Worship this Sunday will be held at Doon Presbyterian Church, 35 Roos St, Kitchener ON N2P 2B9 at 10:00 am. We hope to see you there. Sermon title: “Creation People”
If you can't make it in person, the service will be livestreamed here: https://doonpc.com/messages/
Crieff, 12 July 2026 © Scott McAndless – Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Psalm 119:105-112, Titus 1:5-16, Matthew 5:43-4
Recently I read a book by Rachel Held Evans, a tremendous writer who was, unfortunately, taken from us far too young. As she was writing about some of the ways that we use the Bible, she made the point that she had never in her life heard anybody preach a sermon on Titus 1:12, where it says, “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.”
We claim to be people who take the Bible seriously. Some even claim to take it literally all the time and to believe everything it says. But, if that is the case, Evans argued, why is no one preaching sermons about how awful people from Crete are?
Why aren’t Christians marching with signs that declare that anyone who comes from Crete cannot be trusted and must not be believed? Why haven’t we attempted to cancel all celebrities who have any Cretan ancestry? Why aren’t Jennifer Anniston, Zach Galifianakis and Nana Mouskouri, who all claim parents who come from that large island in the Mediterranean, banned in all Christian churches?
I mean, the Bible says it. It couldn’t be clearer. After quoting this line, attributing it to a Cretan prophet, the writer goes on to add, “That testimony is true.” So why don’t we talk about that truth? And why, Evans wanted to know, doesn’t anyone preach about it?
I’m going to confess something to you. There is one way in which you can manipulate me as a preacher. If you suggest to me that no one has ever preached a sermon on a particular passage of Scripture, and especially if you suggest that preachers are afraid of talking about it, there is nothing that will make me want to preach that sermon more!
So, let’s tackle the question of just how lazy and unreliable people from Crete really are. What is such a saying doing in the Bible, and what should we do with it? It is especially difficult because it is such an absolute statement. It doesn’t say that sometimes some people from Crete can be a bit duplicitous. It doesn’t say, “I once knew a guy from Crete, and he told me a lie.” It is a blanket statement about all Cretans.
I’ve never heard anyone say such things about people from Crete, of course, but it is the kind of statement that you do hear all the time in the world today. You will hear people say awful and ignorant things, things that I am not willing to repeat about, for example, all Palestinians, or all Jews, or all Muslims.
You will also hear generalized statements about what is wrong with all Republicans, or all Liberals, or all Socialists. Even the U.S. president himself just the other day said something about all Iranians being liars.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. If you hang out on the Internet in particular, you will read these kinds of absolute statements all the time. And they are not helpful statements. In fact, I would suggest that they are polarizing our discourse and destroying the fabric of our society more than just about anything these days.
So, I feel like I hear enough of this kind of rhetoric in our modern world. I am not happy to find it in my Bible. But of course, it is in our Bibles. And for me, that means that I need to deal with it and to try and understand what the writer was really trying to get across both to his immediate audience and to us reading it 2,000 years later.
But what if there is more going on in this verse than immediately meets the eye? It doesn’t exactly say that all Cretans are liars. It says that somebody said that all Cretans are liars. Well, who said it? The letter only refers to a prophet, but we actually know who that prophet was.
It was Epimenides of Knossos who said it. In fact, he was famous for saying it. He lived over six centuries before this letter was written, and yet he was still one of the most famous sons of Crete. He was known as a highly respected philosopher, poet and was indeed often called a prophet. This saying of his was so famous because it was known as Epimenides’ Paradox.
There is an old episode of Star Trek called “I Mudd,” in which the crew lands on a planet that is ruled by androids who are perfectly logical. It is an idyllic planet with one flaw: the androids won’t let anyone leave.
So the crew needs to come up with a plan to break android control – kind of like we may need to do once AI takes over our society. (Star Trek is nothing if not a reflection on today’s society.)
So, this is what the crew does. They begin to act in crazy and irrational ways which starts to overtax the data centres of the entire planet. The coup de grace is delivered when Captain Kirk says this about one of the characters to the Head Android, who is named Norman, “Everything Harry tells you is a lie,” Kirk says. “Remember that. Everything Harry tells you is a lie.”
And then Harry says this to the head android: “Now listen to this carefully, Norman. I am... lying.”
