HOPEFUL DADS

Text: Malachi 4:1-6

 June 19, 2005, Dave Philips

 

 

            Back in September of 1992 an important cultural event took place in our country: the season premiere of the television sitcom, Murphy Brown.  Earlier in the year, you may remember, Murphy Brown, the heroine of the sitcom, chose to become a mother out of wedlock.  Vice President Dan Quayle decided to take Murphy Brown on.  He objected to Murphy Brown’s choosing to become a mother out of wedlock, criticizing the television program for “mocking the importance of fathers.” 

            It’s always chancy to get into a fight with a fictional character, and Dan Quayle lost this one on points.  The media moguls went mad.  Dan Quayle, they said,  was legalistic, moralistic, and arrogant for saying such a thing!  Candice Bergen, star of the show, rebuked Dan Quayle on the Murphy Brown season premiere for his “painfully unfair” remarks about the necessity of fathers, and she reminded her viewers that “families come in all shapes and sizes.”  For this Bergen got an Emmy and an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  The Washington Post on the day of the Murphy Brown premiere wrote a front-page article asserting that “a searching reevaluation by social scientists” has shown that “the consequences of the absent fathers” on children “have been overstated.”¹

            However, in 1993, too late to save Dan Quayle’s bid for the presidency, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled, “Dan Quayle Was Right.”  In it Ms. Whitehead pointed out that “according to a growing body of social-scientific evidence, children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures of well-being. Children in single-parent families are six times as likely to be poor. They are also likely to stay poor longer. Twenty-two percent of children in one-parent families will experience poverty during childhood for seven years or more, as compared with only two percent of children in two parent families.” 

            Even Murphy Brown herself, i.e. actress Candice Bergen, has admitted that she was wrong and Quayle was right (although I don’t believe she returned her honorary degree to the University of Pennsylvania!).  Most of us know what we have always known as plain common sense among civilized people: fathers are important!  Many of us Americans have grown up in single parent families.  Many of us are currently single parents.  My hat is off to single moms and dads who are rearing their children and doing a great job without the support of a spouse.  Being a single parent is a tough life, sometimes the only option in an impossible marriage.  But everything I’m reading these days indicates that the large majority of us -- if we had the choice -- would prefer to be rearing our children with the support of a responsible and loving spouse.

            So, hurray for all the dads here this morning, whether you are married, divorced, or widowed, who are taking your responsibilities to your children seriously.  Your kids need you, your church needs you, and our society needs you.

            Seems to me we’re in the midst of teachable moment in the American family these days.  Nobody but Archie Bunker is interested in being the mean spirited, narrow minded, patriarchal type of dad that we knew from the years of the Great Depression and World War II.  On the other hand, who among us actually aspires to be the weak, deadbeat dad who deserts his family and leaves them to their own devices?

            We Christians have an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate the biblical model of fatherhood that is modeled neither after Archie Bunker nor Ray Barone.  The biblical model of fatherhood is something that we have learned from God, his apostles and prophets, and supremely from Jesus Christ.

            I’ve entitled my sermon “Hopeful Dads” to underline the optimism that we Christians have good reason to feel.  I’d like to highlight three powerful father figures we encounter in our scripture lesson this morning, all of them with potential problems in their male self-images, all of them transcending those problems by the power of God. As I highlight these three powerful men, I’ll also point out three things we Christian fathers can reasonably expect from our Christian faith:  first, answers; second, encouragement; and third, power.

 

ANSWERS

 

            We can expect answers.  Remember  Lucy’s attitude when she’s giving psychiatric help to Charlie Brown.  Lucy says to Charlie, “You know what your trouble is?  The whole trouble with you, Charlie Brown, is that you’re you!” 

            “Well,” says Charlie Brown, “What in the world can I do about that?”

            “I don’t pretend to be able to give advice,” Lucy replies, “I merely point out the problem.”

            God does more than point out our problems with fatherhood.  God gives us answers.  The Lord says through Malachi, “Remember the law [remember the Torah, the instruction] of my servant, Moses; the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.” Moses typifies for us the man with the answers. Moses, the lawgiver. But better to say, “Moses, the law receiver, because it is God who gives the Torah, the instruction, to Moses.  The Torah was not Moses’ invention, it was God’s word for successful human life.

            Friends, nothing I have seen or read or experienced in the last forty years during which we have passed through a major social revolution has made me think that those biblical answers need to be revised.  We need to interpret them afresh to each generation even as they have had to be interpreted to every generation from the beginning, including to Moses’ generation.  What the law given to Moses upholds is the ideal of a strong family where all the members of the family: father, mother, and children, are treated with respect and love.  What the law given to Moses upholds is a society where there are humane standards and people are expected to be responsible.

            Moses, let’s remember, was not the most powerful male ever to come down the pike.  He was taken from his parents in infancy and lacked the security of a normal home.  He was raised with the other court brats of Pharaoh’s palace, he was known to be a foreigner and an outsider, when he came into manhood he didn’t know how to express his manhood appropriately. The Bible tells us that he coped with his problems either by extreme aggression -- as when he killed the Egyptian who was persecuting his fellow Israelites -- or extreme passivity -- as when he ran away from the authorities in Egypt and hid in the desert for most of his adult life.

            I read a sad interview given by Sparky Anderson who once coached the Cincinnati Reds to a world championship.  When his son began to wear his hair in a ponytail, Sparky demanded that he cut it.  His son refused.  Sparky persisted, and his son continued stubbornly to refuse.  Finally, when Sparky realized he would lose his temper and become violent with his son, he backed off completely with the parting words, “Some day you’ll respect me.”

