That's no way to talk to your Mother!

Back in my seminary days in preaching class, there was always lively discussion around the topic of whether or not one should preach on themes that arise on the observance of civil or secular holidays. For example, on Memorial Day weekend should a sermon focus on the topics of freedom and sacrifice and war? On the Fourth of July should one preach about God and flag and country? On Labor Day weekend should a sermon lift up themes regarding work and vocation?

I remember well the dialogue that ensued among my class of idealistic seminarians. We concluded that civil holidays and non-religious observances, particularly those we felt were foisted upon by greeting card companies and the restaurant industry, don’t carry the same preaching weight and authority as religious observances like Christmas and Easter and Pentecost and Thanksgiving, too. And we proudly proclaimed to our professor when we graduated and went into the church we would never taint our preaching by caving into commercial interests and cultural pressures.

I remember our professor, Dr. Howard Hageman, who before he became president of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, served for 29 distinguished years at the North Reformed Church in Newark, NJ. Dr. Hageman listened patiently to our high minded discussions and our expressed determination , “I happen to agree with you aspiring preachers, but allow me to remind you, that on the second Sunday in May, commonly known since 1914 as Mother’s Day, should you enter the pulpit and choose to completely ignore the topic, please have the foresight to have your suitcases packed before you come to the church that Sunday.

Thus, wisely so, I always have something to say about Mother’s Day. In terms of business revenue, it’s is the third biggest holiday. 140 million greeting cards sold. 60 million roses purchased. $7 billion spent on meals and gifts. So, lest I forget, let me say it now, “Happy Mother’s Day to all who are mothers and to those who have the heart of a mother. And I add, Happy Mother’s Day to all who were brought into the world by mothers.” In the word of 17^th century hymnist, Martin Rinkart:

Now thank we all our God,
With hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mother's arms
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.

Maybe it’s because of the homey, familial sentiments engendered on this day, that Jesus’ words seem so striking and disturbing. One day, while on the preaching trail, Jesus gets word that his mother and brothers are looking for him. His mother is looking for him! She wants to have dinner with him. She hasn’t seen him for some time. He never calls! He never writes! She concerned for his well being. She’s doing what ever mother does, she out looking for her kid. With what appears to be indignant dismissal, Jesus replies, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”

On another occasion, Jesus turned to the crowd following him and said: “You’d better think again about signing on with me, for unless you hate your father and mother and children and brothers and sister, unless you hate your own family, you’re not the kind of person I’m looking for.” So much for family values!

Why is Jesus so harsh? Why these biting, stinging words? In another touching encounter elsewhere in Luke, a woman approached Jesus and sang the praises of his mother by saying, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” Jesus replied, “That may be so, but I say blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”

On another occasion, Jesus reminded his followers that he came not to bring peace but a sword. And his presence would divide families and cause much turmoil, fathers would be pitted against sons, and sons against mothers, and brothers against sisters.

Imagine current presidential hopefuls – Guilliani, Obama, Romney, Clinton, Anderson – looking into the campaign camera and daring to say, “If you’re thinking of voting for me; if you want me as your leader, you’d better show me more loyalty than you show your own mother.” Hello??!! Goodbye!!

So here we are on this Mother’s Day Sunday, on an occasion when it’s appropriate and expected that we exalt the family unit, and Jesus has little to say on the matter and what he does say, would never make it on a Hallmark card.

This has led one biblical scholar to comment that Jesus broke the hearts of many a first century family, for he was constantly calling people out of their families into a new family, a new community of God, the family of God.

What is it, then, that we find in this new family, this family of God that transcends even our earthly families? One thing we find in God’s family is our true identity. Our value and dignity and worth are not primarily matters of biology as much as they are matters of theology. We’re not deemed significant and splendid creatures because of our heredity or birth order; we are deemed marvelous and magnificent because at one moment in the eons of time God said, “Let us make humans in our own image, male and female God created them.”

It is from God that we get our self image. This favored status, this jeweled identity that God has given is not something we manufacture on our own, not something we gain after pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps and shoe laces. It has nothing to do with degrees or credentials, nothing to do with class rank and GPA. Our God-blessed identity is not something after much personal hard work we end up with; it’s what we start out with. It’s there from the beginning, encoded in our spiritual DNA.

It’s a God-thing, and Jesus knew that. Jesus knew that families can be the place where we receive our greatest joys, but they can also be the place where we endure our greatest injuries. That’s why Jesus was constantly reminding people that the relationship to God is even more primary that our relationship in our earthly families. And what we do in church every time was baptize, every time we welcome, is that we remind ourselves that we are connected as “brothers” and “sisters” even though we might not share the same last names.

Some of you may recognize the name Karl Malone, for most of his professional basketball career he played for the Utah Jazz. The All-Star forward was born dirt poor in Alabama poverty. His father left the family of eight children when Karl was very young. And Shirley Malone, Karl’s mother, raised her eight kids by herself, working two jobs while scrimping and saving to make ends meet.

There was never any money in the Malone family, and when Karl became interested in the game of basketball, there was no court or basketball hoop. So Karl’s mother improvised. Standing tall, she would extend her arms forward, intertwine her fingers and form a circle. She became a human basketball hoop so that Karl could shoot the ball through them over and over and over again.

Shirley Malone did for her son a God-like thing. She extended her arms for her child. I love that image, for it reminds us of the God who extends God’s arms for the world. We can sense the pathos and the emotion in God’s longing in the eleventh chapter of Hosea:

The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught [them] to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. (Hosea 11:2-4) What a poignant picture painted by the prophet on this Mother’s Day.

I end my message with an historical footnote. Mother’s Day was officially calendarized by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, but its origin started some 40 years earlier. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe, author of the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and a witness to the unspeakable human carnage of the Civil War, as well as to the atrocities of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe, issued what is considered by historians to be the first Mother’s Day Proclamation. In the truest sense, Mother’s Day started out as a protest against the casualities of war. Here, then is the first Mother’s Day Proclamation, issued in 1870, calling for woman on all nations to unite:

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm! Disarm!" The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.