And I’m going to give you Norman’s response verbatim because it is so perfect. The android says: “You say you are lying, but if everything you say is a lie, then you are telling the truth, but you cannot tell the truth because everything you say is a lie, but you lie... You tell the truth but you cannot for you lie... illogical! Illogical!” And then the entire planetary system blows up because they cannot process such a statement.
Well, that is a perfect illustration of Epimenides’ Paradox. And Star Trek didn’t invent it; it was invented by Epimenides 600 years before the time of Christ.
When Epimenides said, “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons,” he said it as a Cretan and one who was highly respected. So how do you suppose he expected people to react? Do you think he was expecting everyone to nod and say, “That testimony is true, Cretans are all truly awful people”?
Of course not! He expected everyone to respond à la Norman and say, “You say Cretans always lie, but if you are a Cretan, then that statement is a lie, but if it is a lie then Cretans do not always lie and you may be telling the truth but if you are telling the truth then the statement is false. You tell the truth but you are a liar... illogical! Illogical!”
That is right. It turns out that Epimenides only said that to illustrate just how irrational it is to make blanket statements about groups of people.
And, like I say, this saying of Epimenides was famous in the ancient world. It was famous for that very reason. It was used to teach people not to make foolish blanket statements. So, my question is this. When this famous saying appears in the letter to Titus, how is it being used? Is the writer simply taking the statement at face value and affirming that all Cretans are awful people, or is he aware of the original famous intent of the statement? Is he actually affirming the irrationality of saying such things?
This letter is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Paul. And I would affirm that, if Paul wrote it, there is no way that he would have missed the important philosophical meaning of this saying. Paul, in all his letters, writes in such a way that demonstrates that he has been trained in Greek rhetorical and philosophical techniques. Paul would have known about Epimenides’ Paradox.
Modern New Testament scholars do argue, however, that this letter was not written by Paul. They say it can’t have been because it deals with matters and concerns that only arose after Paul’s death. Instead, they say it was written by someone who felt inspired by God to write for the church the wisdom Paul would have given concerning new challenges that had arisen after his death.
I’m not going to delve into the question of authorship today, but let me just say that whoever wrote this letter was no fool. When he tells his readers that this famous saying came from a Cretan philosopher, he must recognize there is a logical paradox at work in it.
But, even more importantly, even though this writer says that “that testimony is true,” He actually doesn’t believe that “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.” The whole point of this letter is that he wants Titus to help the Christians in Crete to be good, noble and righteous people. That would simply be impossible if they were always liars, vicious brutes and lazy gluttons.
So, I am left with the conclusion that this blanket statement appears in this letter for the same reason that Epimenides said it in the first place. He is writing to teach his readers just how foolish it is to adopt such attitudes towards any group. He is actually trying to show us that stereotyping, racism and exclusion are illogical.
Such a notion should hardly be surprising to Christians, of course, who are followers of the one who challenged his disciples, saying, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Jesus did not invent the notion of loving your neighbour. It was a command that, even in his time, all Jews agreed was at the heart of the Old Testament Law. But it had always been understood in a very particular way.
People had always had a clear understanding of who their neighbour was. Their neighbour was their fellow Israelite. Their neighbour was someone who shared their culture, language and religion. So, for as long as this teaching had existed, no one would have seen any conflict between loving your neighbour and believing that “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.”
But Jesus shattered such an understanding. Here, and in other famous teachings like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, he showed people that the love they owed to their neighbour extended much further. It extended to the very people that they feel least comfortable loving.
This was a radical idea. But Jesus said you should behave in this way to reflect the true nature of God. He insists you should do it “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” He taught that by loving those who are most different from us, we become most like God.
We live in an increasingly polarized world. And one of the big symptoms of that is that we are surrounded by people who are constantly telling us that we cannot make peace or work with certain groups because they “are always liars,” or because they are all “vicious brutes,” or “lazy gluttons,” or because of some other shared trait that makes them completely evil.
This is not just some minor problem. It is something that is killing thousands of people daily, as it starts wars or prevents them from being ended, as we see at this very moment alongside the waters of the strait of Hormuz. It is threatening to tear whole countries apart, including our own.
Friends, we need an antidote to such rhetoric. And we have it. We have it in Epimenides, who demonstrated that such thinking is deeply illogical and self-defeating. Even more important, we have it in Jesus, who taught us to practice love for the very people we find hardest to love.
