OK - I admit it. In odd numbered years ending in "7," when the mood is right and the text lets me get away with it, I preach (gasp!) a Mother's Day sermon. Yes, that's right. I also have a strange penchant for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese dinner too, don't ask me why. The narrative from Acts about Lydia and the women who met at the river in Philippi inspired me to preach on God's gift of woman in the context of Mother's Day. The trick, if you wish to call it that, is to fully unpack the typology of motherhood: Eve, Mary, the Church, along with the great examples of our mothers in the faith. Call the liturgical police if you want; I'll plead the lectionary fifth.
Acts 16:9-15 / 5 Easter C / 13 May 2007 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
In Nomine Iesu
In addition to the readings just heard, I would add the following from the apostle Paul:
1Tim. 2:8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; 9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. 11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
2Tim. 1:3 I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4 As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. 5 I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.
Thank God for woman! Woman - taken from the side of sleeping Adam, bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh, subordinate yet coequal heir of salvation. Womanb - picture-type of holy mother Church as she is seen by God washed with water and the Word, radiant as a Bride adorned for her wedding day. Woman - bearer of the human race, daughter of Eve the mother of all the living. “Every man is born of a woman,” the apostle Paul reminds us. You always know who the mother is.
Thank God for those women who are our mothers, who put up with the morning sickness and swollen ankles and out of whack hormones, who nursed us at their breasts and kissed our various and sundry owies and boo-boos, and who taught us to fear, love, and trust in God above all things.
Obviously, it is Mother’s Day on the liturgical calendar of Hallmark, the 6th Sunday of Easter on the Church’s calendar. Do we preach a Mother’s Day sermon or not? Will the roof collapse if we do? Will the Church collapse if we don’t? The narrative from the book of Acts emboldens us with the story of Lydia and those faithful women who gathered for prayer at the river in Philippi.
For all the faithful women Who served in days of old, To You shall thanks be given; To all, their story told. They served with strength and gladness In tasks Your wisdom gave, To You their lives bore witness, Proclaimed Your power to save. (LSB #855)
“Male and female, He created them,” the Scripture intones. Complementary counterparts, non-interchangeable, our androgynous society notwithstanding. Bring male and female together as one flesh, and from that union you get father and mother (sometimes, but not invariably, as the Lord wills it). Father and mother are strong terms, of which Dad and Mom are the kinder and gentler. You can tell a weak noun because it calls for adjectives - working mom, stay at home mom, single mom, soccer mom. Soccer mother just doesn't work; the noun is too strong. “Mother” simply says it all.
Motherhood and fatherhood are interconnected, as male and female, and cannot be rent asunder. Where one suffers, the other does as well. Where fathers are absent, mothers suffer. Where fatherhood is undermined, motherhood is weakened. And vice versa. The devastation is all around us, especially in the children who bear the brunt of divorce and abandonment. Our culture defined by the gospel of Oprah has canonized the “single Mom” as the Mother Theresa of our day. Single mothers are tragic heros, survivors not saints. Nor are married mothers saints simply for being mothers. Motherhood is not a means of grace, but in need of grace. Motherhood is a vocation, a divine calling, not a sacrament. Some bear the scars of mothers who abandoned, abused, or neglected them. We focus on cute little Knute, the adorable baby polar bear at the Berlin Zoo; we forget that he is being raised by humans because his mother abandoned him. The Knutes of our human society are not always so cute and adorable. Some are never permitted to be born, sacrificed in the womb by their own mothers to avoid the inconvenient or unplanned pregnancy.
We have sinned against our mothers - in thought, word, and deed. We have failed to honor her, to love and cherish her, to obey her. Her work is tiring and long. Fathers simply need to be present; mothers are called to do. Infants seek the breasts of their mothers. I rarely hear a little one in our preschool cry out for his daddy. “I want my mommy,” when things are going wrong. Mothers have the arduous task of administering civic righteousness - she is policeman, judge, and jury. “Mom, he hit me.” “Mom, she called me a bad name.” We have failed to appreciate and fully comprehend what the vocation of mother entails. And so we have failed to thank our Father in heaven for the gift of our mother on earth.
Our Lord had a mother. Her “mother’s day” is August 15th, by the way. Through the blessed Virgin Mother of our Lord, God the Son fully shares in our humanity to save us - born of woman, born under Law, to redeem us who are under the Law. In the womb of Mary, the fullness of God took up residence, the eternal Infinite contained in the finite to be one with us, the Word became Flesh. In the Incarnation of the Son of God, the womb of Eve is sanctified, made to be a holy place, her deception is overturned, her pain is vindicated, and motherhood find its ultimate fulfillment. The apostle Paul alludes to that when he writes, “she will be saved through the birth of the child, literally through the Childbirth.” In the birth of the Son of God, our Savior and Redeemer, is our salvation. Here is the proper dignity of woman as woman - not to preach the Word but to bear the Word, not to be the Head but the Body, an icon of the Church in all her resplendent glory. Thank God for that virgin mother named Mary, the Mother of our Lord, the instrument of the incarnation of God.
