Easter
4 Year A 2014
Father Adam Trambley
May 11, 2014 St.John’s Sharon
Happy Mother’s Day.
Since the closest the church comes to a liturgical “Mother’s Day” is
August 15 for the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our readings today focus on
Jesus, our Good Shepherd, not necessarily mothering. Looking for something that spoke about
motherhood in today’s reading, I was drawn immediately to First Peter: “If you
endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.” Maybe not the most optimistic assessment of
the joys of parenting, but if mothering was one long series of flowery cards
and family brunches cooked by someone else, no one would have needed to create a
dedicated “Mother’s Day.”
I think, from what I’ve seen, that the second most difficult
piece of being a parent is the suffering that comes from doing what is
right. From the physical act of giving
birth or the particular trials of adoption, to the seemingly endless financial
requirements, to sleepless nights (for different reasons at different ages), to
school, sports and activities, to saying “no” to an unappreciative audience, to
picking up the pieces when children are stretching, growing and unknowingly
hurting themselves and others, various levels of suffering for doing what is
right occur when we love our children, and we should know that in all of those
struggles we have God’s approval. Love
requires sacrifices, and our sacrifices are pleasing to God, who also
strengthens us to make such sacrifices.
The most difficult piece of parenting, however, is when we
know we have not been able to do what we would want to do, or to make the
sacrifices we wish we had made. We let
our own issues, our own egos, our own need for control, or just our own
selfishness get in the way of how we would like to love our children. At some point, all parents make mistakes, even
the Blessed Virgin Mary who lost her thirteen-year old in the big city for
three days. Yet, we know that some of our
mistakes can be pretty costly.
The good news in those situations is that Jesus has taken
away ours sins and is able to overcome whatever damage we have done. Again, Peter says: by his wounds you have
been healed. We do go astray like sheep,
but we can return again to the shepherd and guardian of our souls, and not only
of our souls, but the souls of our children and grandchildren, as well. Jesus
is the Good Shepherd. He knows each and
every one of us by name, and he knows all our family members by name, too. Whatever mistakes we make are not too much
for him to correct, although his solutions will occur in his good time and not
necessarily in ours. The pastures he
leads our children and grandchildren in may not be the same pastures he leads
us in, but we know they will be green pastures near still waters. Whether we have been the best parents or the
worst parents, whether our children follow us when they hear our voice or not
(and we know that sometimes children of good parents don’t listen and sometimes
children of bad parents do), whether having children has been our greatest
source of fulfillment or a constant struggle, our children and our children’s
children are in God’s hands and he will care for them.
God, in fact, makes promises in scripture about the
descendants of his servants. We can pray
those verses in our times of anxiety to remind God of his word to us, to
reassure ourselves, and to ensure that our children have no chance to stray
beyond reach of the rod and staff of our Good Shepherd. Here are some scriptures that we can pray:
From Exodus 34: 6-7: The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping
steadfast love for the thousandth generation.
From Psalm 103:17: The
merciful goodness of the Lord endures forever on those who fear him, and his
righteousness on children’s children.
From Psalm 22:29: My soul shall live for him; my descendants
shall serve him; they shall be known as the LORD’s for ever.
From Psalm 112:1-2 Happy are they who fear the Lord and have
great delight in his commandments! Their descendants will be mighty in the
land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.
From Isaiah 59:20-21 And he will come to Zion as
Redeemer, to
those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the Lord. And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says
the Lord: my spirit that is upon you, and my words
that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of
the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children,
says the Lord, from now on and forever.
Of
course, on a day when the joys and struggles of motherhood are lifted up, we
also know that there are many who would like to be mothers but have not been
able to. God has things to say to them
in scripture, as well. Some of the scriptures
that can be prayed for God to grant children include:
Psalm
113:8 He makes the woman of a childless
house to be a joyful mother of children.
Or
Isaiah 54:1 Sing, O barren one who did
not bear; burst
into song and shout, you
who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate woman will be more
than the children of her that is married, says the Lord.
We also
know the stories of Hannah, who was barren and prayed with tears in the temple
and was given a son Samuel, or the stories of Sarah and Elizabeth who were
given children in their old age, or even the story of Rachel, as bizarre as it
sounds to us today, who asked God to open her womb to compete with her
husband’s other wife, Leah.
But like anytime we ask for God to step in and fix something
or to give us something, we don’t always get the answer we want at the time we
want the way we want. Sometimes what we
want, like children, is very good, and we still don’t receive it. I have no easy answers as to why this is the
case, except that we know that God is not absent or unconcerned.
When we are suffering, God is surrounding us. When we are crying, God is comforting
us. When our hearts are breaking, God is
working to put them back together. When
we are walking through the valleys of our own shadows, our Good Shepherd is
with us.
Our wounds about family issues are some of our most painful,
because they affect us most deeply. God
knows the depth of our grief, and he gives us a church, his body, to provide
care, comfort and companionship as we walk through our sufferings. We gather today and talk about mothers not
just because Hallmark told us to. We
talk about mothers today because whether or not we have children, we need the
body of Christ surrounding us. As a body
we need to pray for one another, for parents, for the children in our midst,
and for the children we are longing to have born or adopted into our midst. As a body, we need to be a safe place to talk
about our challenges and struggles so we can lift each other up and help one
another have the good and holy family lives God wants for us. And, as a body, we need to be a true church
family where children can be welcomed and loved, where parents can receive
support (and the occasional breather), and where the mothering gifts of those
without children can be used to their fullest. During communion, we will give the women of
the congregation devotional booklets, but the real way we celebrate Mother’s
Day is by living into being a church family that blesses, cares for, and
supports all the mothers, all the women and all the families among us.
I’d like to close by praying the following prayer by Rev. Leslie Nipps*. Let us pray.
We
give thanks to God
for the divine gift of motherhood
in all its diverse forms.
Let
us pray for all the mothers among us today;
for
our own mothers,
those living and those who have passed away;
for
the mothers who loved us
and for those who fell short of loving us fully;
for
all who hope to be mothers someday
and for those whose hope to have children
has been frustrated;
for
all mothers who have lost children;
for
all women and men who have mothered others in any way –
those who have been our substitute mothers
and we who have done so for those in need;
and
for the earth that bore us
and provides us with our sustenance.
We
pray this all in the name of God,
our great and loving Mother.
Amen.
*From Women's Uncommon Prayers: Our Lives Revealed, Nurtured, Celebrated, eds. Elizabeth Rankin Geitz, Marjorie A. Burke, Ann Smith, (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2000), 364. Posted on-line in A Job Like No Other by Rev. Dr. Scott Stoner.
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