READINGS: Genesis 46:1-7; 28-30
When Israel set out on his journey with all that he had and came to Beer-sheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. God spoke to Israel in visions of the night, and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again; and Joseph’s own hand shall close your eyes.”
Then Jacob set out from Beer-sheba; and the sons of Israel carried their father Jacob, their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him. They also took their livestock and the goods that they had acquired in the land of Canaan, and they came into Egypt, Jacob and all his offspring with him, his sons, and his sons’ sons with him, his daughters, and his sons’ daughters; all his offspring he brought with him into Egypt...
...Israel sent Judah ahead to Joseph to lead the way before him into Goshen. When they came to the land of Goshen, Joseph made ready his chariot and went up to meet his father Israel in Goshen. He presented himself to him, fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. Israel said to Joseph, “I can die now, having seen for myself that you are still alive.”
New Testament: John 10:22-30
At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”
Swedenborg: Arcana Coelestia, 6492
In a dream my father appeared to me, and I spoke with him, saying that after a son becomes his own Master he ought not to acknowledge his father as father, as before; for the reason why the father is to be acknowledged during the bringing up of the son, is that the father is then in the Lord's stead, nor does a son know at that time what he ought to do except by the direction of his father. But when his son becomes his own master, and competent to think for himself, and seems to himself to be able to direct himself from himself, and the Lord must be his Father, whose vice-regent his natural father had been. These things I spoke in my dream. When I awoke, there seemed to descend from heaven a long roll fastened to rods, and tied by the most beautiful woven knots of an azure color; the beauty of this object was indescribable. It was said that the angels make such presents to one another.
Sermon
I’m sure that I’m not alone in wanting to know what was written on that scroll in Swedenborg’s dream. The first thing I imagined written upon that roll was Swedenborg’s genealogy, the unbroken line of parents and grandparents, all the way back to his earliest family members. I suppose this occurred to me because genealogy is one of my hobbies, but also from the context of the dream. Swedenborg is speaking with his father, the man who “stood in the Lord’s stead” for Swedenborg in his early years, the one who probably kindled Swedenborg’s first worldly ideas about the Lord in his lifetime. And so did all the fathers that might have appeared on that roll, creating an unbroken chain of the Lord’s “vice regents” back into the past.
As one of the family genealogists, I recently had to carry out the responsibility that I had been dreading for quite some time. I entered the death date for my father, Edwin Elden Hoffman, born October 10th, 1941, died June 5th, 2021. Fifteen days ago. Fifteen days before Father’s Day.
We just returned from West Virginia where my father spent his final days in this world to be with my mother and to help her pack up the house. Part of that time was sorting through my father’s personal effects. I thought I would show you a few of these effects, because each says something about the kind of man he was, the qualities that don’t get written in newspaper obituaries. I believe that everyone who lives a full life in this world deserves to be recognized, to be known, and so I would like to offer you this tribute.
Binoculars: The first I the pair of binoculars you see on the altar. Dad had collected an assortment of binoculars and magnifiers and glasses with flashlights built into the frames so you could see what you were working on. I show you these because Dad was a careful observer where people were concerned. He wasn’t the one to jump into the middle of a group of people. Rather he would watch and listen. Collect information. If there was a heated argument, he would insert himself as the one with the authority to end the conflict. He would let is simmer down on its own, and then go to individuals after the fact and offer his insights. “You know, you’re not going to solve anything by yelling like that,” he might say. “The other person is hurting, too, and you need to let them speak their peace.” For Dad, authority was never a function of position. It was a function of perspective. It was the one who could see what was really going on that had the authority to speak, providing a resolution that benefited everyone.
Pocket knife: Dad also carried a pocket knife, like this one. I suppose he learned the habit from his father. They are tremendously useful things to have around, and you never really know when you’re going to need one. Dad would use his pocket knife to cut an electrical wire when he was repairing something, or twine when he was securing something else. He had at least two on him whenever he went fishing, and even at home he might take out a knife to peel an apple or clean out the dirt under his fingernails. Dad was like most men, I think, in that he valued being useful to others, and he wanted to keep his tools close whenever he needed them.
Cribbage board: Another way that Dad felt useful was to make sure everyone around him felt welcome. He loved a good conversation, and he loved a good game. There were several decks of cards among his effects, as well as this cribbage board, which has been dated back to 1880. Dad taught me how to play cribbage, as well as poker and a few other games. He brought his best to the table always, but winning the game was never the most important part of it. Having a good time with the people you are with was always more important than winning. Some of my fondest memories of Dad were at the game table, whether it was one-on-one or as many people as we could gather, and we always had a great time with each other.
