Mother’s Day Sermon by The Rev. Allen Breckenridge
May 10,
2009 – St.
Philips in the Hills Parish,
Acts 8:26-40; Ps. 22:24-30; 1 Jn. 4: 7-21; Jn. 15: 1-8
Acts – Philip’s at it again!
Listening to the Spirit and acting out, too! Here he’s entering into the
wilderness way just like Jesus. Philip’s encountering some interesting characters
along the way – like the Etheopian
eunuch (unable to have sexual relations or father a child), but he’s obviously
pregnant with desire and hunger for God. This man is bound to one important
calling, yet yearning for a deeper one – set upon a chariot reading and trying
to discern the word of God – asking questions - a true seeker- in need of help
to understand God and his calling.
And Philip is the active evangelist
here - on Mother’s Day – he is no less than a mid-wife for the Lord. Here he’s
bringing to birth this “God-fearing” person’s faith and understanding of Jesus
and nurturing him in his faith formation by his baptism. Then, Philip’s on the
road again – following the Spirit’s lead!
1 John – Call to love one another, as God has first loved us. The
mothering love of God, which has birthed us time and again, daily into fullness
of being through Christ Jesus; that mothering love is the evidence of the Spirit’s
abiding presence in us – seeing love active and growing is witness to our being
one with God and God’s people.
John – Jesus ( seen through John’s word-painting) speaks of the
true vine and vinegrower. I’ll offer you
my mothering translation for the day of this passage:
“I
am the mother vine, planted and tended by God, and you are my branches, little
children. Stay close and connected to me, and you will produce much fruit. Send
a request up the vine and I will pass on whatever you need to grow and be
fruitful. Thus, in our growing and fruitfulness together, God is glorified. “
I want to read you something
wonderful I found on the website, The
African American Lectionary, a poem entitled “When Mama Was God,” by
RevSisRaedorah:
When Mama Was God
|
When mama was God
She made miracles happen She walked on water She taught us to fear not When mama was God She created not one but
two She hollered for me from the porch She held me close with strong hand When mama was God She laid hands on us |
Healing bad attitudes and broken
hearts. She stood her ground with white folk She made a dollar hollah When mama was God She blessed two fish and five
loaves She kept an open door policy She prayed for us and others
"Girl, you just like
your mama,"
|
By RevSisRaedorah ©
This Eunuch of today’s story from
Acts, “feeling God all over him,”
wanted and needed to be mama’d - needed
to be mid-wifed into his God-called destiny and birthright. Philip (mid-wife
patron of this parish) answered the call and birthed that baby in the waters of
baptism by the side of the road.
John, the Revelator, paints a
picture again and again of Godly mama-ing! Here Jesus, the “mama vine” urges
his little vines to stay attached and close to the hem of his garments and to nurse
upon his breasts of loving nourishment, as the mystics used to say!
Finally, the Epistle writer John,
urges us, as the CSNY song says, “You who are on the road, must have a code
that you can live by – teach your children well, their father’s hell will
slowly go by, and feed them on your dreams, the one they pick’s, the one you’ll
know by.” (
Yes, we are all in need and
dependent upon the mothering of others. And we are called to be mothers for
others and no less than the world itself, with love embodied by Jesus, the
Spirit’s power birthing, parenting, and nurturing us and them in the womb of
God’s love.
So - today is Mother’s Day, and many
moms, and no too few others, might ask, rightly, so what? How is this day any different than any other day for
mom? Are we doing any better today at mothering than the when the day was
originally envisioned and proposed after the carnage of the Civil War, by Julia Ward Howe
(About.com & Women’s History), in her manifesto. Are we doing any better at
respecting and honoring the hard work and sacrifices of moms for their God,
their families, their world? Julia Ward-Howe dared to rally mothers and their
friends world-wide to work for peace and a new way of being community in the
world. Her “Mother’s
Peace Proclamation” declared a bold, motherly vision:
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 answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons (and daughters) shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of 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!
Now that’s quite a Mother’s Day greeting – one which you probably won’t
find on a greeting card today!
Sadly, like mamas all over – we
have neglected mama-ing to the detriment of our children and the earth. Even
So – then what kind of mothering do
we need today? What are we called to be as mothers (and fathers and children)
of a world that Jesus, Jewish mother hen he was, died to save? How can we care
for one another and the world as Jesus called us to do, extending his loving
arms around the world on the hard wood of the cross?
