Joseph: The Story of Reputation

The First Presbyterian Church of Hemet

Why We Celebrate Father's Day

Dr. Larry Thorson
June 20, 2010

Romans 5:6-8

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Happy Father's Day. This American born idea for an official Father’s Day celebration originally came to a grown daughter, listening to a sermon in a church in Spokane, Washington on Mother’s Day in 1910-two years after the first Mother’s Day observance in West Virginia.

Sonora Smart Dodd heard in that Mother's Day sermon many of the ways mothers make sacrifices for their children. But it dawned on her that in her own family, it had been her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, who had done the sacrificing by raising herself and five sons alone, following the early death of his wife in childbirth. For Sonora Dodd, the hardships her father had endured on their eastern Washington farm called to mind the unsung feats of fathers everywhere.

So she proposed a local Father’s Day celebration and it received strong support from the town’s ministers and members of the Spokane YMCA. She suggested her father's birthday of June 5 as a date for Father's Day but that was only three weeks away and the ministers didn't think that would give them enough time to get sermons ready so they moved it to the nineteenth of June.

Newspapers across the country, already endorsing the need for a national Mother’s Day, carried stories about this unique Spokane observance and interest in Father’s Day increased. Among the first notables to support Sonora Dodd’s idea nationally was the orator and political leader William Jennings Bryan, who also backed Mother’s Day. Believing that fathers shouldn't be slighted, he wrote to Sonora Dodd saying, "too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the relation between parent and child."

Father’s Day, however, was not so quickly accepted as Mother’s Day. Members of the all-male Congress felt that a move to proclaim the day official might be interpreted as a self-congratulatory pat on the back.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson and his family personally observed the day. And in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that states, if they wished, should hold their own Father’s Day observances. He wrote to the nation’s governors that "the widespread observance of this occasion is calculated to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children, and also to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations."

Many people attempted to secure official recognition for Father’s Day. One of the most notable efforts was made in 1957, by Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who wrote forcefully to Congress that "Either we honor both our parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one. But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable."

Eventually, in 1972-sixty-two years after it was proposed-Father’s Day was permanently established by President Richard Nixon. Historians seeking an ancient precedent for an official Father’s Day observance have come up with only one: The Romans, every February, honored fathers-but only those deceased.[1] In America today, Father’s Day is the fifth-largest card-sending occasion, with about 85 million greeting cards exchanged.

Recognizing, honoring and challenging fathers is important because one of the chief predictors of youth crime is the role of the father in the home. Seventy percent of adolescents charged with murder and seventy percent of long-term prison inmates are from fatherless homes. Children who live absent their biological father are at least two to three times more likely to be poor, use drugs, be victims of child abuse and to engage in criminal behavior. Twenty-four million children live absent their biological fathers and forty percent of those children have not seen their father at all during the past year.[2] [1] Fatherhood is obviously very important and many of you have been outstanding fathers and even father-in-laws to your children.

Sue Monk Kidd was telling the story of Jonah to her six-year-old vacation Bible school class, and the children fell into a discussion about how they would manage to escape if swallowed like Jonah. "I'd start a fire in the whale's stomach, and he'd cough me out!" declared one fellow, no doubt remembering the scene from Pinocchio.
"I'd stomp on his tongue till he spit me out," said another. The suggestions grew wilder by the minute. Suddenly, a thoughtful little girl spoke up: "I'd call my daddy and wait till he got me out."[3] Now there's a young lady who is very fortunate. She has learned to trust her Dad. I was fortunate like that young lady. I believed that my dad could fix anything from bicycle chains to lawnmowers to lunchbox handles. So it wasn't very hard for me when I grew up to believe that my heavenly Father could fix anything I asked.

Unfortunately not everyone had a father like that. In fact the picture of God as a father is sometimes painful for people to grasp. If God is a father like their abusive and/or elusive father who always breaks his promises then they don't want anything to do with that kind of God. Interestingly, the decline in church attendance across America coincides with the increase in fatherless homes.

So we celebrate Father's Day in church partially to honor all those dads living or now deceased who did the fathering thing right. They were there for their kids. They loved their kids' mother. They tried the best they could. We honor those dads today.

We also celebrate Father's Day partially to set the picture straight of what God the Father is like. He is no deadbeat dad. The picture that the New Testament gives us of God is as a loving Father. And the picture the New Testament gives us of humanity is of a wayward child. And the result of that waywardness and that love is the cross of Jesus Christ.
God, Jesus tells us, is like the father of a boy who takes his inheritance to a far country and spends in riotous living. Back home his father waits and worries and hopes and prays. There's nothing else that can be done except wait. Most of you probably remember that story Jesus told of the Prodigal Son. God is a waiting parent, Jesus told us, waiting for the wayward child to come home.

