MOTHERS' DAY

It's tough to be a working mother on Mother's Day, particularly when your profession is to be in the pulpit, knowing that people bring a range of feelings with them about mothers, perhaps, even, about church. Some of you expect an encouraging word about the state of motherhood, some of you bring less than happy memories or even current situations and do not wish to endure a sentimental Hallmark view of motherhood that has no relation to your own life. And as a preacher who is charged first of all not with coinciding with the secular world but bringing the central message of the unchanging but always challenging word of God to our life and times, my main concern today is that I have spoken something of God's ways to our hurting world.

This week I looked for Mother's Day cards; I get them to send to my mother, of course, and I know not to look at anything unless it has lots of flowers. It is with deep thanks and humility that I carry a deep awareness of my mother's gift of love for me. She cared for me as a child and has successfully made the transition to caring for me as an adult. She was and is musical, has made it her life's work, and wants most of all to have beauty in her life. She is a beautiful woman, though like most mothers, does not think herself so. Her secret heart's desire has always been to dance. Ballet, graceful, swanlike dance. It was therefore a special and deep silent joy to me one day to walk in her home and find her dancing with my daughter with complete delight and abandon, to see her live if only for a few minutes her dream.

I am deeply blessed by her love. It was and is a shepherd's love - tender and compassionate, yes, gentle and knowing, yes, but also strong and tough, as in a mother- bear-protecting-her-cubs tough. It was and is the type of love I endeavor to give my child, and yours, too, by the way - tenderness and compassion, seeing each child's uniqueness, seeking to nurture and nourish each child's gifts, knowing the ways each is strong and weak, knowing the needs of each. Wise parents know that the secret to loving your children is not to love them all equally but to love them in the ways they need to be loved. One child can take roughhouse play, joking, another can't; one child needs cuddle time, another is embarrassed by it.

It's a wise parent who knows how to love a child in the ways he or she needs to be loved and reassured. So with these thoughts in mind, I look each year for a card that says something like this:

Dear mom, from you I have learned some basic truths of life: "work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like nobody's watching. Dance, mom, dance, dance, dance. Follow your secret heart's desire, as you've encouraged me to follow mine."

No less a figure than Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard has offered this reflection on preaching, which seems to have special relevance on this day, which we honor as Festival of the Christian home: "The speaker who does not know how the task looks in daily life and in the living-room might just as well keep still, for Sunday glimpses into eternity lead to nothing but wind.... And it is in the living-room that the battle must be fought, lest the religious conflict degenerate into a parade of the guard once a week; in the living room must the battle be fought, not fantastically in the church, so that the clergyman is fighting windmills and the spectators watch the show; in the living room the battle must be fought, for the victory consists precisely in the living-room becoming a sanctuary."

We've been speaking about the marks of the church for the past few weeks. Last week we talked about eating together, Sunday dinner, as one of the marks. Today I want to look at how we understand family to be a mark of the church. We take as inspiration our text from I John: "little children, let us love one another, not in word or in speech, but in truth and action. " What might that look like in our family lives?

In a recent issue of the journal Weavings, Gerritt and Rhonda Dawson write a reflection on "Building a Household of Faith." Because I cannot improve on their words, I want to offer you some excerpts of their article on what being a Christian family means in their lives; it is what I take Kierkegaard to be driving at, that the family life, how we are Christians at home, is no less central to our faith than how we worship. Here then are some reflections on building a household of God:

"With the eldest of our four children only fifteen, we cannot predict what our house of faith will look like in the future. And we certainly can't say that our style of landscaping or taste in furnishings should be de rigueur for the church. God surely has broad tastes in spiritual home design. But we will describe the foundation of our home and the framework we're trying to put into place. The decorative choices in our household of faith are not nearly as important as the strength and durability of the inner structure. Your house probably will not look like our house. Yet by grace, sharing similar frameworks, our various households may give a weary world a glimpse of the dwellings that will adorn the streets of the new heavens and the new earth. We identified three commitments that comprise the foundation of our household. Our life together begins with a bedrock commitment to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Deep within us, by grace, is a fundamental orientation to the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. Individually and together we see this as the heart of the universe and of our lives personally. Having been gifted with belief, we know we are called to build daily upon Christ. And we share a trust that we are each building on this same foundation.

The next layer fitted directly to this cornerstone is a radical commitment to each other. Years ago, we passionately declared (though we couldn't imagine all it would mean), "I am for you." The words came easily in the flush of youthful beginnings. Yet we have come to see that bringing these words into the world is the masterwork of a lifetime, to be forged on the anvil of hourly choices that move us, year by aging year, toward each other and not away. The vow to be together for the length of days given to us is enacted in a moment by moment fresh choosing of each other. When something comes between us, our commitment calls us to remove the barrier. This discipline is vital to ensuring that what is built will endure. We believe that our children know this about us. Though imperfectly and inconsistently, our hearts' desire is to live for what Hebrews calls, "a better country, that is, a heavenly one." And the household we are building has its design from that far realm. It exists to shelter and nourish sojourners, but its larger purpose is to be a prototype, a preview, of the houses in the kingdom of God.

