1

Sermon 051020 Mother’s Day

There’s an old story whose origin I do not know:

It seems that…after an overnight flight to meet her husband at his latest military assignment, a mother of nine children — all under age 11 — wearily arrived with her kids at the Air Base in Germany. Collecting their many suitcases, the 9 of them entered the cramped customs area. A young customs official watched the entourage in disbelief.

“Ma’am,” he said, “do all these children and this luggage belong to you?”

“Yes, sir,” the mother said with a sigh. “They’re all mine.”

Then the customs agent began his interrogation: “Ma’am, do you have any weapons, contraband or illegal drugs in your possession?”

“Sir,” she calmly answered, “if I’d had any of those items, I would have used them by now.”

The official allowed them to pass without opening a single suitcase. PAUSE

And if on this Mother’s Day… we were honest… we as parents… as mothers… we have all had those days. And also on this Mother’s Day we remember that there are many stereotypes of mamas… there are many faces mothers wear. For some, we think of mamas as the disciplinarian, for some it is 2 being the helicopter mom, following the children all over, hovering, making sure all is well.

There’s the natural/nature mother not only who makes all her own food… and hates the words processed, sugar and medicinal… Then there’s the competitive mom… always comparing …. Always wanting her kid to be the best. …there’s the perfect mom… the work-out mom… the career mom…the strict mom…. and then the laid back mom… where anything goes…

In short, all of us have some notion of what parenting should be… we all have an image. And likewise, we all have an image of what God looks like…. How he acts… what his nature is…. and just as parenting means different things to different people, so God means different things to different people… we all have our faces of God.

In a study conducted by Baylor University and the Gallup poll, they discovered contemporary Americans worship at least four different versions of the Almighty.

First, there’s Authoritarian God, who is seen as highly involved in believers’ lives and in world affairs, but who is ready to throw the thunderbolt of judgment on the ungodly. 3

Then there’s Benevolent God, who still sets absolute standards for mankind in the

Bible, but is seen primarily as a forgiving God, more like the father who embraces

His prodigal son.

Believers in Critical God understand Him as the classic bearded grandfather in the sky, who looks at the world in disapproval, but does not intervene-to punish or to comfort.

Finally, there’s Distant God, who is not active in humanity’s affairs at all, and is not especially angry either. Distant God is more of a cosmic force who set the laws of nature in motion and has left the universe spinning on its own. (The Many Faces of God (Sep 19, 2019/in Devotional, Featured Devotionals /by YMI)

Authoritarian, benevolent, critical, or distant-which is most accurate? Which do you believe God to be? Maybe none of these.

Yet, each one of us has our own view of God and …. how we see God matters, says Professor Sallie Mac Fague “how we think about God, how we see

God, matters… it matters for our faith but it also matters in how we see ourselves, how we see our neighbors, and the way we live our lives in the world. Everyone has a theological house, some fancy, some plain, some have open doors and 4 windows, some are locked by like a prison, some never change, some renovate- add new rooms, take off rooms. Everyone has a theological house…

Theologian Marcus Borg tells of his faith journey… He grew up in a

Lutheran church going to SS there and thought he knew quite a bit about God. For him God was up there sitting on a throne, managing human history, intervening here and there…. Up there and out there somewhere…. But then, he says, the

Space Age came and out there went a lot farther and with then some more intellectual growth, Borg found his ideas of the Almighty were inadequate for him.

( John Buchanan, Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, Sermon, The Many

Faces of God, May 13, 2001, p. 2) PAUSE

That’s where we, too, sometimes get confused and get stuck… when our childhood ideas of God… when the faces of God we have had don’t seem be fit any more…so many of us, either leave that theological house , or we can do the alternate ..lock it up, bar and windows and doors, keep everything just the way it has always been and continue on in the world with beliefs that have not changed since our early Sunday School days.

Now most of us wouldn’t dream of parenting based on what we thought in junior high… we know that would be a recipe for disaster. And so we might want 5 to rethink some of our Jr. High ideas of God. Perhaps it is time to open up some of the doors and windows of our theological house.

Throughout the Bible, particularly in the OT, we learn about God through the stories about the acts of God, like leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.

We hear poems, we see metaphors that people in those times knew and understood…king, shepherd. They understood God the King, God the Patriarch as existed in tribes and clans in which they lived. And those images worked.

But….and this is a big but….they are not the only kind of images. Unfortunately for some those images never changed…we got stuck in these masculine and power faces of God.

Then… along comes Jesus … the scandalous loving and intimate Jesus.

Jesus brings us a face of God much less interested in rule following and righteousness and keeping oneself pure. . Jesus exposes us to the face of a God who is loving, forgiving and accepting… a God who runs down the road to welcome back that wayward son, A God as a woman searching for a coin, a God welcoming outsiders to a banquet, outcasts to dine with him, a God like a mother hen, collects and gathers her chicks under her wings.

