May 11, 2014
4th Sunday after Easter
Mother’s Day
Psalm 23; John 10:1-10
“The sheep follow him because they know his voice.” Sheep are not the brightest of God’s creatures. They are actually rather dumb. You can’t teach them tricks, like dogs. They can’t take care of themselves, like
cats. A study from the University of
Illinois put them slightly lower than pigs and about on par with cattle in
terms of IQ.[1] It’s really not flattering to us that Jesus
compares us to sheep. And yet what sheep DO know is the voice and
face of their shepherd. They know who
their leader is and will not follow another.
And that is a good thing, because it
is perilous to follow the wrong shepherd.
The wrong shepherd will lead you astray, will steal you, will allow you
to be killed. “The thief comes only to
steal and kill and destroy,” and that’s not the life God has in mind for his
people. So, for those of us who don’t
have extra-sensitive hearing, how do you
discern God’s voice from other voices? We’re not sheep; it’s not always as obvious
to us which voice is God’s. And in
today’s world, there are more voices than ever before. It’s not just family and church and school
and work, there’s also Facebook, Twitter, news channels, “news”
channels, movies, advertisements… So
many voices telling you what to wear, what to eat, what not to eat, what to
drive, who to love, who not to love, do this, don’t do that. How do you know who to follow? How do you know whose voice to listen to and
which one is God’s?
In the early Corinthian church, this was one of the problems Paul ran
into. Paul planted the church and stayed
there some eighteen months before moving on.
However, after moving on, some “super-apostles” showed up and began
preaching a message similar to Paul’s, although not identical, and were doing
it with more eloquence and charisma than Paul.[2] Those early Christians thought the messages
were similar enough because it was all about Jesus, and if it’s about Jesus,
it’s all good, right? Paul had to
address that in his second letter to them, pointing out that these super-apostles were
proclaiming a different Jesus, a different Gospel, a different spirit than the one Paul shared with them. Just because it’s close, doesn’t mean it’s
necessarily close enough.
How do you know it’s God’s voice?
There are so many voices we hear today.
Usually, it’s pretty obvious when the answer is definitely no and you
can trust your gut for NO. There are
things that are patently NOT of God: lying, cheating, killing, abuse, and so
on. You hear a voice telling you to
cheat on a test, that voice is clearly NOT God’s. As for other things, you have to test them. That’s how Paul concludes 2 Corinthians: “Examine
yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves.”[3] Talk with trusted Christian friends and see
what they say. Is it compatible with the
Bible? Go through the four parts of the
Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience.
My grandfather is a retired United Methodist elder and his call to
ordained ministry came one evening as he was riding the bus home from
work. He heard a voice call his name,
and his name is so unusual that he knew there was no chance anyone else was
calling him but God. Anyone know someone
with the first name of Eldrich, aside from my Grandpa? That was how he knew it was definitely God’s
voice and could be no other.
Other times,
it’s easier to mistake familiar voices. When
I was in high school, my family went to visit friends over one long holiday
weekend. While I was upstairs in the
house, I heard my name called. I thought
it was my mom calling me, “Heather!” and so I yelled back, “What?!” Well, then my mom’s friend came to the bottom
of the stairs and said my name again. I
was embarrassed at my mistake, because I never would have yelled so rudely as
my mom’s friend. What I’m more
embarrassed by now is that I didn’t think it was rude to yell at my mom that
way, just at other adults. One thing God
does say is to honor your parents. They were the ones who taught me not to yell
at other people and to treat adults with respect, yet somehow, at least as a
teenager, I never transferred that lesson back to them. And there’s part of me that can’t believe I didn’t
recognize that voice as not my
mom’s. You’d think you’d know your
mother’s voice, right? On youth Sunday,
one of the youth asked me how I do it every Sunday, getting up in front of the
congregation to speak, and I told her that I hear my mom’s voice telling me to
“speak slow and clearly.” I know my
mom’s voice, I hear her in my head. But
apparently sometimes other people can sound like her, too. Sometimes identifying a voice you know isn’t
as easy as you’d think.
However,
there are other times when the problem is that we’re waiting to hear God’s voice.
It’s not distinguishing which voice is God’s; it’s waiting to hear his
voice, waiting to hear an answer to prayer.
Then, you’re praying with the psalmist, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”[4] “How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever?”[5] Or with the prophets, “O Lord, how long shall
I cry for help, and you will not listen?”[6] Anyone familiar with that experience, with
waiting and waiting and waiting for the Lord to speak? Anyone give up and decide that God doesn’t
speak to me?
Let me tell
you, waiting for the Lord is not an easy task.
