The Sixth Word: "Father"

photo by Chema Concellon / flickr

Some poet wrote words that I think are appropriate for today. Listen:

“Did Mary make a birthday cake

For Christ when he was small,

And think the while she frosted it,

How quickly boys grow tall?

Did Joseph carve some foolish thing

From extra bits of wood,

An ox, a camel, or a bird,

Because the Christ was good?

Oh, sometimes years are very long,

And sometimes years run fast,

And when the Christ had put away

Small, earthly things at last

And died upon a wooden cross

One afternoon in spring

Did Mary find the little toy,

And sit…remembering?”

Slumped there at the foot of the cross, leaning on the disciple John I think Mary remembered when Jesus spoke from the Cross: “Father, into your hands I commend my

photo by Katrina Cole / flickr

spirit.”Today we have taught our children: “Now I lay me down to sleep…”But in Jesus’ day little Jewish boys were taught another going-to-sleep prayer. Mary’s heart must have turned over. For she had taught little Jesus a prayer at bed-time. Do you know  what not was? “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” She would alway remember that the last thing he had said she had taught him. 

So the last word that came down from the cross was: “Father…” Did Mary remember when Jesus was twelve and they lost him?She and Joseph were so frantic. And they finally found him in the temple with the religious officials. And they said, “Why are you here—we were so afraid.” And Jesus said: “I must be about my Father’s business.” 

Father—a word that would be a thread that runs through the whole story. At his baptism, at the beginning of his ministry there was that word again. As he was baptized the Father said: “This is my beloved son…” And Jesus whispered back: “Father…” Early on he taught his disciples to pray. He said, “Our Father…” Or that time when Mary and Joseph came to bring him home. People were saying terrible things about him and his parents wanted to protect him. He said the strangest thing about other brothers and other sisters and even a larger family—and another Father. There toward the end when he gathered his disciples in that Upper Room—do you remember what he said, :”Let not your heart be troubled…in my Father’s house are many mansions…” And then: “I am going away but the Father will send you a comforter—the Holy Spirit to be with you forever.” But he kept saying that word over and over.  That dark night in Gethsemane when he prayed for that awful cup of suffering to pass—what did he say? He said Father. But he used the term of great endearment when he prayed: “Abba,” he said. It meant Papa. “Papa take this cup from me.” And John said, “Mary did you hear what Jesus called God? Papa.” And then dying on a cross—our Lord’s time had run out. There was no other place to go. And he prayed, ”Father…Father…into your hands I commit my spirit.” He was like a child calling out to a parent in the dark. 

We can’t get away from this word, Father. Oh I know some fathers are lousy fathers. I know there are dead-beat Dads. Some are abusive fathers. Mean and cruel. I know there are absentee fathers. I know all that. So many with pursed lips say we can’t use this term Father any more. It diminishes the picture of God. If God is like my Father, they say, God help me. But let us come back to the cross—and listen to the words of Jesus there at the end. There is another Father—an eternal Father strong to save, who saves us from the restless waves. Who saves us from all the perils of the sea. From every perils of the sea.

Of course he said that God was like a mother hen that gathers together her brood and loves and protects them. God is like a mother. But when we bow our heads before sleep comes…we remember he taught us to say: “Our Father…,our Father in heaven.” And when we come here on Sundays after a week of hard work and worries and just tired. We bow our heads and we say it together—for we all belong to him. We are all members of his family. We pray like he taught us to say, “Our Father…”

The phrase is a word of trust. Maybe call it faith. But Jesus had bet his life on the providence of God. “I have meat that you know not of… He gave himself over to the will of the father and so there at the end it was all he had to say. “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Sculpture by George Grey Banard
Speed Museum, Louisville, KY

What else is there to say? I told you last week about a funeral I just had. John was 34 years old. He has struggled with addiction for years and years. His parents had done everything they knew to do. And because I had known him since he was a little boy and I always loved him—they asked me to give the meditation at his service. What was there to say? And this is what I said: “We remember the story of a stubborn, stubborn boy that took his father’s money and left home in a huff. He said he’d never be back again. Thank God those days were over. The Father of course tried to hold him back. Nothing worked. And so the old Father every day would ask over and over: “I wonder where he is. I wonder if he is OK. I wonder if he is safe.” Night after night the father tossed and turned. The boy had broken his heart. But one day when the boy’s money was gone and he was starving and nobody would take him in—in desperation and shame—he turned back down that road he hoped he would never see again. Barefooted. In rags. Nearly naked. Skinny and dirty. Ashamed and broken. Smelling of cheap beer. But we know the rest of that story. The old Father ran to meet him. And he would not even let his son finish his confession. He put his gnarled hands on the boy’s face and just looked at him. Just looked at him. And the old Father just opened his arms and took him in. And he turned to his servants and said: “Bring the best robe. Bring good sandals. Bring him a ring —he lost the last one or pawned it. But another ring for it says he is my son. And let’s have a feast—a great feast.”  And the old man remembered the boy’s favorite foods. “Fried chicken. Potato salad. Macaroni and cheese. Homemade rolls. Banana pudding and Red velvet cake. Set the table with the best silver for this my son was dead and now is alive.” Who wouldn’t want a father like that? 

From beginning to end the book there is this word: Father. And we people of faith hang on to it like a life-raft—or should. Where else is there to go. When we slosh through every day. When we face the hard, hard things of life. When we have nothing to say in the face on injustice and suffering. When the world is just too much for us. Jesus taught us that the only word for good times and bad is this wonderful word: Father.  

No one captures this word from the cross better than Victor Hugo in his classic, Les Miserables. The story has stirred millions. It is the tale of little Cosette who is scared and lonely.

Cosette is alone and in the dark that she so dreaded. She strained at the bucket that she was forced to carry. She was quite unaware of the event that would change her life forever. 

“She had only one thought, to fly; too fly with all her might, across woods, across fields, to houses, to windows, to lighted candles. Her eyes fell upon the bucket…She grasped the handle with both hands. She could hardly lift the bucket.

She went a dozen steps in this manner, but the bucket was full, it was heavy, she was compelled to rest it on the ground…She walked bending forward head down, like an old woman: the weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her arms.

                                  .                     .               .               .                  .

Arriving near an old chestnut tree which she knew…,the poor little despairing thing could not help crying: ‘Oh! my God! my God!’

At that moment she felt all at once that the weight of the bucket was gone. A hand, which seemed enormous to her, had just caught the handle, and was carrying it easily. She raised her head. A large dark form, straight and erect, was walking beside her in the gloom. It was a man who had come up behind her and whom she had not heard. This man, without saying a word, had grasped the handle of the bucket she was carrying.

                          .                      .                     .                   .                     .

There are instincts for all the crises of life. The child was not afraid.”*

Later, Hugo writes, the child learned to call him father and knew him by no other name.

Is it any wonder that there, toward the end when it was almost over—he said the word he had been using all his life. “Father…into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Let us use it too.

photo by gato-gato-gato / flickr

*Carlyle Marney, Faith in Conflict, (Abingdon, Nashville, 1957) p.42

(This sermon was preached on Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018 at the First Presbyterian Church, Pendleton, SC)

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com