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Thank You, Dad A Sermon Preached by Dr. Andrew C. Harvey First United Methodist Church in Erie June 17, 2007 Father’s Day
I hold in my hand a Bible, a Welsh language Bible. It was presented to John Owen Jones in 1876 in the City of Erie. John Owen Jones was born in 1850 and died in 1940, and he was the paternal grandfather of Harriet Jones. Harriet Jones of course joined this congregation in 1924, while her grandfather was very much alive. The Bible was copyrighted in 1875, and it will be placed among the archives of this church. I confess I know no Welsh! Some distant relatives were Welsh and were fluent in that ancient language which has been revived of late. I recall being in Wales a few years ago and marveled at the dexterity of the people in switching from King’s English to Welsh with not a pause. I am pleased that Harriet entrusted this wonderful Bible from a bygone era to our care, and it will I am sure be precious to future generations. Harriet is the recipient of a rich heritage from her family. And in that, Harriet, we hold much in common. I wrote a bit about my Father in the bulletin today, telling of his many gifts to so many people. Charles Alexander Harvey was born in 1912 and died in 1997. He was a wonderful father, kind, loving, and filled with wonderful stories of his life and of his parents’ life. His mother and father came to America in the latter half of the nineteenth century. His father was a cooker for iron and steel mills in Pittsburgh. He could just look at the molten metal and tell when it was ready to be poured. He worked six day weeks, twelve hours a day. He and his wife had two boys, David and Charles. Sunday for the Harveys was reserved for worship, three hours in the morning, one hour at 4 in the afternoon, and three more hours in the evening. Grandpa Harvey could quote scripture by the mile, and my Dad could too. They studied God’s word and quoted from it freely. I can remember my Dad lamenting the fact that pastors in his day could not do so. Alas, I cannot either. Oh, I know my Bible, but not like him. Dad loved to sing too. My grandfather was song leader for his church. That particular brand of Protestantism had no piano or organ. The song leader would line the hymns, singing a line at a time and the congregation following on the first verse, and then all singing lustily on the verses that followed. That was something peculiar you know about the Welsh, and about the Scot-Irish too. They loved to sing. Like Methodists loved to sing. You talk about contemporary worship, where the congregation may sing for a half hour accompanied by a band. Well my Dad’s little kirk would go on for longer than that, with no musical accompaniment at all. It was a precious gift. One of the great lessons my Dad taught to me is the lesson of Galatians 2:15-21. There we find some of the most magnificent words of all scripture, as Paul proclaims that salvation comes by faith through grace, that it is a gift, and that it comes to us as we realize that we “are co-crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ Jesus who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” Let’s look at this gift my Dad gave me, and his Dad gave to him, and Paul gives to us all. For Paul is the father we must love in Christ Jesus, for he is the parent of our faith in Jesus! The situation was a terrible conflict in the church of the Galatians. Paul had founded that church, and he learned that it was dividing between people who followed him and people who followed James, the brother of Jesus. Apparently at that time, James was teaching that to be a Christian one must first become a Jew, be circumcised, follow the law, observe the sabbath and above all, keep a kosher kitchen and not eat with Gentile sinners. Paul would have none of that. He knew that Jesus died for all, and that God’s grace through Jesus’ death was given to everyone. We did not have to become a Jew first, nor did we have to be circumcised. Christ was all in all. And so Paul wrote this very troubled letter, an angry letter, to the Galatians in which he defended his understanding of the Gospel, and proclaimed the gospel that we live by. First, it is a gospel of Jesus Christ. I wonder if we appreciate that. We are not just United Methodists. We are something more basic. We are people who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Jewish Messiah, that he is the Lord, that he is the Long Awaited One, and that he is the Savior of the World. Those titles are truly troubling to Paul’s generation, but we have forgotten their meaning. Those titles told first century people that something more important than Caesar and Rome and imperial politics were here. Jesus was the Lord, not Augustus or Tiberius or Caligula or Claudius or Nero! Jesus was the Lord, and around him we find life. Nowhere else. He is the ultimate source of life and to him we owe our allegiance. And we are part of his body, we are his people because of his death and resurrection. That’s the second thing. You see that cross hanging there. Pretty, isn’t it. Well to a first century Roman it would be repugnant. It would be as if we placed an electric chair in front of this congregation, or a hang man’s noose. For first century people, the cross was an offense. But for Christians, it was the sign of God’s great love and free gift of salvation. That meant that we could not earn our way into heaven. No brownie points. No rule book. Have you been watching the Open at Oakmont? It’s a tough course, and golf is a tough game. It is a game of rules, rules that have been carefully hewn and carefully followed for well over a century. Break a rule and you get a penalty stroke, or more! Keep the rules and you are a good golfer! Christianity is not a religion of rules! Christianity is a way of life, a way of being in God. We rather have been “crucified with Christ,” for by our faith in Christ we participate in his death and in his resurrection. And so we can say that we live and have our being in Jesus, participating in all that he suffered and won. Salvation, life, is not from following the Torah, but it is a gift, as if a golfer had someone pick up his ball and drop it in the cup for a hole in one! The cross is for us the symbol of this great gift. The cross of Jesus tells us of God’s great love for humankind, and for you and me. And so third, we live a new life, in the flesh, but the power for that life comes not from our will, nor from our effort, but it comes from God. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that send us on our way. We not only live in a new world, with a new leader and guide, we are empowered by that guide and leader to live our daily life in a cruciformed way. The cross is the sign of our salvation and of our daily life. Now all this is the story of the Bible. Galatians 2:15-21 is the story of the Old and New Testaments, the story of God’s wonderful matchless grace bestowed upon each one of us. It is the story we must live by. Whether the story is told in Spanish or English or Welsh, it is a story for all people, and it was the story that empowered by grandfather and my father, and, yes, it is the story that he taught me by precept and example, and, God willing, it will be the story that you and I will teach our children. Yes, I can say “thank you, Dad,” for all your wonderful gifts. But above all, I thank that good and kind man, my Father, the one I call “Daddy” to this day, for the gift of Jesus Christ. It was his gift to me, the gift of salvation, and I pray you will accept it for yourself this day, so that you too may say “the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” Tell me, is Jesus your Lord too? |