7th Sunday of Easter/Mother's Day
May 12, 2013
Acts 16:16-25; John 17:20-26
Many of you know I served in Nicaragua as a schoolteacher before God called me to
seminary. In Nicaragua, Mother’s Day is
May 30 and generally speaking, every woman over the age of about 18 is wished a
Happy Mother’s Day, because it’s assumed that every woman over the age of about
18 is a mother. A few of my students
even wished me a Happy Mother’s Day before remembering that I didn’t have kids,
so ingrained is this expectation that every woman is a mother. While in Nicaragua, I said that I had three mothers. Initially, this upset my mom, who wondered
what she had done wrong that I considered these other ladies to be like my
mom. I explained to mom that it was a positive
reflection on her, that I sought out nurturing women who fed me and sheltered
me and took care of me in a foreign country.
Doña Darling did so partly because she felt it was in exchange for the
couple taking care of her own daughter in the U.S. Her
daughter went to college in Alabama and had an American sponsor family who acted
as her family, coming for parents’ weekend and so forth, since her own family
couldn’t. Doña Darling felt that their
taking me in during my first two months in Nicaragua as I adjusted to living
there was simply doing for me what the sponsor family was doing for her
daughter. Then there was Doña Rosario,
whose family I lived with most of my time there. I am just a little younger than her children,
the youngest of whom got married while I was there. After the wedding, Doña Rosario said that now
she only had one child left to get married – me! Because the mail system in Nicaragua is “shaky” at times, my wedding announcement
did not get through, so imagine her delight when I showed up on her doorstep
with my husband one day a couple years later!
She had tears in her eyes.
Finally, there was Doña Mercedes, at whose house I spent Christmas. In so many ways it was like my mom’s house,
or my Grandma’s, where we hung out in the kitchen talking and cooking.
I don’t know if you’ve been blessed with more than one mom, but if
you’ve spent much time in the church, than I know you have because there are
lots of church mothers. Women who may or
may not have kids who go home with them after church, but who act as mothers in
training us, bringing us up, and teaching us about Jesus.
That first Scripture reading from Acts is a kind of odd one for
Mother’s Day, and yet, it reminds me of two of my church mothers. The first one, Miss Lib, is a retired pastor
and there are two sermons of hers in particular that I still remember. One of them was on this passage from Acts
about Paul and Silas praying and singing hymns to God while in prison. Miss Lib’s point was that the test of a good
hymn is whether you can take it to jail with you. How many hymns do you know by heart that you
could sing and praise God with from
such a dreary situation? How many do you
know? And who taught them to you? Some of you know that I grew up in the
Episcopal Church and that my maternal grandfather is a United Methodist
pastor. One Sunday when we were visiting
Grandpa’s church, as so often happens in smaller churches, the pastor’s family,
namely, my Grandma and me, ended up in charge of the nursery. In this church, you could hear the singing in
the sanctuary from the nursery and my Grandma sang along to all the hymns. Not only did she know all the words to the
hymns, but she was astounded that I didn’t!
She felt this was something rather lacking in my education that I didn’t
know the words to some classic Wesley hymns.
You see, while the United Methodist Hymnal has 49 of Charles Wesley’s
hymns, the Episcopal Hymnal has a mere 21.
Moreover, Grandma adhered to Wesley’s Directions for Singing, which can
be found in the very front of the Hymnal, even before the Table of
Contents. Among them are instructions to
learn all of the hymns and to sing them “lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength.”[1] My Grandma knew that singing is good for the
soul, especially songs of praise to God.
Those are the songs you can take to jail with you, or to the doctor’s
office or to the hospital. I preached
last month on the 23rd psalm, and one church member commented to me
afterward that that was the song she kept repeating while she went through
chemotherapy. Praise songs are good
company. My church mothers taught me
that.
