Everything Old Is New Again
Stories
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Everything Old Is New Again" by Rick McCracken-Bennett
"The Ketchup Church" by Timothy F. Merrill
"Just Like Looking in a Mirror" by Rick McCracken-Bennett
"Sounds Just Like Mom!" by David E. Leininger
What's Up This Week
Stripping and refinishing old furniture is a popular hobby for many people. Though it can be hard work that requires dedication, attention to detail, and lots of elbow grease, the finished product is usually a beautiful restoration that truly makes everything old new again. But as Rick McCracken-Bennett shares with us in the featured piece of this edition of StoryShare, it's also a telling analogy that accurately represents God's power to reshape us to fit his purposes. We also have a pair of interesting takes on the inflexibility and judgmentalism that can permeate our worship styles -- and what it might mean if we truly took to heart Peter's words in this week's reading from Acts about "not making a distinction between them and us." Finally, David Leininger suggests that this week's Gospel text sounds just like a mother -- which is particularly apropos with Mother's Day approaching next Sunday.
* * * * * * * * *
Everything Old Is New Again
Rick McCracken-Bennett
"See, I am making all things new."
Revelation 21:5a
In Revelation (and other places in scripture) we're told that God is in the business of making all things new. What does that mean when the thing God is making new is us?
Years ago my baby sister wandered into a store -- a junk store, really. She walked up and down the cluttered aisles not looking for anything in particular. She was just about ready to leave when a piece caught her eye. It was a bookstand -- dusty, dirty, covered with (she found out soon enough) five layers of paint over the original varnish. "How much do you want for this?" was answered with "How much would you give?" and a few minutes and a little good-natured haggling later Kay walked out with her purchase.
She wasn't immediately struck with buyer's remorse; it was more like buyer's confusion. What was she going to do with it? How could she restore it? She had no idea.
Kay asked around at work and finally contacted a furniture refinisher. He gave her some ideas about what kind of noxious chemicals would remove the layers of paint. He told her a little about sanding and refinishing, and then he said, "But the most important thing is love. You've got to love the piece... see beyond the scratches and the paint and the dirt. You need to spend time with it, love it, and see it as it can be, not as it is."
And so Kay spent time with it: holding it, looking at it, examining it from every angle until she got an idea about how the piece would look when it was finally restored. Then lovingly, carefully, she began to painstakingly strip off layer after layer of paint. When she reached bare wood she found that the gobs of paint had protected it so well that it didn't require much sanding at all. And when she was finished she gave this piece that she loved so much, that she made new, to me as a gift for my ordination. And most Sundays I use that stand on the altar at my church.
It seems to me that this is a lot like how God makes us new. The most important ingredient is God's love. It is God's love that sees past the layers and layers of junk and filth that I've wrapped around myself: my public image I have so carefully held onto; my habits and compulsions I rationalize away; my sin and my sins; my prejudices and hate.
And slowly, over time, God works God's love on me: pealing off a little here and a little there, and all the time knowing full well what is under all that crud. God looks at me with the eyes of love and sees me as I really am, as I was created to be -- and then, if I am willing, God begins to chip away and strip away what doesn't belong.
Unlike my treasured bookstand, the process with us takes a little longer -- perhaps an entire lifetime. God no more strips away something than we find a substitute to fill the spot. Yet the longer God works on us and with us, the better we are able to see what God sees, and love what God loves, and begin to cooperate with the master refinisher to make all things new.
Rick McCracken-Bennett is an avid storyteller, an Episcopal priest and church planter, and the founding pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church in New Albany, Ohio. Rick began his ministry as a Roman Catholic priest, and he has also served as an alcohol and drug treatment counselor and as the director of an outpatient treatment center for adults and children.
The Ketchup Church
Timothy F. Merrill
"What God has made clean, you must not call profane."
Acts 11:9
My parents didn't put up with a lot of foolishness. Two rules stand out: At the dinner table I often heard, "Don't play with your food." At church, still more frequently, I heard, "Sit still."
There's a certain amount of logic behind the first rule. If you think of breakfast, lunch, and dinner as those times when you stop to refuel your body, then you should probably get on task, refuel, wash up, and get back to your chores.
If, however, the family meal is thought of as something much more than one of three pit stops during the day to take in organic energy, if it's thought of rather as a time for conversation, connections, and community, then playing with your food isn't nearly so serious.
