Being a father is one of the best and scariest things I’ve ever done.

I always knew I was called to be a father. I knew I’d get married and we’d start a family. I really won the lottery in the marriage and children department. Yet it’s not ideal. Things on this side of heaven rarely are. Ideals are something I’m believing in less and less. Let me explain.

I heard this description of the Trinity a while back. I think it came from Rob Bell but I couldn’t find the source. God is the ideal. Say you want to create. To write a story or a song. To paint a landscape or a still life. You’re inspired and you get this idea and you set about bringing that ideal, idea, dream into reality.

As you try to incarnate this idea, you hit limitations. You’re limited by what instrument you play or what register your voice is in. You’re limited by your language and your command of it. You’re limited by the boundaries of the canvas and your skill with the brush and what paint colors you have on hand. You find that your idea… your ideal… has particular restrictions. This is Jesus, the brown-skinned Palestinian Jew who lived on the earth with the same restrictions we have. The need for food, clothing, shelter, human connection, all the limitations we have.

Yet Jesus did great things. Such great things that his followers got inspired and took his message of the Creator who came and dwelt with us and said to love. The followers were so inspired they took it from their homes in Jerusalem. To Judea. To the ends of the earth. That’s the Holy Spirit. When you’re inspired by something else and you’re led to create, to make your idea a reality, and you’re guided by a vision, that’s the Spirit.

This process happens all at once. It’s hard to tell where one part ends and the other one starts. I like that way to think about the process of creation through the lens of the Trinity.

I like that because I see it in my own life. I always knew I wanted to be a husband and a father. That was the ideal. I like the romantic comedies that flourished in late ‘80s and ‘90s. When Harry Met Sally. Sleepless in Seattle. Especially Love Actually. Most of those movies end before the incarnation. Most of those are about finding the ideal. Two people discovering one another and making the choice to be together. Most of these movies end at the wedding.

Well, that’s where things get interesting! That’s where the incarnation happens!

Suddenly you have limits! Suddenly, the soaring opus of your love story becomes less soaring because you have to figure out whose turn is it to do the dishes. And those little quirks that were so endearing you now have to live with day-after-day. There are great soaring moments still! And there are very deep lows. But mostly it’s the routine. The daily small ways we choose to love one another. Showing up. Making sure things get done and bills are paid.

Kids are the same way. Kate and I would dream about our children. Then the incarnation happens. We may have had all sorts of unspoken and spoken dreams but we don’t get to choose, and they don’t get to choose their parents. Kids are a mystery in and of themselves. As the prophet Kahlil Gibran stated, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”[1]

Right before we had Eve, a friend asked how I was feeling. I said, “It feels like I’m watching this comet come in and it’s going to be a direct hit. We don’t know what life will be like afterwards. We just know that life will be completely different.” And it was. And is.

So different that I know I’m in over my head. That’s why one of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 69. It begins with how I feel being married to the beauty and intellect that is Kate and being the father of my kids: “I’m in over my head.”

Well, that’s the Pastor Luke paraphrase.

Psalm 69 is a song about loving God so much that it causes problems. People make fun of you. Question your motives. Call you “holier than thou.” Drunks make songs about you.

I was dating this girl in high school and her family was amazed that I went to church. “What are you some sort of goodie two-shoes?” the mom asked when I first met them.

I was stumped. “I think so…. But don’t you want your daughter dating that?!” I knew that she wasn’t the one for me.

The Psalmist says, “I’m up to my neck!” and then pleads “Don’t let the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me.”

When I became a husband, I found the other half of my heart. When I became a father, I found that heart walking around outside of my body. Twice.

And that heart needed to be fed at 2 and 4 in the morning and screams and needs boo-boo’s kissed and diapers changed. They have their own personalities and fears, and it’s amazing and frightening and so hard to describe to you. It’s not ideal. It’s very messy, this business of being a father. The incarnation is rarely, if ever, ideal.

It wasn’t ideal for Jesus. Born to an unwed couple in a barn. Visited by outsiders and outcasts. Born poor and oppressed at the edge of an evil empire. God came to us this way. God, the idea, chose a less-than-ideal way to be revealed to us. To show solidarity with us.

I take great comfort in that. It gives me hope because, as I’ve stated before, my favorite hobbies are 1. Basketball 2. Dungeons and Dragons 3. Setting impossible standards and then beating up on myself when I don’t reach them. When I’m less than ideal is when I’m closer to God.

When I’m in over my head. When I’m out matched and outclassed. For then I am humbled. And being humbled, I’m open to learn.

And that, my friends…. Is the joy of fatherhood. It’s a joy that’s so hard to express. So hard to point to. It sounds so unwanted, that’s because it sometimes is. The sleepless nights. The less than ideal moments. The less than ideal times where I lost patience and yelled or didn’t listen or didn’t hug quick enough. I’m learning to be a better father, and I’m learning to be a better human in those moments.

Because those moments aren’t all there is. There are also transcendent moments. Moments of hilarity when kids say the darnedest things. Eve and Sam are really funny and are developing really clever senses of humor. They inspire me. The incarnation inspires me beyond the small ideals that I once held. I no longer remember or think of those things. I’m too caught up in the present. I’m loving this ride.

I’m loving seeing other parents at work. Our young families here presently. We have a great group of kids here because we have a great group of parents and grandparents who are raising them. And I have the honor and privilege of watching that, and I’m inspired. I don’t know what your ideals were. I don’t get to see the limits of your incarnation and the less-than-ideal parts of your life. I get to be inspired by it. And some of you have kindly said the same of us.

And not just the present parents. I get to hear our seasoned members recall stories of when their kids were in the house. Or those without kids tell me stories of their parents or growing up. I love those stories. To hear of the moments that inspired you and that have been with you ever since they happened—those memories will never fade.

I know the gospel reading today didn’t sound great. Jesus says he came not to bring peace but a sword. He came to divide up the families. The first century had a different style of family. One that wasn’t always based on love or nurture. We should never make peace with an impossible standard of family that is simply an ideal that can’t be incarnated. An ideal that rejects girls who are too much a tomboy or boys who like art. Or trans kids. Or biracial kids. Or foster or adopted kids. Or children being raised by their grandparents, or families that have multiple generations in the house, or people who have remained single or couples who do not have kids or any other standards that don’t fit the popular notion of family.

And let’s reject idealizing children as well. I’ve heard from many after last Sunday’s sermon that racism must be taught. True. That’s true. And yet kids with glasses get made fun of. If you’re too tall or too short, you’re excluded from certain lunch tables. Kids can ostracize all on their own. It’s human to exclude. To include is divine.

So I’m trying to learn to include more. Include the good parts of my personality and the not-so-good parts. Fatherhood is a reflection of trying to be a person of faith for me.

The process of discovering an ideal, then trying to live it out, and then being inspired by the limits only to understand the ideal in a new way… THAT is the Trinity for me. A God who is known but never fully. Christ who challenges me to live the values of God. And the Spirit which guides me back to learn more about God, myself, and neighbor. That process is amazing!

It’s something I’ll always pursue yet never master. I’ll always be the student until maybe I’m a grandpa. Probably not even then. For the student isn’t above the master. That keeps me humble. It keeps me open to learning. It keeps a sense of joy and grace for myself. It has changed my life for the better. It has saved my life on multiple occasions. It makes me want to leave the world a better place than I’ve found it. For my children and grandchildren.

For your children and grandchildren.

For ALL children and grandchildren.

We have work to do church. Let’s get to it!

Works Cited

[1] On Children, The Prophet, page 17