Sunday June 16, 2024
Father’s Day
St. Andrew Church
Rev. Julianne Porras-Center
First Lesson: 1 Samuel 16:1-13
The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
Second Lesson: Mark 4:26-34
He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Good morning once again, and once again, Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there, and to all the children of fathers who celebrate.
I thought a lot about what I might want to preach on for Father’s Day. I know that unfortunately for many of us in this culture where family systems are broken and where fathers have not always been the best example, this is a day of mourning, or at least of ignoring or pretending that this day does not exist.
But I also know that for many of you, this is a beloved day – where we can celebrate the great gift of fatherhood and parenthood in general and the great love that fathers and — adopted fathers — have given to us.
And so I thought a lot about the Fathers of the church – the fathers in the Bible, what we could learn from them, and which one we might want to highlight, to dig a little deeper into, to get to know.
Now, I preached on Mother’s Day as well. And I tried the same method – I wanted to preach on Motherhood, and profile a mothers in the Bible. And well… it’s was easy. I had about 3 women with speaking roles to choose from, and there was one obvious choice. Mary! The mother of God.
But Father’s Day… where to begin!
I mean there’s too many options! They don’t call them church fathers for nothing!
And then I looked at the lectionary for this week, and it’s amazing how the Holy Spirit works. Because today we have a lesson from the book of Samuel that included many unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce names – thank you to our liturgist ____ for suffering through it – and also one familiar name. David. The great King David. The underdog of Sunday School classic David and Goliath. David who wrote the Psalms. David who sang. David who has become something of a gay right icon for his beautiful and intimate relationship with Jonathan, who we are told “loved him as his own soul.” David who sinned when he stole Uriah’s wife and him to be killed in battle. David who is complicated. Flawed. Legendary and yet so very human.
David is in many ways the complicated father of Judaism, and ultimately he is one of the fathers of Christianity. Many believe that it was prophesied from the beginning in the book of Isaiah that the Messiah would come from the “Root of Jesse,” Jesse being David’s father. Both the gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus descended from David’s family line. A few weeks ago we heard Jesus talk about David when trying to justify his breaking of Sabbath.
And so I ask what we can learn from David — this complicated Biblical figure, this father and son.
Our first text is David’s first introduction to the great Biblical narrative. Samuel, who we might remember from a few weeks ago, was prophet of the land, leader of the temple. We’ve fast forwarded in his story here, so let me catch you up with the cliff notes version of 1 Samuel.
The people wanted a King. The Lord said, you’re really better off without a King. How about you just listen to me? The people still wanted a king because they wanted to be like the other nations. The Lord said, really not having a king and standing out is kind of your greatest strength, but ultimately the Lord gave in – The Lord, as a heavenly father, has good boundaries, and tends to let us learn for ourselves just how foolish we are. So the people were given a king. Saul. Saul does what the people want, he wins a bunch of battles, and ultimately he gets cocky and power hungry and starts thinking himself as leader of the temple as well as the state. Things go downhill.
The Lord tells Samuel in 1 Samuel 15 “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” Not what you want to hear from God. Samuel just about tears his hair out, because he tried to retire a few chapters back and he does not want to deal with this, but consents to be the Lord’s vessel and clean up this mess on behalf of Israel.
And we are now up to date, at 1 Samuel 16, where the Lord tells Samuel that he will anoint a new king, a better king, and gives Samuel the game plan. Samuel is to go to Bethlehem, where the elders will be terrified because they think he comes on Saul’s behalf. Samuel will invite Jesse, a sheepherder, farmer, and leader in Bethlehem, to a sacrifice — sacrifice being the center of the ancient Israel’s spiritual and religious life, much Sunday service is for us. At this sacrifice, the Lord will choose one of Jesse’s 8 sons as the next king of Israel. Simple.
Samuel sees the oldest, Eliab, who is tall, the firstborn, probably the most mature, the most prepared for the job, and thinks “This is the guy! Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord!” And the Lord says… well no. So Jesse, the eager father, probably disappointed, sends his next son, Abinadab, thinking, probably, “Surely, this is the one the Lord will choose!” And again, the Lord, through Samuel, says “No, neither has the Lord chosen this one.” This happens 5 more times. Jesse sends the next eldest son, Samuel and Jesse hope that this one is the chosen one, and again the Lord says no. You can imagine the comedy – each one lining up, the pickings getting slimmer and slimmer, until a punchline occurs.
Finally, 7 sons have passed by the Lord, and Samuel says to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” Jesse replies, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” In other words, “You mean… you want the kid?” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him.”
This is David, the youngest. The underdog. The last kid picked when they split the teams to scrimmage in P.E. Not the anticipated King of Israel, father of Judaism or Christianity.
But the Lord says to Samuel thousands of years ago and to us today: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature … for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
The Lord said well before the cliché arose “Do not judge a book by its cover.” Do not judge a child based on your preconceived notions of what success will look like. Do not underestimate the power of the heart.
As our Gospel passage reminds us today: do not judge the size of the harvest by the size of the seed.
You see, while the Old Testament told stories with moral meaning through history, Jesus told stories with moral meaning through parables. And though they might be different in genre, in style, in texture and life, though they might seem to have very little in common, Jesus’ parable in today’s reading gives us a very similar message.
Jesus asks “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
David was a mustard seed. Small, young, green, and with great potential. We all begin as mustard seeds. And it is the role of the parent to take care to plant those seeds well, to tend to their growth, to give them the nutrients and the water and the circumstances that they need to thrive.
Unfortunately, parents were also once seeds. And though I sincerely hope that every single one of you had perfect parents who gave you everything you needed to grow… we all know that isn’t reality. We can live whole lives, successful lives, still unhealed from the wounds of our childhood. It is an everyday process to grow.
