Monday, May 20, 2013

Things My Mothers Taught Me



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.


[1] The United Methodist Hymnal, 1989, p. vii
[2] John 17:20
[3] I edited it a little bit.  The original can be found here: http://www.messymiddle.com/2012/05/10/an-open-letter-to-pastors-a-non-mom-speaks-about-mothers-day/