About Being A Mom

About Being a Mom

Luke 11:27 – 28

Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael Harvey Koplitz

Luke 11:27 While Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised

her voice and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that carried You, and the breasts at

which You nursed!” 28 But He said, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the

word of God and follow it.”

In Luke chapter 11, verses 27 and 28, we have a short transition narrative that deals

with the role of women being moms in the Scripture. Jesus responded by taking the

mother's beatitude about his mother, Mary, and expanding it into following God’s

word. Preachers usually talk about following the word of God and concentrating on

verse 28. However, I want to take a look at the implications of verse 27 because I think

there’s a lot there that we can look at.

Animal instinct tells us that moms are driven to do whatever they have to do to protect

their children. I like watching videos of lions in the African wildlife preserves. It is

wonderful what lionesses will do for their young. It is also impressive to watch what

other female animals do for their young, even risking their lives to save their children.

With humans it’s a bit different, but the same concept is still there. Okay, that sounds

like an oxymoron. What I mean is someone is not going to try to eat children, but rather

we have to protect children from elements of our society. There are people out there

that have kidnapped children and placed them into situations that are just horrific. And

mothers try very hard to protect their children. They have to because our society has

changed so much.

Let me expand on that just for a moment. When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s, I

lived in the town of Rosedale, which is in the borough of Queens in New York City.

My mother would just tell us in the summer to get out of the house and not come back

until lunch, and then after lunch she would tell us to leave and not come back until

dinner. She had no concept of what we were doing. However, the dangers that we have

today didn’t exist, at least in my little part of the world.

I remember at seven years old going to the Valley Stream Mall with several guys. We

actually rode our bicycles about 1 mile (1.61 km) to the mall. We would lock up our

bicycles on a bicycle rack and rummage through the mall. Back then Macy’s was on one

end of the mall and Gimbels was on the other. Malls like this still exist today, but many

are being torn down and turned into town centers. On summer days when it was very

hot, we went into Macy’s or Goebbels because they had air conditioning. We would

become a disturbance at times and escorted out of the store.

I like going into Gimbels and going to the basement because in the lower level they had

United States stamps on sale. They also had a display window showing all the United

States stamps that they had available for sale. I became a stamp collector, and I loved

going to Gimbels looking at the stamps that I could never own because they were so

expensive. As a side note, I was able to buy almost all the stamps that I wanted as a kid.

Good thing I had an excellent job before I went into ministry.

When Jim Henson created the show Dinosaurs, he had one episode that I really clung

to. In that episode the parents had to take a test to get a license to have children. I truly

wish that they had such a thing for humans back in the 1960s because, being honest

with you, my parents were not exceptional. My mother didn’t care what we did during

the day and never questioned it. My father worked, and when he was home, did not

want to be bothered with his kids; he wanted to sit and watch TV. There were a couple

of times that I can think of in my childhood when it would have been really nice if my

mother would have stepped in to help me. But I’m not going to go through those past

things because it’ll take far too long and is not necessary. What I can say to you is I

learned how not to be a parent by seeing how bad my parents were.

Before I asked my lovely bride to marry me, I did bring up the thoughts in my head

about what kind of mom she would be. She constantly exceeds my expectations of how