Her Name Is Philip
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
This coming Sunday is Mother's Day in the U.S. -- and for many people, it's one of the most important occasions of the year. Anyone in the restaurant trade knows how busy this day is (just try getting a table without a reservation or a long wait!). And because it's such a revered holiday, Mother's Day can pose something of a dilemma for those who wish to keep the focus on God's Word. In this installment of The Immediate Word, team member Thom Shuman looks at the lectionary texts for this Sunday, and suggests that their emphasis on the theme of unconditional love may provide a way of bridging the gap. Carter Shelley offers several additional ideas for celebrating Mother's Day centering on the pivotal role of biblical mothers, including a sermon exploring God's compassion for Leah. The week's material is completed with numerous illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
Her Name Is Philip
by Thom M. Shuman
THE WORLD
"M" is for the million times she told me to pick up my room...
"O" is for the only time she fixed my favorite meal...
"T" is for...
Well, that's not quite how the lyrics to that old song go, but the alternative "translation" points out the ambiguity, if not downright tension, many of our parishioners (not to mention ourselves) feel toward Mother's Day. Think mothers don't rank higher than dads? A quick Google search shows over 84 million pages on mothers; fathers get only 45 million or so. In traditional American fashion, we will spend money trying to honor our mothers. It's been estimated that we Americans will spend over $12 billion to observe this special day. Some will spend hours trying to find the Perfect Card to send. (Which leads us to Shuman's Second Law of Greeting Cards -- which states that the more flowery the card and the more sugary the sentiment, the more difficult the relationship with one's mother.) We will even try humor. One retail store is selling a line of T-shirts for Mothers Day, one of which reads "Mom: made just like Dad, only smarter."
So how do we preachers, called to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, bring a word to our people when society seems to confuse the issue as to whether this coming Sunday is Mother's Day or Christ's Day? Do we just throw out the lectionary on this particular Sunday and do a little searching for just the right text to preach about mothers? Do we ignore the fact that many of us have issues with our mothers? Do we try some sort of "blended" approach that allows people to feel all warm and gooey about Mom, yet also enables us to engage with God and God's Word for this day?
Like last Sunday's discussion about Car-Nation, there just may be a connection between a secular holiday like Mother's Day and this faith we struggle with each and every day.
THE WORD
It would be nice if the Epistle Lesson for today was from 2 Timothy, acknowledging the faith that young Tim's grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice had passed on to him. Instead we have 1 John 4:7-21. But before we dismiss this passage as just John repeating the sermon on love he gave last week (and the week before), maybe we should take note of how love is intricately and intimately involved in our relationships -- not only the one we have with God, but also the ones we have with other folks.
Personally, I would have chosen Psalm 139 for this particular Sunday. After all, the connection made in verse 13 about God being involved in the process of development in a mother's womb might be a springboard into a sermon. But Psalm 22? About sleeping, and bowing down? I'm not sure how a preacher can use that in a sermon on mothers.
Likewise, it would have been nice if Jesus, as he is talking to his disciples, had even once mentioned the positive influence Mary had been on him. Certainly she must have read stories to him; certainly she was the one who cared for his skinned knees and bruised thumbs; certainly she was the one who reminded him to eat his vegetables. But not a word. Instead, we once again have Jesus talking about his relationship with the Father and using agricultural imagery to make his point, not observations of what goes on in a kitchen. So the gospel reading for this day doesn't seem to offer many possibilities.
And Acts 8:26-40? A eunuch in a chariot, a disciple walking down a wilderness road, a strange discussion about a biblical passage? How in the world does this particular story speak to us about this "holi-day" we celebrate on Sunday?
Let's admit that on the surface, none of these passages give us anything remotely connected to Mother's Day. But recognizing this, and recognizing that each preacher as well as each person we preach to on Sunday has a different set of experiences, feelings, and remembrances about their mother, I think there is a way to bring a word to our people from the Word God gives us for this day.
CRAFTING THE MESSAGE
The title for my sermon this Sunday will be "Her Name is Philip." I hope you will soon see why. I am going to look at each of the lectionary texts for this week, and share with my people what they have to say about mothers, about faith, about faithful living, about trying, about failing, about enduring.
When I read Psalm 22:25-31, I try to imagine in my mind's eye what my baptism looked and sounded like. As an infant, I have no memory of it, but the institutional memory of the church tells me that there was the day my mother stood in the midst of a "great congregation" and made some promises on my behalf.
Her faithfulness to the call of God, and her oneness with all the other voices in the congregation who made similar promises, evidenced in a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, are one of the reasons I can stand in the midst of another congregation and praise God for her steadfast modeling of a faithful life.
I now proudly tell folks that I have the greatest mother in the world. Fifty years ago, my view was probably skewed in the other direction. One of the things I have discovered over the years of aging is that for better or worse, in good times and bad memories, in days when they cuddled us on our laps and on those nights when they sent us to our rooms as punishment -- our mothers continue to abide in us (John 15:1-18).
And fifty years later, I know that whatever fruit I am able to bear in my life in large part is because of the seeds God planted in me through my mother.
A professor in seminary once said that a parent's love may just be the closest human experience we will have to unconditional love. If we are lucky enough to have that experience, it is because God's love is revealed to us through our parents.
If John (or whoever wrote 1 John 4:7-21) is correct that God is revealed to us in such an intimate emotion and such a risky and fragile relationship as love, then that love is first and foremost demonstrated to us (or sadly, not) through our mothers. Our mothers help us to understand that love is lived out in the relationships we have with other people, starting first with family.
I was fortunate enough to have been raised to understand that hating my siblings was not allowed (no matter how much they aggravated me!). And by extension, and by example, I knew just as clearly that hating any of my spiritual sisters and brothers was not an option.
I have not seen God, but I have seen the love of mothers, time and time and time again. I saw it in the risk my mother took to go to work in a time when women did not do such a thing! I see it in the lines etched in my wife's face from all the sleepless nights sitting in the cancer ward with our son. I see it in all the mothers in my congregation who support, encourage, and pray for the choices their children make (even when those choices drive the mothers to distraction).
And when I look into the faces of these women, I know the truth of that haunting line at the end of Les Miserables -- "to love another person is to see the face of God."
Maybe the secret name God gives to every mother is Philip (Acts 8:26-40).
After all, if it wasn't for the encouragement of mothers, how may folks could really "get up and go" anywhere, much less into this wilderness we call life?
Who else stands at the edge of adolescence gently, softly, hopefully whispering "go and join" -- make friends with the little girl down the street; be kind to the boy everyone else laughs at; call the one you've always had a crush on and invite them to your birthday party?
When my mother held me in her lap and read to me in the evening, running her finger under each word as she went across the page, she was silently asking me "Do you understand?" And she kept "guiding" me again and again and again until I could speak the words myself -- and until I fell in love forever with the Word of life.
I have no idealistic, romantic, looking-through-rose-colored-lenses ideas about my mother. I know her faults, her warts, her failures. But I also look back and realize how she began to speak to me and my siblings about faith, even using words once in a while. I remember the simple witness of her getting up early every morning so we would have breakfast on the table, a lunch to take to school, a hug to carry us down the sidewalk. I remember the profound witness of her getting up every Sunday morning, when she probably could have stayed in bed, and walking us to church. I have the yellowed and aged proof that she made sure I was baptized, and confirmed, and raised by the church.
More importantly, she made sure that I knew without any doubt that however much she loved me, God loved me so much more.
The eunuch sits there in his chariot, reading about the "servant of God" talked about by Isaiah. Like so many biblical scholars before and after him, he wonders who this servant was that God talks about, God honors, God holds up as the role model for all of us.
I now know who this servant is: a mother.
ANOTHER VIEW
by Carter Shelley
Ideas for Mother's Day recognition
This Sunday the church I am serving will have its children's musical in place of the sermon. This annual tradition means there is no sermon on Mother's Day. The service is followed by a church luncheon honoring mothers. Besides the church fellowship the luncheon provides, it has the added bonus that no church family has to fight the eat-out crowds at restaurants on Mother's Day. These days, the meal is provided by the Christian Education committee. In the past, when the congregation had a strong Men of the Church organization, the men did the cooking.