Playing with your food. Today, corporate food providers are encouraging just that. Food and eating, traditionally so boring, can now be fun, fun, fun. For example, ketchup used to be red, like tomatoes are red. Then Heinz came up with the idea of using yellow and blue dyes to create a product line called "Blastin' Green" ketchup. Within weeks they'd sold 10 million plastic squirt bottles of the stuff and kids all across America were plastering their burgers with green ketchup and grossing out their parents.
Heinz went on to produce a "Funky Purple" ketchup, and ConAgra Foods marketed blue and pink margarine. Mott's applesauce was available in turquoise, red, and acid green colors. Oreos even came with an orange filling which, when dipped in milk and stirred, created funky swirly patterns.
All of this, of course, is culinary heresy. Most of us know that ketchup is not green; it's red. It's always been red. Margarine is not blue, it's yellow. (Actually it's white, and some of us can remember having to peel open a little yellow dye packet and stir the coloring in.) These basic notions are imprinted on our minds, and squirting green ketchup on our cheeseburger or spreading blue margarine on our toast just doesn't do anything for us. We're not supposed to play with our food.
It's this same mind-set behind my parents' frequent admonitions to sit still in church. Like food, church was a time to refuel spiritually. So even at church, you don't play with your food.
Perhaps. Is it possible that God is trying to break through traditional notions of worship that are imprinted on our consciousness? Go right on down the list from stained-glass windows, pipe organs, steeples, pews, to Sunday school, and it becomes clear that these old traditional patterns and experiences, beloved by many, have no appeal to those who like to play with their food.
So the next time you see a drama sketch during worship, or glance over at someone in the chair next to you sipping a Starbucks latte, or watch a video clip from Spiderman, or listen to the keyboard synthesizing some new tunes -- rise, shine, and give God the glory. Children of the Lord -- they're just playing with their food, and God is loving it.
Timothy F. Merrill is the Senior Editor of the preaching journal Homiletics. He has published numerous articles in the religious press and in academic journals, and he is the author of Learning to Fall: A Guide for the Spiritually Clumsy (Chalice Press). Merrill is an ordained United Church of Christ minister who has served churches in Colorado, Minnesota, and Oregon. This piece appears in the CSS volume Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Series IV, Cycle C).
Just Like Looking in a Mirror
The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us."
Acts 11:12a
"If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?"
Acts 11:17
Sometimes we get strange ideas about other folks, their religions, and their practices. This fellow had some of the strangest ideas of them all.
It was a peculiar little private game that he played. Every day when the newspaper arrived he would open it to the page with the wedding photos. Carefully, so as not to cheat, he covered the words underneath each picture, stared at the newly married couple, and tried to guess whether or not they belonged to his denomination or another.
I know, I know -- it sounds weird, but that's exactly what he did. Week after week he would test his skills and keep track of his batting average. It was pretty good, actually.
Sometimes it was easy to tell. Perhaps there was a piece of church architecture in the background which either looked or didn't look like something that would have been in his church. Other times the couple was dressed way too informally for them to be members of his denomination. Still other times, it was just a hunch. Even so, most of the time he got it right.
It was a quiet bigotry that he exercised in this way; a way of looking down his nose at other religions, other ways of doing church, and raising his own to an artificially higher level of purity.
Once in a while he would be so certain that a couple had been married in a church of his particular franchise that he was flabbergasted to find out that not only had they not, they had been married by a minister in a park or on a beach and not in a church at all. You can imagine what he thought about that.
As he got better and better at it, he tired of the game. It's actually no fun to win most every time. Like a person who only does the easy Sudoku puzzles, it was no longer a challenge and he quit.
And over time, something else began to happen. He left a job, moved to another city, and just for fun, just to see what it would be like, he began to visit churches of other denominations.
It was odd how these people didn't look so strange and different after all. Oh, their code language was a little different from the code language he was used to, but it didn't take too long to translate. He actually began to get used to a new church, then like it, and then love it. And in time, he joined a church quite different from the one he grew up in.
Months went by and he became more and more involved. He took part in newcomer meetings, sang in the choir, helped on a Habitat for Humanity project, and even did a stint with the youth group.
One day, a Saturday, he picked up the newspaper and saw the photos of newly married couples. Without even thinking, he found a 3 x 5 card, held it over the stories about their weddings, and played his old game, trying to guess who had been married in the denomination he had come from. He missed the first one, and then the second. In fact, he didn't score well at all.
