed in the name of God, Father Son, and Holy Spirit.
But what seems normal to us
would have been about a far from normal as you could get
for the first disciples.
They had grown up
reciting every morning
“Hear, O Israel. the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and mind and soul and strength.”
It had been drilled into them:
there is only one God. And God was so holy
you couldn’t even speak his name
for fear of being
struck down.
The only way
to refer to God
was to use a pseudonym,
Adonai,
or use his title, Lord.
The people of Israel
knew that they were God’s children,
but they would never have dared
call God Father.
And so it all got very complicated
when Jesus came along,
and stood in the Jordan River getting baptized
and everyone heard the voice that came from heaven,
“This is my own dear son, with whom I am well pleased.”
No one had ever heard God
single out someone
like that.
And then Jesus started referring to God as his father,
and then, when the disciples asked him
to teach them to pray,
Jesus taught them the words that we know today
as the Lord’s Prayer,
the words that begin,
“Our Father...”
Only it wasn’t any word
for Father,
but the one that little children used,
the one my cousin, whose mother is Israeli,
uses for her father.
“Abba.”
Dad.
“Our Dad in heaven.”
Can you imagine it?
One moment, you’re calling God by a pseudonym or title,
just in case in calling him by his name,
he took offense at the familiarity
and struck you dead,
and next
you’re calling him Dad?
But it’s Jesus telling you to do it, and Jesus is the one
who has been healing people in the name of God, and forgiving their sins,
and all along
acting like God is his best friend, and Jesus hasn’t been struck dead. Yet.
And you’ve actually heard God say, say in a voice like any other voice,
that Jesus is his son and that he’s happy with him.
And so if anyone has the right to call God Dad, it’s Jesus.
But it’s not just Jesus’ right.
Because thanks to Christ,
we who follow him
get to call God Father.
Not just second hand, but because through Christ,
somehow, and we don’t know exactly how it all works,
somehow,
we’re adopted in to the family.
Thanks to Jesus,
we’re part of God’s family.
God becomes
our adoptive Father.
And so we follow Jesus, and we call God father,
not just as a name,
but to express the relationship
we have with God.
God is our adopted Father, and we are his adopted children,
and he cares for us and loves us
as his own.
And we see the fatherliness of God in how he cares for his people.
In the Old Testament, God does
what fathers are expected to do.
When they run out of food and water,
God intervenes and provides.
When they lose their way,
God leads them to safety.
When they mess up, God disciplines them
but also forgives them.
God is kind, God is wise, God is the one they turn to
time and time again.
And most of all, God loves them, loves them passionately
and wants only the best for them.
And it’s the same God the Father
that we see in the New Testament,
except this time
we get to see God the Father up close,
we get to see him
from the perspective
of his Son.
And everything we saw in the Old Testament
is true,
but even more - it’s as if it has been magnified.
And it’s a testament to just how great a Father God is,
that his Son
would do anything for him,
even let himself be killed
for the sake of us.
No wonder that it has become
probably the most common way
we refer to God, as our Father,
the way we talk to God
day by day.
So, with all this about God as Father,
why isn’t this day in the church’s year
just called “God the Father” Day?
Well, I think it’s because
fathers aren’t fathers
unless they have children.
God isn’t a father in the abstract.
He’s not just some god-guy
with fatherly qualities.
For God to be a father
there has to be a child.
God is the Father
of Jesus Christ, his first and only birth son,
and it all happened
through the Holy Spirit.
That’s the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
There’s more to God
than just being father.
And just in case you think
that this is all a bit sexist,
there is a day
that was traditionally part of the Church’s calendar,
though in this country
it got replaced
by Mother’s Day,
there is a day
called Mothering Sunday
when we celebrate the way in which God
and the church
are like a mother to us,
and we remember all the times in scripture
where God is described
as being like a mother.
But today, as Trinity Sunday and Father’s Day coincide,
we remember God
as our father.
We think about all the ways he loves us and cares for us.
And we think about the ways our fathers have loved us and cared for us.
Most of our fathers - actually all of them, I suspect - aren’t or weren’t perfect. They’re human, like the rest of us. Sometimes they’re great. Sometimes they’re not.
Sometimes they love us.
Sometimes they hurt us.
Sometimes they’re around. Sometimes they’re absent.
Oftentimes, they are mixture of all the above.
In the New York Times yesterday,
a man wrote about his father.
His father was absent more than he was present,
and when he was present, he was usually drunk.
He teased his children.
But one day, he took his son to a watermelon patch, and they bought watermelons wholesale, and then spent the day
driving around, selling them to anyone who would buy one.
And for all the hurt that son had suffered from his dad,
he remembers with thanks and joy
that one day.
Today, I invite you
to think of the very best
of your father,
and give thanks.
And try, if you can, to forgive them, for the times
when that weren’t as good.
And above all, remember that each and every one of us
has a father in God,
a father who is totally reliable, totally trustworthy,
who loves us and cares for us, and never lets us go.
Dear Daddy,
Happy Father’s Day.
love, your children.
Amen.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010