And how do we deploy that antidote? There is only one way. We need to start by living out this teaching of Jesus in the most radical way we possibly can. We need to welcome the stranger, to reach out to the hated Samaritan, to actually love a lazy, vicious brute of a lying Cretan enough to realize that they are actually none of those things.
I know it is a small thing to do it ourselves, but that is where true revolutions begin, in the small things. When we show the world that it can be done, new possibilities will arise everywhere. That is the challenge that Jesus has left for us.
So, I’m going to leave you with a challenge. This week, I want you to reach out to someone whom you have been taught is unacceptable because of whatever political, ethnic, religious or other group they belong to. I want you to try to get to know that person as a person, not just as a member of their group. That is where it starts; that is how we begin to bring a better world into view.
Worship on July 12 will be held at Knox Presbyterian Church in Crieff 7156 Concession Road 1, Puslinch ON N0B 2J0 at 10 am. as part of our summer schedule.
The service will not be livestreamed (they do not have the bandwidth at Crieff), but will be posted on the church website afterwards: https://pccweb.ca/knox-crieff/
Hespeler, June 28, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 28:1-9, Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18, Romans 6:12-23, Matthew 10:40-42
How many times over the last few years have you been exactly where the Prophet Jeremiah is in our reading this morning from the book that bears his name? “Amen! May the Lord do so!” Jeremiah cries out to another prophet named Hananiah.
He says this because Hananiah has just prophesied that God is about to undo all of the awful things that have happened recently. The nation has been defeated, the king and many leading citizens have been taken away into exile, and the holy temple of the Lord has been plundered of all of its sacred objects. This is disaster piled upon disaster.
But it is okay, Hananiah says, because all of it is about to be undone. All of the treasures and all of the people will be returned. The terrible tyrant, Nebuchadnezzar, the cause of all this misery, will lose his power. And it will all happen within two years, which is incredibly fast for the ancient world, more like two weeks for our modern fast-paced world.
And Jeremiah hears this incredible prophecy, and he cries out, “Amen! May the Lord do so!” Because who wouldn’t want that? When it seems as if everything in our world has completely fallen apart, when everything is topsy-turvy, the one thing we long for is for everything to go back to how it used to be.
We recognize, I think, that everything wasn’t perfect before. There were all kinds of failures, problems and injustices. But when the massive changes come upon us, they overwhelm us so completely that any promise of a return to normalcy can make us cry out, “Amen! May the Lord do so!”
I seem to have been doing that a lot lately. Especially – I don’t really know why – for the last year and a half or so. And I know that I’m not alone.
About a year and a half ago, for some strange and inexplicable reason, our Canadian economy was thrown into turmoil. Our trade relations were suddenly in uncharted territory. And it was scary and disturbing. And what happened?
Well, it turned out that our country was heading into an election. And so, prophets showed up on the scene. They showed up in the form of politicians. And what did those prophets promise? A return to normalcy. They promised that, within a certain number of months, they would restore our trade relations to normal.
It wasn’t just one politician, mind you. They all promised to repair the relationship with our trading partner and to make everything go back to the way it was. They may have had different plans to get there, but they were all heading to the same place.
And how did we Canadians respond? “Amen!” we cried, “May the Lord do so!” And I know that Canadians most certainly did not all vote the same, but they all seem to have voted with the same motivation for the candidates that each thought had the best way to get there.
And ever since, I assume, everything has been fine because I kind of stopped paying attention. No? Everything is not fine yet? Hmm, that is too bad.
More recently, it has happened again. All of a sudden, four months ago, shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was shut down. Again, I’ve not been paying attention, but I’m sure that whoever started whatever led to that must have had good reasons which they thoroughly explained.
But it turned out that shipping traffic in that part of the world was really important. Who knew? And the shutdown caused some really big problems all over the world, so much so that everyone was very quickly longing for the Strait to just be open and for things to just go back to normal.
Many prophets, in our time, particularly seem to hang out on social media where they can speak to the whole people just like the ancient prophets did. And one particular prophet went on a social media platform that he owned to prophesy that everything would be fixed very quickly.
It would all be over, he promised, in a matter of two weeks, tops. Well, maybe four or certainly no more than six weeks, but that everything would very quickly go back to how it used to be. And of course, how did we all respond? “Amen!” we cried, “May the Lord do so!”
