I’m not sure that guys really look forward to Father’s Day, at least not in the church. It’s not like Mother’s Day. In most churches on Mother's Day the pastor celebrates motherhood and reminds everyone to be good to their mothers. On Father's Day he (it’s usually a he) lectures the men on what they need to do to be better at being a dad. If you don’t believe me, go look at sermons on the Internet. Mother’s Day sermons are usually of the warm fuzzy variety. Father’s Day sermons are more likely to fall in the “cold prickly” zone – or as Jeannette puts it, “three thumbtacks on the pew” class.
Why is that? Perhaps it’s simply a function of the fact that most pastors are men and they’re wise enough to know they can’t tell women how to be mothers. Still, it’s hard enough to just be a guy these days, never mind a father. There are so many competing images of manhood thrown at us. You have the old classic image; the “John Wayne Man,” strong and silent and dangerous. You can still trace a line of these guys in film – Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis. Then there is the “James Bond Man”; suave and worldly, good with words and with women. “Ray Romano Man” in Everybody Loves Raymond, trying to figure out whether he should be more afraid of his wife or his mother. (Canadian Tire gadget man belongs here too.) And there’s SNAGs “Sensitive New Age Guys” whose primary characteristic is that they’re very much in touch with their feelings. And, of course, there’s “Gangsta Rap Man,” abusive to women and each other. So many images of manhood, all competing for our allegiance.
It’s important where we get our images of manhood from because, perhaps more than ever before, men have an identity crisis. Sam Keen, writer of “Fire in The Belly”, says, “We are self-conscious animals, and our status as men, our grandeur or meanness, is determined by the horizons of our moral universe, by our choice of heroes and authorities, by trying to keep up with Donald Trump, imitate the lifestyle of Mick Jagger, or follow in the footsteps of [a religious leader].” (Keen 84)
I’m going to speak mainly to the men here this morning, but I make no apology about that. It isn’t only men who project models of manhood. Wives and mothers and sisters do it too and it’s important that we all hear this.
Parents tell their sons, “Be a man.” Wives tell their husbands, “Be a man.” Men tell other men, “Be a man.” I’m not sure if there is a parallel phrase in English, “be a woman!” I’ve never heard it. What does it mean to “be a man?”
It used to be easy. For thousands of years societies have had ways of making boys into men. In some tribal societies there’s a ceremony when a boy is allowed to enter the men’s hut for the first time. He goes in as a boy but he comes out as a man and is expected to act like one. Sometimes it means a trip into the bush where the boys are taught the secrets of the hunt or go on their first hunt. Sometimes it involves circumcision, ritual scarring or a vision quest. In Jewish society it’s the bar mitzvah. After his bar mitzvah, at age 13, a Jewish boy is responsible to fulfil his own obligations under the Jewish law and expected to begin to take his place in adult society as a man.
You may think 13 is a bit young, but adolescence is a modern invention. Until a couple of hundred years ago people were children – then they became adults. There was no in-between stage. Adolescence is the result of the industrial revolution and the need to extend education into what used to be adulthood.
[Jason’s description when he was 16 - adults/children - and they get to choose.]
In traditional societies, girls were eligible to join adult society when they menstruated. [In Afghan society a girl is free from having to wear the head covering until she reaches puberty and free once again when she hits menopause.] But what do you do with boys? They have no “natural” marker for moving from boys to men. So societies have invented ways of letting boys know that they’re men and expected to behave accordingly. Those events are always “men only” affairs because only men can tell men what it means to be a man.
Traditionally men have defined themselves in relation to three areas; war, work and women.
In relation to war, men have defined themselves by being able to protect. Men have always been taught to suppress fear and pain. Fathers, brothers, mothers, they all tell us, “big boys don’t cry.” That’s because, in a dangerous world, the men were the ones that had to be trained to protect the women and children.
The problem with suppressing fear is that it usually results in the suppression of other emotions too. For many men the only acceptable emotion is anger and everything gets channelled through that one emotion. Sam Keen describes the result as, “a shell of muscle and will wrapped around a vacuum.”
In relation to work, men have defined themselves by being able to provide.
[My father-in-law worked his entire life at International Harvester down on Burlington Street. He went into the accounting department because he’s great with numbers and he loves working with them. - He once said he didn’t care what job they gave him as long as he had a phone on his desk. That way he could call his broker during his coffee break. - In his late 20’s he had an opportunity to move into the engineering department where they produced the manuals for all the farm equipment. It offered a better career path and more money, although it wasn’t really something he liked. But for his generation that wasn’t an issue. The goal was to provide for your family. So he took the job. He was a man. He provided for his family.]
In relation to women, men defined themselves by the ability to procreate. The test of your manhood was to father children, preferably sons who would carry on the family name.
Today those traditional roles for men have generally been deconstructed. Many Canadians struggle with the fact that we have troops in Afghanistan because violence of any sort is no longer an acceptable option to them. Most families have two incomes so the man is no longer the provider, and people are waiting longer to have children, sometimes deciding not to have kids at all. What’s a man to do?
Well, we can’t go backwards. I’m not promoting the agenda of the conservative men’s groups in the States who say that all a boy needs is a Dad, a dog and a gun. Manhood has always been measured by a man’s ability to rise to the challenges of his time. Those challenges change, and so the definition changes. In a hunting society manhood is about “Bringing Home Animals” (the title of a book about the Cree of Northern Quebec). In a farming society manhood is about working the land and providing for the family that way. In a warrior society or in a nation at war it is about courage and being able to stand pain while protecting those you love. In the commercial society for most of the last hundred years or so it has been about working a job, even if you hated it, to provide for your family.
What is it now? We’ll come back to that…
The other question is, “How do we help boys become men?” I said that only men can tell men what it means to be a man, and the primary place that a boy learns about becoming a man is from his father.
