June 19, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Today’s is a very special day! Some of you are here to be in the official Church Family Portrait of 2005. Some of you are here because it’s Father’s Day and you’re going out to lunch afterward. Some of you are here because of Avery’s dedication and you want to witness the beginning of that unique “father/daughter (and mother/daughter) relationship!” For all these reasons and more, you and I are here because of the importance of relationships. We are related to each other. We came to strengthen those “bonds of love” as Dr. Chuck would say.
I read in the paper that buying a Father’s Day gift is not as easy as it used to be. Not long ago, it was okay just to buy him a Craftsmen tool or a tie. Now they want you to expand his wardrobe with bright clothes for the summer or one of those Hummer-size gas grills or how about that NASA astronaut-tested recliner that distributes your body weight so that he won’t be tired lying down! I thought that’s what lying down means!
None of these gifts say anything about relationships.
The first Father’s Day was celebrated in 1910 in Spokane, Washington. A Mrs. John B. Dodd proposed the idea when she realized after becoming an adult how amazing it was for her father, a Civil War veteran to raise six children after his wife died in childbirth with their sixth child. He raised these children by himself on a rural farm in eastern Washington State. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father’s Day and finally in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father’s Day. The idea of honoring fathers grew out of a deep appreciation of a daughter for her father. It’s about relationships.
Relationship to Jesus
Today’s Scripture lesson from Matthew is rich with a number of teachings. Each sentence can be a full sermon. But all of them have to do with relationships. When we relate with Jesus, he teaches us that disciples cannot surpass their master, but they can be like him. Jesus is up here and our relationship with him is that we are down here. We are not to be above Jesus. But it is more than enough to imitate what Jesus does.
In a like manner, children will never be older, more experienced, or better prepared, at least theoretically, than their fathers and mothers. But they do become like their parents, and the influence of a parent on a daughter or son is unmistakable, for good or ill.
We all have experienced this when attending a funeral of a friend’s father. Having never met the deceased before, we still feel as if we knew him all along. We knew him through his child. As parents we want to be mindful of how important our modeling role is with our children.
When we are disciples of Jesus, it means that we will be rejected by the world just like he was rejected. But the rejection should not instill fear in us because God will take care of us as he does with the sparrows. We are worth much more than pennies. Like a father, God will protect us from harm and even knows every hair on our heads.
When we follow Jesus as his disciples, our relationship includes the way of the cross. We are called to love Christ, and to acknowledge our relationship to him openly. If we own him, he will own us. But if we deny him, he will not know us.
One of the most difficult passages in the Bible is found in the section that Jesus said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” He goes on to say that he came to set a son against his father and a daughter against her mother, and there will be foes and enemies in one’s home. On this Father’s Day, the last things we want to hear are such fighting, divisive and troubling words.
But when we follow Jesus, there may be sharp separations within the family. We might find ourselves choosing Christ over our relationship with our family. No other relationship is as important as our relationship with Jesus.
The point that Jesus is making in Matthew’s gospel is that when it comes to giving our loyalties, giving our life’s utmost dedication, it will no longer be to any government authorities, no longer to other religious idols, even to the point that following Jesus may mean leaving the relationship that you have with your family for a new relationship with God.
Now if we as parents are committed to Christ and our children are committed to Christ as well, there wouldn’t be family separations. We would all be choosing Christ together. New loyalties are expected of us when we give our life to Christ.
This means that when it comes to asking our children to be obedient to our wills as parents, the will of God takes precedence. Fathers and mothers must recognize that there’s a higher loyalty when it comes to following Jesus. As parents, we can model this devotion to God, and therefore to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with the Lord in our own lives, and invite our sons and daughters to follow the way of Christ. Just as we follow Christ in our lives, we pray that eventually, our children will make their own decisions about giving their highest loyalties to Christ as well.
Like Father, Like Son
Probably one of the most precious gifts for a father to receive on Father’s Day is when your son or daughter says to you, “I catch myself saying the same things you used to say to me.” Our challenge as parents is to make sure that what we have to say and how we are living our lives are characterized by our loyalty and faithfulness to Christ. Someone once said, “People don’t do what we expect, they do what they inspect.”
We know that Jesus listened to the words of his Father God and obeyed them to fulfill the plan of God’s kingdom. Like God the Father who created all things wonderful and beautiful, the Son Jesus Christ was loyal to the end and the result is that God’s wonderful grace and mercy are available to us. Jesus told us that when we see him, we have seen the Father. Like disciples in the Bible, we too are Jesus’ disciples who understand that our relationship with Jesus is to be like him. That is enough to claim Christ and he will claim us as well.
The gift I want for Father’s Day is when our children come to a situation that they are seeking for truth and direction that they would say, “Dad would say this.” Like father, like son and daughter. The prayer I have for myself is that I, a disciple of Jesus Christ am not above the Lord, but only his disciple called to be like him. To that end, I have a life-giving relationship with God.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, lead us to be like Jesus who followed your plan for his life that through his sacrifice and resurrection redeemed the world. We dedicate ourselves to you, acknowledging you in our lives before others. As parents, caring adults, children and young people, we pray for strength and wisdom to be faithful disciples taking up the cross to follow Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.