In her commentary on this subject
of mothering, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, in the African American Lectionary says:
“Mother’s Day is the day we commemorate the lives
of the women who are anointed with the special and the mysterious something
called “mothering,” which is best described as the nurturing, caring, and
loving spirit of women who have molded and maintained our families and
community. Mothering is not a biological thing, but a divine gift. Many women
have given birth to children, but they have never been “mothers” in the full
sense of the word. Whereas, there have been women who have never borne children
that have been mothers to countless individuals. The old adage, “the hand that
rocks the cradle, rules the world,” is a true one indeed, because it is often
the hand of the mother that takes the characterless, shapeless, selfless lump
of flesh called a human and molds it into a person, citizen, and legacy.
Mothering has no color, no age, no ethnic or
national origin, nor geographic preference. Instead, mothering is a gift that
is rarely convenient for the bearer of the gift, for the shoulders of a mother
carries the burden of the nature and nurture of the world, but for the
recipient it is absolutely necessary. Much like the gift of the sun (in the
sky), it is the mother that warms, sustains, and gives life. Every soul that
does not receive the life-giving rays of a mother remains as lifeless and cold
as the earth does without the sun. For a God-ordained “mother,” … is one whose
ambition outruns and exceeds the ambition one has for one’s self.”
(Indeed…she says) Before I knew God, I knew my mother. I say this not to be trite, but because of the miraculous power of my mother’s love it only seemed logical and natural to believe in the reality of God. For in my mind, only God could create someone as awesome as a mother. “
To truly love Mama, both our earthly parent, our mother the church, and the God who created us all, we can:
1. Attend the upcoming Vestry Forum on Sunday,
May 17 at 10:00 to discuss ways to support and nurture “
2. Again see mothering as a divine gift and calling. “Before I knew God, I knew Mama.” Thanking moms and acknowledging the Godly vocation offered by those women and thanking God for entrusting such co-creative powers to humans who love us into being, and believing, and the mothering and fathering of others. Surely, we know such earthly mothers aren’t perfect, but the gifts they are to the world by God is made in perfect love and blessing to all creation. “For God so loved the world that he birthed his only Son by a mama who taught him perfect love and mama-ing, even unto death on a cross.”
3. Such mothering, and Mother’s Day, as Julia Howe and others who worked so hard to teach a troubled world, is not just about a day. Rather it is a Movement as Pastor Ron Lewis has reminded us in his video “Mother’s Day Movement – the Work of the People.” It is clearly a subversive, counter-cultural movement, begun by God in birthing creation and brought to fullest expression through the womb of Mary and in her child, Jesus. Like Philip, patron saint of this church, midwife to God’s children, we are called to no less a radicalization of vision and commitment to the mothering way.
So Mom and Mother-in-Law, Thelma and Evelyn – thank you, wherever you are in God’s Kingdom, for loving me and our families. Thanks, too, wives and sisters and daughters and aunts and grandmothers and all the women who’ve loved the human family into being and gotten us to the place where we are today, in spite of many obstacles and mis-steps along the way. Thanks, most especially to God, who created moms, calls them to birth the kingdom in their day and time, and who sustains them in their struggles and blesses them with consolations and joys beyond measure.
Let us close with this prayer from:
Mother's Day
Prayer: A 21st Century Worship Resource
by The Rev. Jane Sommers
This day we gather with eager
hearts, hungry for your Word, Mama God, yearning for the joy you promise in
love. Mama God, together we hold a
vision of your kingdom, a people of prayer and open hearts, a loving Body of
Christ eager to learn and eager to share.
On this day of celebrating your
love, we lift to you those who have given us life, those who have loved us,
those who have blessed us, and those who have taught us, our mothers. May your
blessing pour out upon the woman who gave us birth, and those beautiful, strong
women of faith who have been mothers to us along our journey.
We lift to you the heart of every
mother who has watched her child die of hunger, every mother who had been a
victim of abuse, every woman who stands in protest against a world that
massacres her children and renames them "collateral damage." We lift
to you the prayer of every mother who has ever loved and lost.
We
lift to you our Mother Earth. We lift to you our