MOTHERING – Who Does It?

Sermon to be preached at East Doncaster Baptist Church May 13, 2012

by Rev. Jan Croucher

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Our theme today claims it can be done by anyone.

1 Cor 13:1-8a, 1 John 4: 7-21

INTRODUCTION: ‘Mothering Sunday’ seems now to be the preferred name for this special day. I happen to be a mother of four, a grandmother of six, but I also believe that I am ‘mothering’ lots of other people – including sometimes the man I’m married to!’

Some inevitable quotes – Gore Vidal – Never have children, only grandchildren. Bill Cosby – Parenting can be learned only by people who have no children, and you know your children are growing up when they stop asking where they came from and refuse to tell you where they are going. Another: What my mother taught me about JUSTICE – “One day you’ll have kids, and I hope they are just like you….then you’ll see what it’s like. Finally – ‘If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?’ But best – An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

If we take the word mothering as an acrostic I want your adjectives to describe each letter. For instance, M could stand for maintenance (for example of ‘maintaining order in the house’). What adjectives do you have?

Some ideas:-

M – maintenance, marvellous,
O – overbearing, occupational hazard,
T – time-consuming, treacherous,
H – heavenly, hopeless,
E – exquisite, endless, exhausting
R – rash, relinquishable (you give your children roots, then wings)
I – indescribable,
N – neverending, and of course, most importantly, nurturing
G – great, a gift

I think we would all agree that being a parent remains one of life’s most creative challenges, but these days there are various ways of doing it, while still recognising the huge difficulties and responsibilities.

QUESTION – Where did we get our training from? Of course the answer is from our own mothers.

SOCIETY’S INFLUENCE

The women’s movement of the 1960s was one of the most profound social revolutions humans have ever experienced. Women began to demand recognition, equality and the right to choose their vocation, whether mothering, a career or a mix of both.

The challenge in the 80s and 90s has been for women and men to acknowledge their different biologies and psychologies, and to live with the issue of motherhood being a highly valued vocation for women. But couples are having children later now due to improved contraceptives, the high cost of housing but also to ensure their marriage relationship is secure enough to raise children.

Some women return to the workforce after giving birth, or in some cases allow their husbands to be the homemakers if they themselves are able to earn more. But the bonding of the child to both parents only happens if they are around more often than strangers are. Mothering, with all its heartaches and its messiness, I believe to be the most rewarding and strategic experience there is, and I also believe it is open to anyone, and, wait for it – anyone either gender – in one form or another.

In fact when holidaying in Manly a few years ago and having time to just sit and observe I was really struck by the number of young men wheeling babies in prams and strollers or carrying in them on the child seat of a bike.

Dictionaries define a mother as a female parent, but we all know she is much, much more. With almost no preparation she embarks on the role of nurse, cook, counsellor, chauffeur, philosopher, teacher, hostess, cleaner, homemaker, listener, talker, social secretary, nutritionist – and the list goes on and on…….

The wife of a university professor chose to stay at home and raise their children, but there were the occasional faculty parties which she attended with her husband. Some of these academics would look condescendingly at her and say: ‘What do you do, my dear?’ She would say: ‘I am socialising two homo sapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they may be instruments for the transformation of the social order in the teleologically prescribed utopia, inherent in the eschaton.’ This usually ended the intimidation.

SOME BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS

We can learn a lot from specific mothers in the Bible and I’d like to draw your attention to a few. First of all Rebecca (in the O T) was the wife of Isaac and the Mother of twins. Unfortunately the word that sums up her mothering was ‘deception’.

She and her husband let favoritism get out of hand and shape the whole of their family life. Rebecca favored Jacob and Isaac Esau, so a deadly game of competition and one-up-manship began. Blind old Isaac and dim-witted Esau were no match for this enterprising Jewish mother and wily son, and together they managed to deceive Isaac, and cheat Esau out of his birth-right and the family blessing. At first it seemed that Rebecca and Jacob had won but years later Jacob was deceived by his own sons in much the same way that he had deceived his old father.

The shadow of our influence as parents is long and powerful. I once chatted in the Women’s prison with a young woman who was due for release. I asked her how different life would be for her when outside. She couldn’t see that she would be any different. She had only known living by theft from large departmental stores when she would grab a whole rack of clothing, rush out to her waiting car and take off at great speed. Then she added that her father had taught her how to do it.