From this vision flows the third foundational commitment, which is to our children. We hope that they absolutely take for granted the love of God that has given rise to our love for each other and that is poured out upon them through us. Our desire is that in these formative years secure, accepting love is so much a part of the atmosphere of our household that they think of it the way we think of air - we just live in it. We hope there is a sense in our family that it is better to be together than apart.

We want to be with our children, and we communicate to them that they are not a burden or a nuisance but the very ones for whom we live. They are who we spend our time with. Our struggle is with a culture that offers so many activities that families can be on the go every moment. When the good things we are doing pull us apart, we make an effort to pull in and redirect the flow of our family so that we can be together more. Our belief is that this gathering love actually creates the security that makes mature departing possible.

With awareness that inconsistency and imperfections are constant companions, we offer these priorities that arise from the above foundational beliefs: Worship. Corporate worship is the essence of the Christian faith. We feel great peace when we're all in the sanctuary on Sunday mornings. And the few Sunday mornings when release from pastoral duties allow us all to sit together are precious. We do not underestimate what it means for young children to sit with their parents in worship. So, we go to church nearly every week. Of course, with one of us a pastor, keeping that discipline is easier for us than for some. But we have struggled with unpopular decisions in our household, especially during soccer tournaments or when we've had guests in town. Our hope is that being in church on Sunday mornings will be such a part of the structure of our household that it will carry over to the time when our children build their own households.

We are not legalistically restrictive about Sunday activities but rather try to accept graciously the gift of rest. Our household generally does not do homework, yard care, desk work, or chores on Sunday. This has been very liberating for us as parents. We are free to be with each other and our children without pressure of what we could be accomplishing. For a number of years, we have been tithing our income and teaching our children to do the same. We give them a regular allowance and help them plan their giving. The result has been a marvelous freedom about money. Tithing and some saving enables us to acknowledge the source of all and then go forward in joyful use of what we have.

Scripture and prayer. We teach an alternative set of values in a materialistic age by porviding an alternate vision of the world. For our house, this has meant teaching the scriptures to our children from their infancy. For all that we do to make our church Sunday School program effective, we know that one hour a week will never do. At the same time, we know that teaching the Bible doesn't mean pounding children with God's word at every opportunity. We read and study the Bible together every weekday. For years, we've required our children to memorize scripture. We regularly discuss theology in the car, at the table, in our room at night. The children are always welcome to participate in these discussions. We allow them to voice doubt and encourage even the farthest inquiries. Our hope is that such discussions always will seem a normal part of household life.

Prayer is a regular part of our family life. After scripture study, we pray together, and each family member takes a turn praying aloud during the week. We pray before meals, before long journeys, and at night with our youngest child. Our hope is that a structure is in place for our children to feel comfortable in God's presence and at home both in listening to and communing with their Lord.

Focus on others. Having children was a bracing tonic for our youthful narcissism! Our commitment to them constantly draws us out of ourselves toward their needs and concerns. The presence of the children has profoundly instructed us about the nature of love as other-focused. Now we hope to be passing along this consciousness that there are others in the family and in the world to whom God calls us.

Concretely, this has meant a strong emphasis on respecting one another in the home and honoring those whom we meet in the world. Telling the truth is given a supreme place in our home. Part of telling the truth, of course, is confession, and as parents we have tried to model apologizing to each other and to the children when we are in the wrong. We have had many discussions about treating one another as we desire to be treated and suspect we will have many more. We have had to be creative in our use of discipline to communicate this value most effectively, and many nights we lie in bed wondering if we'll ever get through to our children. We try to put this focus on others into action by encouraging acts of service. Our children have volunteered at the retirement community, accompanied us on visits to the hospital, schemed with us to deliver anonymous gifts, and joined the attempt to be hosts who honor the guests who come to our home. Hopefully, the work that we as parents do in the community and the priority we give to responding to need will seem a normal part of life to our children.

As we write these words, we constantly are aware of all the ways we've failed to live what we believe. We are at times inconsistent, and no one knows this better than our children. Yet we dare to believe that with Jesus Christ as our foundation, the framework we build through the years will support a household of God." (Weavings, September 1999)

Well, for all us mothers who dance like nobody's watching, even if only in our secret hearts, for all us mothers who try and fail and try again to instill the values of Jesus into our children, for all us mothers who are painfully aware of our own shortcomings, who long to give our families deep roots and strong wings, for all us mothers who dare to hope that we are sharing something of the love of Christ Jesus, Happy Mother's Day. May these words be true of us: that we love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.






Return to Sermon Page

Return to FBC Homepage

Request free weekly Puppet Scripts by Louise Ferry.