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"The Gift of Having A Loving Father" Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – June 21, 2015 Centenary United
I Samuel 16:1-2, 8-13; Mark 4:35-41 This morning, I would like to discuss Jesus' remarkable teaching
abilities. There was a time
when Jesus' listeners said to one another, "He is not like the Teachers
of the Law. He teaches with
an uncommon understanding of life.
He is giving us new insights into our relationship with God."
(Matthew 7:29) In
other words, Jesus carried himself differently because his message was
not like the religious
authorities who passed on to others the centuries-old message that
they had taught. Jesus was
an excellent teacher for every occasion. Jesus knew how to address one of the wisest teachers in Mark's Gospel lesson this morning features the well-know story
where the Master was asleep in the fishing boat when a fierce storm
arose. The traditional
interpretation of this story is that Jesus commanded the wind to be
quiet and the waves to be still causing the disciples to say, "Who is
this man that even the winds and waves obey him?"
However, there are other commentators that suggest another
interpretation. Rather than
altering the course of a natural event, Jesus may have used this
experience to teach his disciples how better to manage their fears.
He asked them, "Why are you afraid?
What has happened to your faith?"
Commanding the storm to cease its existence would not have taught
them anything. However, if the other Biblical commentators are correct,
we might expand on the content of our lesson to include: This is no time to
be afraid. This is a time
to put into action what you know how to do. You are no strangers to this
kind of weather. Turn the
boat into the wind and start bailing. You
will be fine. Have you no faith in yourselves? What Jesus did for his disciples is the same thing well-informed
fathers do when their children find themselves in circumstances that
they have never experienced. Well-informed fathers also know how to
teach alternative ways to interpret those
stormy events when they
arrive. When I worked for the Federal Government during a summer, I met
an interesting woman who was also employed in my division for the
summer. She was also a summer
intern. We frequently had lunch together.
When I learned that she had been reared by a single father, I
asked her to tell me some of her experiences. She told me that when she was 16 and had gotten her driver's
license, she and her father were driving somewhere when they discovered
that one of the tires had gone flat.
Ironically, this occurred during a torrential rain.
He said, "We have a choice to either drive on the rim that will
ruin it or we can change the tire."
She teasingly said, "Let's change the tire."
To her surprise and chagrin, he pulled off the road and that is
what they did. They both
got out of the car and he instructed her on how to retrieve the jack,
lug wrench and spare tire from the trunk.
As best as I can remember her comments, this is what she told me:
We became drenched
in no time. Doing this was
so ridiculous that it was fun and we could not stop laughing. Talk about
a bonding experience! When the wrench kept slipping off the lugs, I
didn't have the strength to loosen any of them.
My dad had purposely purchased a breaker bar and a socket that
just fit the lug nuts. He sent me back to the trunk to get it.
He knew that the lug wrenches that come with new cars are often
no match for lugs that were put on by mechanics that used a
compressor-powered air-wrench.
He wanted me to go through all the steps while he was there to
teach me. With that tool, I
was able to loosen all those lug nuts.
I changed that tire in the rain!
I will never forget that experience for as long as I live.
He actually taught me how to use
all kinds of his tools. He used
to tease me about marrying some guy that might not know one end of a
hammer from the other. Stephanie's story so impressed me that I have always equipped my
cars through the years with a breaker bar and a socket. They provide
great torque for removing those nasty lug nuts. She told me an even more intimate story.
One evening she came home from a date after 11:00 p.m., the time
she promised her dad that she would be home.
He waited up for her.
She came into the house sobbing and hyperventilating.
When she saw her dad, she threw her arms around him and became
even more emotional. When
she turned toward him, he saw her blouse had been torn and there were
several buttons missing. He
knew instantly that she had experienced
a stormy experience in a
circumstance where she had never been. The two of them dealt with that experience right then and there
while all her emotions were fresh and before she could over-think her
role in it. He said to her:
From now on, you
will have a unique set of new skills as a result of what happened
tonight. Your date may not be the last aggressive male to come into your
life. You have nothing to be
ashamed of and you did the right thing by demanding that he take you
home the minute he began to touch you. You are fine and tomorrow you
will be better because you will know how to read the signs of the young
men who want to date you and you will be more prepared to communicate
what you want and what you do not want.
She said, I have treasured
those moments with my dad to this day.
He helped me to interpret the experience as painful and
horrifying as it was as simply another lesson I had to learn.
As a result, I have experienced no shame or guilt that somehow I
had encouraged or evoked my date's behavior.
My dad allowed
nothing to pass without teaching me how to gain strength from every
experience. What he did
with the incident was even more telling.
He knew that I would have to face this guy on Monday morning at
school. He told me to take
my blouse to him in a brown paper bag with these instructions, 'I want
you to find the two buttons that are somewhere in your car and sew them
back on my blouse. If you
cannot do that, I will take this bag to your mother and ask her to do
it. Of course, I will have
to tell her why they are missing.'
My dad knew all the angles to teach lessons to kids." Stephanie had a highly evolved orientation toward living and her relationships. Life will teach us when we focus on the lesson to be learned and nothing more. Most of our experiences are neutral until we supply their meaning. Since most of us are going to do that anyway, why not make the meaning something that will add to our growth rather than to sabotage it. My father taught me
very little with his words.
In fact, I learned more about how mechanical things work from Lois' dad
than from my dad. One time
my dad mounted a screen door on our back porch.
He was about ready to buy more tools to trim the edges when my
mom said, " There were so many times where my dad was not as skilled as other
dads with home maintenance issues, but his love for the four of us was
unmistakable. A couple of
sermons ago, I spoke of role-modeling as one of the main ways we learn
behavior and attitudes from others. That was my dad's method of teaching
even though he may not have known it at the time.
I worked with him for twelve
years as his Associate Pastor in the church where I grew up from the age
of two. Storms will occur in life and one wholesome thought to cultivate
when they do is what Jesus was teaching the disciples in that fishing
boat, "Be quiet, be still, think and then respond. Have faith in your
ability to get through the experience and move on."
Life is too magnificent to remain preoccupied by a memory of a
bad date, a traffic accident with the family car, the death of a parent,
spouse or child, or a marriage that failed.
There will be stormy seas.
Learn to look at them as teachers and nothing more. When we study Jesus’
teachings in the Gospels, we learn how to respond by choosing responses
that will serve our growth rather than allowing those storms to defeat
us. We do not need to
respond with negative, resentful and callous thoughts because the lesson
of the moment is difficult to understand. As we have mentioned the last two weeks, people were fascinated
by Jesus performing miracles.
We have to remember that, even for Jesus, all his miraculous
healings were temporary.
Everyone that was healed by Jesus eventually got sick later on and would
die one day. However, when
we learn that it is possible to live in the Most of us have felt or experienced sadness after nine people
were shot to death by Dylann Roof during a Bible Study in Emanuel AME
church, the historical church in The people of While the community mourns, its skills of spirit are on display.
No burning, looting and mayhem
this time. It is refreshing
to see that the media is covering forgiveness as a central theme during
this tragic loss of life. Jesus clearly taught us how to live without fear as he did that day when he instructed his disciples in that fishing boat to have faith in their abilities to get through the experience. On a day when we celebrate fathers, let us pray that fathers everywhere have either learned or will learn how to teach their children navigational skills when the storms of life come. |