The second mother I want us to note is Jochebed, yes the mother of Moses. The best word to describe her motherhood is ‘resourceful’. You will probably remember how she hid him in the bulrushes until found by Pharoah’s daughter who raised him as her own thereby preparing him well for future responsibility. There are so many difficulties facing family life today that a bit of creative resourcefulness goes a long way.

BUT WE ALL KNOW THIS

I need to confess that there are lots of things I learned too late. There are lots of things I wish I had done. We brought our kids up as if in a herd – a herd of four. We did lots of things together. But I should have spent more time – as Wesley’s mother famously did – with each one individually.

BUT I HAVE LEARNED NEVER TO SAY ‘IT IS TOO LATE’

In 1990, when America’s First Lady, Barbara Bush was invited to give the commencement address at a University College hundreds of angry students protested because she was not a suitable role model, having spent her life raising children rather than pursuing a career. But they listened carefully as Barbara Bush courageously said:
‘The choice that must not be missed is to cherish your human connections; your relationships with friends and family. For several years, you have had impressed upon you the importance to your career of dedication and hard work. This is true, but as important as your obligations as a doctor, a lawyer or business leader will be, you are a human being first, and those human connections – with spouses, with children, with friends – are the most important investments you will ever make. At the end of your life, you will not regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a spouse, a child or a parent.’

We can each start now to build better relationships with a spouse, a child or a parent. And for many of us there is only one of those three left, and for some of us none. Life can be hard, especially on mothering day, and grieving is an important part of our life experience. I grieve over a brother I lost 50 years ago and still think of things I wish I had done for him. The grief still hits me all these years later I ask the Lord to give him a big hug from me and tell him I’m sorry.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY FRIEND SALLY – so badly mothered by both parents ended up in Winlaten – a home in Blackburn where State authorities put difficult young people and where Youth for Christ took an interest in her. They were all young workers, so – it was 15 years ago – they asked if I could simply try to fill in the mothering gap and provide the love and the listening ear that she never had. She had a little girl the result of pack rape but was still heavily into drugs. When her second child was born she came home to us for ten days while another couple cared for her daughter. We have built up a strong relationship with her and are constantly amazed at her developing parenting skills learned we presume from the Youth for Christ young couples who never gave up. She is off drugs now, and has a responsible job. Many of you may also be doing this type of thing.

But before we can be secure enough to help another it may be that we need some gaps – in our own journey towards emotional health filled ourselves. This can only happen if we are ready to seek help. It need not be professional help. A non Christian psychiatrist once said that if we Christians only realised it we have the most perfect organisation to do him out of a job – the church – the place where people are able to be part of a community of love, where they have support and understanding and above all a real sense of community – the sharing of grief and pain, of joy and achievement, the place of the listening ear. The place where we discover the forgiveness of our sins.

THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH

Have you found a trusted friend within the church fellowship with whom you can share in depth and know you are still loved – with whom you can journey and not be condemned?

Sometimes the way we were mothered prevents us from seeking help. By dealing with the past we are not saying to go back into the past or even into yesterday. But whether we like it or not our mother lives with us every day in the present. And some of our mothers taught us to put on a victorious face and never share our problems.

And if forgiveness of our mothers is a problem, listen to these words I once heard at the funeral of an alcoholic mother: ‘We bury the dead three ways – physically, we bury what they did to us, and we bury what they should have done for us.’

Beneath all the bright faces looking at me today I know there are some with pain behind them, particularly on a day like today. But I know too that our nurturing Father/Mother God wants you to be healed, to be transformed by his love and even to bring good out of the pain you have suffered particularly by poor mothering. Here – right here, amongst us – we can experience Jesus’ promise to give us life in all its fullness!’ Jn 10:10

Amen

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[Rough notes of Part II for a church used to a longer sermon]:

FORGIVENESS

In PhillipYancey’s book What’s So Amazing About Grace, he admits that grace is unfair. It is unreasonable to expect a woman to forgive the terrible things her father did to her just because he apologizes many years later, and it’s totally unfair to ask that a mother overlook the many offences her teenage son committed. Grace however is not about fairness.

Our experience of forgiveness in Coventry and then in Israel. Ungrace is like the background static of life for families, nations and institutions. It is our natural human state.

