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Mother's Day

Seventh Sunday after Easter

1Peter 4:13-14

May 8, 2005

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

 

Today is Mother's Day so I don't want to go any further without first wishing all the mothers here a happy Mother's Day.

Now I myself have never actually BEEN a mother.  But I had one once.  From my earliest memories though, Mother's Day always kind of felt sort of hypocritical on my part.  That may have had to do with what my mother sometimes said when I gave her her Mother's Day gift.  She would always gush over the gift, saying wasn't this such a sweet thing.  And then, without taking a breath she'd add something like, Wouldn't it be nice to have a happy mother's day on all the other days, too!"  From that moment, the clock would start ticking until the next time I screwed up and she would say, "Now is this the same boy who just wished me a Happy Mother's Day?"  I think that for her, Mother's Day was more like an official day of cease-fire.

My guess is that this is really why Mother's Day is important to lots of mothers:  this is the one day of the year that the rest of us have to legally be nice to them.  Which is probably why we wish them A happy Mother's Day;  singular: A happy Mother's Day.  Suffice it to say that motherhood is not always an easy or entirely happy experience.  In fact, I'm almost tempted to suspect that it was a mother sitting on the world-wide committee that chose the Epistle Lesson for Mother's Day.  The Bible Focus that just happens to land on Mother's Day would make a really strange Hallmark card:

"Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice that you participate in the suffering of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed."

Actually, this may not be too far off the mark, that God would arrange for this to be the lesson on Mother's Day.  The holiday itself actually began in Greece, long before Jesus was even born. But when the Christian Church took over this day, it was to honor Mary, the mother of Christ.  For Christians, who else could be the greatest example and inspiration of motherhood than the only human being God ever chose to be the mother of the Son of God?

But when I search the Bible for happy stories about Mary's motherhood, I come up short.  To make a long story short, what the BIBLE says about Mary's motherhood is nothing at all like a Hallmark card.  Her motherhood started in very difficult circumstances to say the least.  After her unplanned and very inconvenient pregnancy, she brings her child to the Temple, what is she told but that throughout her motherhood, a sword would pierce her own soul.

On Good Friday each year, we meditate our way through what is called The Stations of the Cross which recall different moments on Jesus' final steps to the cross.  We use a version that was written by Bishop[ Fulton J. Sheen.  Where Jesus' body is taken down from the Cross, Bishop Sheen reflects on what the mother of our Lord might have been going through.  He says that,

"At the foot of the Cross throughout the ordeal sat His mother, agonizing like the Father the suffering of her son, suffering which she had to watch but could not stop.  And some legends have it that when Jesus' body was taken down from the Cross, it was placed in the arms of His mother, who must have still recalled the first time she held Him in her arms in Bethlehem.  Is it possible that she recalled how those same hands now pierced on a Cross had once been tiny and warmed by the breath of oxen in a manger?  Is it possible that her eyes filled with new tears as she remembered how she had once nourished His body with food from her own?"

The Bishop Sheen draws this conclusion.  He says:  "We realize that his is not Bethlehem, but Calvary."  Think about it.  THIS is a lot closer to the truth about what it really means to be a mother:  all the close calls, the late nights, the disciplining, the "terrible two's," the adolescent challenges, the ups and the downs.  Virtually everything we know about motherhood from Mary is like this.  That is because this is what life itself is really like on this side of Jesus' Second Coming.  We live our lives on Calvary, not Bethlehem.

And THAT is why Peter's words are especially appropriate for this particular day.  To be sure, he's not talking specifically about motherhood - but he is talking about the kind of struggles in life that everyone goes through when he says, "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice that you participate in the suffering of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed. ...Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. ...And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast."

That is the guarantee for mother AND for fathers AND for kids who live the life of Jesus Christ and His mother.  So, as I often say on this day, the wish is not just for A happy Mother's Day, but for the assurance the EVERY day is a BLESSED Mother's Day...because of Jesus and His mother.

Amen.  May it be so.