Leaving A Legacy

Matthew 7:7-11

June 20, 2004

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

Before Annie Grace was born, two friends of mine gave me two different books about fathering. The first was given to me by Kaye Hoover, a good friend, who happens to be a veteran children’s minister, and mother and grandmother of four. On the front cover of the book were the words that made up its title: “How to Dad.” Its title tells you what is inside the book. Inside, on its pages, are instructions on how to do certain things, like how to fly a kite, how to teach someone to tie their shoes, and how to put a worm on a fishing line. I will admit that I have not used the book much, but as Annie Grace gets older, I know that I will use the words and diagrams in this book. The second book was given to me by Jeanie Burton, the one time pastor of this church. The two of us worked together for four years and we quickly became friends. The book that she gave me is very different than the one Kaye gave me. The one Jeanie handed me was written by a man with four daughters. The name of his book is The Difference a Daddy Makes. Two of his daughters are in their late twenties, so it is not hard to imagine what you can find on the pages of his book. Inside are his words about his experiences raising four girls. His advice covers everything from what happened when he saw his daughter for the first time to what happened when she drove away for college.

I remembered another book and pulled out my copy of it the other day about fathering. This one was written by comedian and actor Bill Cosby and its title is simply Fatherhood. It was written in 1986 and its wisdom still rings true. I recommend it to you. As you might imagine, Cosby’s book is a humorous look at things that he learned along the way. Let me share a vignette from his book. Bill writes, “Now that my father is a grandfather, he cannot wait to give money to my kids. When I was a kid and asked him for fifty cents, he would tell me the story of his life. He would tell me that when he was seven, he would get up at four o’clock in the morning and walk twenty-three miles to milk ninety cows. The farmer for whom he worked did not have a bucket, so he had to squirt the milk into his hand and then walk eight miles to the nearest can. And for this, he earned five cents a month. Bill says that the end result was that he never got fifty cents from his father. But now, when his grandchildren walk into the house, this man says, ‘Well, let’s see how much money old Granddad has got for his wonderful kids.’” Bill writes that the minute they take money from his father’s hands, he calls them over to him, snatches it from them, and says, “That’s my money!” I now wonder what Bill Cosby would have written after hearing of the death of his son. You may remember that happening in the winter of 1997. Three books from three very different authors taking varied approaches to what it means to father.

Well, today is Father’s day. By now you do not need reminding of that. Your dad may have already opened the shirt and tie that you picked out yesterday at Dillard’s or Stein Mart. If you will let me this morning, I would like to preach a different kind of sermon. In it, I would like to say a word about how important it is for men to take a vital role in the lives of their sons and daughters and in young people in the church. I will admit that it is only recently that I have come to realize how important this is. I should have realized it a long time ago. I should have understood it way back when I was in seminary. All three years that I lived in Dallas I worked in an after school care program at the University Park United Methodist Church. A friend of mine worked there and encouraged me to apply. So I went there and met Mary Lange, the director of the program. She hired me on the spot. Her words of instruction to me were these, “I want you to drive a van and when you get back here, I want you to play on the playground and in the gym with our boys.” Mary did not spell it out for me, but I should have known what she was trying to tell me. She was trying to tell me that there was a population of six and seven, eight and nine year olds whose main male influence was going to be me in the afternoons, when they came to that church, to our program. So our work, our ministry, in the church, men, and might I also say women, with our kids and children in this church and in our lives, is so important. Let me say two different things to you this morning using three scripture lessons.

Here is the first. We must connect with God in order to help our children and the children of this church. It is hard to teach, to live and to model what we do not already have. Someone wiser than me has observed that our children get their view of God from their fathers. The way they are treated by their fathers, the way hat fathers speak to their children plays an important role in that child’s understanding of God. That is why one prominent preacher in our conference admitted in a sermon that he found it hard to pray the Lord’s Prayer because his earthly father was not a wonderful man. That is the reason that on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, we pray the prayer that we do. We pray for those who have been good father to us. We pray for those who have not been good fathers to us. And we pray for those men in our churches who have been fathers to us. Consider this, if a parent is critical, then a child thinks of God as judgmental. If a parent is neglectful, then that child concludes that God does not care.