They also taught me to believe
in Jesus. This is where the John passage
comes in. Jesus says he prays not only
for his disciples, “on behalf of these;
but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.”[2] Jesus knows that the disciples will continue
to spread the word about Jesus and that others will come to believe in him
through the disciples’ teaching. Most
people who believe in Jesus have not met him face to face. Some believe because they’ve been told about
him. So, who taught you about
Jesus? If you grew up in the church and
went to Sunday School regularly like I did as a kid, chances are good your
Sunday School teachers were women, were church mothers. Now I can’t name every Sunday School teacher
I’ve ever had. But I remember the
activities, like drawing pictures of the ten plagues and coloring in the church
seasons on a wheel, and I remember the lessons, like Jesus loves you, just like
he loved that wee little man, Zacchaeus, and how Jesus wants to come into your
heart to stay. I never realized the
extent of my other Grandma’s faith until her funeral service. She planned it a couple years before her
passing. I thought it spoke a lot about
her faith that it was important to her that we celebrate Holy Communion. She also picked the hymns we sang, one of
which is titled: “Faith of Our Fathers.”
It is hymn 710 in our hymnal. I
found it telling that at her funeral, Grandma wanted us to sing about our
historic faith, a faith handed down to her from previous generations and one
that she passed on to later generations.
I considered singing it today, changing the chorus to “Faith of our
mothers”J. Who taught you to believe in
Jesus? Chances are, a church mother had
a hand in it, and may even still.
Finally, my church mothers taught me
to let the Holy Spirit work through you. When I left Nicaragua, I went on medical leave for two months and
I stayed with my mom’s best friend, who is another mom, and her husband in Florida. Miss
Pat has lived with a chronic disease her entire life and one of the things she
taught me is that when you don’t ask for help, you deny someone the opportunity
to serve. Think about that. When you
don’t ask someone for help, you deny that person the opportunity to serve
Jesus. It puts asking for help in a
whole different perspective, that instead of being ashamed that we can’t do it
on our own, how our culture would have us feel, instead of believing in the
myth of self-sufficiency, asking for help gives someone the opportunity to
serve, to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to let the Holy Spirit move. Miss Pat also taught me not to care about
what others think or conform to the expectation of others but to be myself, the
person God created me to be. By using
your God-given talents and abilities, speaking your own mind, while still being
gracious, the Holy Spirit can and will work through you. Becoming your own person, living into your
God-given potential, is the best way to honor your creator, and maybe even the
best way to honor your parents.
Just as every child is unique, so is
every mother, so I’d like to end with this litany on the spectrum of
motherhood, by a woman named Amy Young[3]:
To those who gave birth this year to their
first child – we celebrate with you.
To those who lost a child this year – we
mourn with you.
To those who are in the trenches with
little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains – we appreciate you.
To those who walk the hard path of
infertility, fraught with pokes, prods, tears, and disappointment – we walk
with you. Forgive us when we say foolish things. We don’t mean to make this
harder than it is.
To those who are foster moms, mentor moms,
and spiritual moms – we need you.
To those who have warm and close
relationships with your children – we celebrate with you.
To those who have disappointment, heart
ache, and distance with your children – we sit with you.
To those who lost their mothers this year –
we grieve with you.
To those who experienced abuse at the hands
of your own mother – we mourn with you that your childhood was not as it should
have been.
To those who lived through driving tests,
medical tests, and the overall testing of motherhood – we are better for having
you in our midst.
To those who are single and long to be
married and mothering your own children – we mourn that life is not turning out
the way you long for it to be.
To those who step-parent – we walk with you
on these complex paths.
To those who envisioned lavishing love on
grandchildren – yet that dream is not yet or will not be, we grieve with you.
To those who will have emptier nests in the
upcoming year – we grieve and rejoice with you.
To those who placed children in the guardianship
of others – we commend you for your selflessness and remember how you hold that
child in your heart.
And to those who are pregnant with new
life, both expected and surprising – we anticipate with you.
This Mother’s Day, we walk with you.
Mothering is not for the faint of heart and we have real warriors in our midst.
We remember you and what you have taught us and we give thanks to God for you. Amen.
