Through the eyes of a Father

I got one heck of a Father’s Day gift yesterday. My wife, Shannon, and my daughter, Ruth, have been gone for the past week visiting our family in Kentucky. So, I’ve been lonely and a little down waiting for them to return. And yesterday around 6 in the evening they returned. I was hanging out at the coffee shop down the steet, working on this sermon, when they pulled up in front of our apartment. As I walked down Magazine St. to greet them, I saw little Ruthie, standing on the sidewalk next to some luggage, pushing around her brand new toy stroller. And I as soon as I saw her, I swooned. I am head over heels, full on ridiculously in love with this little girl. All I can see is how wonderful she is, she is so strong, so big, she’s such a great little walker. Look at how she puts the baby doll in the stroller, she’s a genius! Every little thing about her is amazing to me. I cannot believe how lucky I am to have the smartest, most gifted, most beautiful child, in the entire world. As all of these wonderful, borderline delusional thoughts go through my mind, Ruthie sees me approaching and runs towards me. She smiles, she giggles, and she lets me hug her and shower her little face with kisses. Like I said, it has already been a great Father’s Day.
I imagine that many fathers feel this way about their children, convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are special, that they are really something. In the history of Israel, the figure of King David, stands out as special, as being really something. King David became a figure that was larger than life, he become legendary. Like all legends, King David’s fame, generated a number of stories of his origin, stories of his humble beginnings and how he rose to fame. Several of these are collected in the book of Samuel, his fight against Goliath the giant Philistine is one, and the story we heard this morning, the story of Samuel choosing him over his older brothers and annointing him King. One element that all these origin stories of David share is the fact that he, the youngest among his brothers, was a shepherd.
Shepherding is not a common profession in our present day context. As such, many of the connotations that accompanied the occupation of shepherd in ancient Israel are not immediately apparent to us. First, there are the negative connotations. There was a shift in the history of Israel, an evolution that was still occurring at the time of David, from being a primarily nomadic and pastoral community, to becoming an settled agricultural community. As often happens in times of change, the old ways begin to be seen as backwards, as wrongheaded, as holdouts against the future, against progress. As the population settled into towns and cities, and settled agriculture took hold, shepherds were forced to the outskirts, they were marginalized. Viewed as uncivilized, as bandits and lowlifes. Shepherding was not a respectable profession. It was not fit for a respectable family, the work of shepherding was hired out, or if times were rough, it was work given to the youngest child, to the disinheirited.
Despite shepherding’s decline in status as a profession in Ancient Israel around the time of the monarchy, there remained a strong sense of nostalgia surrounding the shepherd. As is often the case in times of great change, symbols of the earlier, simpler times, become sentimentalized and symbolic. As Israel became a settled agricultural kingdom, the figure of the shepherd came to be just such a symbol. In a time of centralizing power, great income inequality, and the elevation of kings, generals, and courts, the shepherd was remembered as one who saw the value in all of his sheep. The shepherd had a special concern for the lost sheep, as it was the one that needed to be found. The shepherd had a special concern for the weak sheep, as they needed to be proteceted. The shepherd showed undying mercy, and unending grace, and unconditional love to the sheep. Though they might wander from him and the flock, he always sought them out, always welcomed them back to the fold. Finally, as an outcast himself, as a person marginalized by his society, the shepherd always had a heart for the outcasted and the marginalized. When the people of Israel remembered King David, they remembered him as having been a shepherd.
The figure of shepherd would one day move from describing King David, to describing the Son of David, Jesus the Christ, the Good Shepherd. God not only showed partiality to the shepherd David, but God acts as a shepherd. Presented with the sons of Jesse from whom to choose a King for the people, God passes over the obvious choice. The firstborn was the one with the rights and privileges of the House, and Jesse’s first born Eliab was tall and strong and handsome. He cut the figure of a King. When Samuel saw Eliab, he thought, here this is God’s annointed. And yet God told Samuel no. “For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance but he looks upon the heart.” So too the next son, and the next, and the one after that. All seven of Jesse’s sons pass before God and Samuel and none of them are chosen. When it seems that all Jesse’s children have been rejected, Samuel asks, “Are all your sons here?” Jesse replies no, there is one more, the youngest, but he is out keeping the sheep. David has not even been considered. He has been forgotten. All cJesse’s sons called forth to be King, all except David who wasn’t worth considering. He could stay with the sheep, stick to the shepherding, stay in the margins.
Yet God does not leave David in the margins. Could does not forget David, nor does God refuse to consider him. God skips over the first born, God skips the privileged and obvious choices, and Samuel holds up the whole process so that David can be brought forward, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.”  The unworthy is to be considered, the forgotten is remebered, the marginalized is brought to the center. David, the youngest, the lowly shepherd will be brought before God. Like a good shepherd God seeks out the lost and forgotten. Like a good shepherd God shows special concern for the lowly. When David is brought before Samuel, God says to him, “Rise and annoint him: for this is the one.” Though the world might not see him as much, though his own family might not consider him worthy, in God’s eyes David was special. God could see in David the lowly shepherd the potential for greatness.
Father, is the name that Jesus used for God, and the metaphor for the divine that he has passed on to us. To believe in God as Father is to believe that God sees you as God’s own child, that God sees you through the eyes of a loving, nurturing, parent. Another person walking down Magazine Street last night, might have seen a dirty little toddler in need of a haircut, babbling incoherently and causing trouble for its mother as she tried to unload the car. Another person might have just seen the problems, the flaws, and the trouble. But not me, for I am now a father, and there is no flaw I can’t see past, no problem I cannot forgive, there is nothing in the world that could convince me that my daughther is not capable of great things, that she is anything less than special. To believe in God as Father, is to believe that that is the way that God see you. God knows you are special and cannot be convinced otherwise. Despite what you or anyone else may think, God believes that you are capable of great things. God is calling you to the center, God is considering you for greatness, God is preparing you in each and every moment to become all that God knows you are capable of. God loves you, as only a good parent can.
Finally, faith in God our Father calls us to more than just believing in ourselves and the great things that God can call forth from us. For God is not merely our Father, God is THE Father, the Father of each and every human child in existence. The same God who loves us unconditionally, who sees our unending worth and value, and who believes that we are special, feels the exact same way about every other human being on the planet. Our Father God, is also the Good Shepherd, and that Shepherd cannot forget the lost, the weak, the needy. God is unending compassion and bottomless love for the lowliest among us. We are not God, and we cannot strech our limited and finite compassion as far as that Good Shepherd, I can try as I might but I won’t be able to love every child as I love Ruth, my own daughter. But as Christian, as a child of God, I am called to remember that God loves every child, of every race, of every nation, of every gender, as only a parent can. We are called to remember God’s love for all children, to ever strive towards better embodying that love to the children of the world, and to remember that all children are remembered, loved, and considered special by God our Father. Amen.
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