That brings us to a grief that is very close to the surface for many men these days. The aching void of the absent father. Lots of boys have lost their fathers because they were too busy with work or because of divorce and desertion. But even if the father is physically present, he’s often emotionally inhibited or too tired after work to form a close bond with his kids. One man says, “My father was a traveling salesman, but even when he was at home he wasn’t close to me. All my life I have suffered from uncertainties about my masculinity. I think it is because he never shared himself with me. He didn’t tell me what kinds of problems he wrestled with, what he felt, what it meant to him to be a man. I have had to make it all up for myself, and I’m never sure that I have it right.”
[tell my own story]
50% of today’s children are raised in single parent homes, usually by the mother. The studies show that that is much harder for the boys than it is for the girls.
[That’s why it’s so important for men to help single moms form their sons by being willing to be a male figure in their lives. That’s risky these days. Big Brothers is crying out for volunteers but they have to deal with the fact that men in general have been painted as sexual predators and one accusation of sexual abuse can destroy a man’s life. A friend who is a pastor had that happen to him. The accusation was totally unfounded. He survived it, but his church’s children’s ministry didn’t.]
Two questions; “What does it mean to be a man?” and “How do we help form boys into men?” Do we have any answers?
Well, if the issue of being a man is about images and models, the first thing is to choose the right model. Who are you going to model yourself after? Your father? Bill Gates? Brad Pitt?
Those of you who grew up in Sunday school know the story of the Sunday School teacher who asked, “What lives in trees, has a bushy tail and eats nut?” One boy answered, “Well, it sure sounds like a squirrel, but since we’re in Sunday School the answer must be Jesus.”
Well, this time the answer is “Jesus,” but you have to forget a lot of what you learned in Sunday School, especially those pictures of the sweet and gentle Jesus, meek and mild.
Jesus drew all kinds of men to himself, and most of them weren’t Sensitive New Age Guys. They were hard working fishermen, political revolutionaries, crafty financial wheeler-dealers, and they left everything and decided to follow him and become his disciples. This is not “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”
In the passage we read this morning we heard of a Roman centurion who came to Jesus and asked him to heal his servant. (Matt 8:5-13) A Roman centurion was a career, professional soldier. It took 15-20 years to work your way up to the rank of centurion and he had full authority over about 100 men in the field. That’s company strength, so a centurion was the equivalent to a major in a modern army.
This is a man who knows men. Now, you might think that the highest expression of manhood is the great individualist who does it his way and doesn’t need anybody else. But when Jesus offers to come to the centurion’s house the centurion replies, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
He says, “For I myself am a man under authority…”
I was at a folk concert on Friday night and when I was talking to one of the performers in the break and I said, “I used to play in a ceilidh band myself when I was younger.” meaning, “We have this in common.”
The centurion is saying to Jesus, “I recognise that we’re not that different. I’m a professional soldier and I understand how authority works. I only have authority because I am submitted to those above me. I see that in you too.” And Jesus agreed with him. It’s what Jesus said about himself, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19) Both Jesus and the centurion recognise that our identity is formed by our relationships, especially by who or what we submit to.
We saw this a couple of weeks ago when we looked at Philippians 2 which speaks of Jesus’ choice not to assert himself but to submit himself to his father and become human, so human in fact that he gave his life for ours. – Self-sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the community. Now there’s a virtue that men have identified with for thousands of years. It’s what society has always trained, and expected, soldiers, police officers, and emergency workers to do.
To quote Sam Keen again as he speaks about Jesus, “[This] single insight about manhood… continues to be as revolutionary as it was two millennia ago. A man finds fulfillment… only when he turns aside from willfulness and surrenders to something beyond self.”
If that’s true, if the essence of true manhood is not assertin yourself but submitting yourself, then the only question that remains is, “To what or whom are you submitted?” “Who or what is your master?” As Bob Dylan sang, “You gotta serve somebody, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.” You can add to that list; the devil, the Lord, the company, your career, your ego, your self. You name it. The only one in that list that won’t destroy you in the in end is if you serve your creator God, because that is what you were made for.
That’s what Jesus models for us, loving submission to his father, and pouring ourselves out in service to others. That’s the path to discovering ourselves as men, not learning to be assertive or getting in touch with our feelings.
If that’s the target, loving submission to
our heavenly father, and service to others, how do we help each other as men
accomplish that? How do we who are older men help younger men discover that?
How do fathers help sons learn what it means to be male?
I don’t pretend there are any easy answers to that one. But I do know this, we’ll all find it easier if we are willing to learn from one another and invest time and energy in one another as men.
So this sermon is essentially a plea for us to begin to think, pray and dream about some kind of men’s ministry here at Wentworth. I’m not suggesting that we just replicate what has always been done for men in the church, although I have nothing against high cholesterol breakfasts from time to time. I’d like us to pray and talk about what would make a difference in the lives of men in the church and beyond. I don’t envisage anything happening before the fall at the earliest but if something is going to happen we need to be talking and praying now.
So I’m going to do something a little different after the service. I’m going to have the talk-back session as usual but I’m going to ask that, just this once, only men come to it. Even if it’s only for half an hour, I’d like us to talk a bit about what might be possible in the future. Even if all we do is agree on a time for us to get together when there’s more time to talk about it. And I’d like to ask that we don’t just “round up the usual suspects,” men who have done this kind of thing before. I’d like to hear new voices, young voices, in the discussion.
And to the ladies I’d like to say thank you for bearing with us this morning, and I’d like to ask you to pray for the men in your lives; fathers, husbands, brothers, boyfriends, fiancés, or just friends, that they will find their fulfilment in following Jesus and serving others.