I have used several methods for addressing Mother's Day without getting too schmaltzy about it. The following approach is one I have used, with youth group members reading the various biblical scriptures about mothers while I offer the transitions from one set of texts to another. I have also read shorter passages about biblical mothers along with readings about the specific women from Frederick Buechner's Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who (Harper & Row, 1979). There is also a nice piece by Buechner, identified as "Mother," in another of his resources for ministers, Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (Harper & Row, 1988). I begin the following by quoting the last paragraph of the latter entry:
Our mothers, like our fathers, are to be honored, the Good Book says. But if Jesus is to be our guide, honoring them doesn't mean either idealizing or idolizing them. It means seeing them both for who they are and for who they are not. It means speaking the truth to them. It means the best way of repaying them for their love is to love God and our neighbor as faithfully and selflessly as at their best our parents have tried to love us. It means seeing they are taken care of to the end of their days. (pp. 81-82)
Biblical Mothers
The first biblical mother was, of course, Eve. (Read Genesis 3:20)
Because motherhood at its best comes about through a combination of joyous intimacy between husband and wife, and the hardship and hazards of childbirth, the authors of Genesis use the story of Adam and Eve's fall as a way to explain women's suffering. Note that prior to the Fall, man is not over woman. (Read Genesis 3:16)
Mothers are concerned with the economic well-being and future security of their children. Sarah protected Isaac's right of succession by getting Hagar and Ishmael expelled from the family. (Read Genesis 21:8-14)
Rebekkah helped her favored son Jacob receive Isaac's parental blessing over her other son Esau. (Read Genesis 27:1-17)
Women's pursuit of children could even impel them to be sexual aggressors and defy societal norms of propriety and modesty:
Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah (Read Genesis 38:12-26)
Ruth, the childless widow (Read Ruth 3:1-18; 4:13-17)
Tamar and Ruth did not act as "proper" young women were expected to act; and yet, far from being condemned, they were treated as heroines who acted to have children ad maintain the patrilineal line of their marital family.
Women are protectors. When the lives of children are at stake, women defied unjust political laws and were not intimidated by authority:
Pharaoh's daughter (Read Exodus 2:5-10)
Childbirth itself was not considered an accomplishment of women, for the woman was considered the eager recipient of the baby, and only God could make women pregnant. The Bible sympathetically portrays women who want children. (Read 1 Samuel 1:1-20)
Cultural expectations that a woman plead on behalf of her child's life were not only accepted but approved as the appropriate action for a mother to take:
Prophet Elisha and the Shunammite woman (Read 2 Kings 4:8-10, 18-37)
Canaanite woman and Jesus (Read Matthew 15:21-28)
The best biblical mothers are those who are devoted to God first and to their children second:
Mary, the mother of Jesus (Read Luke 1:26-38)
This portion of the service concludes with a Litany of Thanksgiving for the Mothers of the Church. I include in it not only the standard offerings of thanksgiving, but also a series of "beseeches":
Bolster those mothers who are single parents, the ones who struggle to balance job, childcare, homecare, and finances.
We Beseech You, O God.
Assist the teenage mothers themselves, only half-grown, who need education, a decent income, maturity, and hope beyond their own years and ability to provide.
We Beseech You, O God.
Provide each of us with a sense of belonging to the family of God, that we may always be people who can love those beyond our own blood ties and care for those who most need affection and support.
This Sunday offers a chance to sing "Faith Of Our Fathers" and substitute the word "Mothers" in each instance throughout the hymn.
The Compassionate God
by Carter Shelley
The following discussion of Genesis 29:31--30:24, excerpted from my book Preaching Genesis 12--36 (Chalice Press, 2001), offers another approach to Mother's Day.
While Genesis is written within a patriarchal culture for a patriarchal culture, no attempt has been made to diminish or play down God's interest and communications with women such as Hagar, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel. Women may not be that important to Laban, Jacob, or other key male characters presented in Genesis, but they are important to God.
Genesis 29:31--30:24 begins with God's expression of compassion for Leah. The concept of God's compassion provides the following sermon's central idea.
Character Sketch
They are all my children -- all of them, every one. I made a promise to Abraham and Sarah, and I kept that promise through Isaac and Rebekah, and to Jacob and the rest. But my promise to the chosen ones does not interfere with my love and compassion for the others, who are also my children: Hagar, Esau, and Leah. I am as much their God as I am the God of the chosen ones, for it is the ill-used, betrayed, and unloved ones who most need my compassion and my support.
I could not leave Hagar and young Ishmael in the desert to die. I could not let Esau be eaten up with hate for his brother when he had his whole life ahead of him. I could not idly watch Leah's rejection by Jacob and leave her alone and comfortless. I am God, not man. As God, I judge, I bless, I forgive, and I love all my children -- all of them, every one of them. Even you.
Sermon: The Compassionate God
In listening to Genesis 29:31--30:24 you probably noticed two things. First, Jacob has two wives, Leah and Rachel, who are vying for his attention and his sexual favor. Second, the way each woman estimates her own value is through childbearing. Leah hopes that by having children she will earn Jacob's love. Rachel has Jacob's love, but she feels hollow without children. The plot thickens when Leah goes through a dry spell after giving birth to her fourth son, and barren Rachel concludes that the only way she can have children is through giving her maidservant Bilhah to Jacob as a surrogate mother. Before we've gotten as far as verse 24, Jacob's attentions are in demand by four women. The resulting competitiveness and bed-hopping is worthy of a sixteenth-century English Restoration drama, in which the witty and willing hero woos and wins the sexual favors of a number of different women. One doesn't know whether to pity the guy or envy him!
Yet the Yahwist narrator of this text shows no interest in Jacob's thoughts or feelings. The text begins with God's compassion for Leah and ends with God's compassion for Rachel: "When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb.... Then God remembered Rachel, and God heeded her and opened her womb."
Divine compassion is a key concept in the Old and New Testament. Whenever the word is applied to God or Jesus, "it denotes an inner feeling of sympathy or love which is expressed outwardly in a helping action" (Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 352). God's compassion leads to action. There are several Hebrew words that translate into English as compassion. The concept conveyed by all of them is divine mercy, pity, and active compassion. When applied to God these words are not nouns but verbs.
For example, if you or I watch the evening news and see tragic portraits of skeletal children scrounging for food in Ethiopia or we witness a film clip of homes and possessions washed away by monsoons in Bangladesh, our initial response is likely to be a combination of pity and guilt. We feel pity for the suffering we see on our television screen, and we feel guilt that we shall soon sit down to a plentiful dinner in our comfortable home. For us the words "pity" and "guilt" more often describe a fleeting emotion, not a concrete response. We may convince ourselves that we are compassionate people, because our emotions and conscience are pricked by the suffering of others, but such passing feelings are human, not divine.
God does not observe Leah in her unloved, unhappy state and send her a bunch of flowers and sympathy card that says, "Smile, God loves you!" God opens her womb. God's compassion is never passive or inert. The Bible is full of concrete examples of God's active compassion: parting the Red Sea, providing manna in the wilderness, delivering the Israelites from their enemies, fulfilling promises, forgiving sins -- but those events are in the future. In this instance, God's compassion centers upon the two women who have become the wives of the third patriarch.
Through no fault of their own, both women have been married off to Jacob. I say "married off" because in ancient and not-so-ancient times, daughters were the property of their fathers. Consequently, the decision about whom a daughter would marry belonged to the father. In this instance, we know father Laban has tricked nephew Jacob into marrying the older sister Leah when it is the younger sister Rachel whom Jacob really loves. Thus, the father's greed sets up a situation fraught with misery.
It's not the first time that human selfishness and ambition have made a hash of things. We've seen it all before. Abraham and Sarah don't understand God's promise, so Sarah gives Hagar to Abraham, creating a triangular relationship that concludes with Hagar and Ishmael's abandonment in the desert. Isaac and Rebekah have two children, but each parent favors one son over the other, resulting in scheming, thievery, and heartache for all. Now, the greed of father-in-law Laban has led to Jacob's marrying both sisters, when Jacob clearly loved Rachel and couldn't have cared less about Leah. In these instances, where man's self-interest has wrought suffering and hardship, God intervenes with compassion to help the ones who suffer most: "When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb." Leah's response acknowledges God's role in her son's conception: "She named him Reuben; for she said, 'Because the Lord has looked on my affliction.' "
But notice that in intervening, God's compassion doesn't alter or interfere with the human mistakes made. God's call was to Abraham and Sarah and their biological children. The birth of Ishmael doesn't alter that call, but God's compassion leads to God's protection of Hagar and Ishmael when they are abandoned in the desert. Jacob steals Esau's birthright, and God makes no move to stop it, but God does act through Isaac's second blessing to bless Esau, and God also acts to comfort and protect fugitive Jacob at Bethel. When Laban cheats Jacob out of the wife he wanted, God does not interfere. Human initiative and sin propel the action of Genesis forward. Blessed, and maybe cursed, with God-given free will, we humans make our own decisions and plot our own courses. As a result, we are free to love where we will, act as we choose, and treat each other abysmally.
Thus we are told: Jacob loved Rachel.