I shared with you all back in February that my family will be leaving
Orange at the end of next month. Well, this past week, we only
just found out where exactly we’re going. For four months (it's felt like longer) I’ve been wondering
if God’s saying not yet, or to wait, or to take a break, or even if perhaps we
misheard him about moving. For four
months, I didn’t know how I was going to live into his call on my life to be a pastor,
and for a long time it really looked like I wasn’t going to serve as a pastor
after leaving Orange. Then one of the
youth who preached on Youth Sunday two weeks ago used a phrase in her sermon
that stuck with me: “This is not the end.”
Leaving Orange, at the end of next month, is not the end. But I still had to wait another ten days to
find out what was next. And I was just
about jumping up and down on Tuesday when the call came that starting July 1
I’ll be pastoring not just one, but two, small churches on the northeast
side of Baltimore. God is good, all the
time, but his timing surely is not
ours. I’ve been questioning and waiting all spring and living in the midst of
such uncertainty about what was next.
How long, O Lord? If this is not
the end, then what’s next???
Many of you
know that I’m also pregnant, and those of you who are mothers or have spent
time around pregnant women know that pregnancy is also a time of waiting. And yet, it’s a time of active waiting. You prepare
for the coming baby. You change your
diet, baby-proof your house, buy the furniture and other things you’ll need to
care for an infant. It’s not as if you
sit around doing nothing or go about business as usual. You actively
prepare for the end of the waiting.
Perhaps that’s how we need to approach waiting for God, as an active waiting, preparing yourself to
hear God’s voice. Not just praying and
then sitting in silence a minute or two, hearing nothing, and so moving on to
the next thing; but actively preparing yourself to receive God’s Word, and
taking more than just a minute or two to do it.
If you’re waiting for God to speak, what are you doing while you
wait? Are you twiddling your
thumbs? Are you mindlessly watching
TV? Are you listening to other voices
instead? Or are you preparing yourself,
staying tuned in, going to places where you’ve heard God speak before, talking
with those whom God has used in your life before; are you actively waiting?
And if you’re
in a waiting period yourself, you’re still in good company. The psalmist says, “Be strong, and let your
heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.”[7] And also, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my
soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning.”[8] Finally, the prophet Isaiah says that “those
who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with
wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not
faint.”[9] If you’re running while you’re waiting for
the Lord, then you are not passively waiting, that is an active waiting.
And when you
finally hear God’s voice, there is the matter of what his voice says. The
first thing that comes to mind, thinking about what God says, is “the answer is
yes.” Again, going back to 2
Corinthians, Paul wrote, “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed
among you, was not “Yes and No”; but in him it is always “Yes.” For in him every one of God’s promises is a
“Yes.”[10] This doesn’t mean that if you ask God if you
should steal something from a neighbor that he’s going to say ‘yes.’ Keep the verse in context: “every one of
God’s promises is a ‘yes,’” whether it’s the promise that God loves you, that
God will never forget you, that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, that
God will provide for your every need, or, as at the end of Gospel reading this
morning, the promise of abundant life.
Those are the things to which the answer is yes. Shall I repeat them again? God loves you, no matter what. You are not forgotten. God wants abundant life for you. To quote the chorus of our middle hymn at
8:00 and 11:00 – “Do not be afraid, I am with you. I have called you each by
name. Come and follow Me. I will bring you home. I love you and you are mine.”[11] That
is what God’s voice says. And if you are
waiting to hear it, I pray that your waiting time is soon at an end.
There is a
rather well-known children’s book about a mother and her son and the mother’s
refrain is: “I’ll love you forever. I’ll
like you for always. As long as I’m
living my baby you’ll be.”[12] As God is both Father and Mother, I think
that’s something else he’d say, and keep in mind, that there is no end to how
long God lives, he, or she, is eternal: “I’ll love you forever. I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living, [and that’s forever] my
child you’ll be.” I don’t know if you
have parent issues, if one or both of your parents didn’t do a very good job,
if the voice you hear for either of them is one that’s always yelling or
criticizing, if there was or is abuse, or if you’re struggling with being a
parent, or not being a parent, yourself.
A dear friend of mine was abused as a child by her late father and she
knew she didn’t love him, but she recognized that God still calls us to honor
our parents, and so she always said she didn’t love him, but she did respect
him, because he was her father. And
God’s voice does say to honor our mother and our father. God knows the relationship may be far from
perfect. Today, let’s honor them, in
particular the mothers, anyway. I’d like
to close with a litany I shared last Mother’s Day on the Wide Spectrum of
Mothering. I decided it's been a year, and it's good enough to use again.
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.
(adapted from
http://www.messymiddle.com/2012/05/10/an-open-letter-to-pastors-a-non-mom-speaks-about-mothers-day/)
http://www.messymiddle.com/2012/05/10/an-open-letter-to-pastors-a-non-mom-speaks-about-mothers-day/)
