Days like today are complicated celebrations that seem to underline in so many ways the heart-breaking tensions of living in a fallen world... 

The idea of a ‘Dad’ was God’s.  And yet – like in so much of our experience – His vision can be tragically marred.  The complicated reality of a world that ignores God trips us up, and hinders our celebration of God’s idea.  For many days like today can be painful reminders.  Memories of our fathers are not always joyous, but can be scarred by abandonment, neglect, betrayal or suffering.  Relationships with our dads today are not always straightforward, and can be the cause of ongoing frustration and tears.  There are those who have so desperately wanted to be dads, but the circumstances of their lives have meant those hopes and dreams lie broken and unfulfilled.  Many feel judged, and are profoundly aware of their failure as dads on a day to day basis; for others ‘Father’s Day’ is an agonising reminder of decisions we would give anything to go back and make again.  For others, today opens afresh the wounds of loss.  Others find in their children a source of tremendous confusion and grief.  Even the most wholehearted and joyous celebration of Father’s Day will be tainted with sorrow. 

As Christians we are to ‘mourn with those who mourn’ (Rom.12:15).  Our focus should be on the broken, the wounded, the sinner and the sinned against.  This is righteous.  Our faith gives us the courage to face life as it really is, and not to have to pretend.  Yet the same verse (Rom.12:15) also commands us to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice’.  Our concern for the wounded can often lead us to forego the rejoicing and to mute our celebration.  Or we can lose balance the other way, and disregard the wounded in thoughtless rejoicing.  But this is not the way of the Scriptures. 

Nor is it their way to disregard, or distort God’s vision for fatherhood.  There are elements of it that seem unfamiliar, and problematic in our own culture.  The Christian vision of family is – sometimes explicitly – being eroded.  In this season of political manifestoes it can be worth reflecting on where our prospective governments prioritise (or even recognise) the value of the nuclear family, constructed along Biblical lines.  Unless we are deliberate and intentional, it is likely that we have little sense of what fathers are called to.

As Christians, we are to honour those who are worthy of honour, and give them the recognition they deserve (Rom.13:7).  This is rarely done in our world, and the Church dare not follow suit.  Churches must maintain a holy and healthy balance.  We cry out to God both to heal the wounded, and in gratitude for what is worthy of honour; both for grace to cover our failure and in praise for when God has enabled us to be faithful in our calling.

Only at the Cross can we find the resources to maintain this balance.  Only here can we learn to look beyond ourselves, our own experiences and situations, and our own culture, and to enter into the experience of another with such total empathy, so that those who mourn can rejoice with those who rejoice, and those who rejoice can mourn with those who mourn.  The integrity of neither is compromised.  For us all, we may find that as we obey His call, God is at work in us far more than we had anticipated.  Only at the cross do we truly grasp the cost of Fatherhood.  Only at the cross can we stand to critique our own assumptions and find them displaced by God’s vision for this most noble and courageous of roles.

And as we confront the complicated nature of today’s celebration of fatherhood, we find our hearts aching again for the holy simplicity of the New Creation, when ‘there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ (Rev.21:4).  This is our future in Christ, and on that day our joy will no longer be complicated, or tainted.  It will be complete in and through Him, and the fulfilment of His work.  That is our hope in Christ.  And it is a hope that radically relativizes everything in this old, passing age.  It relativizes both the joy and sorrow, and ironically perhaps even the institution of fatherhood, and of our love for our fathers.

Passages like Mark 10:29-30 and Luke 14:26 relate the disturbing words of Jesus.  His teaching calls us to a total allegiance to Christ that undermines even our love for the one who bore and nursed us.  Our love and respect for, and our honouring of ‘Dad’ (and his love for us); the relationship we may enjoy with him (and that he enjoys with us) must be understood in the context of our much deeper love for Christ and a much more compelling relationship with Him.  Ultimately we are delivered from this present age and delivered into the Kingdom of Heaven, where there is no Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free, or I wonder, father or child…  while our citizenship is in heaven, our pilgrimage remains through this old creation and this old age.  While here, we are called to ‘honour our … father’, but only in such a way that truly we are honouring Christ.  Neither we nor our fathers should expect more than this.  Perhaps this is the most complicated thing of all.

In Christ,

Mark