None of these kids looked different or distinctive to him like they had before. He was no longer looking down his nose at anyone else for having an "inferior religion." He was finally able to understand what the apostle Peter meant when he said, "The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us." He understood it at last, and that's exactly what he did!
Rick McCracken-Bennett is the pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church in New Albany, Ohio.
Sounds Just Like Mom!
David E. Leininger
John 13:31-35
This week's Gospel text does sound just like Mom, doesn't it? And particularly so since it appears in the lectionary at a time of year that is so close to the day Americans celebrate as Mothers' Day. Every mother wants her children to get along, to love one another. No doubt there are times that she wonders if that will ever happen, but you know nothing makes a mom happier.
Someone has proposed a unique take-off on the Survivor shows that have been popular in recent years:
-- Six men will be dropped on an island with one van and four kids each, for 6 weeks.
-- Each kid plays two sports and either takes music or dance classes.
-- There is no access to fast food.
-- Each man must take care of their four kids, keep their assigned house clean, correct all homework, complete science projects, cook, do laundry, etc.
-- The men only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done, and none of the TVs have remotes.
-- The men must shave their legs and wear makeup daily, which they must apply themselves either while driving or while making four lunches.
-- They must attend weekly PTA meetings; clean up after their sick children at 3:00 a.m.; make an Indian hut model with six toothpicks, a tortilla, and one marker; and get a 4-year-old to eat a serving of peas.
-- The kids vote them off the island based on performance.
-- The winner gets to go back to his old job.
Happy Mothers' Day!
The first call for a Mothers' Day in the United States came in the 1870s as an effort to rally women to work for peace in the world. Julia Ward Howe -- writer, lecturer, social reformer (and author of the "The Battle Hymn of the Republic") -- initiated the idea. After her experience tending the wounded in the War Between the States, she started a crusade to institute such an event. The last Mothers' Day of that kind was June 1, 1912, where the printed invitation noted that "this festival... is a time for women and children to come together; to... speak, sing, and pray for 'those things that make for peace.' "
The Mothers' Day now observed on the second Sunday in May has its origins with Anna Jarvis, who had a very different reason for honoring mothers. Never a mother herself, Anna spent most of her adult life caring for her mother in Grafton, West Virginia. Her concern was for mothers who needed care and whose adult children were neglecting them. Out of this interest, in 1905 Anna Jarvis started a campaign for an annual religious celebration to honor mothers. In 1914 Congress passed a resolution providing that the second Sunday in May be designated as Mothers' Day, and President Woodrow Wilson issued a Mothers' Day Proclamation.
Sadly, Mothers' Day has been trivialized in recent years, but it can and should be more than a "Hallmark holiday." For that matter, I would insist on the only slightly heretical idea that it should not be relegated to a celebration of those who have given birth. As the news media regularly attest, the ability to breed does not necessarily qualify someone to be a mother. On the other hand, some of the finest mothering ever seen has come from people -- both male and female -- who have never had children of their own. They provided encouragement to the dejected, fortitude to the faint-hearted, applause for accomplishment, and whenever needed, a shoulder to cry on.
Suddenly we hear Jesus sounding like a mom who wants her kids to get along -- more than get along, actually: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."
A new commandment? There is something different here from all the other instructions we have from the Old and New Testaments concerning our obligation to love our neighbor. Two things are different, actually: 1) this command is directed especially to those and for those within Christ's circle of friends (the church); and 2) there is now a specific standard against which to measure whether or not we are doing what we have been told -- the standard of the Lord's own love for his own.
Years ago Henry Drummond preached a sermon about love called "The Greatest Thing in the World" in which he suggested that if you put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified body, that piece of iron becomes electrified. It is changed into a temporary magnet in the presence of a permanent magnet -- and as long as you leave the two together, they will share this characteristic. It is no different with Christians and Christ -- when we are close to him, we reproduce some of his characteristics which would be quite impossible if we merely attempted to obey his command or imitate his example.
"Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." Sounds just like Mom, doesn't he?
Oh... speaking of magnets, a junior high science teacher was about to begin a unit on the subject, and to introduce it he offered his students a puzzle. It read, "My name has six letters, beginning with 'M,' and I pick things up. What am I?" Half the kids in the class wrote "Mother!"
David E. Leininger is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Warren, Pennsylvania. His most recent book is A Color-Blind Church (CSS), the account of an intriguing match of two congregations -- one black, one white -- in a small community following the reunion of the northern and southern streams of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1983.
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StoryShare, May 6, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. 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.
