Father’s Day

Help us O God to know that you bless us even as we ask the question about how to return to you even a portion of what you have given to us. Hear in our asking a longing to respond in a faithful way to all that you have given us. Bless us now, we pray. Amen.

I love this passage from Romans, but it always raises some questions for me. What does Paul mean by justification? What is grace? What do they have to do with you and me? We can hear the words justify and justice in there. We know about graciousness and gratitude, but what do they mean?

On one level, we humans know about justification. We know about it because we have a tendency to justify and rationalize things all the time, especially when we believe a good justification for something will get us out of trouble. We know better, but we do it anyway. “Teacher, the dog ate my homework”, ”my computer crashed,” “Officer, I know I was speeding, but I was running really late, plus I was just keeping up with the flow of traffic”. “It’s not my fault - they made me do it. I was just going along with the crowd.” When we try to justify ourselves, we know deep down that we are just making excuses, so we are not really surprised when we also sometimes feel embarrassed and ashamed.

Thank God, Paul is not making excuses when he talks about justification and grace. He is talking about being made right with God, that is justification. He knows from his own life’s experience, from his episode on the Damascus road, that justification is not an excuse, but an intense experience of being loved and forgiven by God. It really is about God’s ability to take in our whole picture, to know all about us and love and care for us anyway. When we are justified before God, it is as if we have been exonerated, cleared of all charges, set free, healed of the brokenness that keeps us from God. It is to be restored like the Prodigal Son was restored to his family, and like the man born blind and the woman at the well were restored to their communities (Harper’s Bible Dictionary, p. 520). They were all justified, they were made whole and made right again.

We are justified by God and we stand on grace. Grace comes from a Greek word that means delight, joy, happiness, or good fortune. In its Hebrew form, grace comes from the word that means favor. Grace is the divine blessing and mercy of God. Grace is a gift from God.

Grace is all of that plus this; grace is thanksgiving to God. We know that, it is what we are saying when we say grace before a meal. We are simply thanking God for the gift of food and for the people who have set the meal before us.

The other way Paul speaks of grace is to describe it as he does in this letter to the Romans - grace is ultimately God’s favor shown to sinners through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Harper’s Bible Dictionary. 1985, pgs. 357-358).

When you and I were broken, far from God, and out of relationship, we were not, even then outside God’s grace, in fact, God through Christ was available to us and when we reached out to God, we found ourselves restored and renewed. What do we give back - what shall we render in return for the blessings of grace and forgiveness?

What a glorious thing it is for us - what freeing, liberating news it is for us to know that we have access to the favor of God in our lives. Here is a relationship we can boast about to others. Now, I hear you saying, boasting is not good, it is bragging, it calls too much unnecessary attention to ourselves. It’s a conceited, puffed up thing to do, and we were raised never to do it. Besides it is embarrassing and a little shameful. All of that might be true if we were just talking about ourselves and what we’ve accomplished.

I know we are reluctant to talk about ourselves in a self-admiring way, but I believe we can find the balance between talking about ourselves too much and talking about ourselves too little when we focus our boasting. But I join Paul in urging us to boast, to proclaim to talk about our relationship with the One who created us, and kept us all these years and who has given us gifts to share and gifts to receive. I want us to let the world know that we boast because we stand on grace, and live in the hope of sharing in the glory of God. We live in hope. Remember, hope is about our future with God.

Infinite in time and place, flung the stars in burning radiance through the silent fields of space,

(“God Who Stretched The Spangled Heavens” words by Catherine Cameron 1967, Hope Publishing Co. #651, Chalice Hymnal).

If we believe, and I do, that our future is filled with the glory of God, we can begin to live in blessing and favor now. Living with blessing now, boasting in God’s glory now, helps us to deal with some stuff we would rather avoid. No healthy person likes to suffer, after all, suffering can and does lead to depression, anger, and illness. But if the joy and glory of God is in front of us, if we can see and feel it, and hold on till we can grab it, then we can endure. But Paul says boast in it. Do it not because you love the pain, or the loss, or injury, or insult that result in suffering, but because suffering while we maintain our hope in Christ helps us hang on.

