Mother’s Day—it’s treacherous ground for a preacher. On one hand,
eager to honor women and the noble role of motherhood, there is the risk of
turning worship into nothing more than a sentimental greeting card, leaving
little margin for the presence of God and the mystery of the holy to intersect
with our mortal lives. On the other hand, if you neglect Mother’s Day and treat
it as you would any other Sunday, the preacher is seen as a joyless chump who
ruined the day for those who came with their mother’s to church and who wanted
to have them honored and lifted up in some significant way.
Robert Fulgham who wrote the best seller “All I Really Needed to
Know I Learned in Kindergarten” once wrote an essay about his days in the pulpit
and the touchy subject of Mother’s Day. Rev. Fulghum, being young and liberal
and full of himself planned to shy completely away from the traditional themes
of the holiday, in his sermon. Instead, he would address the great gospel
themes of love, obedience and discipleship.
Upon entering the church, he found himself caught by a parishioner
of his, a middle aged woman he knew to be quite forthright. Introducing an
elderly woman standing next to her, she said, “Rev. Fulghum, I want to introduce
you to my mother.”
I've brought her to church with me today to hear one of your
wonderful sermons. I've told her you often find new things to teach us from the
Scriptures, and that you are quite creative. So...I do hope you have a good one
ready for us today.”
“Well,” Fulghum responded, “I'll certainly try!”
Then in a quieter tone, just out of earshot of the older woman, she
leaned in and whispered, “And it had better have something to do with Mothers!”
I saw a plaque the other day in one of those little shops that sell
all kinds of bric-a-brac that none of us needs but all of us find irresistible.
It read, “Home is where the Mamma is.” I thought about the truth of that
statement.
Home is where the Mamma is, refers to the comfort, the care and the
love that we find at home. Attributes more often than not delivered at the
hands of our mothers.
Scripture puts a pretty high value on love. Jesus, in fashioning a
new commandment for his followers called them “little children,” and then told
them, “love one another as I first loved you.”
Paul writes of this love, in a familiar passage many of us know by
heart. Here, Paul speaks of love as the very thing that precedes and outlasts
all other things. “Faith, hope and love, these three abide. But the greatest
of these is love.”
William Sloan Coffin, perhaps the greatest preacher and prophet of
justice and love in our time wrote: “Socrates had it wrong; it is not the
unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living. Descartes
too was mistaken; ‘Cogito ergo sum’--‘I think therefore I am?’ Nonsense. ‘Amo
ergo sum’--’I love therefore I am.’ Or, as with unconscious eloquence St. Paul
wrote, ‘now abide faith, hope, love, these three. And the greatest of these is
love.’
Coffin concludes by saying “ I believe that. I believe it is better
not to live than not to love.”
So how do we learn to love? I think Jesus gave his disciples a clue
when he addressed them as “Little children.” “Little children,” he said, “I’m
not going to be here much longer, and so I give you a new commandment. Love one
another.”
Little children, he called them. As if to say, love the way a
little child loves.
A
group of professional people posed the question "What does love mean?" to a
group of four through eight-year-olds. Listen to their answers:
·
"Love
is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your french fries without
making them give you any of theirs."
·
"If
you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate."
·
"When
someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your
name is safe in their mouth."
·
"When
my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails
anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got
arthritis too. That's Love."
·
"Love
is when someone hurts you. And you get so mad but you don't yell at them because
you know it would hurt their feelings."
·
"Love
is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and
listen."
·
"During my piano recital, I was on a stage and scared. I looked at all the
people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one
doing that. I wasn't scared anymore."
·
"Love
is when mommy gives daddy the best piece of chicken."
·
"Love
is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day."
·
"When
you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of
you."
·
"You
really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you
should say it a lot. People forget."
As I listen to these profound thoughts on love, I am struck by how
many of them equate loving to giving. To love is to give. To love like a
little child loves, is to give the way a child gives. Freely. With a great
joy. Give until it puts a skip in your walk!
I receive the greatest gifts from children--from slaps of “gimme
five” at the doorway when they leave, to the colorful drawings with which some
have blessed me. From the unexpected hugs that catch me off guard and make me
giggle. To a tiny finger motioning me to lean down to hear some important thing
they have to say. A child’s gifts are precious, and they ought always be
received.
A child gives, because a child loves. And intuitively, a child
knows that both fills them with life and joy. We forget that sometimes, we big
people. We forget that the opportunity to discover joy and an abundance of life
is right under our noses. Or more truthfully, in our hands. We discover joy
and life as we discover the secret of giving.
In the Holy Land are two ancient bodies of water. Both are fed by
the Jordan River. In one of these bodies of water, fish play, animals and birds
quench their thirst, and roots find sustenance. In the other, there is no
splash of fish, no sound of bird, no leaf or root to be found. The difference
between the two is not the source of their water, for both are fed by the
Jordan. But one body, the Sea of Galilee, for every drop of water taken in, one
goes out, channeled for the benefit of those downstream. It gives, and it
lives. The other gives nothing. It hoards all the water that flows into it,
until it either evaporates in the hot sun, or seeps into the sand. You know the
name of this body of water. It is called...the Dead Sea.
Just as these two bodies of water are known the world over by the
nature and the character of what they are, so we are known by whether we choose
to channel God’s love and good gifts outward, or whether we tend to hoard them
up until we die. Jesus had it right. Christians, those who follow Jesus, are
known by their love. By loving one another, people will know whether or not we
belong to Christ.
Again, I want to share again what Bill Coffin has to say: “Love
measures our stature; the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller
package in all the world, than that of a man all wrapped up in himself.”
Be big in your love.
Be enormous in your love.
Be child-like in your love.
Be a disciple of Jesus Christ, known by your love.
Now, for
always. Amen.