Our Lord blessed and redeemed motherhood from the cross. To His beloved disciple John`, He says, “Behold thy mother.” To His mother, He says, “Behold thy son.” He blesses His own mother and cares for her. He is the obedient, loving, honoring, cherishing Son for us all, embodying the perfection of the 4th commandment in all its glory. In Him is the redemption of motherhood and fatherhood, the reconciliation of children to their mothers and mothers to their children, the healing of our wounds inflicted and received. By His wounds we are healed from all that sin has done to us, and all that our sins have done to others.
We are children of God born in Baptism; conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of our holy mother, the Church, the new and heavenly Jerusalem with her apostolic foundations and Israelite gates, who embraces the glory of the nations. Like our biological mothers, the Church has not always been a good and faithful mother. She is, like all of us, a sinner-saint, justified by Jesus’ blood and covered with His righteousness, not her own. She has not always dealt justly or wisely with her baptismal children. Yet Christ, her crucified and risen Groom forgives her, and calls us to forgive her as well. She is our mother, without whom we would not have been born anew of water and Spirit. And for that we are thankful.
We are thankful also today for our mothers in the faith, those faithful women who have embraced their feminine vocations with strength and vigor. Today we heard of Lydia from Thyatira, a woman of means, a business woman who dealt in goods dyed purple, that costly color drawn from a tiny drop extracted from a tiny desert snail. She was there at the river in Philippi to pray along with some other women. Faithful women in a city that did not have ten faithful men to start a synagogue. They were there on the Sabbath, gladly hearing the Word and praying. They were joined by Paul and his company, and heard the great good news of Jesus. That Word had its way with Lydia, who already was a worshipper of God. She believed, she was full of faith, and she and her household were baptized. She invited Paul and the others to her house. Perhaps the congregation at Philippi began here, in Lydia’s living room, that faithful congregation that supported Paul during his time in prison.
We remember the likes of Timothy’s grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. Timothy’s father was a pagan Greek, and like so many marriages of mixed beliefs, it fell upon the women of the household to teach little Timothy. When the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, “from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures,” he was referring to all those times the mother Eunice and grandmother Lois read the Scriptures with Timothy and prayed with him. I think of my own mother and grandmother, godly women both of them. How many of us, myself included, learned the Our Father from mothers praying beside us before we went to sleep? I remember faithful Mrs. Holtz who taught Sunday School year after year, and all those faithful women who set before us restless boys true images of womanly piety and devotion to Christ. Men who have such mothers tend to marry well. For such faithful, godly women, our mothers in the faith, all thanks and praise to God.
Some today decry the “feminization” of the Church, but I beg to disagree. What is wrong with the Church is not its feminizing, but its neutering, in which there is neither male nor female but a gnostic, androgynous, politically-correct “it.” I would argue instead that the Church is not nearly feminine enough, just as her ministry is not nearly masculine enough. As fatherhood goes, so goes motherhood. We have lost the motherly nurture and care of the congregation just as we have lost the firm, fatherly authority of the pastoral office. We have lost the proper place and dignity of our being male and female, and so we are confused about our respective roles.
Recovery and reform are not to be found in chest-thumping distortions of masculinity or in strange caricatures of femininity, but in brokenhearted repentance. Kyrie, eleison! We have despised our vocations as fathers and mothers, as parents and children, we have abandoned our posts, we have sinned. We seek the mercy of our Father in heaven. And He is ever merciful to forgive, restore, and renew for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, by whose Spirit we are reborn, renewed, and gathered to His Bride, the Church, our mother.
There is mercy for all in Jesus - for father and mothers, for sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. For you. “In the world you will have tribulation,” Jesus says. Mothers know that. Fathers too. “But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
O God, for saints and servants, Those named and those unknown In whom through all the ages Your light of glory shone, We offer glad thanksgiving And fervent prayer we raise That, faithful in Your service, Our lives may sing Your praise.
hey, wait a second.... novermber 2002, lecture in homieltics - "never preach on secular holidays"
this a case of do as I say, not as I count on the gospel for my "Sinning Boldly"..
(not to worry - won't report you to the Liturgical Police,...unless you accompanied this with liturgical dancing with you in leotards with one pink and one green leg - and then taught SUnday school based on your idea that Bin Laden is the beast, and the rapture happens on pentecost this year...
oh btw - May your celebration of the ascension this day, remind you of our hope - of his return, and our being rid of these mortal fallible bodies
but have to admit - the picture of you in the liturgical leotards was in some maiing about the SC....
with suggestions that your a distant relative of the jesuit priest Ribera - who suggested the Rapture doctrine in the first place - back in the 16th century....
This would explain your romanist, high church, pre mill, post trib rapture leanings
either that - or you just like wearing black...
:-D
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