The Apostle Paul in our Scripture reading today describes a godly Father when he wrote to his young church at Rome that was struggling with their picture of God as a loving and forgiving father. He wrote...”You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

In other words Paul was saying we don't have to prove our self to be accepted by this father. “While we were still sinners...” means acceptance. What's missing in a lot of people's lives today is acceptance by their earthly father.

        There was a woman dying of AIDS when a visiting priest attempted to comfort her to no avail. "I am lost," she said, "I ruined my life and every life around me. Now I go painfully to hell. There is no hope for me."
        The priest saw a framed picture of a pretty girl on the dresser. "Who is this?" he asked. The woman brightened. "She is my daughter, the one beautiful thing in my life." "And would you help her if she was in trouble, or made a mistake? Would you forgive her? Would you still love her?"
"Of course I would!" cried the woman, "I would do anything for her! Why do you ask such a question?" "Because I want you to know," said the priest, "that God has a picture of you on His dresser."
        Do you believe that? I guess it depends on what kind of God you have.
I read of a man who frequently dreamed that God ran after him with a paper in his hand. All his life he ran from God, for he believed that paper contained a warrant for his arrest. After accepting Christ as his savior, the man said that now, looking back on his dream, he realized the paper was not a warrant for his arrest, but a pardon for his sins.[4] It depends on what kind of God you have. The God Jesus revealed to us is a God who patiently waits for His wayward children to come back home.
        From time to time we hear of a father who says to his child, "You are no longer my child." That cannot happen with God the Father.
        James W. Moore tells about a little boy, David Leroy, who got in trouble in a small town in Louisiana. His dad, who owned the grocery store in that little town, had saved money for years, and the family had just purchased a brand new 1928 Buick. It was their prize possession.
        Even though David Leroy was only eleven years old at the time, he loved to drive the car around in the yard. He would move it from one shady spot to the next in the yard of the old home place.
        One morning, David Leroy's mother announced that she needed to take some clothes to the cleaners. "I'll move the car around front for you, Mom," said David Leroy, and then, quick as a flash, he was out the door before his mom could protest.
        David Leroy was so excited as he rushed to bring the car out that he forgot to close the car door, and as he backed out, the open door smacked against the garage, the door ripped completely off and fell with a sickening thud to the ground! Can you imagine? David Leroy had knocked the door off their brand new 1928 Buick! Understandably his mother was not happy!
        David Leroy's dad arrived home just in time for dinner but for some reason the young man just didn't have an appetite. Rather, he stood sheepishly out of sight, just outside the door of the kitchen, and listened as his mother told his dad what had happened.
        David Leroy was braced and ready, expecting the worst; but to his amazement, he was surprised by his father's response: "Well, you're right, Ruby. The car is precious to me, but not as precious as David Leroy. Just as you said, he didn't mean to do it. He was trying to help. We can get the car fixed. The main thing is that no one got hurt. He's our son, and he must feel awful right about now. We just need to love him through this." What do you think happened to David Leroy? He grew up to become one of the great southern television preachers of America, Dr. D.L. Dykes.[5]
        When Dr. Dykes reminisced about that episode, he said: "Mom interceded for me, and Dad forgave me. The way my parents responded that day touched me more deeply than I could ever describe. I learned from them that day something of what God is like. I learned from them that day the meaning of grace " and it is, indeed, amazing."(6) Do your children know about amazing grace because they have experienced it in your family? I hope so but even if your kids are grown and you don't see them much, you can still show them what your heavenly father is like.

We celebrate Father's Day in the church to honor all those dads who did or are doing the parenting thing right. If your dad is still around tell him how he did it right for you. If he's already moved on to the next life, tell God how much you appreciate what your dad did for you and then try listing some of the ways he did.

We also celebrate Father's Day in the church to remind ourselves how a real father, our Heavenly Father acts. Your earthly father may have struggled and he may have fouled up raising you and may even continue to do so today, but he like you and me are just sinners fallen short of what God wants for our life. Our Heavenly Father is not a fallen sinner and waits with open arms any and every time we stray. Today, will you open your heart and invite Jesus back into your life in prayer?

[1] Www.wikepia.org – article on the history of Father's Day

[2] From “Wayward Children” a sermon prepared by King Duncan as found in www.esermons.com

[5] Some Things Are Too Good Not to be True, (Nashville: Dimensions for Living, 1994).