And God has compassion for Leah.
But by not altering human behavior or interfering with human actions, God doesn't change Jacob's feelings for Leah. As we read through the rest of this text, it's clear that Leah's longing for Jacob's love and approval remains an unmet need, a need that she uses a variety of terms to describe:
* After the birth of her first son, Reuben, Leah says: "Because the Lord has looked on my affliction; surely now my husband will love me."
* After the birth of Simeon she states: "Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also."
* After Levi's birth she hopes that "now this time my husband will be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons."
* And after the birth of son Zebulun she prays, "God has endowed me with a good dowry; now my husband will honor me, because I have borne him six sons."
Leah uses a variety of terms to describe the kind of relationship she hopes to establish with Jacob: "love me," "not hate me," and "honor me" are all used at one point or another. It suggests that she keeps trying, and also suggests that Jacob does not respond as she hopes, thus causing her over time to shift her expectations from loving to honoring.
God expresses compassion for Leah by opening her womb to bear many children, but God doesn't alter human actions or emotions, such as Jacob's capacity for loving or honoring his first wife. You see, God's compassion doesn't protect humans from the consequences of our own actions. Laban's scheming and Jacob's likely post-marriage-feast inebriation both have a hand in the marital heartache to come. A drunk driver may walk away from a car wreck in which two other people are killed, but she can never escape the fact that her drunkenness caused their deaths.
Human actions have consequences for ourselves and for others. We drop out of college in rebellion against our parents, abandon spouse and children to be with someone new, vote with our pocketbooks, start wars, and so on. God's compassion doesn't protect us from the consequences: fewer economic opportunities without a college degree, a bitter ex-wife or husband and emotionally troubled children, the suffering of other citizens due to tax cuts, the suffering of civilians during war.
The fact that God's compassion doesn't protect us from consequences doesn't mean God's compassion isn't expressed toward us or toward those whom we hurt -- for God's compassion can always be found in the life-enhancing, life-producing parts of life, because God's compassion is active and creative.
Hagar, through her son Ishmael, becomes the matriarch of the Arab nations who are an international political force today. Esau was recognized by the authors of Genesis as the father of the Edomites, important nomadic neighbors of the ancient Israelites. Leah, the unloved, is herself mother of six sons and a daughter and the proxy of two more. Rachel becomes the mother of Joseph and Benjamin.
God's compassion is active and creative toward those whose lives are damaged by humans: the illegitimate child, the passed-over older brother or sister, the child of the ghetto, the war-zone survivor. And God's compassion continues:
"Comfort, comfort my people. . ."
"For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given"
"Why do you seek the living among the dead?"
[The sermon could be concluded with a reading of "The Compassionate God" character sketch above.]
ILLUSTRATIONS
When God Created Mothers
When the good Lord was creating mothers, He was into his sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."
And the Lord said, "Have you read the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; have 180 moveable parts... all replaceable; run on black coffee and leftovers; have a lap that disappears when she stands up; a kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair; and six pairs of hands."
The angel shook her head slowly and said, "Six pairs of hands... no way."
"It's not the hands that are causing me problems," said the Lord. "It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."
"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. "One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word."
"Lord," said the angel, touching His sleeve gently, "come to bed. Tomorrow..."
"I can't," said the Lord. "I'm so close to creating something as close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick... can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger... and can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower."
The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.
"But tough!" said the Lord excitedly. "You cannot imagine what this mother can do or endure."
"Can it think?"
"Not only think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.
Finally the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. "There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You -- You were trying to put too much into this model."
"It's not a leak," said the Lord. "It's a tear."
"What's it for?"
"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."
"You are a genius," said the angel.
The Lord looked somber. "I didn't put it there."
-- Erma Bombeck
***
If you were to ask 10,000 people who or what had the most positive influence on their religious faith, what do you think they'd say?
The Search Institute of Minneapolis found out a few years back. The vast majority of the 10,000 people they polled answered with two simple words: "My mother."
Mothers are truly important people when it comes to passing on tradition, teaching the things that matter. Fathers and grandparents, trusted friends and church school teachers all have their roles: but so often, it is the mothers who struggle mightily to answer those childlike questions of theology, questions like...
"Do hamsters go to heaven?"
"Who made me?"
"Why are people so mean to each other?"
"Does God see me even when I'm in the bathroom?"
Not only are mothers dispensers of hugs, tie-ers of shoelaces, tellers of bedtime stories; they are also guardians of the faith. And so it is fitting, this Mother's Day, that we celebrate the role of mothers, those great teachers of things that matter.
***
Lieutenant Karl Timmerman was the first American officer to cross the famous bridge at Remagen, Germany, in the closing days of World War II. As soon as the news of this victory reached the U.S.A., the telephone rang at the Goldenrod Cafe in West Point, Nebraska. Lieutenant Timmerman's mother worked there as a waitress.
A reporter was on the other end of the line. "Your son Karl just crossed the Remagen Bridge," he told her. "Do you know what that means?"
"I know what that means to me," Mrs. Timmerman replied. "Is he hurt?"
"No, ma'am, you don't understand. He's not hurt, but listen to this: Karl Timmerman was the first officer of an invading army to cross the Rhine River since Napoleon. What do you think of that?"
"Napoleon I don't care about," Mrs. Timmerman said. "How is my Karl?"
***
Parents are like God when they provide maximum support and minimum protection.
-- William Sloane Coffin
***
In the fourth century B.C., the people of China lived in fear of savage barbarian tribes from the north. And so they built the engineering marvel known as the Great Wall of China. Some say it's the only human-made structure that can be seen from the surface of the moon. Four thousand miles it stretches, from the Yellow Sea to a point deep in central Asia. The Wall is thirty feet high -- far too high for anyone to climb over. It's wide enough on top for two horse-carts to pass each other by. It's so strong that -- until the advent of modern technology, anyway -- no one could ever break it down. And so the Chinese people settled back, behind their wall, to enjoy their security.
During the first century of the wall's existence, China was invaded from the north three times. Not once did the barbarian hordes break down the wall, or climb over the top. Each time they bribed a gatekeeper and marched right through. The Chinese authorities had placed such confidence in their walls of stone that they forgot to teach integrity to their children.
***
The time had come, the young man knew. At the dawning of this day, there was no longer any doubt: his boyhood was over.
He had arisen early, in the gray half-light. First he'd put on the trousers, shirt, and jacket he'd laid over the chair in the corner of his bedroom. (No more knee-breeches for him; he was too old for that now.) Then he'd clicked open the shiny latches on his cardboard suitcase one last time and peered inside. (Just making sure he had everything packed everything for college -- he did.)
He was the first one in his family to go to college. The day the bulky brown envelope had arrived from the state university, bearing news of his scholarship, his parents had been so proud.
He went downstairs to a hurried bowl of oatmeal (everyone ate silently, for a change), and then his father drove him, in the clattering Model T, the few short blocks to the railway station. His mother came along for the ride.
It wasn't long before the locomotive appeared round the bend, spouting steam. Still, no one said much of anything. It was one of those moments when there was simply too much to say. The conductor cried, "All aboard!" Swiftly, the young man kissed his mother on the cheek and gave his father a perfunctory hug. He bounded up the steps and seated himself beside a window where he could look out at his parents -- who seemed, suddenly, smaller than he remembered.
As the train lurched forward, his mother began to run along the platform. For a few seconds she kept up with the train as it picked up speed. It looked like she wanted to say something.
The young man pulled down his window, and stuck his head out. It was then that his mother cupped her hands to her mouth and called out four words that would be etched in that man's memory all his life: "Remember... who you are!"
Remember who you are. Those are words of advice any mother would gladly give a son or daughter leaving home for the first time. The lessons are over, the chores are ended, the long arm of parental discipline has extended just about as far as it can reach. From here on, discipline has to come from within. No longer is it a matter of direction and correction; now it has become a matter of character.
***
There comes a time in every child's life when he or she learns the value of a day's work. For some children, this awareness comes with the first lemonade stand... or maybe at a family yard sale, at which a few of those piled-up Happy-Meal toys may be redeemed for cold cash.
For a certain boy named Bradley, age 8, this awareness arrived one morning just before breakfast. Somehow he managed to slip under his mother's plate a folded piece of paper. It was a bill. Scrawled in crayon were these words: "Mother owes Bradley: for running errands, 25 cents; for being good, 10 cents; for taking piano lessons, 15 cents; for extras, 5 cents. Total, 55 cents."