What's Up This Week
"Everything Old Is New Again" by Rick McCracken-Bennett
"The Ketchup Church" by Timothy F. Merrill
"Just Like Looking in a Mirror" by Rick McCracken-Bennett
"Sounds Just Like Mom!" by David E. Leininger
What's Up This Week
Stripping and refinishing old furniture is a popular hobby for many people. Though it can be hard work that requires dedication, attention to detail, and lots of elbow grease, the finished product is usually a beautiful restoration that truly makes everything old new again. But as Rick McCracken-Bennett shares with us in the featured piece of this edition of StoryShare, it's also a telling analogy that accurately represents God's power to reshape us to fit his purposes. We also have a pair of interesting takes on the inflexibility and judgmentalism that can permeate our worship styles -- and what it might mean if we truly took to heart Peter's words in this week's reading from Acts about "not making a distinction between them and us." Finally, David Leininger suggests that this week's Gospel text sounds just like a mother -- which is particularly apropos with Mother's Day approaching next Sunday.
* * * * * * * * *
Everything Old Is New Again
Rick McCracken-Bennett
"See, I am making all things new."
Revelation 21:5a
In Revelation (and other places in scripture) we're told that God is in the business of making all things new. What does that mean when the thing God is making new is us?
Years ago my baby sister wandered into a store -- a junk store, really. She walked up and down the cluttered aisles not looking for anything in particular. She was just about ready to leave when a piece caught her eye. It was a bookstand -- dusty, dirty, covered with (she found out soon enough) five layers of paint over the original varnish. "How much do you want for this?" was answered with "How much would you give?" and a few minutes and a little good-natured haggling later Kay walked out with her purchase.
She wasn't immediately struck with buyer's remorse; it was more like buyer's confusion. What was she going to do with it? How could she restore it? She had no idea.
Kay asked around at work and finally contacted a furniture refinisher. He gave her some ideas about what kind of noxious chemicals would remove the layers of paint. He told her a little about sanding and refinishing, and then he said, "But the most important thing is love. You've got to love the piece... see beyond the scratches and the paint and the dirt. You need to spend time with it, love it, and see it as it can be, not as it is."
And so Kay spent time with it: holding it, looking at it, examining it from every angle until she got an idea about how the piece would look when it was finally restored. Then lovingly, carefully, she began to painstakingly strip off layer after layer of paint. When she reached bare wood she found that the gobs of paint had protected it so well that it didn't require much sanding at all. And when she was finished she gave this piece that she loved so much, that she made new, to me as a gift for my ordination. And most Sundays I use that stand on the altar at my church.
It seems to me that this is a lot like how God makes us new. The most important ingredient is God's love. It is God's love that sees past the layers and layers of junk and filth that I've wrapped around myself: my public image I have so carefully held onto; my habits and compulsions I rationalize away; my sin and my sins; my prejudices and hate.
And slowly, over time, God works God's love on me: pealing off a little here and a little there, and all the time knowing full well what is under all that crud. God looks at me with the eyes of love and sees me as I really am, as I was created to be -- and then, if I am willing, God begins to chip away and strip away what doesn't belong.
Unlike my treasured bookstand, the process with us takes a little longer -- perhaps an entire lifetime. God no more strips away something than we find a substitute to fill the spot. Yet the longer God works on us and with us, the better we are able to see what God sees, and love what God loves, and begin to cooperate with the master refinisher to make all things new.
Rick McCracken-Bennett is an avid storyteller, an Episcopal priest and church planter, and the founding pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church in New Albany, Ohio. Rick began his ministry as a Roman Catholic priest, and he has also served as an alcohol and drug treatment counselor and as the director of an outpatient treatment center for adults and children.
The Ketchup Church
Timothy F. Merrill
"What God has made clean, you must not call profane."
Acts 11:9
My parents didn't put up with a lot of foolishness. Two rules stand out: At the dinner table I often heard, "Don't play with your food." At church, still more frequently, I heard, "Sit still."
There's a certain amount of logic behind the first rule. If you think of breakfast, lunch, and dinner as those times when you stop to refuel your body, then you should probably get on task, refuel, wash up, and get back to your chores.
If, however, the family meal is thought of as something much more than one of three pit stops during the day to take in organic energy, if it's thought of rather as a time for conversation, connections, and community, then playing with your food isn't nearly so serious.