And when those two or four or six weeks went by without everything being fixed, we were quickly reassured by updated prophecies. It would just be a couple more weeks. “Amen! May the Lord do so!” We just had to threaten total annihilation and really mean it this time. “Amen! May the Lord do so!” A little inexpensive naval blockade would quickly do the trick. “Amen! May the Lord do so!”
And, well, here we are about exactly four months later. Nothing really seems to have bounced back to the way it was before all of this began. (And it is not as if everything was great before it began but at least the Strait was open, which has become the only thing that matters). But don’t worry, the latest Memorandum of Understanding and the ongoing two months of negotiations enforced by renewed threats is going to fix everything real soon. “Amen! May the Lord do so!”
When Jeremiah cried out, “Amen! May the Lord do so!” I believe that he meant it. He was human. He was just as troubled by what had gone wrong over the last few years as anybody else. He would have been happy to see the exiles released and all the stolen items returned.
But he also added something else. “As for the prophet who prophesies peace,” he said, “when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.”
Now, what did he mean by that? He was truly uttering great wisdom that we need to take to heart. He was saying that, when people come along and promise that everything’s going to go back to the way it used to be, we need to receive such a promise with a great deal of skepticism.
We need to practice skepticism first of all because anyone who says that probably has their own agenda. They want you to feel and react in a certain way, and most often, what they want you to be is complacent so that they can continue to do whatever they want.
They understand that there will always be something soothing and comforting about the promise to take everything back to the status quo. People crave a familiar situation, especially when it seems as if everything has been thrown into chaos. So always be aware that such promises are being made to manipulate you.
But there is another, more important reason why Jeremiah counsels skepticism. Jeremiah, himself a prophet who had given more than his fair share of very negative prophecies, has a sense of how God actually works. And, while we may crave what is familiar and comfortable, God has a different priority. God craves what is right and what is just.
Remember what I said before about how, when things get chaotic, we tend to forget the very real problems that existed before the chaos began? Well, we might forget, but God never does. And God knows that the crisis that we are living through today may be a step towards the world that we need to be living in tomorrow. And so, when we are so desperate to go back to how things used to be, God wants us to go through to where we need to be.
And so I am going to be a bit of a Jeremiah today. “The Strait of Hormuz is about to open wide, you say?” “Amen! May the Lord do so!” say I, but…
And all of Canada’s trade relations will soon be restored, you say? “Amen! May the Lord do so!” say I, but…
But maybe a reckoning on how everything was working before all of this began is needed. And maybe until we can build an economy in which most of the benefits don’t just flow right to the very top and we learn to prioritize sustainability over profitability and environmental concerns over spending on weapons of war, this kind of chaos will continue to appear. We can’t just go back; we have to find a way through.
I am no expert on global affairs and certainly not on economics, so you can certainly write me off as a false prophet just like Hananiah wrote off Jeremiah. But I would caution you to practice the same skepticism towards those prophets who are telling you what you want to hear as Jeremiah did.
But I guess we are not going to solve the world’s problems here and now, so maybe I ought to take this wisdom of Jeremiah and also apply it a little bit closer to home.
I think that Jeremiah’s word is one that the church needs to hear these days. There is no question that the church is presently living through fast-paced and disorienting change. And what do we often hear as a result? I hear a lot of church people talking about and dwelling on how things used to be.
“Oh, if only we could go back to the days when everyone felt obligated to be in church on Sunday, and there was nothing else to do anyway. Why doesn’t God make things like that again?”
And to that I say, “Amen! May the Lord do so!” But what if God has something for us to learn from where we are now? What if how things used to be was not as perfect as we remember, and God wants us to be a better and more resilient church? What if the church needs to go through, not just to go back? If we just put all our energy into trying to get back to how things used to be, we might miss that opportunity.
But perhaps the hardest place to apply Jeremiah’s wisdom is in your own personal life. I have no doubt that many of you are dealing with something in your life right now that has thrown your lives into chaos. If you’re not there now, you have been there before and, chances are, you will be there again sooner or later. That is just a part of living in this world.
And because of that, I’m sure that you have uttered that prayer of the heart. You have cried out in your soul for God to put things back to how they used to be. And I join my prayer to you, and in my soul I do cry out, “Amen! May the Lord do so!”