Bradley's mother smiled when she saw the note, but said not a word. As he returned for lunch, Bradley discovered to his delight that at his place was a little pile of coins: 55 cents. He discovered something else, as well: another folded piece of paper. Opening it, he read, in his mother's handwriting, these words: "Bradley owes mother, for nursing him through the chicken pox, nothing; for being good to him, nothing; for clothes, shoes, and playthings, nothing; for his playroom, nothing; for his meals, nothing. Total, nothing."
Bradley got the point. He learned a valuable lesson that day, a lesson about love: that it has no price. Love -- true love -- is literally priceless.
***
There was a man who, as a young boy, saw sacrificial love demonstrated by his own mother. His name was Joseph Rosenbaum. Listen to what he writes, in a World War II memoir:
[A] mother is always there when you need her. She helps, protects, listens, advises, and nurtures physically and morally. She makes sure that her family is loved 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. At least that's how I remember my mother, for the few precious years I was blessed to have her.
But no words can describe the sacrifice she made out of love for me, her young son. I was 19 years old, and I was being taken to a concentration camp with a large group of other Jews. It was clear that we were destined to die. There was another group of Jews who had passes, and these were going to remain in the ghetto.
As I passed by my mother, at the last possible moment and without being noticed by the Nazi officers, she handed me her [pass] and then took my place in the line. And although it was more than 50 years ago, I will never forget her last words to me and her good-bye look. "I have lived long enough," she said. "You have to survive because you are so young." I never saw her again.
Most kids are born only once. [But] I was given birth twice -- by the same mother.
***
One of the most beloved of all Hollywood movie stars was Audrey Hepburn. When she died prematurely in 1993, all the world mourned this lovely woman who had touched so many hearts through her sensitive acting.
What is not so widely appreciated, by those who know Audrey Hepburn only from movies like Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady, is that she was also a woman of iron determination. She had suffered much in her early years, and was committed to lessening the suffering of others.
As a young woman growing up in the Netherlands, the daughter of a British father and a Dutch baroness, Audrey had suffered through the Nazi occupation of her homeland. During those terrible years, she knew deprivation and malnutrition firsthand. When she suddenly found herself a wealthy movie star, she committed herself to using her wealth and power to make the world a better place for children -- particularly as a spokesperson for UNICEF.
On one occasion or another, Audrey Hepburn shared a list of what she called "beauty tips." They're appropriate for Mother's Day, or for any other day when we consider love and all that it means:
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it -- once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone...
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed.
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands:
One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
***
In a Peanuts comic strip, Peppermint Patty and Violet are reflecting on grandmothers. After Patty declares that she would like to be a grandmother, Violet says that she would, too. Being a grandmother is easy, she remarks. All grandmothers have to do is "sit and rock."
But then reality sinks in. The two girls remember that, in order to be a grandmother, you first have to be a wife, and then a mother.
"I know," sighs Violet. "It's all those preliminaries that get me!"
"All those preliminaries" are the stuff of motherhood.
***
When I was a child I looked forward to a trip back to my birthplace and spending a week or two at the home of my grandmother. I never knew my grandfather, as he had died before I was born. It was a warm feeling to experience the gathering of the family: three aunts and their spouses, one uncle and his spouse, my parents, and a host of cousins. Even then you could sense the oneness of this family and how they were raised. Each of the aunts had worked hard to put their brother through college. Each of the aunts and the uncle assisted their mother in the care of the property they grew up on. Each grandchild was taught incredible respect for their grandmother. In return, the grandmother went to each house every day and performed a function for the daughters and the son that lived in the hometown. Before my grandmother died in the hospital, she met with each daughter and her son for a final conference. Each one of them received a special gift for a specific purpose that she had planned for many years. That kind of living inspired each daughter and son to generate the same kind of admiration in every grandchild -- and the cousins of the matriarch are still as close as brother and sister.
***
As a pastor I have watched both the similarities and the differences in mothers. There is little generalization that can be made, except for the fact that they all love their children and desire that each child reach his or her potential. In some cases the child must discover his or her potential on their own, while others are given every advantage, sometimes too much for their own good. A few years ago a young man became acquainted through his newspaper route with a member of our church. The church member brought him to services and Sunday school each week. One day the young man told his sponsor that he would not have to pick him up on Sunday because his parents were going to bring him and his baby brother. This was the first Sunday that either parent had ever been in church -- but they missed very few after that day. The newspaper boy was responsible for bringing numerous families to church, many of whom became members. But the happiest day of his life was when he was the sponsor for his baby brother and his parents when they were baptized as a family into the family of God. Years later his mother still told everyone that the greatest Mother's Day gift that she ever received was the first time her son led them into the church and a relationship with Jesus Christ.
***
A woman about sixty years old sat on the steps of a large church for most of the afternoon. She looked as though she had lived a very hard life. As the hours passed and the same people went by her, going to and from the store or work, they began to ask her if they could help her in any way. She told each one that she was waiting for her son. It appeared to the people who asked her that she was waiting for someone who was not going to come.
Finally, late in the afternoon the pastor joined her in her watch. In the conversation he learned that her son was being released from prison that day and was coming home. For more than seven years she had visited him in prison, and she never left without saying a prayer that God would come into her son's heart and that he would live a changed life. Her son had never made her a promise, but something she felt inside told her that he would come to be one of God's people. Not only that, but she believed that he would meet her on the steps of the church. Yet it was now past dinnertime, so the pastor invited her to his house for something to eat. He wished to relieve her of her disappointment, and he told her how pleased his wife would be to share their dinner. But the mother never moved, and the pastor went home.
After he finished his dinner, the pastor told his wife he was going to take the woman a plate of food. The pastor's wife gave him a wink and said that he had better take two plates. Seeing the spark in his wife's eyes, the pastor decided to go along with her and he took two plates. When he returned to the church steps, he found the waiting mother and a man holding her hand. The mother's faith in her son was greatly rewarded, and the pastor left the two plates with amazing joy.
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by Thom M. Shuman
Call To Worship
One: Here, in this place of worship, with the congregation of the faithful:
All: We lay down our fears, to boldly sing God's praises.
One: Here, in the vineyard of the Lord, with our sisters and brothers in Christ:
All: Grandparents tell stories of faith to little ones sitting on their laps.
One: Here, where God waits to serve us at the Table:
All: We shall be filled with love so we can go to serve others.
Prayer Of The Day
Like a mother sending her children off to school each day,
you watch us walk down the streets of the kingdom,
trusting and believing we will bear fruit;
like a mother softly lullabying her baby to sleep,
you let us snuggle in your lap
as you softly sing to us of grace and hope;
like a mother asking a neighbor over for coffee,
you invite us to enter into your heart.
God of Abiding Love,
hear us as we pray as Jesus has taught us:
Our Father . . .
Call To Reconciliation
The seeds of grace, hope, joy, and love are planted deep within us,
so they can bear fruit in our lives.
But we resist staying connected to the Vine,
thinking we can flourish on our own.
Let us confess our sins, so we can once more feel God abiding in us.
(Unison) Prayer Of Confession
Mother of Compassion:
called to be one body,
we fragment ourselves into a million selfish pieces;
called to be your children of love,
we insist on the right to hate our sisters and brothers;
though your Perfect Love was broken for us,
we are afraid to be give of ourselves to the world.
Abide in us, Vine Grower.
Forgive us of our sins, so we may live boldly, love fearlessly, and
proclaim unceasingly that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.
(silent prayers may be offered)
Assurance Of Pardon
One: Do you feel it -- there in your hearts?
God's love is alive, beating, breathing -- in you!
All: Because God abides in us, we can live for others,
allowing God's love to bear fruit in us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
A strong faith
Object: some mustard seeds or something tiny to represent mustard seeds
Good morning! There was once a woman who came to Jesus and wanted him to heal her daughter who was being tormented by a demon. Do you think this woman really believed that Jesus could cure her daughter? (let them answer) Yes, of course she did. She wouldn't have come to him if she didn't believe he could do it. And she was very persistent. Even when the disciples tried to send her away she kept asking. Even when Jesus tried to discourage her, she kept right on asking him to heal her daughter. Finally, Jesus said to her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." Do you think the daughter got cured? (let them answer) She sure did! As soon as Jesus said those words, the daughter was cured.
Now when Jesus said she had great faith, do you think he meant that she had a great amount of faith, or was he saying that she was using the faith she had in a great way? (let them answer) He meant that she was using her faith in a great way. If you have faith, you have faith, and if you don't, you don't! It doesn't come in amounts. Once, Jesus told his disciples that if they had faith the size of this mustard seed (show the seeds), they could move a mountain. That was his way of telling them that faith doesn't have amounts. If you have faith and use it, it will become stronger, not larger. If you believe in Jesus as your Savior, you have all the faith you will ever need. Do you believe in him? (let them answer) Good! So now all you have to do is continue to use the faith you have so it will get stronger and stronger like that woman who wanted her daughter cured. Let's ask God to help us have a strong faith.
