Proper 6 C
Transcribed from a
sermon given on
June 16, 2013
By the Rev. Valerie
Ann Hart
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
Arroyo Grande, CA
On this Father’s Day I thought I
would tell a story about my father that I think illustrates the point of the
Gospel and the reading from Paul today.
My father was not a very
expressive man. He was raised in a conservative German household where men did
not express their feelings and so he was not the sort of man to give lots of
hugs, or to say “I love you,” or to express himself that way. As a child
growing up I always wanted to feel his love. So I was a very good child. I was
one of those children who tried to earn the love of my parents. I tried not to
get into trouble. I studied hard at school. I did my chores. I was all of those
things trying to earn my parents love, but always feeling a little bit empty.
Then something happened when I was
in high school. I had recently learned to drive. It think I was about 16 ½. One
summer day a friend and I wanted to go to the park and play our guitars, so my
father let us take the Buick convertible that they had - his car. On the way to
the park, it was a hot summer day so we had the top down, we stopped at a
frozen custard stand. We got our frozen custards and got back in the car and
sat and talked as we ate them. And yes I finished eating the frozen custard
before I tried to drive the car. I was a good girl. I wasn’t going to drive
with something in my hand. At least back then. So then I went to pull out from
the parking place. As I pulled out you, know how you turn the car as you pull
out, and I turned it a little bit too much and sure enough there was this horrible
scrapping sound as it went down the car next to me. I pulled back straight
again and of course there was a man sitting in that car eating his frozen
custard. He was furious. He looked at my friend and I. Now this was my hippie
stage, I didn’t look terribly hippy, but my friend was totally hippy with long
hair and flowing dress and all of that. And we had our guitars in the back
seat. He had decided who we were and what we were very quickly. And he was angry.
How could we do that to him? Meanwhile I was kind of scared, you know. So I
said to him, “I’ll have to call my father.” I didn’t know what else to do. So I
went inside, they didn’t have cell phones then of course, and I went in and
called my father. And went back to the car. And he was like, “I’m glad you are
calling your father cause your father’s going to take care of you.” It was all
that sort of energy going on.
So my father pulled up. I want you
to get an image of this. Think of this man who is waiting for my father to come
and tell me off. My father pulls up in my grandfather’s 58 Chevy because I had
his car. Now if you remember the 58 Chevys they were like driving a tank. They
were huge. Now my father was a business executive. He was the sort of man who
on Saturday afternoon wore a sports jacket and a nice shirt. He never was
poorly clothed. He always looked dignified. And he was a large man, slightly
overweight but in good shape. So he got out of the car with total dignity, as
if he were at a business meeting, and he calmly walked up and gently put his
hand on my back. Nothing demonstrative, but a positive acknowledge of me. Then
he walked over to the gentleman in the other care and said, “Hello, my name is
Ralph Hart.” And shook his hand and said, “I see my daughter scratched your car.
I am very sorry about that. Here is my card. Just go get it fixed and contact
me and there will be no problem in taking care of whatever the costs are.” And
the man was there flabbergasted. He was totally out classed. He did not get the
response from my father that he expected. Instead I got a response from my
father that I never could have dreamed of, and that was that I really felt
loved. Here I had made a mistake, I had had an accident, I had done something
wrong, and he was right there supporting me.
That was the time when I really
knew that my father loved me. Because you see while I was trying to be good and
earn his love I got presents at Christmas and on my birthday and he treated me
well, but it was an exchange. Now this was something that was graciously given.
When I became vulnerable. You see as long as we are trying to earn love, we
can’t really receive love, because love is not an exchange. Love is not I’ll do
this for you and then you do that for me. Love is something that is freely
given.
That is why Paul in this letter to
the Galatians is so adamant about not trying to go back to following the Law in
our relationship with God. The Galatians lived in a town where Paul had set up
a church and gotten it going and then, as was his way, once it was effectively
going he would go and move on to another town and do missionary work there.
Well evidently some Christians that he called Judaizers had come to Galatia and
said said to the people there that they had to follow all the law of the Jews.
You have to be circumcised. You have to follow the rules about food. You have
to follow the Law if you are going to be a Christian. And Paul was adamant,
adamant, that that is not the way it should work because our relationship with
God is not like our relationship with Santa Claus. Now if you think about it
with Santa Claus, we are told that if we are good we’ll get good things, and if
we are bad we will get coal. And we better watch out and follow all the rules
or we’ll be in trouble. Now Santa Clause is wonderful, and we can appreciate
what we get from Santa Clause. But we can’t really say that we love Santa
Claus. Because we’ve earned what we get from Santa Claus. We’ve done what we
needed to do. So if we try to follow the Law with God and we say if I follow
all of these rules, then I’ll be right with God, we are trying to tell God what
to do. We are telling God, “I followed all the rules, now you give me what I
want.” That’s not love. That’s not a real relationship.
With my father I could feel and
experience his love only when I made a mistake. Only when I was able to
experience his compassion and his forgiveness. I didn’t even need to ask for
forgiveness, it was just there, and given to me. And so when we stop trying to
follow the law, but instead become vulnerable before God, when we acknowledge
our weakness, when we acknowledge the mistakes that we have made and we feel
God’s appreciation for us as who we are, when we know that we are still in
relationship with God in spite of all we’ve done, only then can we know God’s
love.
That’s really true in all our
relationships. We can have a friendship with someone where we are always
showing our good side. You know when you first meet somebody and you try to
never show any weakness or any mistakes, and you never talk about what you have
done wrong, you can have a friendship that way, but it doesn’t go deeper. It
doesn’t go deep into a real love relationship until you become vulnerable in
front of each other. Until you are able to take your weaknesses and mistakes to
that other person, until you are able to say you are sorry, until you are able
to tell them what you’ve done in your life that you wish you hadn’t and when
you are able to be vulnerable and ask for their help. Only then does the
relationship deepen to one of love.
That’s what we are invited to do
with God, to take to God our weakness, our sinfulness if you want, the mistakes
we’ve made, the things that we are kind of embarrassed about, that which Is not
what we would like to be, but is true about who we are. And when we can take
that to God and know that we are forgiven and that we are appreciated for who
we are and that we indeed are loved just as we are, then like, the woman who
went to Jesus, we respond with love for God. For she somehow, through Jesus,
had known God’s forgiveness and her love overflowed. All she wanted to do was
to express that love by wiping his feet with her hair and anointing his feet.
So what we are called to do is not
just to follow the law, but rather to open ourselves and be vulnerable to God
and let ourselves know just how much we are loved by God.
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