I am not the only one who understands the cry of your heart. Your God understands it too. God never wants to subject any of God’s people to such hardships and struggles, and yet they are practically inevitable when you are living in this broken world. So, yes, God totally understands your desire for things to go back.
But, at the same time, I want you to consider that there may be no going back to how things used to be and that what God is ready to do is to be with you as you go through your chaos. Consider the possibility that, as you embrace the difficulties that you face, God may meet you to offer strength and wisdom and guide you through to the place where you will be able to find not only consolation but hope.
I understand, of course, all those who long for things to go back to how they used to be. The cry of my heart is “Amen! May the Lord do so!” But I also know that we have a God who calls us to hope. And hope is about much more than just putting things back how they used to be. It is about moving forward with courage and wisdom to meet the challenge of a new day.
Amen! And may the Lord give us such an enduring hope.
Hespeler, June 21, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39
I am sure that on this day, Father’s Day, in churches across the country, preachers are stepping into their pulpits clutching sermons to their breasts with titles like “Seven Biblical Secrets to Being a Great Father,” or “Six Steps to Being a Successful Sire.”
And I totally get that impulse. This is that one day in the year when we pause to celebrate the role of father. We recognize the wonderfully positive impact that Fathers can have. And so, we pack the fathers into our churches (or at least we pack them in as best we can for a late Sunday in June) and tell them we love them.
But we also recognize that it is a difficult job to be a dad. Raising children only seems to be getting harder. And fathers sometimes struggle to be that hero that everyone seems to expect them to be. And so, of course, preachers are going to want to give some practical advice to their congregations – advice that many fathers are hungry for.
And I would certainly like to do the same thing and offer some real support for the wonderful and faithful fathers who are part of this congregation. But I think that there might be one little problem.
It turns out that there are not all that many great examples of fathers in the Bible. I mean, think of all the heroes of the Bible. How many were really great fathers?
King David messed up his family so badly that he literally ended up fighting a civil war against his own son. Moses abandoned his wife and sons in the middle of the Exodus, sending them back to Zipporah’s father (Exodus 18:1-9). Jacob’s favouritism towards one of his sons led to the others trying to kill Joseph.
And, as for the heroes of the New Testament, both Paul and Jesus famously never married and had no children. And then there is the time when Jesus described his mission like this: “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” That doesn’t sound particularly “pro-family,” does it?
Ah, but surely there is one exception, one biblical father who breaks the mould. Abraham has got to be the most celebrated father in history. He is known as the father of many nations, not to mention the father of three major world religions. Surely, he has something to teach us about being a great dad.
In our reading this morning, we zoom in on Abraham’s family at a key moment, as they gather to celebrate a milestone in the life of Abraham’s youngest son. “The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.”
Now, I know that in our culture, weaning is not something that we tend to celebrate, but I guess it was a big deal for them. Children nursed for a very long time – it was by far the safest way to feed infants in a world with dodgy water supplies. So, it really was a big deal when a 4 or 5-year-old finally graduated to a diet made up of solids.
And we can certainly think of many milestones we celebrate in our children’s lives – significant birthdays, graduations and such. And so maybe right here we can find our first piece of advice for the fathers among us. Sermon point number one: take advantage of every milestone you can to communicate to your children just how special they are.
And there is absolutely a significant truth there. It is true that we really ought to make good use of every opportunity we have to let our children know just how unique and special they are. And look, we even have a lovely little scene of domestic bliss as we see Abraham’s new child together with his half-brother: “Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.”
Isn’t that sweet? The family is really coming together at this celebration. But, before we jump ahead to make a second sermon point about creating opportunities for your children to play together or something like that, I’m beginning to think that maybe I ought to have read this entire passage before I started into this sermon. Because I just looked ahead and I think there might be a problem.
See, it turns out that Sarah wasn’t too happy about the two boys getting along and playing together. And… oh no! She insists that Ishmael and his mother both get thrown out at the risk of them dying in the desert!
Oh, but look here, it says that Abraham was upset about that. “The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son,” it says. So maybe we are back on track here. Abraham is about to step in and act to get his family back on track.
So, is that what happens? Does Abraham step up and act like the hero? Does he have that really difficult conversation with Sarah and tell her that, though he understands her feelings, what she wants to do about her feelings is only going to make everything so much worse? Or does he sacrifice his oldest son and Hagar for what would be little more than the illusion of family peace?