We see here a God who is like the mother who told her son, “Before you were

conceived I wanted you. Before you were born I loved you. Before you were 6

here an hour I would die for you. This is the miracle of love.” – a love that

hopes all things and endures all things… mother’s love for children…

(Heimberger, Sermon, 5/9/2010, p. 2)

You see, it does matter what face we put on God. You and I, we need to open our windows, open our doors, let the Spirit of this God blow in and through and around us…to give us fresh air… we give us fresh life… give us new faces of God….

Scottish theologian, Philip. Newell, provides us with a new look at God when he notes: “There IS that mother’s heart at the heart of God.” Repeat ((Quoted Rev.

Dr. John Buchannan, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, May 14, 2006).

It is this same kind of love that God describes in scripture, love that gives God a feminine side, a mothering love… a compassion, merciful and caring love… a love that hopes all things and endures all things:

As far back as the 1300s, Julian of Norwich a Christian mystic, wrote “ God is our mother as well as father. ( www.vatican,va . Spirit_20010807-giulian+morwich_en)

She connected God with motherhood in terms of God the Creator… and God the mothering, loving and nurturing God. We see this mothering theme played out in scriptures. 7

So God is not only seen as a father who cares for and protects his chosen people but also as a mother who gives birth to, feeds, and comforts her children. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus, himself describes God as desiring to gather his people together like a mother hen who gathers her brood under her wings.

- Perhaps one of the loveliest images of God in the entire Bible is the

mothering image: from Hosea:

- When Israel was a child, I loved him,

- and out of Egypt I called my son...

- It was I who taught [them] to walk,

- I took them up in my arms;…

- I led them with cords of human kindness,

- I was to them like those

- who lift infants to their cheeks.

- I bent down to them and fed them. (vv. 1, 3-4) repeat PAUSE

Or the Isaiah passage that says "As a mother comforts her child, so I will

comfort you [says the Lord]" (Is 66:13). repeat

And God is depicted as a woman who searches for a lost coin…like the

shepherd who looks for the lost sheep 8

Or I will bear you up on Eagles wings….an interesting feminine metaphor as

it is the female eagle who has the stronger wings. REPEAT

It was this kind of mother love that we hear in the Isaiah reading for today, “Can a mother forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb?

And when his people ask God, when they cry out “The Lord has forsaken me, my

Lord has forgotten… , God responds…can a mother forget her nursing child? It is this kind of love, that God assures his people of…… PAUSE

And lest we forget… “Mother,” as one author put it, Mother, in biblical

terms obviously does not mean just being the woman who actually gives

birth and cares for a child. ..to be a mother is to feel in your being the

suffering of all children… not just your biological ones. We are not to be

just a mother to 2 or 3… we are mothers to all children….

In our church community we are not just mothers/grandmothers to our

own. We are mothers to all our children.. All our children need mothering

both my men and women.. we all ought to, as the gospel of Matthew says.

long to gather our children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her

wings…. To gather them, to hold them up, to comfort them…That’s what

mothers do.. that’s what we all do…that’s a mother’s heart PAUSE 9

Further, the Bible portrays God’s maternal side as neither aloof nor domineering. God does not coerce or ever give up on people. God’s love makes room for human growth, freedom and expression…. even if when it means allowing them to be stupid and to be destructive. God does not coerce or control

….but his patience, steadfastness and everlasting love are the qualities that scripture attributes to God’s attachment to God’s children. God is not vengeful…God is compassionate.

God does has many faces, yet they all unite in one, that of Jesus Christ.

Jesus has the face of a king and a servant, the face of a judge and that of a man condemned, a face of extreme joy and he also has a face of unfathomable sadness, he has the face of a sage and, in Our eyes sometimes to us he even seems foolish…. And the list goes on . Yes, God has many faces but they all unite in just one, Christ, and Jesus reveals those many aspects of God

(- Daniel Bourget) PAUSE

There is a wonderful story told by a friend of Edward Pruden, who for many years was the distinguished minister of First Baptist Church of Washington, D.C. The story is about Pruden's young son, Ed Pruden, age 4. 10

In conversation with his mother Mae, young Ed Pruden said:

Mother, I wish we could have another little boy at our house. His mother said,

Where in the world would we find one? Young Ed replied, Maybe some other mother would give you her little boy. Oh, no, son, she responded, I would never give you to anybody. Ed countered: Well, you might, when you get through with me. “But son”, his mother said, I'll never get through with you. I will never get through with you. (Homilectics, Online, Edward Prudent )pause

And God is never through with us. God is never through with us…Would a

nursing mother, our God… desert her child?… neither would God.