Playing with your food. Today, corporate food providers are encouraging just that. Food and eating, traditionally so boring, can now be fun, fun, fun. For example, ketchup used to be red, like tomatoes are red. Then Heinz came up with the idea of using yellow and blue dyes to create a product line called "Blastin' Green" ketchup. Within weeks they'd sold 10 million plastic squirt bottles of the stuff and kids all across America were plastering their burgers with green ketchup and grossing out their parents.
Heinz went on to produce a "Funky Purple" ketchup, and ConAgra Foods marketed blue and pink margarine. Mott's applesauce was available in turquoise, red, and acid green colors. Oreos even came with an orange filling which, when dipped in milk and stirred, created funky swirly patterns.
All of this, of course, is culinary heresy. Most of us know that ketchup is not green; it's red. It's always been red. Margarine is not blue, it's yellow. (Actually it's white, and some of us can remember having to peel open a little yellow dye packet and stir the coloring in.) These basic notions are imprinted on our minds, and squirting green ketchup on our cheeseburger or spreading blue margarine on our toast just doesn't do anything for us. We're not supposed to play with our food.
It's this same mind-set behind my parents' frequent admonitions to sit still in church. Like food, church was a time to refuel spiritually. So even at church, you don't play with your food.
Perhaps. Is it possible that God is trying to break through traditional notions of worship that are imprinted on our consciousness? Go right on down the list from stained-glass windows, pipe organs, steeples, pews, to Sunday school, and it becomes clear that these old traditional patterns and experiences, beloved by many, have no appeal to those who like to play with their food.
So the next time you see a drama sketch during worship, or glance over at someone in the chair next to you sipping a Starbucks latte, or watch a video clip from Spiderman, or listen to the keyboard synthesizing some new tunes -- rise, shine, and give God the glory. Children of the Lord -- they're just playing with their food, and God is loving it.
Timothy F. Merrill is the Senior Editor of the preaching journal Homiletics. He has published numerous articles in the religious press and in academic journals, and he is the author of Learning to Fall: A Guide for the Spiritually Clumsy (Chalice Press). Merrill is an ordained United Church of Christ minister who has served churches in Colorado, Minnesota, and Oregon. This piece appears in the CSS volume Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Series IV, Cycle C).
Just Like Looking in a Mirror
The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us."
Acts 11:12a
"If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?"
Acts 11:17
Sometimes we get strange ideas about other folks, their religions, and their practices. This fellow had some of the strangest ideas of them all.
It was a peculiar little private game that he played. Every day when the newspaper arrived he would open it to the page with the wedding photos. Carefully, so as not to cheat, he covered the words underneath each picture, stared at the newly married couple, and tried to guess whether or not they belonged to his denomination or another.
I know, I know -- it sounds weird, but that's exactly what he did. Week after week he would test his skills and keep track of his batting average. It was pretty good, actually.
Sometimes it was easy to tell. Perhaps there was a piece of church architecture in the background which either looked or didn't look like something that would have been in his church. Other times the couple was dressed way too informally for them to be members of his denomination. Still other times, it was just a hunch. Even so, most of the time he got it right.
It was a quiet bigotry that he exercised in this way; a way of looking down his nose at other religions, other ways of doing church, and raising his own to an artificially higher level of purity.
Once in a while he would be so certain that a couple had been married in a church of his particular franchise that he was flabbergasted to find out that not only had they not, they had been married by a minister in a park or on a beach and not in a church at all. You can imagine what he thought about that.
As he got better and better at it, he tired of the game. It's actually no fun to win most every time. Like a person who only does the easy Sudoku puzzles, it was no longer a challenge and he quit.
And over time, something else began to happen. He left a job, moved to another city, and just for fun, just to see what it would be like, he began to visit churches of other denominations.
It was odd how these people didn't look so strange and different after all. Oh, their code language was a little different from the code language he was used to, but it didn't take too long to translate. He actually began to get used to a new church, then like it, and then love it. And in time, he joined a church quite different from the one he grew up in.
Months went by and he became more and more involved. He took part in newcomer meetings, sang in the choir, helped on a Habitat for Humanity project, and even did a stint with the youth group.
One day, a Saturday, he picked up the newspaper and saw the photos of newly married couples. Without even thinking, he found a 3 x 5 card, held it over the stories about their weddings, and played his old game, trying to guess who had been married in the denomination he had come from. He missed the first one, and then the second. In fact, he didn't score well at all.