If we can endure - if we can hold on and hang in until, if we must let go, it really is the best possible solution for the situation, then we learn perseverance, we learn to keep trying until we are sure we have done all that we can do. How do you know how much you can endure? First you have to go through some stuff. You have to suffer the pain and the ache to know how much you can stand. Then I urge you to trust yourself, trust the counsel of people who love you, and above all trust God to help you endure. Endurance will lead to character.

Our sense of character lets us know who we are whether our lives are going well or not; it is who we are in our deepest selves. Character is who we are when nobody is looking. I had an ethics professor who asked our class one day, “what would you do if you knew you would never get caught?” Would you lie, cheat, steal, or kill? Would you join a criminal gang, or become a bigamist? What would you do? It is a question of character.

When life knocks you down, and it will; the job will end, the loved one will die, the divorce will become final, children and parents will disappoint each other, trust will be betrayed. When it happens to you, will you just lie there, with no thought of recovery? Or do you find yourself eventually getting back up, dusting yourself off, and starting all over again - that’s a character question. When confronted with your own wrongdoing - do you make excuses, or take responsibility, it is a character issue.

Character leads us to hope which does not disappoint us. Nelson Mandela is an example of what I am talking about; he dared to say that the South African policy of legal racial separation was immoral, and a lie that dehumanized its victims. He suffered arrest, he endured prison for nearly thirty years, what he endured strengthened his character. When he got our of prison, he was not bitter, he was resolved to remake his country, and he did. Eventually, he served and retired from a peaceful term as the President of the government that imprisoned him. Hope does not disappoint.

Disappointments such as the ones that knock us down can slow us up; sometimes they stop us cold. But hope that comes from God does not disappoint because of God’s love for us poured into us through the Holy Spirit.

What does that love look like? On this Father’s Day, I believe the love of God in human form looks like the widowed father I read about in the Dispatch last Friday. Recovering from the stroke that prevented him from attending his twin sons’ high school graduation four years ago, he not only encouraged his four children to continue in school, but went back himself. One of the things that kept him going was a saying he heard in the church where he was raised: “Dependency enslaves, education frees.” While his children were in school, he completed his bachelor’s degree, then began work on a master’s program. This year, he received his degree, one daughter graduated from law school, another daughter is in college, and if things went as he planned, he was present in Ohio Stadium this past Friday morning when his sons graduated from OSU. That’s what love and hope can do. That’s what endurance, character, and hope can do.

God’s love looks like my memories of my father who taught me to love baseball, driving, study, debate, and current events. He taught me to appreciate a well kept lawn and a clean car, and how to ride a two wheel bike, to laugh at myself, and how to tell a joke.

I am grateful for all of that, but mostly I am grateful for my father’s faith. It was a deep faith in Christ and the love of God and the church both my parents passed on to us as an inheritance. They lived in hope and passed on their hope and trust in God to us. It is the same hope and trust I share because I know I am loved by God. I want you to know that you are loved by God too.

Ultimately the love of God looks like a cross with Jesus himself. There is God’s own Messiah on it, laying down his life for us not when we were at our highest, but when we were at our lowest, when our hope was gone, our character weak, our endurance depleted, and our suffering really was our own fault. At that moment, when we said the cynics are right, there is no God, Christ died for us.

And by his death and resurrection we have eternal life, our souls are restored, and we find ourselves here, now in this moment filled with hope one more time. Such love requires a response. What shall we return to God for all these blessings?

The song says, “All I can render is my body and my soul, That’s all I can render, that’s all I can give.” (Margaret Pleasant Douroux).

We give our love, our trust, our faith in the future. We declare our love for God and Jesus Christ in a public, worshipful way as we take our place in this household of God and make our offerings of time, talent, and treasure. We give ourselves back for all God has given to us when we share the bread and lift up the cup of salvation. We praise God and say, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor