Father's Day 2003 | Matthew 23:1-11

*Preached at Grace North Church June 15, 2003.*

When I was about thirteen years old I was playing in the front yard with another boy from the neighborhood. My Dad was doing yard work at the same time, and I was not aware of the degree to which my activity was being monitored. The other boy and I took to "wrastling," as we called it, and before long things had gotten a little out of hand. My opponent was obviously not of the "uncle" school of wrastling, and as it got rougher, I began to get scared.

I should have been scared, but not of the other kid. I looked up to see that my father was witnessing this bit of rough sport, and he was not pleased. I'd been calling "uncle" and the other boy was not relenting. This was not how the game was played, and my protests were becoming shrill. This no doubt irritated my father greatly. I had always had the sense that he was ashamed of me, that I was too much of a "sissy" for him. I tried to play baseball and other sports, because I knew that it would please him, but I was invariably terrible at all of them. My boyhood world revolved around fantasy literature and Tchaikovsky, not football and track.

My father loved sports and other typically "guy" things, but was asthmatic as a child and was not able to participate. He had hoped to enjoy such things through his son, but unfortunately, his son was not very cooperative. He was not interested in anything that I had any native talent in, and I had no native talent for any of his interests. It was a very difficult stalemate for us, and I believe that much of this frustration came to the surface on this day when I was "wrastling" on the lawn.

To my great horror, he came and stood over us, and issued his command. "Hit him," he told me. I was horrified at this, and instantly felt paralyzed. "Punch him in the face," my father insisted, "Or I'll give you a whipping." Now I was really between a rock and a hard place. Here I was wresting a boy that I knew to be a bit of a bully. I did not want to engender his wrath, or I feared being set upon on the way home from the bus stop by him and his friends. But I also did not want to anger my father further. I certainly did not want a whipping.

But when it came right down to it, I found I could not hit the other kid simply because I did not know how. I had never hit anyone in my life, had received no instruction in boxing or martial arts. I had no clue what I was doing. And so I just stood there, until my father told the other kid to go home. The kid was mad, and disappointed, because he looked like he was itching for a fight, even if he was a little nervous about my father standing right there.

It was the last whipping I ever received, and I remember that I did not think that it hurt very much. Not because my father was holding back, but because I was more focused on how ridiculous it felt to be spanked at that age, and my feelings of injustice at the whole affair.

Now, I have very fond feelings for my father, this incident aside, but it is true that my dad is kind of limited in the range of emotions he allows himself to express. He is a largely stoic character. He is quick to show strength, courage, and anger, but the softer emotions are a bit of a problem for him. Expressing sadness, or affection, or approval, or sentimentality, or even contentment is a bit of a challenge.

This is largely due, I think, to the kind of environment my dad grew up in. His parents were of a generation that were told by their doctors and religious leaders that being too soft on a child would weaken him, and that one ought not show affection in the home. My grandparents tried to be good parents, utilizing the prevailing wisdom in child rearing of their day. My grandmother is repentant today, but the damage has been done. There is a chill between my father and his parents that is palpable when one visits.

Another factor compounding this lack of affection is a macho culture still prevalent in our country that says that it is not appropriate for boys to cry or to express "softer" emotions. The feminist movement has done much to dispel this, and to pave the way for the new, kinder, gentler male, but it is still in the air, as any school-aged boy will attest.

It was certainly worse when I was growing up, and worse still when my father was a boy. He won several awards in drag racing in his late teens, and hung with some rough characters, which no doubt instilled this macho character trait even further. As an adult, he became a federal agent, and routinely kept three pistols on his person when on dangerous assignments. In his day, the idea of the "soft male" was a social heresy, and I'm sure that the realization that his son was growing up "soft" was very troubling for him.

The macho culture is prevalent in many areas of our world. The dogma of such a culture is that there are certain emotions which are encouraged and certain emotions which are forbidden. Satisfaction, elation, anger, and even kindness are tolerated, but sorrow, grief, mercy, and affection (for anyone other than one's spouse) are not. It seems to me that if one boils it all down, the greatest taboo is suffering. One may suffer, but one must not betray that one is suffering. This is the greatest sin against the macho dogma: you must never let on that you are suffering. This is certainly what my father tried to model for me, and what macho culture the world over holds up as its ideal. To let on that you suffer is heresy.

It is religious heresy as well. In the early church, a theological opinion arose that said that if God was truly in Jesus then God the Father shared equally in his sufferings on the cross. This position is called patripassionism, which literally means, "The father suffers." Now this doctrine makes good sense. If Jesus and the Father are one, as Jesus said, then did not the Father experience all of the Son's passion? Apparently not, if the early church fathers are to be believed, for they vigorously attacked this doctrine and declared it a notorious heresy.

Neo-Platonic theologians followed suit, and declared God immutable, unchangeable, passionless. And yet, this theologizing is in direct contradiction to the witness of scripture. There are few deities as impassioned as the God of the Jewish scriptures. He rages, he chastens, he is apparently bi-polar at times. He is capable of great anger, and yet of great tenderness as well. He is spoken of as a mother hen who guards her chicks, as a lover who passionately longs for his partner, and as a jealous husband who calls his wife to return to him. And he suffers when his people suffer.