None of these kids looked different or distinctive to him like they had before. He was no longer looking down his nose at anyone else for having an "inferior religion." He was finally able to understand what the apostle Peter meant when he said, "The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us." He understood it at last, and that's exactly what he did!
Rick McCracken-Bennett is the pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church in New Albany, Ohio.
Sounds Just Like Mom!
David E. Leininger
John 13:31-35
This week's Gospel text does sound just like Mom, doesn't it? And particularly so since it appears in the lectionary at a time of year that is so close to the day Americans celebrate as Mothers' Day. Every mother wants her children to get along, to love one another. No doubt there are times that she wonders if that will ever happen, but you know nothing makes a mom happier.
Someone has proposed a unique take-off on the Survivor shows that have been popular in recent years:
-- Six men will be dropped on an island with one van and four kids each, for 6 weeks.
-- Each kid plays two sports and either takes music or dance classes.
-- There is no access to fast food.
-- Each man must take care of their four kids, keep their assigned house clean, correct all homework, complete science projects, cook, do laundry, etc.
-- The men only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done, and none of the TVs have remotes.
-- The men must shave their legs and wear makeup daily, which they must apply themselves either while driving or while making four lunches.
-- They must attend weekly PTA meetings; clean up after their sick children at 3:00 a.m.; make an Indian hut model with six toothpicks, a tortilla, and one marker; and get a 4-year-old to eat a serving of peas.
-- The kids vote them off the island based on performance.
-- The winner gets to go back to his old job.
Happy Mothers' Day!
The first call for a Mothers' Day in the United States came in the 1870s as an effort to rally women to work for peace in the world. Julia Ward Howe -- writer, lecturer, social reformer (and author of the "The Battle Hymn of the Republic") -- initiated the idea. After her experience tending the wounded in the War Between the States, she started a crusade to institute such an event. The last Mothers' Day of that kind was June 1, 1912, where the printed invitation noted that "this festival... is a time for women and children to come together; to... speak, sing, and pray for 'those things that make for peace.' "
The Mothers' Day now observed on the second Sunday in May has its origins with Anna Jarvis, who had a very different reason for honoring mothers. Never a mother herself, Anna spent most of her adult life caring for her mother in Grafton, West Virginia. Her concern was for mothers who needed care and whose adult children were neglecting them. Out of this interest, in 1905 Anna Jarvis started a campaign for an annual religious celebration to honor mothers. In 1914 Congress passed a resolution providing that the second Sunday in May be designated as Mothers' Day, and President Woodrow Wilson issued a Mothers' Day Proclamation.
Sadly, Mothers' Day has been trivialized in recent years, but it can and should be more than a "Hallmark holiday." For that matter, I would insist on the only slightly heretical idea that it should not be relegated to a celebration of those who have given birth. As the news media regularly attest, the ability to breed does not necessarily qualify someone to be a mother. On the other hand, some of the finest mothering ever seen has come from people -- both male and female -- who have never had children of their own. They provided encouragement to the dejected, fortitude to the faint-hearted, applause for accomplishment, and whenever needed, a shoulder to cry on.
Suddenly we hear Jesus sounding like a mom who wants her kids to get along -- more than get along, actually: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."
A new commandment? There is something different here from all the other instructions we have from the Old and New Testaments concerning our obligation to love our neighbor. Two things are different, actually: 1) this command is directed especially to those and for those within Christ's circle of friends (the church); and 2) there is now a specific standard against which to measure whether or not we are doing what we have been told -- the standard of the Lord's own love for his own.
Years ago Henry Drummond preached a sermon about love called "The Greatest Thing in the World" in which he suggested that if you put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified body, that piece of iron becomes electrified. It is changed into a temporary magnet in the presence of a permanent magnet -- and as long as you leave the two together, they will share this characteristic. It is no different with Christians and Christ -- when we are close to him, we reproduce some of his characteristics which would be quite impossible if we merely attempted to obey his command or imitate his example.
"Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." Sounds just like Mom, doesn't he?
Oh... speaking of magnets, a junior high science teacher was about to begin a unit on the subject, and to introduce it he offered his students a puzzle. It read, "My name has six letters, beginning with 'M,' and I pick things up. What am I?" Half the kids in the class wrote "Mother!"
David E. Leininger is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Warren, Pennsylvania. His most recent book is A Color-Blind Church (CSS), the account of an intriguing match of two congregations -- one black, one white -- in a small community following the reunion of the northern and southern streams of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1983.
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How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and email the story to us.
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StoryShare, May 6, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. 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.