Dear Father in Heaven. We thank you for giving us faith, faith that allows us to believe in your Son, Jesus. Help us to use our faith every day so that it will get stronger and stronger. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, May 14, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
Her Name Is Philip
by Thom M. Shuman
THE WORLD
"M" is for the million times she told me to pick up my room...
"O" is for the only time she fixed my favorite meal...
"T" is for...
Well, that's not quite how the lyrics to that old song go, but the alternative "translation" points out the ambiguity, if not downright tension, many of our parishioners (not to mention ourselves) feel toward Mother's Day. Think mothers don't rank higher than dads? A quick Google search shows over 84 million pages on mothers; fathers get only 45 million or so. In traditional American fashion, we will spend money trying to honor our mothers. It's been estimated that we Americans will spend over $12 billion to observe this special day. Some will spend hours trying to find the Perfect Card to send. (Which leads us to Shuman's Second Law of Greeting Cards -- which states that the more flowery the card and the more sugary the sentiment, the more difficult the relationship with one's mother.) We will even try humor. One retail store is selling a line of T-shirts for Mothers Day, one of which reads "Mom: made just like Dad, only smarter."
So how do we preachers, called to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, bring a word to our people when society seems to confuse the issue as to whether this coming Sunday is Mother's Day or Christ's Day? Do we just throw out the lectionary on this particular Sunday and do a little searching for just the right text to preach about mothers? Do we ignore the fact that many of us have issues with our mothers? Do we try some sort of "blended" approach that allows people to feel all warm and gooey about Mom, yet also enables us to engage with God and God's Word for this day?
Like last Sunday's discussion about Car-Nation, there just may be a connection between a secular holiday like Mother's Day and this faith we struggle with each and every day.
THE WORD
It would be nice if the Epistle Lesson for today was from 2 Timothy, acknowledging the faith that young Tim's grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice had passed on to him. Instead we have 1 John 4:7-21. But before we dismiss this passage as just John repeating the sermon on love he gave last week (and the week before), maybe we should take note of how love is intricately and intimately involved in our relationships -- not only the one we have with God, but also the ones we have with other folks.
Personally, I would have chosen Psalm 139 for this particular Sunday. After all, the connection made in verse 13 about God being involved in the process of development in a mother's womb might be a springboard into a sermon. But Psalm 22? About sleeping, and bowing down? I'm not sure how a preacher can use that in a sermon on mothers.
Likewise, it would have been nice if Jesus, as he is talking to his disciples, had even once mentioned the positive influence Mary had been on him. Certainly she must have read stories to him; certainly she was the one who cared for his skinned knees and bruised thumbs; certainly she was the one who reminded him to eat his vegetables. But not a word. Instead, we once again have Jesus talking about his relationship with the Father and using agricultural imagery to make his point, not observations of what goes on in a kitchen. So the gospel reading for this day doesn't seem to offer many possibilities.
And Acts 8:26-40? A eunuch in a chariot, a disciple walking down a wilderness road, a strange discussion about a biblical passage? How in the world does this particular story speak to us about this "holi-day" we celebrate on Sunday?
Let's admit that on the surface, none of these passages give us anything remotely connected to Mother's Day. But recognizing this, and recognizing that each preacher as well as each person we preach to on Sunday has a different set of experiences, feelings, and remembrances about their mother, I think there is a way to bring a word to our people from the Word God gives us for this day.
CRAFTING THE MESSAGE
The title for my sermon this Sunday will be "Her Name is Philip." I hope you will soon see why. I am going to look at each of the lectionary texts for this week, and share with my people what they have to say about mothers, about faith, about faithful living, about trying, about failing, about enduring.
When I read Psalm 22:25-31, I try to imagine in my mind's eye what my baptism looked and sounded like. As an infant, I have no memory of it, but the institutional memory of the church tells me that there was the day my mother stood in the midst of a "great congregation" and made some promises on my behalf.
Her faithfulness to the call of God, and her oneness with all the other voices in the congregation who made similar promises, evidenced in a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, are one of the reasons I can stand in the midst of another congregation and praise God for her steadfast modeling of a faithful life.
I now proudly tell folks that I have the greatest mother in the world. Fifty years ago, my view was probably skewed in the other direction. One of the things I have discovered over the years of aging is that for better or worse, in good times and bad memories, in days when they cuddled us on our laps and on those nights when they sent us to our rooms as punishment -- our mothers continue to abide in us (John 15:1-18).
And fifty years later, I know that whatever fruit I am able to bear in my life in large part is because of the seeds God planted in me through my mother.
A professor in seminary once said that a parent's love may just be the closest human experience we will have to unconditional love. If we are lucky enough to have that experience, it is because God's love is revealed to us through our parents.
If John (or whoever wrote 1 John 4:7-21) is correct that God is revealed to us in such an intimate emotion and such a risky and fragile relationship as love, then that love is first and foremost demonstrated to us (or sadly, not) through our mothers. Our mothers help us to understand that love is lived out in the relationships we have with other people, starting first with family.
I was fortunate enough to have been raised to understand that hating my siblings was not allowed (no matter how much they aggravated me!). And by extension, and by example, I knew just as clearly that hating any of my spiritual sisters and brothers was not an option.
I have not seen God, but I have seen the love of mothers, time and time and time again. I saw it in the risk my mother took to go to work in a time when women did not do such a thing! I see it in the lines etched in my wife's face from all the sleepless nights sitting in the cancer ward with our son. I see it in all the mothers in my congregation who support, encourage, and pray for the choices their children make (even when those choices drive the mothers to distraction).
And when I look into the faces of these women, I know the truth of that haunting line at the end of Les Miserables -- "to love another person is to see the face of God."
Maybe the secret name God gives to every mother is Philip (Acts 8:26-40).
After all, if it wasn't for the encouragement of mothers, how may folks could really "get up and go" anywhere, much less into this wilderness we call life?
Who else stands at the edge of adolescence gently, softly, hopefully whispering "go and join" -- make friends with the little girl down the street; be kind to the boy everyone else laughs at; call the one you've always had a crush on and invite them to your birthday party?
When my mother held me in her lap and read to me in the evening, running her finger under each word as she went across the page, she was silently asking me "Do you understand?" And she kept "guiding" me again and again and again until I could speak the words myself -- and until I fell in love forever with the Word of life.
I have no idealistic, romantic, looking-through-rose-colored-lenses ideas about my mother. I know her faults, her warts, her failures. But I also look back and realize how she began to speak to me and my siblings about faith, even using words once in a while. I remember the simple witness of her getting up early every morning so we would have breakfast on the table, a lunch to take to school, a hug to carry us down the sidewalk. I remember the profound witness of her getting up every Sunday morning, when she probably could have stayed in bed, and walking us to church. I have the yellowed and aged proof that she made sure I was baptized, and confirmed, and raised by the church.
More importantly, she made sure that I knew without any doubt that however much she loved me, God loved me so much more.
The eunuch sits there in his chariot, reading about the "servant of God" talked about by Isaiah. Like so many biblical scholars before and after him, he wonders who this servant was that God talks about, God honors, God holds up as the role model for all of us.
I now know who this servant is: a mother.
ANOTHER VIEW
by Carter Shelley
Ideas for Mother's Day recognition
This Sunday the church I am serving will have its children's musical in place of the sermon. This annual tradition means there is no sermon on Mother's Day. The service is followed by a church luncheon honoring mothers. Besides the church fellowship the luncheon provides, it has the added bonus that no church family has to fight the eat-out crowds at restaurants on Mother's Day. These days, the meal is provided by the Christian Education committee. In the past, when the congregation had a strong Men of the Church organization, the men did the cooking.