Parents were once children without proper nutrients, proper soil to grow, and they grew lopsided and imperfect. And they raised us the best that they could under the circumstances, the best that they knew how, and we grew lopsided and imperfect. They cycle continues.
Psychologists and family therapists tell us that family systems tend to repeat themselves via both reaction and modeling. We react against the way our parents raised us AND we also model their behavior. About three times a day I chuckle to myself because I have just done something exactly like my mother would.
So what does this have to do with David? Well, we’ve heard the beginning of his story, seen alongside God the potential in his small seed.
But here’s how David grew:
He was made king of Judah, he fought bitterly against King Saul, his best friend, soul of his soul’s, father. He was cast out. He allegedly wrote songs during his distress and exile. He won the war against Saul and his enemies, and he was anointed king of all of Israel, uniting at last the two kingdoms and beginning a new dynasty. He did more things and I’d love to give you the cliff notes version of his whole story, but honestly, you all should go home and read 1 and 2 Samuel because they are epic narratives which though ancient continue to captivate. But what you need to know is he was blessed and loved by God:
the prophet Nathan – Samuel having finally passed — anointed him, and God spoke to him. 2 Samuel 8 reads:
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. 9 And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more.”12
Notice here the language of planting. Notice here the language of dwelling in, longing for home.
And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more.”
Perhaps nations and faiths and ministries are a bit like seeds too.
But despite this blessing, despite this promise, despite this success, David also failed, and especially when it came to his personal life. David, adopted son of God, great great great great grandfather of Jesus, sinned. Sinned greatly. Seemingly unforgivably.
Leonard Cohen memorialized his downfall in the beautiful song, Hallelujah:
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya.
David broke vows with Bathsheba, he broke commandments, he killed a man, he lost a son. And it might not seem like the kind of polite conversation to have in church, to have on Father’s Day, but I humbly submit to you that it is. Because the great lesson of King David is that you can be flawed, that you can sin against people so greatly that you can never be forgiven by them, you can, as a hurt person, hurt people.
And you can still be loved and forgiven – if not by your earthly father, or earthly parent, or earthly children – then by your heavenly father. God saw in David both the potential for greatness and for great harm. God did not forsake David, even as he wrote the words that Jesus would later say on the cross in Psalm 22 “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
If you have said those words or some similar, know that even after David’s sin, God still loved him, still forgave him, never left him.
Hallelujah.
And while we can sin and fall and hurt ourselves and our loved ones and be redeemed, we also don’t need to. We do not have to be our parents. We can mitigate harm. We can break the pattern of lopsided and imperfect growth and heal. We can give ourselves and our children and our grandchildren and the next generation the proper soil they need to grow and grow out of the bad habits we still inhabit.
Unfortunately, to my human eyes, David’s redemption is not in his own story. God is all loving and forgiving towards David, but I, as a human, I have a hard time forgiving David. I judge him.
To my eyes, David’s redemption is through Solomon his son — this is Father’s day after all. Solomon whose plot and existence enacts a poetic justice unparalleled by the true poetry of his father. Solomon who makes good on his father’s desire to build a house where the Lord could dwell with his people. Solomon who builds a temple. Solomon who is wise where David was strong, but often headstrong. Solomon who is the answer to the second half of the blessing Nathan gave David in 2 Samuel 8 12-15:
And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more.”12
Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. 12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 … 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, 15 but my steadfast love will not depart from him.”
There are a few lessons in David’s story, but I see three primary ones:
- God can make small things great. Because “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” And I encourage you when looking at members of your family to not see as outsiders might, but to look on the heart, to see the potential even in frailty and failure. If you don’t, who will?
- We are neither the beginning nor the end of our stories. Who we are is shaped in a large part by those who parented us – our parents, our neighbors, our friends, the people who came into our lives for better or worse, even our societies and cultures. David might have been the son of Jesse, but we also hear a lot about Saul and Jonathan and Samuel in his story. We hear even more about the violent and patriarchal culture he lived in. These are, for better or worse, the nutrients in his soil – the exemplars against which he reacted and toward which he modeled. They live in his psychology as much as his story and soul. We must acknowledge where we came from and how we were molded, in order to heal from it and begin to make our lives our own. Just as David’s legacy was not born when he was, but was contained in the wisdom and folly of his ancestors, so David’s legacy did not end when he died. He lived in the psychology and story of Solomon, of his other children, in each person in his family line all the way to Jesus and to us, his theological legacy.
- God’s model of parenthood is not one of controlling outcomes. God does not make sure that Saul or David or Samuel do God’s will no matter what. Rather, God models a certain kind of loving detachment and unconditional love. God lets God’s children make mistakes, follow their own will rather than the will of God. And God continues to love them and guide them.
God’s model of parenthood is planting seeds. Is tilling soil. Is looking at the potential in something small, undeveloped, innocent, and guiding that potential like a trellis.
Just as we hope our fathers don’t give up on us,
and just as I hope, those of you who are fathers do not give up on your children,
and just as those of us who come from broken homes do not give up on our parents,
God does not give up on God’s children.
God models for us the kind of unconditional love which empowers us to break the patterns of sin and shame which we inherited from our families and which we will pass down to our families unless we break that pattern.
How? Well, with some work, certainly. Often with a therapist or a pastoral counselor or a trusted partner, we will have to show up. But how will we get healed? We don’t know. God’s love is a mystery, a miracle. God’s love is, well perhaps its best said by God’s son, Jesus:
“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
May we continue to tend to the plants of our souls, our children’s souls, our parents’ souls, our nation’s soul, and the souls of all those who we encounter. May we continue to plant seeds. And may we continue to marvel how, with the power of God’s love, they grow.
Amen
By: Rev. Julianne Porras-Center
