Sermon for 21.06.20 – Loving like a Father

By The Rev Preb. Marjorie Brown

Today is Fathers’ Day, not a church festival, but for many families a very important celebration each year. Over the past three months of lockdown, I am sure that many fathers have spent more time with your children than would normally be the case. Perhaps you’ve been involved in home schooling. You have probably had to be quite imaginative to help think of entertainments that can be done at home and without the company of your children’s friends, at least until recently. Perhaps you’ve become a creative cook. And it is likely that you have had to juggle all these activities with working from home or continuing to go out to work. 

At the same time, many of you may have been unable to see your father or grandfather because of the government restrictions. It has been a time for valuing the importance of our family connections. 

So it seems rather jarring to read the passage in today’s gospel about divisions in families being caused by choosing to follow Jesus. This is not, by the way, a passage specially chosen for Fathers’ Day – it’s just what happens to be set for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity.

But I think there is something to learn from it. Divisions in families are a fact of life. For many young people they are the first and most important thing that goes wrong for them and for their life chances.

A couple of weeks ago, a book called Crossing the Line by John Sutherland, a retired Chief Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police, was serialized on Radio 4. Each of the five episodes traced the problems in one area of policing – alcohol abuse, domestic violence, mental illness, sexual offences, and the one that really caught my attention, knife crime among young people. The common denominator in all these crimes is that they start with problems in the home environment. 

The episode on knife crime talked about the Adverse Childhood Events that traumatise young people, including various kinds of abuse in the family, and the absence, mental illness or imprisonment of one of the parents. The one universal factor, for every single young person who got involved with knife crime, was a violent atmosphere at home.

The upshot for young people who experience a number of these events is that anger becomes their first response to challenging situations. They become desensitized to violence, preferring numbness to the pain of feeling what they are missing. Neither politicians nor police can solve the problems that result, when young people turn to criminal gangs for the sense of belonging and security that is lacking in their family lives. Only a commitment over many years to their wellbeing by a person who really cares about them has the slightest chance of making a real difference.

You will all recognize that I am describing the approach that has always been the foundation of St Mary’s Youthwork. Our youthworkers know that young people suffer from an epidemic of violence – and that it is a public health crisis, like COVID-19. Violence is contagious, but it can also be treated, and best of all it can be prevented. What is needed is the kind of love for vulnerable children that might well be described as fatherly, whether it is provided by a father, a mother, a youthworker, a teacher, or a community volunteer.

It is the kind of love that Jesus talks about earlier in the gospel passage. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

The message that every single human being needs to hear, from the moment they are born, is “you are loved; you are valued; you matter.” The tragedy is that this message fails to be delivered to countless young people, and it’s not just those who are living in material poverty. Of course anyone who experiences racism or homophobia or transphobia hears some very ugly messages from society. That’s why Black Lives Matter is such an important slogan. You matter, you are valued, is the opposite of the message that is so often conveyed.

But it’s not just those who experience society’s institutional discrimination who need to be assured that their lives are of value. Every single person needs to get this message from birth onwards. It’s not what you accomplish, what you own, what you earn that makes you a valuable human being. You are loved because you are you.

And that is why the Christian gospel is life-changing. Christianity is not a moral code to tell us how to behave. It is not a series of doctrines that we must give assent to. It is a love letter from God the Father of us all.

What does our youthwork offer vulnerable young people? Activities, opportunities, guidance, places of safety, practical help, yes, all of the above. But the main thing our youthworkers provide is unconditional acceptance and love, continuing over years, whatever happens. That is why, although our youthwork programme never tries to convert anyone, we can say that it is rooted in the gospel, the extraordinary love that leaves no one outside.

That is the love that we celebrate on Fathers’ Day. We may have been lucky enough to have received it from our own father or mother or grandparent, or another constant and significant adult in our young lives. If not, we may have felt the loss of it in many painful and long-lasting ways.

We may be in the fortunate position of being able to offer that kind of unconditional love to our own children or grandchildren, or to a vulnerable young person who needs it. We don’t have to be perfect to be adequate parents, thank God. We can make countless mistakes, fail over and over, and still be good enough, if we are constantly able to tell and show our children that they matter, they are valuable, and we love them just because they are who they are.

Some of us will gather by Zoom tonight to discuss the novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and you may have heard me claim that it is my favourite 21st-century novel. I’ve just been reading it for the fifth time and I see no reason to change this judgment. It is a book about fatherhood. It’s a book about forgiveness between generations, and about unconditional love, and about seeing our relationships in the light of God’s love for each of us.

The novel is in the form of a letter written by an ailing old man in small-town Iowa in the 1950s. He is a Congregationalist minister who made a very late marriage and has a young son he knows he will not live to see grow up. He writes to this little boy, in a message to be read long in the future, “I know you will be and I hope you are an excellent man, and I will love you absolutely if you are not.” 

Near the end of the book, reflecting on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, he writes this:

“I am one of those righteous for whom the rejoicing in heaven will be comparatively restrained. And that’s all right. There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal.”

And that’s what Jesus is talking about. The Creator of heaven and earth does not let a tiny sparrow die without his knowledge. That eternal love is real and present in our fleeting lives. We are able to catch hold of that love and share it with our children, both our own flesh and blood and the many young people who have known so little love and acceptance. Through love we can all be healed.

What an extraordinary piece of good news this is. In fact it’s the gospel.