JOSEPH’S STORY – the story of his reconciliation with his brothers

• one moment harsh – throwing brothers into jail
• another full of sorrow
• then played tricks on them
• seized one as hostage

Finally Joseph, after maybe months or years, could restrain himself no longer and forgave them – dramatically. These brothers had bullied him, had cooked up schemes to murder him, had sold him into slavery. Because of them Joseph had spent the best years of his life rotting in an Egyptian dungeon. Though he went on to triumph over adversity and wanted with all his heart to forgive them, the wound still hurt too much and it took time to do it.

When grace finally broke through to Joseph the sound of his grief and love echoed throughout the palace.

The very taste of forgiveness seems somehow to be wrong. Even when we have committed something wrong, we want to earn our way back to the injured person’s good graces. Despite a hundred sermons on forgiveness we do not forgive easily, nor find ourselves easily forgiven.

In a world that runs by the laws of ungrace, Jesus demands a response of forgiveness. So urgent is this need for forgiveness that it takes precedence over everything: ‘Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and then remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled and then come and offer your gift.

ONLY THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING FORGIVEN MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR US TO FORGIVE

Helmut Thielicke, a German who lived through the horrors of Nazism said: ‘This business of forgiving is by no means a simple thing…We say: ‘Very well, if the other fellow is sorry and begs my pardon, I will forgive him.’ We make a law of reciprocity which never works because we each wait for the other to make the first move.

He concluded that the only remedy was his realization that God had forgiven his sins and given him another chance. Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative, because God’s initiative lies at the heart of the gospel that Thielicke had been preaching but not practising.

At the centre of Jesus’ parables of grace stands a God who takes the initiative towards us: a lovesick father who runs to meet the prodigal, a landlord who cancels a debt too large for any servant to reimburse, an employer who pays eleventh hour workers the same as the first hour crew, a banquet giver who goes out onto the streets in search of undeserving guests.

JESUS BROKE FOREVER THE CHAIN OF UNGRACE

When I do say: ‘I forgive you’, there is something in me that still wants to hear the words that I was right after all. I still seem to put even subconsciously a condition on my words

BUT GOD’S FORGIVENESS IS UNCONDITIONAL. SUCH IS HIS LOVE FOR ME

It comes from a heart that demands nothing for itself, a heart that is completely empty of self-seeking. It demands that I step over that wounded part of my heart that feels wronged. Paul admonitions us in Romans 12 to – Hate evil, be joyful, live in harmony, do not be conceited ….. then ‘Do not take revenge, my friend…it is mine to avenge; I will repay’ etc. By forgiving , I release my own right to avenge and leave it to God to work it out.

When Joseph finally came to the place of forgiving his brothers (and here is the recognition that forgiveness takes time), the hurt did not disappear, but the burden of being their judge fell away.

Only by knowing we are so totally loved by God do we have the resources to truly forgive. Some of you are weighed down by sorrow over the lack of good mothering in your life. In the fellowship of the church I urge you to find a trusted friend with whom you can share and cry and to whom you can report on your journey toward forgiveness. It is at this point that we discover transformation, the filling of a void that has eaten into our lives, that has caused depression and anger, frustration and bitterness. God’s love for you is such that he forgives and he heals.

The fortunate ones among us may agree with Abraham Lincoln who said: ‘All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. No one is poor who has a Godly mother, or with George Washington who declared: I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education which I received from my mother.’ It may be Mark Twain’s comment that best fits you: ‘My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.’

May this Mothers’ Day be one where you can grieve your losses and forgive your mother, but one too where you are able to discover the true nature of the Church which is a community of love in which you can find someone whom you can trust to help fill in the holes left by your mother, who, like you, did not experience perfect mothering either.

By recognising this I believe we can truly honor our mother and our father as the Scriptures require.

REMEMBER JESUS’ WORDS – I have come that YOU may have life and have it to the full!

May this Mothering Day be one where you can grieve your losses and forgive your mother, but one too where you are able to discover the true nature of the Church which is a community of love in which you can find someone whom you can trust to help fill in the holes left by your mother, who, like you, did not experience perfect mothering either.

By recognising this I believe we can truly honor our mother and our father as the Scriptures require.

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Note to preachers: feel free to use this (acknowledgement of source is an good ethical thing to do)!