Chess: The game he taught me first, and the one for which I am most grateful to him, was chess. This is a knight from a set my mother bought for him years ago, when we took a family vacation down to Cumberland Gap in Kentucky. It’s made of onyx, and it came with an onyx board. I remember Dad gluing felt on the bottom of all the pieces so they wouldn’t scratch the board, but that just made them all unstable, so he cleaned all the felt off them. I don’t know where he learned the game—maybe his father taught him—but he loved to play it. I think the most valuable chess lesson I learned from him is that the person you are playing against will always be more important than the game. It’s a lesson that I tried to convey whenever I taught the game to kids who just had to win so that they could think of themselves as smarter than everyone else. Games are not about winning, Dad taught me. They do sharpen your wits, but they are about making connections with people.
Western novel: Dad was a reader in his alone time, and Westerns were his favorite genre. This is the book he was reading during his final days in this world. I think he liked reading about how communities out on the frontier teamed together to face their shared challenges. He liked reading about men doing what needed to be done, and finding their manhood through the struggles they encountered. He was attracted to the independent spirit that all the western heroes seemed to possess. I think what he liked most was reading about how the bullies failed. His bookmark is a picture of Nancy Pelosi standing up in a cabinet meeting, pointing her finger at the president across the table who, out of respect for my father, shall not be named. Dad loved the idea of standing up for what is right, regardless of the cost, and opposing anyone who seeks personal profit, unconcerned with who might be hurt by it. During those four years, Dad flew his American flag upside-down as a sign of national distress. I am very grateful that he saw it flying right-side-up before he left.
Dog tags: I could show you many other things that would symbolize what my father valued: his guitar, which his son never quite learned how to play; his golf clubs, which he only used to spend time with his three brothers and several brothers-in-law; his fishing poles, which, if you are a guy, I don’t have to explain. But the last thing I want to show you are his dog tags, which he wore as an enlisted soldier in the United States Army right before I was born. I wish I could tell you what that meant to him, but we never really spoke about it. Dad served in Europe, and he learned years later that he was serving just a few miles from where his ancestors lived—the silver and iron-mining specialists who brought the Hoffman family name to these colonies in 1714. I can only say that for me these dog tags are a reminder that, when your community, your country, needs you, you step up. You do your part, without counting the cost. I signed up for the Selective Service when I was eighteen, and I think my dad was grateful, really, that his only son was never called into the military to fight. I hope that this collar serves as proof to him that his son is willing to stand up when he was called.
Speaking as a father, I hope that my name appears on my family’s roll as a worthy “vice-regent”, as one who conveyed that decency and that willingness to serve and the wisdom that only a mindful life can bestow on us into the next generation—not for my own sake, mind you, but for the sake of my child and for a perpetually better world. I will go out on a limb here and claim that’s what most fathers want. With the Lord’s guidance, I pray that my link in the chain of men reflected in my genealogy will be strong and positive, as my father’s link has been.
Joseph and I have something in common: we both found our prosperity after we left home. I’m sure that separation from his father had a profound emotional effect on him, judging by his tears when they were reunited. I’m sure Joseph wondered if his father would approve of him after all those years, being so different from the people that he had left behind. Egyptian clothes. Egyptian wife. Joseph wasn’t a shepherd anymore. Would his father regard him as a foreigner now? Was he still Hebrew in his father Jacob’s eyes? I worried about that when I went away to college years ago. How far can a son diverge from his father’s path and still be considered worthy of his birthright? It sounds a little silly, but those feelings were real. I am different from my father in many ways, and my adolescent self wondered if that would be okay. Jacob’s response to his son really put my heart at ease on that issue. “I can die now, having seen for myself that you are still alive.” I understand now that as long as the life of Love and Wisdom is within us, that family chain will remain strong and useful. The rest is window dressing. As long as love rules, and truth is honored, everything will be okay.
I could talk about Dad for a long time. He has been really, a decent man worth knowing. But that would be selfish of me. I don’t want this to be a eulogy; I want to give you a Father’s Day message that you can all put to use. I am aware that not everyone has been blessed with such a positive fatherly influenced. Too many men in this world have children before they are mature enough to be fathers. Too many people live with immature fathers, abusive fathers, absent fathers, but they, along with the men who have enthusiastically accepted the gift of fatherhood, who have let fatherhood bring out the best in them, all of them leave their effects in us. Of all your father’s effects that you can show someone, you are the most telling, and the most precious. Maybe you’ve inherited a facial expression, or a habit. Maybe your father is written in your appearance, as a genetic inheritance. But he’s in there, somewhere. He has had an effect on you. By the Lord’s grace, we have the freedom to accept the best of our fathers as our own and to reject the more undesirable inheritances by working to better ourselves. Jesus exemplified this, by working to live by and to give voice to what the Creator, his spiritual father, had taught him. Wisdom that he was able to perceive because his earthly father, Joseph of Nazareth, was without a doubt an excellent vice-regent of the Creator.
I have been blessed with an excellent vice-regent. Like Joseph, I can embrace my father and say, “I’m doing just fine, Dad. I am alive, in the best sense of the word, thanks to you.” May the best of your fathers live on in you. Amen.