Look at our first scripture lesson this morning, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. These words are in Matthew’s gospel. Listen again to these words about prayer, “Ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you...” These words speak about prayer, but they can also say a word to us about how we ought to perceive God. “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?” In this passage, Jesus is encouraging us to replace hesitant and bashful prayers with bold and venturesome ones. Jesus is concerned that we will see God as punitive, as a Lord who is as ready to curse as he is to bless; maybe even to think of God as a lion who is ready to pounce and so we tiptoe lightly around the lion’s den. Jesus insists that God is not this way, but instead is like a loving parent who promises to give good gifts to those who seek him in prayer. In another place, Jesus teaches that we can call God “Abba.” Translated the word Abba means father, but what it really means is da-da. That is a good lesson. Jesus insists that God is not this way, but is instead like a loving parent, who promises to give good gifts to those who seek him in prayer. Jesus also says this, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children...” We can stop the lesson right there. That is not a flattering word, is it? There is truth in it, though. We know that we are not perfect as parents. We know that we make mistakes, that we misjudge situations, and that sometimes we do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. One of the basic teachings of the church is that we sin. This means that we will not parent perfectly. Do not let that get you. Listen to what else the passage says. It also says that though we are sinners, we still know how to give good gifts to our children. One of the greatest gifts that we can give to our children is the gift of our relationship with God.

Which leads me to the second thing that I would like to say to you this morning. Besides connecting with God ourselves, we need to help our children connect with God. At some point we all come to the realization that life is hard, that life is not just about us and that there is.... something greater that we are to give our lives to. Let us look at our second scripture lesson for this morning. It is a famous verse in the little known apocryphal book, The Wisdom of Sirach. The first line of the forty-fourth chapter reads, “Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers in their generation.” For Jewish men, the fathers in their generation meant the heritage, the tradition that they passed on to their children. So, the father was the latest in a long line of fathers that extended four thousand years now, back to Abraham. The immediate image a child had was his dad, so maybe it was a picture of a frail and flawed man. The wise father called in the troops. He showed his child not just him, but the fathers in their generation. What that means is that he told the stories of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and David. He told the stories of the prophets and all the heroes of the faith. He told the stories so that their lives as well as his own life would be an example for the children. The book of Hebrews puts it this way, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses...” These men, these great men, all had fault and frailties. They were sinners, but also heroes. I like the way that these stories are told. These biblical stories are realistic. Abraham tried to pass off his wife as his sister, not once but

a couple of times and yet the lesson is taught that we have a purpose and that we are in a covenant relationship with God. This is the God that we are to give our entire lives to. Can I put it this way, what we must give our children is a spiritual heritage. We must pass this along to them. It used to be that sons followed in their father’s footsteps. They did the things, vocationally that their dads did. Today sometimes they do and sometimes they do not. When they do not, their fathers feel as if they have nothing to pass along to their sons. Fathers must pass along a spiritual heritage.

My dad, raised with traditional worship, gave his whole life to teaching music and playing the organ and directing choirs in a service like this. He and I have talked. He is concerned with contemporary worship. I understand his concern. He says this to me, “There is a whole generation that is missing traditional church music and some of the great hymns of the faith.” My dad is right. I am concerned about contemporary worship, too, but for a different reason. I have served a church where children are dropped off in Sunday School while parents go to such a worship service. When Sunday School and the service is over, the family goes home, never worshiping together. The times that I have sat in a pew with my father are few. When I grew up, dad’s place was in the loft, near the choir. I sat next to my mother in church. But still, I remember getting up on Sunday morning, getting dressed, getting in the car, and coming to the church with my parents. It is something that Annie Grace will never experience.

Worship, friends, is important. Worship is where the heritage is rehearsed and celebrated, year after year, Sunday after Sunday, week after week. Worship is where a parent can get help from those sitting around them and from the people of faith whose stories are scripture. I know this. Sometimes a mother has to be a mother and a father. Sometimes a father has to be a father and a mother. That is not new. That has been around for a long time. So that if there was not a father in the home, children still had fathers in the heritage and men in the congregation who helped them along the journey. So if there was not a mother in the home, children still had mothers in the faith and women in the congregation who helped them along the journey. Please, let me say this to you this morning. If you are trying to be a role model for your children and for children in this church, you are carrying a burden that is too heavy for anyone to carry alone. In attempting to do so, and this gets to the heart of the problem in being a parent, you will be tempted to be dishonest and to hide your faults, a task that gets a little harder the older children get. A better example is that of a father who has the freedom to be himself, and to lift up the example of the fathers in their generation. He holds up images of greatness from the biblical story and from men in the church and he gives those to his children.

Let me close with this. I heard of a newspaper writer who wrote about his dad one Father’s Day. His dad was not important in the community. His life was not illustrious. His life was simple and hard. But on Father’s day, he praised his father for what he had meant to him. And he finished the article with these words, “He was not a great man, but he was the best man he could possibly be.” There is no great legacy that we can give our children. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Kaye Hoover and Jeanie Burton for the books on fathering. Special thanks to my father whose spiritual heritage was passed along to me. Special thanks to those who have fathered me, guided me, and prayed for me, both related to me and in my family of faith. I hope to pass a legacy on to my child and the children in this church).