            “I already do respect you,” his son replied.

            That was the last communication between Sparky Anderson and his son for the next year.  Sparky could see no middle ground.  He felt he either had to be violent with his son or to leave him completely alone.  Sparky’s comment on the situation: “I wasn’t man enough to father my son.”

            Zsa Zsa Gabor had a withering observation on the macho man.  “Macho,” she said, “does not prove mucho!”  Most macho men I’ve met are either all aggressiveness, or else they passively run away from their responsibilities. 

            That’s Moses before he began to listen to God’s word.  That’s us guys when we don’t pay attention to God.  But any male with feelings of inadequacy can become stronger by paying attention to the answers in God’s Word.  Any father who feels overwhelmed with his responsibilities can become a stronger father by aspiring to be like the Heavenly Father that we know through scripture.

            Dads, whether you’re young or old, develop that expectant attitude.  The answers are there waiting to be discovered.  They’re tough answers to be sure. To paraphrase Chesterton, it’s not that these answers have been tried and found wanting.  They’ve been found difficult and left untried.  But for all their difficulty, they’re real answers.  They work!  So read your Bibles and check them out!

 

ENCOURAGEMENT

 

            The second thing we can expect from our faith as dads is encouragement.  A Presbyterian elder from Texas told me a great Texas story: as the deer and the antelope were playing on the Texas plain, a huge herd of buffalo was charging along optimistically behind their fearless leader, when suddenly the lead buffalo planted his feet and came to a full stop.  Naturally, there was a horrendous pileup as the whole herd crashed into the lead buffalo.  They picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and then they said to the lead buffalo, “What’s the matter? Why did you stop?”  He replied, “I thought I just heard a discouraging word!”

            Dads, there are lots of discouraging words about fatherhood floating around in our culture. But let’s be suspicious of an attitude that can find a million problems with American fatherhood but nothing encouraging.  The Lord says through Malachi, “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”²  

            I want to remind you that the heart in ancient Israel meant not just the emotions but the mind as well.  So, what God is promising when he says that Elijah will turn the hearts of the children to their fathers and the hearts of the fathers to their children  is a revolution not only in our emotions but also in our thinking.  God promises to give us a new heart and a new mind so we can think clearly about what it means to be a Christian family.

            Elijah is the second powerful father figure I see in this passage.  Elijah is the great encourager of his people.  Remember Elijah?  He’s the one who faced down the king and 450 prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel.  But we need to remember, Elijah had a few problems with his own male self image.  He’s the macho man when he’s facing the King and 450 prophets, but when one woman, Queen Jezebel, says, “I’m gonna get you!” he runs away to the desert and prays to the Lord, “O Lord, take away my life.”³

            But God says to him, “Elijah!  What are you doing?  You’ve got 7,000 men on your side in Israel.  And I’m on your side.  You can do what I’m asking you to do!”  And Elijah takes courage and comes out of hiding.

            Christian dads, it’s time to come out of the closet.  Don’t be afraid of what your neighbors might think of you.  Just do the right thing.  You’ve got the answers!   Nothing magic happened on that Murphy Brown show that made you obsolete.  On the contrary.  The social scientists are catching up with what that revolutionary document, the Bible, has taught for centuries: dads, you’re important!  So, if you’re important, be what you are!

            Furthermore, this is a golden age of resources for Christian dads.  Meaty, substantial, interesting books and films dealing with the how-to’s of fatherhood are readily available in bookstores.  God has not left himself without a witness.  There are thousands of witnesses to the power of God in the home who continue to encourage us in our roles as dads.  We’ve got answers in the word of God and encouragement from the Holy Spirit, our Helper. 

 

POWER

 

            Finally, we can expect power from our faith.   The third powerful father figure in our scripture lesson is not mentioned by name.  He is there by anticipation.  This last prophetic book of the Old Testament cries out for the coming the Messiah, of Jesus.  Malachi describes him in the third chapter: “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”⁴  Jesus is that messenger of the covenant that Malachi prophesies and Elijah announces.

            But Jesus, a father figure?  He never had children of his own.  And did you ever think that Jesus might have had potential problems with his male self image?  He was rumored to be illegitimate.  We hear nothing about his father after Jesus’ bar mitzvah, and tradition tells us that Joseph, Jesus’ stepfather, died while Jesus was still a youth.  Jesus had a very strong mother, a Jewish mother, of course, who could have smothered and dominated him.

            But something else was operating in Jesus’ life than sociology.  He was in touch with his Heavenly Father.  Are you remembering that we probably wouldn’t call God our Heavenly Father except for Jesus?  There are only a handful of references to God as a Father in the Old Testament compared to 267 references in the New Testament.

            And the kind of power Jesus teaches us as dads is not the kind of macho power that pushes people around and always gets its way.  That’s not Jesus!  Instead, the power Jesus teaches dads is the kind he learned from his Heavenly Father, the kind that he himself lived. Remember his toughness when he faces down a murderous mob intent on throwing him off a cliff.  Remember his tenderness when he deals with the woman taken in the act of adultery.  Remember his persistent loyalty when he said to his frightened disciples, “I will not leave you as orphans.⁵  I am always going to be with you, to the end of the world.”⁶

            Jesus is my kind of guy.  He’s like an oak:  flexible in the storms of life, but firmly rooted and immovable in the ground where he was planted which is the ground of being.  That’s the way I want to be as a man in Christ: with answers, encouragement, and power to be the kind of dad my children still need.