"gifts from My Father"

Dr. George R. Sinclair, Pastor

Gen. 18:1-15 (21:1-7); Ps. 116:1-2,12-19 Rom. 5:1-8; Matt. 9:35-10:8 (9-23)

June 15, 2008

              Though he died nearly 27 years ago, I am still very much influenced by my father.  I learned a lot from my father.  He taught me how to hit and catch a baseball, though I must admit I was better at catching than hitting. A few weeks ago I was watching a baseball movie about the Chicago Black Sox, 1918 or something like that. I happened to notice the gloves. You know, the kind with individual fingers and no webbing, just a fat glove with little padding—that’s what my first baseball glove looked like. There would be others—two catcher’s mitts, a first baseman’s glove and a modern style fielder’s glove. 

My dad played baseball at Davidson College back in the 40’s, after the war.  He was a catcher and so naturally I wanted to be a catcher. My dad taught me to play baseball. He also taught me how to kick and pass a football. He told me once that his own father never did those things with him. My grandfather was over fifty when my father was born, which during the Depression was a lot older than it is today—plus he was in poor health and didn’t tolerate the heat and humidity of Wilmington, NC which is not unlike the heat and humidity of Mobile. My father made a conscious effort to make up for what he thought was missing in his childhood and I suspect that’s something most dads do.

My father taught me how to play ball.  He also gave me my interest in hunting and fishing and my love for books. Daddy read almost every night—novels mainly, but he also liked history and political science.  After college he went to law school and would have made a good lawyer. He loved argument, sometimes for argument’s sake, but he fell in love and married my mother and went into insurance and became a successful businessman. 

My father took me to church.  He was raised Presbyterian and raised us Presbyterian. He was a deacon, sang in the choir, taught adult Sunday school, and my senior high class, which actually wasn’t as bad as you might think— not for him or me!

I learned a lot from my father. He gave me a lot. I want to tell you about four gifts he gave me. They’re not bad gifts for any father to give. Any son or daughter should be so lucky. My father taught me to laugh. He taught me to work hard, to tell the truth, and to live by grace.  

Laughter shows up in our Old Testament reading for today.  Sarah laughs when she hears she’s going to be a mother. She is “old, advanced in age” and “it had ceased to be with [her] after the manner of women,” which is Bible’s polite way of saying she was post-menopausal and had stopped having sex. When Sarah learns she is expecting or soon will be she says to herself: “After I have grown old and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?”  And she laughs.  Sarah laughs.

Abraham, meanwhile, is cross-examined, “Why did Sarah laugh?”  We all know why—old women aren’t supposed to have babies. Finger-pointing follows—“You laughed.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

The story is not clear about who is pointing the finger—God or Abraham?  I think it’s Abraham. I think he protests a little too much.  I think maybe he’s thinking he has been caught too. You see, Abraham also laughed when he found out he was going to be a father.  So he’s thinking, “Uh-oh, I shouldn’t have done that! I shouldn’t have laughed.” Abraham’s circumspection comes at Sarah’s expense. 

The fact is, no apology was needed.  Laughter is a sign of impossibility and not just impossibility, but of “all things made possible” by the God for whom nothing is impossible. The “wonder” making God also makes us laugh. If God doesn’t have a sense of humor, we are in real trouble!

The first time I remember my dad making me laugh was when I was between three and four years old.  It is one of my first memories of anything. 

As a child and teen, I had a very long emergency room rap sheet. By the time I was four, I had split open my tongue. I fell out of bed and had to wear a neck brace; I tore off my big toe nail in a tricycle; and I fell out of a car going 35 mph—all before age four. My mother said my middle name should have been “Almost.”  I think a better name would have been “Lucky.” 

Anyway, sometime between ages three and four, I had a hernia operation.  I remember very little about falling out of the car, just faint images, but I remember being in the hospital and sleeping in a tall iron bed. I remember the smell of anesthesia and how it felt lying there in the operating room. 

So, I’m three, three and half and I’m in the hospital. Why they admitted me the night before surgery, I don’t know, but this was 1957 and they did things differently then. They also made my parents leave—I mean my parents left me in the hospital all by myself. I was three years old, alone and scared. I worried that somebody was going to come and take my bag, my little suitcase that was sitting on the floor next to the dresser.  The nurse came in, and she couldn’t comfort me, so she called my father and he came back.  They lived only a short distance away, so it was no big deal.  He came into the room and I was crying and afraid.  And what does my father do? He lights up a cigarette and blows smoke rings. 

You have to remember this was 1957; everybody smoked or just about, and didn’t think anything about it. My father lit up right there in the hospital—smoke rings.  

Well, it worked. I stopped crying. I remember poking holes in the rings. The things fathers do!  We’re stupid, but sometimes stupid works. He made me laugh. The monsters left my room, and I slept.

