WHO’S YOUR DADDY?

1. To Offer Or To Receive Admonition Is No Shame
To admonish or not to admonish. That is not the question for Hamlet, but for every father who is worth his razor stubble. To admonish or not to admonish. That’s even the question for people who resemble our paternal parentage. For example, at the end of a long trip in the station wagon, it’s only your Dad who can let slip a phrase like this, “Don’t make me come back there.” He can say it and on most occasions he will not have to stop the car and come back there. That’s true for fathers, and even more apropos for various father-figures in the faith that God sends in our direction. A father-figure in the faith is more than a mentor and more than a friend. A father-figure happens to be a mature person of faith in Jesus Christ to whom we have ceded special authority and who will speak the truth to us in love. The question for the father-figure is whether to admonish or not. And the question for those of us in a relationship with the father-figure is whether or not we should receive such admonition. And the best thing I can say this morning, based upon 1 Corinthians 4, is that to offer or to receive admonition is no shame.

Eugene Peterson tells the story of growing up in a small town in Montana, and one time he hopped over a fence and walked in the tall grass of his neighbor’s farm. In the distance, atop a green John Deer tractor, sat Leonard Storm, and when old man Storm spotted Little Pete in his field, he stood up on the seat of the tractor and waved his arms. Little Pete, as he was known in those days, felt ashamed—he felt as if he had crossed a boundary and that old man Storm was reprimanding him for doing something wrong. So, the child skulked away. But later, you see, Leonard Storm approached Little Pete at worship. He said, “Little Pete, why didn’t you come to me when I called you the other day?” Peterson said, “When did you call me?” He said, “I called you from my tractor like this…” (and he waved his big hands). “How do you call people if you want them to come?” And Little Pete responded by curling his index finger. “That’s piddly. On the farm we do things big,” said the father-figure.
Now, I know the caricature of church. I understand that in North America and much of the western world, church is categorized under the rubric of a voluntary activity, or as a charitable donation, or as pious pastime. But I wonder if you will believe me if I tell you that at church big things are happening. At church we either learn about the grace of God—about God’s invitation for us to join him in plowing the field—or we feel ashamed by what we perceive to be a reprimand and we run off.
“I am not writing this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.”

2. Being Responsible Like A Father Is A Painful Privilege
Now, if you’ve been with us for a few months, you’ve heard me admit that the church as an institution has a lot for which to be sorry….

But let me be clear. The solution to this abuse of power is not the renunciation of relational authority. On the contrary, the power that’s given to us by God is huge. And, while being responsible like a father is a painful privilege, it is a privilege that we must embrace over and over again.

In the film, Places In The Heart, where the father has died, there is even this sad moment when the surviving parent, played by Sally Field, asks her son, “What would your father do in a situation like this?” And the child responds that if his father were there, he would admonish: “For this, Pa would be pretty mad. So I reckon he’d give me four good whacks.” And, you see, if you and I are under the impression that only God has the authority to admonish and that the church has nothing to say, I’d like you to reconsider. Painfully and prayerfully the church must foster relationships that resemble a father’s connection to his child.
“What would you prefer?” says Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:21. I’ll leave it up to you. “Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” You see, that’s a painful question to have to pose to a church community. But we need not be ashamed of it. William Willimon writes,
As a college chaplain, I vividly remember a student, a young man of about 20 years, complaining to me about my generation’s inability to be parents. “Your generation didn’t tell us anything!” he complained. “I guess it’s because you didn’t want to be told anything by your parents, but you didn’t tell us what we needed to know.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“When I was home last summer, I asked my father, ‘I’m getting ready to grow up. Tell me what I need to do to have a happy life.’ He responded to me with a bunch of gibberish, nonsense about how he was miserable in his job, about how he maybe made a mistake in marrying my mother, about how nobody had ever really understood him. It was pitiful.”
I have this vivid memory of my nephew, around 17 years old, and he strolls into worship with his girlfriend, Laura. They are beaming together, and I can tell right off the bat that she has led him to the foot of the cross. She is the one who is mentoring him in faith. Anyway, a few weeks after they came to our church, Michael and Laura stayed up all night at the prom, and early in the morning Michael’s driving to a restaurant for breakfast and falls asleep. He falls asleep, the car drifts into on-coming traffic and there’s a huge collision. After the collision my nephew, who’s injured, watches as his girlfriend and guide takes her last breath. I tell you; there are not many experiences in life that are worse. But these events set the stage for Michael’s grief. His parents don’t quite know how to handle it. And one night, as he’s going out the door, Michael’s Dad, asks him where he’s going. Michael says, “Out.” The Dad then says, “What time are you going to be home?” And this brokenhearted, now eighteen year old kid, says this: “What time do you want me to be home?”

In other words, give me some structure. Help me to understand and appreciate the parameters. And I think the community of faith, even Latah Valley, needs to exercise its fatherly authority in the same way that Michael asked his father.
“I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me…”
3. The Face To Face Encounter Reveals The Power of the Kingdom
And if you ask me why this statement of the apostle Paul isn’t considered an arrogant statement, I will say it has something to do with what he says next:
“For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them everywhere in every church.”

Paul isn’t being arrogant here. What he’s doing is telling the people what time to be home. He’s offering them the boundary of the face to face encounter. And, you see, with all due respect to e-mail communications, to blogging, to twittering and to calling people and leaving long, monologue messages on the phone, I’d like to emphasize the face to face encounter. The face to face encounter reveals the power of the kingdom that Paul mentions in verses 19 and 20. He says,
“But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.”

“Does she know me,” says an escaped psychiatric patient in Walker Percy’s novel, The Second Coming. “Should I know her?” she says to herself, while preparing to sit down on a park bench. Allison has just stowed away on truck transporting linens to and from the facility. She’s trying to act as normal as possible, but because of the electric shock therapy which she’s endured, she can’t be sure if she knows the prim and proper evangelist who has just crossed her path. With a reassuring smile, the person hands Allison a pamphlet and declares, “We’re having a meeting tonight at the church. A person like you might get a lot out of it.” “A person like me,” thinks the psych patient. “Does she know me?” Should I know her?”

I want to pause right here in the middle of this interaction—and I want to repeat what I’ve often said: Church Is Dialogue. It’s a dialogue between God and the weary people whom God is calling to himself. And, you see, it helps the dialogue for us to have a father-figure.
It helps to have someone say to the evangelist who brushes by Allison, “Slow down. Face people. Demonstrate the power of the kingdom that is revealed when you face people. Face this person that you have assumed to know and really know her.” It also helps, I think, to have a father-figure give this advice to Allison, or to whoever’s out there: “I’m sorry that you have felt unknown and a stranger in the world; we would like to know you and to be known by you in Christ.”

Amen.