I have used several methods for addressing Mother's Day without getting too schmaltzy about it. The following approach is one I have used, with youth group members reading the various biblical scriptures about mothers while I offer the transitions from one set of texts to another. I have also read shorter passages about biblical mothers along with readings about the specific women from Frederick Buechner's Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who (Harper & Row, 1979). There is also a nice piece by Buechner, identified as "Mother," in another of his resources for ministers, Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (Harper & Row, 1988). I begin the following by quoting the last paragraph of the latter entry:
Our mothers, like our fathers, are to be honored, the Good Book says. But if Jesus is to be our guide, honoring them doesn't mean either idealizing or idolizing them. It means seeing them both for who they are and for who they are not. It means speaking the truth to them. It means the best way of repaying them for their love is to love God and our neighbor as faithfully and selflessly as at their best our parents have tried to love us. It means seeing they are taken care of to the end of their days. (pp. 81-82)
Biblical Mothers
The first biblical mother was, of course, Eve. (Read Genesis 3:20)
Because motherhood at its best comes about through a combination of joyous intimacy between husband and wife, and the hardship and hazards of childbirth, the authors of Genesis use the story of Adam and Eve's fall as a way to explain women's suffering. Note that prior to the Fall, man is not over woman. (Read Genesis 3:16)
Mothers are concerned with the economic well-being and future security of their children. Sarah protected Isaac's right of succession by getting Hagar and Ishmael expelled from the family. (Read Genesis 21:8-14)
Rebekkah helped her favored son Jacob receive Isaac's parental blessing over her other son Esau. (Read Genesis 27:1-17)
Women's pursuit of children could even impel them to be sexual aggressors and defy societal norms of propriety and modesty:
Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah (Read Genesis 38:12-26)
Ruth, the childless widow (Read Ruth 3:1-18; 4:13-17)
Tamar and Ruth did not act as "proper" young women were expected to act; and yet, far from being condemned, they were treated as heroines who acted to have children ad maintain the patrilineal line of their marital family.
Women are protectors. When the lives of children are at stake, women defied unjust political laws and were not intimidated by authority:
Pharaoh's daughter (Read Exodus 2:5-10)
Childbirth itself was not considered an accomplishment of women, for the woman was considered the eager recipient of the baby, and only God could make women pregnant. The Bible sympathetically portrays women who want children. (Read 1 Samuel 1:1-20)
Cultural expectations that a woman plead on behalf of her child's life were not only accepted but approved as the appropriate action for a mother to take:
Prophet Elisha and the Shunammite woman (Read 2 Kings 4:8-10, 18-37)
Canaanite woman and Jesus (Read Matthew 15:21-28)
The best biblical mothers are those who are devoted to God first and to their children second:
Mary, the mother of Jesus (Read Luke 1:26-38)
This portion of the service concludes with a Litany of Thanksgiving for the Mothers of the Church. I include in it not only the standard offerings of thanksgiving, but also a series of "beseeches":
Bolster those mothers who are single parents, the ones who struggle to balance job, childcare, homecare, and finances.
We Beseech You, O God.
Assist the teenage mothers themselves, only half-grown, who need education, a decent income, maturity, and hope beyond their own years and ability to provide.
We Beseech You, O God.
Provide each of us with a sense of belonging to the family of God, that we may always be people who can love those beyond our own blood ties and care for those who most need affection and support.
This Sunday offers a chance to sing "Faith Of Our Fathers" and substitute the word "Mothers" in each instance throughout the hymn.
The Compassionate God
by Carter Shelley
The following discussion of Genesis 29:31--30:24, excerpted from my book Preaching Genesis 12--36 (Chalice Press, 2001), offers another approach to Mother's Day.
While Genesis is written within a patriarchal culture for a patriarchal culture, no attempt has been made to diminish or play down God's interest and communications with women such as Hagar, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel. Women may not be that important to Laban, Jacob, or other key male characters presented in Genesis, but they are important to God.
Genesis 29:31--30:24 begins with God's expression of compassion for Leah. The concept of God's compassion provides the following sermon's central idea.
Character Sketch
They are all my children -- all of them, every one. I made a promise to Abraham and Sarah, and I kept that promise through Isaac and Rebekah, and to Jacob and the rest. But my promise to the chosen ones does not interfere with my love and compassion for the others, who are also my children: Hagar, Esau, and Leah. I am as much their God as I am the God of the chosen ones, for it is the ill-used, betrayed, and unloved ones who most need my compassion and my support.
I could not leave Hagar and young Ishmael in the desert to die. I could not let Esau be eaten up with hate for his brother when he had his whole life ahead of him. I could not idly watch Leah's rejection by Jacob and leave her alone and comfortless. I am God, not man. As God, I judge, I bless, I forgive, and I love all my children -- all of them, every one of them. Even you.
Sermon: The Compassionate God
In listening to Genesis 29:31--30:24 you probably noticed two things. First, Jacob has two wives, Leah and Rachel, who are vying for his attention and his sexual favor. Second, the way each woman estimates her own value is through childbearing. Leah hopes that by having children she will earn Jacob's love. Rachel has Jacob's love, but she feels hollow without children. The plot thickens when Leah goes through a dry spell after giving birth to her fourth son, and barren Rachel concludes that the only way she can have children is through giving her maidservant Bilhah to Jacob as a surrogate mother. Before we've gotten as far as verse 24, Jacob's attentions are in demand by four women. The resulting competitiveness and bed-hopping is worthy of a sixteenth-century English Restoration drama, in which the witty and willing hero woos and wins the sexual favors of a number of different women. One doesn't know whether to pity the guy or envy him!
Yet the Yahwist narrator of this text shows no interest in Jacob's thoughts or feelings. The text begins with God's compassion for Leah and ends with God's compassion for Rachel: "When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb.... Then God remembered Rachel, and God heeded her and opened her womb."
Divine compassion is a key concept in the Old and New Testament. Whenever the word is applied to God or Jesus, "it denotes an inner feeling of sympathy or love which is expressed outwardly in a helping action" (Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 352). God's compassion leads to action. There are several Hebrew words that translate into English as compassion. The concept conveyed by all of them is divine mercy, pity, and active compassion. When applied to God these words are not nouns but verbs.
For example, if you or I watch the evening news and see tragic portraits of skeletal children scrounging for food in Ethiopia or we witness a film clip of homes and possessions washed away by monsoons in Bangladesh, our initial response is likely to be a combination of pity and guilt. We feel pity for the suffering we see on our television screen, and we feel guilt that we shall soon sit down to a plentiful dinner in our comfortable home. For us the words "pity" and "guilt" more often describe a fleeting emotion, not a concrete response. We may convince ourselves that we are compassionate people, because our emotions and conscience are pricked by the suffering of others, but such passing feelings are human, not divine.
God does not observe Leah in her unloved, unhappy state and send her a bunch of flowers and sympathy card that says, "Smile, God loves you!" God opens her womb. God's compassion is never passive or inert. The Bible is full of concrete examples of God's active compassion: parting the Red Sea, providing manna in the wilderness, delivering the Israelites from their enemies, fulfilling promises, forgiving sins -- but those events are in the future. In this instance, God's compassion centers upon the two women who have become the wives of the third patriarch.
Through no fault of their own, both women have been married off to Jacob. I say "married off" because in ancient and not-so-ancient times, daughters were the property of their fathers. Consequently, the decision about whom a daughter would marry belonged to the father. In this instance, we know father Laban has tricked nephew Jacob into marrying the older sister Leah when it is the younger sister Rachel whom Jacob really loves. Thus, the father's greed sets up a situation fraught with misery.
It's not the first time that human selfishness and ambition have made a hash of things. We've seen it all before. Abraham and Sarah don't understand God's promise, so Sarah gives Hagar to Abraham, creating a triangular relationship that concludes with Hagar and Ishmael's abandonment in the desert. Isaac and Rebekah have two children, but each parent favors one son over the other, resulting in scheming, thievery, and heartache for all. Now, the greed of father-in-law Laban has led to Jacob's marrying both sisters, when Jacob clearly loved Rachel and couldn't have cared less about Leah. In these instances, where man's self-interest has wrought suffering and hardship, God intervenes with compassion to help the ones who suffer most: "When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb." Leah's response acknowledges God's role in her son's conception: "She named him Reuben; for she said, 'Because the Lord has looked on my affliction.' "
But notice that in intervening, God's compassion doesn't alter or interfere with the human mistakes made. God's call was to Abraham and Sarah and their biological children. The birth of Ishmael doesn't alter that call, but God's compassion leads to God's protection of Hagar and Ishmael when they are abandoned in the desert. Jacob steals Esau's birthright, and God makes no move to stop it, but God does act through Isaac's second blessing to bless Esau, and God also acts to comfort and protect fugitive Jacob at Bethel. When Laban cheats Jacob out of the wife he wanted, God does not interfere. Human initiative and sin propel the action of Genesis forward. Blessed, and maybe cursed, with God-given free will, we humans make our own decisions and plot our own courses. As a result, we are free to love where we will, act as we choose, and treat each other abysmally.
Thus we are told: Jacob loved Rachel.
And God has compassion for Leah.
But by not altering human behavior or interfering with human actions, God doesn't change Jacob's feelings for Leah. As we read through the rest of this text, it's clear that Leah's longing for Jacob's love and approval remains an unmet need, a need that she uses a variety of terms to describe:
* After the birth of her first son, Reuben, Leah says: "Because the Lord has looked on my affliction; surely now my husband will love me."
