Sermon June 19, 2011
                                                    “Structure Not Rigidity” 

  In the summer of 1962 I stole a car. Now that I have gotten your attention, let me give you the details -- for it is not quite as bad as it sounds.  49 years ago this month I was a counselor in training at a Y camp in Central Iowa. There were 5 of us – “CITs”. We spent some of our time helping the senior counselors teach archery, swimming, tennis, and crafts. We went on camping trips, and canoed down the local rivers with the campers and the other staff. But even more we spent much of our time as virtual serfs cleaning stacks of  pots and pans at every meal for several hundred campers and mowing what seemed like endless fields not of dreams but of weedy and scrubby grass.

Given our ages we, CITs, thought our jobs pretty cool -- especially because we got to hang out with the college guys who were the senior counselors. In particular one of them, Paul, was great with the CITs. He even let the one CIT who had a driver’s license take Paul’s old rusty Renault out for drives on the many dirt roads that wound around the camp.

Well one day Paul was away on one of the canoe trips. The CIT with the driver’s license – a high school classmate of mine -- decided to take the Renault out for a spin. He invited all four of us CITs to go with him. Three of them quickly jumped into the car but I declined. I didn’t think we had been given permission to use the car when Paul was gone. I also thought the driver -- my classmate -- was not the most responsible guy. As you can imagine I was subjected to lots of peer pressure and ridicule for being such a wimp but I held fast. And so off the car went dust flying and tires squealing. Ten minutes later they were back with stories of what fun they were having skidding and doing power slides on the dirt roads throwing up lots of dust. My fellow CITs were by now merciless in calling me out for being such a big chicken. Finally, I succumbed and slipped into the back seat. We took off in a cloud of dust. We entered the first serious curve at a high rate of speed and, before I knew it, we were airborne and then rolling over and over and over. To this day I remember that moment because there was an open box of Tide detergent in the back seat and as we rolled over we were engulfed in a blizzard of white soap powder.  When the car stopped rolling, we all got out. No one was hurt but the car was totaled. Everyone, except myself and one other CIT,   literally ran off – promising to catch a freight train west.

Almost immediately the camp directory and other camp officials were at the crash site. And not long after that the local County Sheriff appeared. To top it off  Paul, the owner of the car, appeared. He had just returned from his canoe trip and learned of the accident. Paul and the camp director persuaded the authorities that this was a camp matter.  Paul reported that he had given the driver general permission to use the car on the camp roads -- an act of generosity and reconstructed history that I have never forgotten.

But then reality set in. We had just wrecked a car. As bad as it was to be there standing in front of the car’s owner and the camp director – I couldn’t help but think -- “oh my God what are my parents going to say and do”.  For the only thing the director said to us was, “I am going to the office now to call your parents.”

Let me digress a moment to tell you a little about my father. Most of you know that he was a minister, but not your stereotypical minister. He was a type A+ personality. He graduated first or second in his class from every school he ever attended, including Yale Divinity School where for years he was the only person to receive all three of the senior class awards.  He ran in the Ohio track championships coming in second, which disappointed him greatly, even though he lost to Jessie Owns. He had high expectations for himself and especially for his children. Quite clearly wrecking a car was not on  his list of expectations for me.  I had no idea how our conversation about this mess I was in was going to go.

Other than saying something to the effect that what I had done was pretty stupid -- he never said another word about how I had screwed up. He rightly knew I needed no verbal lessons or additional punishment. He knew I was acutely aware of and embarrassed by my mistake. What he did say was that while he would advance my portion of the cost of a replacement vehicle for Paul -- one way or another -- he expected me to pay him back. That expectation I did meet.

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For a moment I want to change focus. The passage from Genesis that Robin read is one of the most famous in the Bible. Most of us here know it well

In the beginning when God created the heavens
            and the earth, the earth was a formless void and
            darkness covered the face of the deep, while a |
            wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

We are all familiar with the repetitive cadences “and God said let there be” that run through the 7 days in which God  creates the world and finds Creation good. And most of us have accepted this as a wonderful creation myth, not a scientific explanation of creation. And yet even though this creation story is not literally true, there is profound truth contained in it.

What is most interesting in this passage is God’s role. Unlike the gods of the ancient world who were thought to control the world like a puppet master controls puppets, the God of the Israelites offered not control but structure. God took a formless void and created a glorious and interconnected world of seasons, of days and nights, of animals and fish and creepy crawly things, and of plants and trees and flowers. It was a structure that encouraged interdependence among living things, enabling them to live and thrive; indeed to multiple and flourish. This God gave suggestions on how to live -- be fruitful and multiply, use the green plants for food, exercise stewardship over all living things on earth. And perhaps most importantly God’s people were reminded that human beings were made in God’s image.  No divine force pulls our strings, we have freedom –– to make good choices or bad in how we live. That God–given freedom is good but requires structure not chaos and we have the power, freedom and creativity to replace chaos with structure

If we are made in God‘s image and according to God’s likeness, what this says is that at our best we should act as God does. Having been given various divine gifts such as intelligence, creativity and freedom we ought to exercise these gifts following God’s template. 

Today’s passage from Genesis is such a guide. Especially on this Father’s Day I see in Genesis the reminder that as parents we are helping to provide our children with structure. We provide shelter, food, education, support and love – for them.  And we give them guidance. We let them know what we value and how we want them to treat others. But also we must affirm their freedom. That freedom is critical and is what underlies the Jewish –Christian view of the loving relationship between humans and God and among human beings. Choosing to do what is right and good is better than being forced to do so. The same is true in our relationships with our children.  When they freely choose to do the right thing, I think you will agree, that is better than if we force them to do so. And sometimes that means allowing them to make a bad choice and suffering the consequences On the other hand unstructured chaotic freedom is not good either. Offering no structure or guidance is not a loving act. To love one is not to enable them to do whatever they want but rather to help them to be the best they can be, even if it means saying no sometimes.

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Now, back to my stolen car story. I have thought back on that event often – especially after I became a parent. What I can now appreciate is that my father gave me structure and yet allowed me freedom to make my own decisions. But he also made sure that I was not shielded from the consequences of those decisions.   While I was aware of my father’s disappointment, I knew that this event would be forgiven and   forgotten in the fullness of time. And most of all I knew that I was loved and that my father wanted me to be the best I could be. He was not a perfect father – there are none -- but he gave me loving structure. The rest has been up to me.

  On this Father’s Day let us hold up all those fathers -- past and present  imperfect though they be – who have blessed us by giving us  the freedom and opportunity to be the best we can be. For them let us say thanks be to God.