Father's Day 2010 - June 20, 2010
Pastor Bill NicholsIntroduction
As I was looking for material for today's sermon I ran across a sermon by Robbie Chestnut titled "The Blessing of Father's". What really caught my attention about his message was the statement that: "for many of us, Father's Day is a time of guilt". What he meant by that was, that many of the stories written about Father's Day and many of the sermons that are preached on Father's Day are negative. Father's are scolded, intentionally or not, because they are not there, they do not spend enough time with, they do not go to, they do not express their love, and, well, you know. I am sure that you have heard it before why Dad's just do not cut the mustard.
Not only that, when you compare the hoopla concerning Mother's Day to that of Father's Day, there just is not a comparison.
When you think of Mother's Day, what things do you associate with it? I think of things like, breakfast in bed, flowers, taking mom out to eat, phone calls, gifts, church, a new dress or outfit, a nice card, a box of candy, etcetera. Mother's day is more sentimental and it's a big day for restaurants and florists.
Father's day is a lot less sentimental. Chestnut states that; "There's even an element of humor that surrounds Father's Day that is just simply not present at Mother's Day. The big question at this time of year is: 'What kind of tie are we going to get him?'"
Father's Day just does not get the same amount of attention as Mother's Day. Even the establishment of Father's Day as a National Day of recognition took some sixty two years to become official. Listen to this account of how Father's Day began.
The idea for an official Father's Day celebration came to a married daughter, seated in a church in Spokane, Washington, attentive to a Sunday sermon on Mother's Day in 1910 - two years after the first Mother's Day observance in West Virginia.
The daughter was Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd. During the sermon, which extolled maternal sacrifices made for children, Mrs. Dodd realized that in her own family it had been her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, who had sacrificed-raising herself and five sons alone, following the early death of his wife in childbirth. For Mrs. Dodd, the hardships her father had endured on their eastern Washington farm called to mind the unsung feats of fathers everywhere.
Her proposed local Father's Day celebration received strong support from the town's ministers and members of the Spokane YMCA. The date suggested for the festivities, June 5, Mrs. Dodd's father's birthday, was three weeks away and had to be moved back to the nineteenth when ministers claimed they need extra time to prepare sermons on such a new subject as a Father.
Newspapers across the country, already endorsing the need for a national Mother's Day, carried stories about the unique Spokane observance. Interest in Father's Day increased. Among the first notables to support Mrs. Dodd's idea nationally was the orator and political leader William Jennings Bryan, who also backed Mother's Day. Believing that fathers must not be slighted, he wrote to Mrs. Dodd, "too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the relation between parent and child."
Father's Day, however, was not so quickly accepted as Mother's Day. Members of the all-male Congress felt that a move to proclaim the day official might be interpreted as a self-congratulatory pat on the back.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson and his family personally observed the day. And in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that states, if they wished, should hold their own Father's Day observances. He wrote to the nation's governors that "the widespread observance of this occasion is calculated to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children, and also to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations."
Many people attempted to secure official recognition for Father's Day. One of the most notable efforts was made in 1957, by Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who wrote forcefully to Congress that "Either we honor both our parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one. But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable."
Eventually, in 1972 - sixty-two years after it was proposed - Father's Day was permanently established by President Richard Nixon. Historians seeking an ancient precedent for an official Father's Day observance have come up with only one: The Romans, every February, honored fathers - but only those deceased.
Now I have to say that for many of us, Father's Day is not that big a deal. Do not get me wrong, it is great when the kids call or they get you something, but for me, that is not what is important. I love my children and grand children regardless of whether or not they recognize this one day. But we all need to recognize that fathers do play such an important role in the lives of their children, and they should be honored by them. I say that recognizing that all fathers are not cut from the same cookie cutter. Some men make better fathers than others. And as we have seen with succeeding generations of men, their attitudes toward work, family, expressing love, and the like, continue to change. One thing that children also need to recognize is that their dad is a product of his upbringing and it sometimes takes generations for bad practices to disappear and good ones to develop.
It is interesting to me that in the Ten Commandments, God does not say, "Honor your good, godly, perfect Father and Mother, so that you may live long in the land." He just says, honor your father and mother.
I think that most of us dads are doing the best job we can at being a good father. Could we do better, maybe? The good news dads, is that it is often the little things that we do that are the most meaningful to our children.
Robbie Chestnut in his sermon states that; "In a popular evangelical book on this topic Gary Smalley and John Trent asked 100 people, "What is one specific way you knew that you had received your parents' blessing?" Listen to a few of the responses in relation to dads.
- "My father would put his arm around me at church and let me lay my head on his shoulder."
- "When my father was facing being transferred at work, he purposely took another job so that I could finish my senior year in high school at the same school."
- "When I wrecked my parent's car, my father's first reaction was to hug me and let me cry instead of yelling at me."
- "When I was thirteen, my dad trusted me to use his favorite hunting rifle when I was invited to go hunting with a friend and his father."
- "My father went with me when I had to take back an ugly dress a saleswoman had talked me into buying."
- "My father would let me practice pitching to him for a long time when he got home from work."
- "Even though I had never seen him cry before, my father cried during my wedding because he was going to miss me no longer being at home."