* After the birth of Simeon she states: "Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also."
* After Levi's birth she hopes that "now this time my husband will be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons."
* And after the birth of son Zebulun she prays, "God has endowed me with a good dowry; now my husband will honor me, because I have borne him six sons."
Leah uses a variety of terms to describe the kind of relationship she hopes to establish with Jacob: "love me," "not hate me," and "honor me" are all used at one point or another. It suggests that she keeps trying, and also suggests that Jacob does not respond as she hopes, thus causing her over time to shift her expectations from loving to honoring.
God expresses compassion for Leah by opening her womb to bear many children, but God doesn't alter human actions or emotions, such as Jacob's capacity for loving or honoring his first wife. You see, God's compassion doesn't protect humans from the consequences of our own actions. Laban's scheming and Jacob's likely post-marriage-feast inebriation both have a hand in the marital heartache to come. A drunk driver may walk away from a car wreck in which two other people are killed, but she can never escape the fact that her drunkenness caused their deaths.
Human actions have consequences for ourselves and for others. We drop out of college in rebellion against our parents, abandon spouse and children to be with someone new, vote with our pocketbooks, start wars, and so on. God's compassion doesn't protect us from the consequences: fewer economic opportunities without a college degree, a bitter ex-wife or husband and emotionally troubled children, the suffering of other citizens due to tax cuts, the suffering of civilians during war.
The fact that God's compassion doesn't protect us from consequences doesn't mean God's compassion isn't expressed toward us or toward those whom we hurt -- for God's compassion can always be found in the life-enhancing, life-producing parts of life, because God's compassion is active and creative.
Hagar, through her son Ishmael, becomes the matriarch of the Arab nations who are an international political force today. Esau was recognized by the authors of Genesis as the father of the Edomites, important nomadic neighbors of the ancient Israelites. Leah, the unloved, is herself mother of six sons and a daughter and the proxy of two more. Rachel becomes the mother of Joseph and Benjamin.
God's compassion is active and creative toward those whose lives are damaged by humans: the illegitimate child, the passed-over older brother or sister, the child of the ghetto, the war-zone survivor. And God's compassion continues:
"Comfort, comfort my people. . ."
"For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given"
"Why do you seek the living among the dead?"
[The sermon could be concluded with a reading of "The Compassionate God" character sketch above.]
ILLUSTRATIONS
When God Created Mothers
When the good Lord was creating mothers, He was into his sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."
And the Lord said, "Have you read the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; have 180 moveable parts... all replaceable; run on black coffee and leftovers; have a lap that disappears when she stands up; a kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair; and six pairs of hands."
The angel shook her head slowly and said, "Six pairs of hands... no way."
"It's not the hands that are causing me problems," said the Lord. "It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."
"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. "One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word."
"Lord," said the angel, touching His sleeve gently, "come to bed. Tomorrow..."
"I can't," said the Lord. "I'm so close to creating something as close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick... can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger... and can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower."
The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.
"But tough!" said the Lord excitedly. "You cannot imagine what this mother can do or endure."
"Can it think?"
"Not only think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.
Finally the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. "There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You -- You were trying to put too much into this model."
"It's not a leak," said the Lord. "It's a tear."
"What's it for?"
"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."
"You are a genius," said the angel.
The Lord looked somber. "I didn't put it there."
-- Erma Bombeck
***
If you were to ask 10,000 people who or what had the most positive influence on their religious faith, what do you think they'd say?
The Search Institute of Minneapolis found out a few years back. The vast majority of the 10,000 people they polled answered with two simple words: "My mother."
Mothers are truly important people when it comes to passing on tradition, teaching the things that matter. Fathers and grandparents, trusted friends and church school teachers all have their roles: but so often, it is the mothers who struggle mightily to answer those childlike questions of theology, questions like...
"Do hamsters go to heaven?"
"Who made me?"
"Why are people so mean to each other?"
"Does God see me even when I'm in the bathroom?"
Not only are mothers dispensers of hugs, tie-ers of shoelaces, tellers of bedtime stories; they are also guardians of the faith. And so it is fitting, this Mother's Day, that we celebrate the role of mothers, those great teachers of things that matter.
***
Lieutenant Karl Timmerman was the first American officer to cross the famous bridge at Remagen, Germany, in the closing days of World War II. As soon as the news of this victory reached the U.S.A., the telephone rang at the Goldenrod Cafe in West Point, Nebraska. Lieutenant Timmerman's mother worked there as a waitress.
A reporter was on the other end of the line. "Your son Karl just crossed the Remagen Bridge," he told her. "Do you know what that means?"
"I know what that means to me," Mrs. Timmerman replied. "Is he hurt?"
"No, ma'am, you don't understand. He's not hurt, but listen to this: Karl Timmerman was the first officer of an invading army to cross the Rhine River since Napoleon. What do you think of that?"
"Napoleon I don't care about," Mrs. Timmerman said. "How is my Karl?"
***
Parents are like God when they provide maximum support and minimum protection.
-- William Sloane Coffin
***
In the fourth century B.C., the people of China lived in fear of savage barbarian tribes from the north. And so they built the engineering marvel known as the Great Wall of China. Some say it's the only human-made structure that can be seen from the surface of the moon. Four thousand miles it stretches, from the Yellow Sea to a point deep in central Asia. The Wall is thirty feet high -- far too high for anyone to climb over. It's wide enough on top for two horse-carts to pass each other by. It's so strong that -- until the advent of modern technology, anyway -- no one could ever break it down. And so the Chinese people settled back, behind their wall, to enjoy their security.
During the first century of the wall's existence, China was invaded from the north three times. Not once did the barbarian hordes break down the wall, or climb over the top. Each time they bribed a gatekeeper and marched right through. The Chinese authorities had placed such confidence in their walls of stone that they forgot to teach integrity to their children.
***
The time had come, the young man knew. At the dawning of this day, there was no longer any doubt: his boyhood was over.
He had arisen early, in the gray half-light. First he'd put on the trousers, shirt, and jacket he'd laid over the chair in the corner of his bedroom. (No more knee-breeches for him; he was too old for that now.) Then he'd clicked open the shiny latches on his cardboard suitcase one last time and peered inside. (Just making sure he had everything packed everything for college -- he did.)
He was the first one in his family to go to college. The day the bulky brown envelope had arrived from the state university, bearing news of his scholarship, his parents had been so proud.
He went downstairs to a hurried bowl of oatmeal (everyone ate silently, for a change), and then his father drove him, in the clattering Model T, the few short blocks to the railway station. His mother came along for the ride.
It wasn't long before the locomotive appeared round the bend, spouting steam. Still, no one said much of anything. It was one of those moments when there was simply too much to say. The conductor cried, "All aboard!" Swiftly, the young man kissed his mother on the cheek and gave his father a perfunctory hug. He bounded up the steps and seated himself beside a window where he could look out at his parents -- who seemed, suddenly, smaller than he remembered.
As the train lurched forward, his mother began to run along the platform. For a few seconds she kept up with the train as it picked up speed. It looked like she wanted to say something.
The young man pulled down his window, and stuck his head out. It was then that his mother cupped her hands to her mouth and called out four words that would be etched in that man's memory all his life: "Remember... who you are!"
Remember who you are. Those are words of advice any mother would gladly give a son or daughter leaving home for the first time. The lessons are over, the chores are ended, the long arm of parental discipline has extended just about as far as it can reach. From here on, discipline has to come from within. No longer is it a matter of direction and correction; now it has become a matter of character.
***
There comes a time in every child's life when he or she learns the value of a day's work. For some children, this awareness comes with the first lemonade stand... or maybe at a family yard sale, at which a few of those piled-up Happy-Meal toys may be redeemed for cold cash.
For a certain boy named Bradley, age 8, this awareness arrived one morning just before breakfast. Somehow he managed to slip under his mother's plate a folded piece of paper. It was a bill. Scrawled in crayon were these words: "Mother owes Bradley: for running errands, 25 cents; for being good, 10 cents; for taking piano lessons, 15 cents; for extras, 5 cents. Total, 55 cents."
Bradley's mother smiled when she saw the note, but said not a word. As he returned for lunch, Bradley discovered to his delight that at his place was a little pile of coins: 55 cents. He discovered something else, as well: another folded piece of paper. Opening it, he read, in his mother's handwriting, these words: "Bradley owes mother, for nursing him through the chicken pox, nothing; for being good to him, nothing; for clothes, shoes, and playthings, nothing; for his playroom, nothing; for his meals, nothing. Total, nothing."
Bradley got the point. He learned a valuable lesson that day, a lesson about love: that it has no price. Love -- true love -- is literally priceless.