This is the true test of a father, right? It is not about those times that are easy, when you’re cracking the dad jokes and holding celebrations. It is about having the courage to step up and say what needs to be said even if it is going to disturb things. And if that is the test, then I am afraid that Abraham fails it. He does not even offer any feedback to Sarah.
And I know that this may not be the message you want to hear on a Father’s Day, but I do think we all need to be reminded of it. Fathers are not always heroes. And sometimes that expectation that we put on them that they have to be the hero does not help them.
The number one thing you need to know about being a father is that you are going to fall short. That is not just true for fathers. It is true for every parent or anyone who ever takes on a caring role in somebody else’s life.
I remember the sometimes-paralyzing fear that I went through when my daughters first arrived or when they went through some of the inevitable crises that come with growing up in a broken world. Of course I was afraid that, if I reacted badly, if I said the wrong thing, if I punished too severely or not severely enough, if I was neglectful or if I was too much of a helicopter parent, I was going to mess them up completely and ruin their lives.
If you have ever felt like that, know that you are not alone. And even worse, my fears were often justified. I got it wrong. I got it wrong regularly and sometimes disastrously. And I do not think that we should be so reverential towards a biblical figure like Abraham as to not see that he too really messed up on this occasion.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You’ve read ahead (you really ought to stop doing that!) and you have seen that none other than God signs off on Abraham’s conflict avoidance. “But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you.’”
So, does that mean that Abraham didn’t do anything wrong because God signed off on his conflict avoidance? I know it is often read that way, but I see it a bit differently. I do not see it as God approving of what Abraham has already decided to do. It is rather that God is acknowledging Abraham’s weakness and his failure to navigate this crisis in the best way. That leads to God making an extraordinary promise. “As for the son of the slave woman,” God continues, “I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”
For me, that means that God understands Abraham’s weakness. He understands that Abraham doesn’t have it in him to stand up to this wicked course that Sarah has decided upon. Of course, God would love Abraham and Sarah to do better. God would love us all to do better. But God is also not going to force us to do the right thing against our will. God is that excellent kind of parent who knows that we will only learn by making our own mistakes.
To make this relate to our own roles as parents or guardians in people’s lives, God isn’t going to stop you from making your mistakes or getting things wrong. God loves you and respects your autonomy too much for that.
But – and this is the most important part – God is not going to abandon the people that we are responsible for because we get it wrong. That is the promise that God makes to Ishmael. And that is why I am not afraid that my mistakes or shortcomings will ruin my children’s lives.
They are beloved of God. And, as I have learned to trust in that, I have been able to watch with admiration as my children have become these amazing human beings. They have not become who I thought or expected they would be. They have not become mere protégés trying to live up to my idea of what they are supposed to think, do and be. They have become their own people who are setting their own course.
And thank God for that! And I mean literally thank God. They have become the people they need to be despite the mistakes I made in parenting them. They have chosen their course despite what I thought was wise advice. Who they are becoming is a product of the grace of God and the gifts and abilities that God has placed in them. And to see that is the best Father’s Day gift that anyone could receive. I mean, that and a really good steak cooked on the barbecue.
So I guess, when I think about it, there is some really good advice for fathers to be found in our reading this morning from the Book of Genesis. But it is not there because Abraham himself was such a fantastic father. He messed up just like all of us mess up.
I am certainly not going to suggest that any of us ought to follow his example and become so fearful of disturbing the peace in our life that we will not stand up to protect someone who is being attacked or marginalized. Abraham should have done better, and we all can too, with God’s help.
But the good news is that, even if we fail, we do not need to despair. God does not abandon us in our failure. We believe in the grace of God, and that grace is powerful enough to override our failure and reverse our flubs. And there will be days when the knowledge of that truth is the only thing that will keep you going.
So, I promised at the start that I would offer you “Seven Biblical Secrets to Being a Great Father,” or “Six Steps to Being a Successful Sire.” Let’s get down to the practical level.
Number 1: Let’s stick with that first one I gave you. “Take advantage of every circumstance you can in order to communicate to your children just how special they are.” It still sounds like pretty good advice.
But if I’m going to fill out the rest of a list today, I would probably do it like this:
So, happy Father’s Day.