I got my first job when I was fifteen.  I worked for an orthopedic one summer—cutting off casts, cleaning exam rooms—once I watched him sew up a toe or what was left of one after a guy run over his foot with a lawn mower.  That was fun!  I’ve had a job of some kind ever since. I learned to work from my father.

My father was a do-it-your-selfer.  We built a boat once—it sank or was stolen, I can’t remember which.  My father had a woodshop and made furniture.  I’ve always liked the smell of sawdust.  We built a storage building once. We called it “The Building.”  It was painted barn-red and had two sets of doors, one on either end. You could enter one door from the ground level, but the other was, I don’t know, four, five, maybe six feet off the ground. It had a door and I guess Daddy was going to make stairs, but never got around to it. So he just left it. “The Building” had a door six feet off the ground and no stairs. Fathers do things like that. 

I had fun helping my father build  “The Building.” We laid the block, everything.  There are a lot of nails in a building like we built. Daddy was always building something—“piddling” he called it.  I know now it was a diversion. It took his mind off of the work that doesn’t make you “good and tired,” just tired. But that same work, when it is good, feels like vocation, like calling. 

My father worked for the same company his entire life. At the time of his death, he was responsible for five hundred employees and a $350 million annual business, but you’d never know it. He drove a truck to work before trucks were fashionable. He knew the names of the elevator operators and you could tell by the way they exchanged “good mornings” they had spoken many times before. 

Business for my father wasn’t just about making money. He never got rich, but he was proud of the services his industry provided and the standards by which it was governed. The word “integrity” comes to mind. And I think that integrity had to do with the truth that stood squarely in his life. I am thankful that my father taught me about truth even when it was painful.

Summers where I grew up were hot.  Lemonade stands were not uncommon. One day I decided to buy some lemonade and I didn’t have any money, but I knew my father had a piggy bank on top of his dresser. So I climbed up, uncorked the porcelain pig and took three cents. Who would know?

That night Daddy comes home from work and dumb me talks about what great lemonade I’d had that day. So my father asks, “Where’d you get the money?” 

I got a whipping. But I also got a visit that night from my father. After I’d gone to bed, he came to my room—the attic fan was pulling in still, warm air—“I’m really sorry I had to do that, son.” He felt bad about spanking me. And he probably had overreacted. Three-cents was no big deal. It was a painful experience for me and also, no doubt, for a still young father, but it was the most important three cents I’ve ever spent.

I’m glad my father taught me about truth telling.  Our world could stand for a lot more “truth-telling.” Just think about all the money we spend because people don’t tell the truth. Think of all the laws and regulations, all of the wasted time and effort because people lie. My dad believed in telling the truth. He believed in rules, in law, but he also knew in his bones that rules and law aren’t truth’s final measure. My father believed in grace.

On my 21^st birthday, Paula and I went for supper at my parents’ house. We lived a few miles away.  Paula was teaching school and I was in my final year of college. We had a place of our own and had been married just short of a year—so I thought I was grown. We go to dinner.  Nice steak dinner. Everybody is happy. Mama has made a birthday cake—21 candles. It’s the middle of summer. My birthday is in July, so, I’m not in school. I am between semesters and between jobs. 

After supper, my father and I go into the living room. I’m sitting on the couch. He’s sitting in his recliner. We’re talking about the day and I’m telling him I’ve been on a job interview—“Saw a guy today and think I’ve got a job, maybe driving a truck, making deliveries.”

 And my father, pointing to my face and the disappointed beginnings of a beard, says: “You didn’t go to your interview with that mess on your face?”

And I say, “I did, so what?”

And he says, “It’s a mess. And you shouldn’t have.”

And I say, “Where do you get off telling me that?”

And he says, “It’s my damn house and I’ll say what I want." And rising to my feet I say, “It’s my damn face and you can keep you damn house.”  By this time, Paula’s crying and Mama’s crying, and we’re out the door.  It was ugly.

So, we go home.  It’s about 8:30 or so.  Around 9:30 the phone rings. It’s my father.  “Son, I’m sorry.  I was wrong.”

That was one of the best phone calls I’ve ever had. And it was one of the most important things my father ever said, not that he was wrong, but that he was sorry, “Son, I was wrong, forgive me.”

“While we still were sinners, Christ died for us.” Our heavenly Father doesn’t wait for us to make the first move. Our heavenly Father makes the first move. He always has. He did with Father Abraham and Mother Sarah.  He did in Jesus Christ. 

At the heart of the universe is love, which makes the first move, love which comes down, love which is humble; love which gives life. In the world God has made, forgiveness trumps law. In the world God has made, grace perfects truth.   Amen.