***
There was a man who, as a young boy, saw sacrificial love demonstrated by his own mother. His name was Joseph Rosenbaum. Listen to what he writes, in a World War II memoir:
[A] mother is always there when you need her. She helps, protects, listens, advises, and nurtures physically and morally. She makes sure that her family is loved 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. At least that's how I remember my mother, for the few precious years I was blessed to have her.
But no words can describe the sacrifice she made out of love for me, her young son. I was 19 years old, and I was being taken to a concentration camp with a large group of other Jews. It was clear that we were destined to die. There was another group of Jews who had passes, and these were going to remain in the ghetto.
As I passed by my mother, at the last possible moment and without being noticed by the Nazi officers, she handed me her [pass] and then took my place in the line. And although it was more than 50 years ago, I will never forget her last words to me and her good-bye look. "I have lived long enough," she said. "You have to survive because you are so young." I never saw her again.
Most kids are born only once. [But] I was given birth twice -- by the same mother.
***
One of the most beloved of all Hollywood movie stars was Audrey Hepburn. When she died prematurely in 1993, all the world mourned this lovely woman who had touched so many hearts through her sensitive acting.
What is not so widely appreciated, by those who know Audrey Hepburn only from movies like Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady, is that she was also a woman of iron determination. She had suffered much in her early years, and was committed to lessening the suffering of others.
As a young woman growing up in the Netherlands, the daughter of a British father and a Dutch baroness, Audrey had suffered through the Nazi occupation of her homeland. During those terrible years, she knew deprivation and malnutrition firsthand. When she suddenly found herself a wealthy movie star, she committed herself to using her wealth and power to make the world a better place for children -- particularly as a spokesperson for UNICEF.
On one occasion or another, Audrey Hepburn shared a list of what she called "beauty tips." They're appropriate for Mother's Day, or for any other day when we consider love and all that it means:
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it -- once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone...
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed.
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands:
One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
***
In a Peanuts comic strip, Peppermint Patty and Violet are reflecting on grandmothers. After Patty declares that she would like to be a grandmother, Violet says that she would, too. Being a grandmother is easy, she remarks. All grandmothers have to do is "sit and rock."
But then reality sinks in. The two girls remember that, in order to be a grandmother, you first have to be a wife, and then a mother.
"I know," sighs Violet. "It's all those preliminaries that get me!"
"All those preliminaries" are the stuff of motherhood.
***
When I was a child I looked forward to a trip back to my birthplace and spending a week or two at the home of my grandmother. I never knew my grandfather, as he had died before I was born. It was a warm feeling to experience the gathering of the family: three aunts and their spouses, one uncle and his spouse, my parents, and a host of cousins. Even then you could sense the oneness of this family and how they were raised. Each of the aunts had worked hard to put their brother through college. Each of the aunts and the uncle assisted their mother in the care of the property they grew up on. Each grandchild was taught incredible respect for their grandmother. In return, the grandmother went to each house every day and performed a function for the daughters and the son that lived in the hometown. Before my grandmother died in the hospital, she met with each daughter and her son for a final conference. Each one of them received a special gift for a specific purpose that she had planned for many years. That kind of living inspired each daughter and son to generate the same kind of admiration in every grandchild -- and the cousins of the matriarch are still as close as brother and sister.
***
As a pastor I have watched both the similarities and the differences in mothers. There is little generalization that can be made, except for the fact that they all love their children and desire that each child reach his or her potential. In some cases the child must discover his or her potential on their own, while others are given every advantage, sometimes too much for their own good. A few years ago a young man became acquainted through his newspaper route with a member of our church. The church member brought him to services and Sunday school each week. One day the young man told his sponsor that he would not have to pick him up on Sunday because his parents were going to bring him and his baby brother. This was the first Sunday that either parent had ever been in church -- but they missed very few after that day. The newspaper boy was responsible for bringing numerous families to church, many of whom became members. But the happiest day of his life was when he was the sponsor for his baby brother and his parents when they were baptized as a family into the family of God. Years later his mother still told everyone that the greatest Mother's Day gift that she ever received was the first time her son led them into the church and a relationship with Jesus Christ.
***
A woman about sixty years old sat on the steps of a large church for most of the afternoon. She looked as though she had lived a very hard life. As the hours passed and the same people went by her, going to and from the store or work, they began to ask her if they could help her in any way. She told each one that she was waiting for her son. It appeared to the people who asked her that she was waiting for someone who was not going to come.
Finally, late in the afternoon the pastor joined her in her watch. In the conversation he learned that her son was being released from prison that day and was coming home. For more than seven years she had visited him in prison, and she never left without saying a prayer that God would come into her son's heart and that he would live a changed life. Her son had never made her a promise, but something she felt inside told her that he would come to be one of God's people. Not only that, but she believed that he would meet her on the steps of the church. Yet it was now past dinnertime, so the pastor invited her to his house for something to eat. He wished to relieve her of her disappointment, and he told her how pleased his wife would be to share their dinner. But the mother never moved, and the pastor went home.
After he finished his dinner, the pastor told his wife he was going to take the woman a plate of food. The pastor's wife gave him a wink and said that he had better take two plates. Seeing the spark in his wife's eyes, the pastor decided to go along with her and he took two plates. When he returned to the church steps, he found the waiting mother and a man holding her hand. The mother's faith in her son was greatly rewarded, and the pastor left the two plates with amazing joy.
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by Thom M. Shuman
Call To Worship
One: Here, in this place of worship, with the congregation of the faithful:
All: We lay down our fears, to boldly sing God's praises.
One: Here, in the vineyard of the Lord, with our sisters and brothers in Christ:
All: Grandparents tell stories of faith to little ones sitting on their laps.
One: Here, where God waits to serve us at the Table:
All: We shall be filled with love so we can go to serve others.
Prayer Of The Day
Like a mother sending her children off to school each day,
you watch us walk down the streets of the kingdom,
trusting and believing we will bear fruit;
like a mother softly lullabying her baby to sleep,
you let us snuggle in your lap
as you softly sing to us of grace and hope;
like a mother asking a neighbor over for coffee,
you invite us to enter into your heart.
God of Abiding Love,
hear us as we pray as Jesus has taught us:
Our Father . . .
Call To Reconciliation
The seeds of grace, hope, joy, and love are planted deep within us,
so they can bear fruit in our lives.
But we resist staying connected to the Vine,
thinking we can flourish on our own.
Let us confess our sins, so we can once more feel God abiding in us.
(Unison) Prayer Of Confession
Mother of Compassion:
called to be one body,
we fragment ourselves into a million selfish pieces;
called to be your children of love,
we insist on the right to hate our sisters and brothers;
though your Perfect Love was broken for us,
we are afraid to be give of ourselves to the world.
Abide in us, Vine Grower.
Forgive us of our sins, so we may live boldly, love fearlessly, and
proclaim unceasingly that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.
(silent prayers may be offered)
Assurance Of Pardon
One: Do you feel it -- there in your hearts?
God's love is alive, beating, breathing -- in you!
All: Because God abides in us, we can live for others,
allowing God's love to bear fruit in us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
A strong faith
Object: some mustard seeds or something tiny to represent mustard seeds
Good morning! There was once a woman who came to Jesus and wanted him to heal her daughter who was being tormented by a demon. Do you think this woman really believed that Jesus could cure her daughter? (let them answer) Yes, of course she did. She wouldn't have come to him if she didn't believe he could do it. And she was very persistent. Even when the disciples tried to send her away she kept asking. Even when Jesus tried to discourage her, she kept right on asking him to heal her daughter. Finally, Jesus said to her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." Do you think the daughter got cured? (let them answer) She sure did! As soon as Jesus said those words, the daughter was cured.
Now when Jesus said she had great faith, do you think he meant that she had a great amount of faith, or was he saying that she was using the faith she had in a great way? (let them answer) He meant that she was using her faith in a great way. If you have faith, you have faith, and if you don't, you don't! It doesn't come in amounts. Once, Jesus told his disciples that if they had faith the size of this mustard seed (show the seeds), they could move a mountain. That was his way of telling them that faith doesn't have amounts. If you have faith and use it, it will become stronger, not larger. If you believe in Jesus as your Savior, you have all the faith you will ever need. Do you believe in him? (let them answer) Good! So now all you have to do is continue to use the faith you have so it will get stronger and stronger like that woman who wanted her daughter cured. Let's ask God to help us have a strong faith.
Dear Father in Heaven. We thank you for giving us faith, faith that allows us to believe in your Son, Jesus. Help us to use our faith every day so that it will get stronger and stronger. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, May 14, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