The idea that God suffers carries no shame to my way of thinking. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? If the spirit of God pervades all things, experiences every emotion and every sensation of every being that has ever lived, then that is a powerful lot of suffering. Alfred North Whitehead called God "the fellow sufferer who understands." This is not a God of stoic forbearance, or a grim god of war. It is certainly not a god acceptable to our macho culture. It is, however, a much more complete picture of true fatherhood than many of us have ever experienced.

In fact, my experience of God in the scriptures provides a great rebuke to macho culture. For the God revealed there suffers, is not afraid to suffer, nor is he afraid to express it. Just read the Lamentations of Jeremiah, or Hosea, or the Song of Solomon for a portrait of God that flies in the face of every notion of masculinity we have been handed.

I feel privileged to have discovered, as an adult, the God who is a picture of a much more complete masculinity. But I also grieve that I had to wait until adulthood to see such a picture. How different my life might have been if our culture had not outlawed much of my emotional life. Even that might have been bearable if my father had been able to model the range of human emotions for me in spite of the prevailing cultural dogma. No doubt I would not have grown up hating my emotions quite so much. I thought of them as unruly beasts and unwelcome visitors, who came without bidding and seemed bent on my social suicide. I hated them for preventing me from being the kind of boy my father so desperately wanted me to be.

Fortunately, I have had women in my life who have encouraged me to express my real feelings, and who, in fact, saw and admired my willingness to be so dreadfully uncool. This is perhaps misplaced, since I am someone who cries at the drop of a hat, and no show of force has ever been able to keep tears at bay, no matter how hard I tried or how badly I embarrass myself. Yet through the support of such women, and my own study of culture and scripture, and nearly 20 years of psychotherapy, I have come to an uneasy peace with my emotional nature. I cry freely and frequently at the movies, and try to be liberal in my displays of affection for both family and friends. And, as many of you can attest, when I suffer, I can whine up a storm.

But I am still sad that it has taken so much work, so much heartache, and yes, so much suffering. And I am not so solopsistic to think that I am the only boy who has ever suffered so. I believe my father suffered greatly. In fact, I am convinced that every man who has ever felt coerced into hiding his real feelings, who has ever blinked back at his tears, who has ever stifled the desire to embrace his family members or friends has suffered, and continues to suffer. And this suffering is often at his own hands, though surely it is a result of the messages society has drilled into us men since the day we were born: be strong, not weak; show anger, but not remorse; shine, but don't reflect.

If an intrinsic part of masculinity is courage, then we need to model the courage to be whole people, capable of feeling and expressing the full range of human emotion, including kindness, empathy, and suffering. Women can support this process, but men, it is your job to confront these false messages in yourselves, and to model a healthy emotional life for your children, and ultimately to tip the scales of culture. Millions of men die each year of heart attacks-many of them conditions which could have been avoided if feelings could be expressed and not cannibalistically turned within. If you will not learn to make peace with your emotions to save your own lives, I beg you to do it to save the lives of your sons.

When I completed my PhD, my parents flew down from Alaska to attend my graduation. After the reception following the ceremony, my parents found some time to talk to me alone, and gave me several gifts. One was a series of strips of paper upon which was written a pithy quotation of wisdom that my father had come across, the other was a check for a thousand dollars. I was surprised by the money-my parents are not rich-and I was moved by the very personal collection of wisdom sayings-an indication that my father saw and approved of my studies. But it was when I looked up from the envelopes that I received my greatest gift. I saw tears in my Dad's eyes. I have never seen that before. Never. I had to wait 35 years for that sight, and it shook my world right off of its axis. I experienced a rush of my own emotions upon seeing it: relief, gratitude, and profound affection for this man who has given me so much. But I also felt anger and regret that I had to wait 35 years to see it, when it would have meant so much to me to have witnessed it as a child.

Better late than never, though, eh? Perhaps. It certainly melted a great deal of ice between us, and two years ago, that ice became thinner still when at my grandfather's funeral I held my father as he sobbed in his grief. Yes, he had all these feelings, he had always had all these feelings, but he had never let on. Perhaps he felt he no longer had to model being the "manly man" to me, and when his grief overwhelmed him, he could not muster the strength to stop it. I only know that my father is much more human, much more vulnerable, and much more loveable in his late middle age than he was in my boyhood. I am beginning to see that my father is not the impregnable mountain I thought he was, and perhaps he is beginning to realize that the mountain's façade is simply too much work to maintain. This is a good thing, because I have not believed it for some time. And it is so completely unnecessary besides.

Father's Day is a time when we celebrate the role of our fathers in our lives, and I would like to think that most of us are grateful for our fathers. But as people of faith, it is also our duty to challenge our culture when it is unhealthy and harmful. Macho culture is a violence that needs to be taken seriously, and not just because "sissy" boys suffer from it, but because all boys suffer because of it, boys who grow into men who continue to suffer, even if they cannot let on. Let us pray

Our Father, who art in heaven, teach us to embrace our full humanity, our emotions, and our vulnerabilities. Help us to model for each other a complete human life, even as thy Son, Jesus Christ modeled such a life for us. For in his time on earth, he laughed, he wept, he suffered, and he was not ashamed. Help us to grow into his likeness, and to teach our children to be likewise complete. For you call us to wholeness, and bid us not to divorce any true part. For you have made us and love us as we are. Help us to love ourselves, as well. For we ask this in the name of the Human One, even Jesus Christ. Amen.