Can you, in your own mind, hear your mother’s voice? Can you remember not only what she says or used to say, but how she says it? Many of us can remember those things. Even people whose mothers died young can remember distinctive things. It seems we can’t quite shake off Mom’s voice. It stays with us, hanging around like a perfume, fading and yet quietly present. Mom’s voice sounds off in our brains at the strangest moments. No matter how old we are, something will trigger off that voice. Remote as it may be, we can’t shake off Mom’s voice.
And some do want to. For all the sentimentality we attach to Mother’s Day, the sound of Mom’s voice is not always pleasant. Sometimes it chastises us, and we feel guilty because we are not doing what Mom would have wanted us to do. Sometimes Mom’s voice was a voice of disapproval, and something in us won’t allow us to live in peace until we get our mothers’ approval. But it just won’t come. It nags at us, and, as much as we’d like to, some of us just cannot shake off Mom’s voice.
Here’s a young woman in love. A young man has professed his love and wants to commit to marriage. But this young woman all during her childhood years heard her mother’s negativity about men. She heard sharp criticism of her father every day. She listened to her mother’s suspicions. Every time she went out on a date, her mother would lecture her about how you know boys only want one thing, and then would interrogate her the next morning just to be sure. Now, however, this young woman is going to marry. But because she can’t shake off Mom’s voice, she commits to a wedding but not to a marriage. Did you get that distinction? She commits to a wedding, to getting married. But she doesn’t commit to a marriage. She doesn’t commit to the trust involved in being married. She cannot quite trust her husband, even though he gives her no reason for mistrust. Why? Because she can’t shake off Mom’s voice. Her marriage is riddled with fear, suspicion, doubt, and mistrust. The outcome is devastating, all because she can’t shake off Mom’s negative, suspicious voice.
A middle-aged man heard every day from his mother that there wouldn’t be enough money. There had never been enough money, even though Dad, now long deceased, had made a decent living. But Mom had always acted as though the family was on the fast road to the poor house. There had always been these pointed comments about how Dad should have done better, but was not ambitious enough. There had always been these barbed insinuations that she could have done better herself, that she had had a chance at two or three of the more up-and-coming fellows of her day, but, well, it was too late. Constantly this man heard a litany of poverty from his mother, who, now, in her old age, was compulsively saving every dime and was denying herself the most ordinary of comforts. I visited her in the heat of summer and found her in an upstairs bedroom struggling with emphysema, unable to breathe. I suggested that a simple room air conditioner would make such a difference. But no, she said, there won’t be enough money.
Then the day came when Mom passed away; and there was enough money for the funeral; there was enough money for the medical bills; there was enough money to pay the taxes; and there was enough money for this son to inherit several hundred thousand dollars. Now remember our thesis, however, that you can’t shake off Mom’s voice. What did he do? How did this son respond? Within two weeks after his mother’s funeral the driveway sported a new luxury car; tied up at the Annapolis docks there was a new boat; and his wife was prancing around in a fur coat! You say, well, he certainly did shake off Mom’s voice. He went way off the deep end. No he didn’t. No, he didn’t. He didn’t shake off Mom’s voice; he just went into rebellion against it, but it was still ringing in his ears like the peal of thunder against a summer sky! His behavior was driven by rage against Mom’s voice. For it or against it, you can’t shake off Mom’s voice! Like it or hate it, Mom’s voice is indelibly etched on our memories.
The issue, then, is twofold: first, in what kind of voices do Moms want to speak so that their children will hear positive, life-building messages? And second, since we do hear our mothers’ voices, all of us, what do we do with negative and painful messages? Is there good news for us?
I really have two sermons today. One is for mothers, and the other is for everybody who has had a mother. One sermon is for those whose voices are speaking, and the other sermon is for those of us who cannot shake off Mom’s voice. And, guess what? Each audience gets the same sermon. Mothers and those who listen to mothers, both of us get the same message, but each from a different angle.
I
The first message today is for mothers. The Biblical grandmother Lois and mother Eunice had said something to Timothy. “The faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and then in your mother Eunice …” What had been in the voice that Timothy was listening to? What were the messages the young Timothy was hearing?
Had Lois and Eunice taught him good morals? Maybe, but that’s not what Paul says. Was it fine manners? Perhaps, but that’s not what this passage mentions. What did Lois and Eunice say to Timothy? In addition to high moral standards and fine manners and common sense, and in addition to the usual messages about spending your money wisely and eating your spinach and always wearing clean underwear ... beyond all of those messages, the one great message that Lois and Eunice communicated to Timothy was faith. Faith. Trust. Confidence in God.
You see, Timothy’s mother’s voice spoke not so much about ideas as about a relationship. Mom communicated something more subtle than concepts and more fundamental than rules. She communicated an atmosphere of faith. She expressed and embodied trust in God. What you ultimately want your child to hear is not just a list of rules and regulations, habits and behaviors. What you want your child to hear, knowing that he or she cannot shake off Mom’s voice, is the assurance that God is truly in her life, that she knows the Lord personally.
We’ve been persuaded in our time that raising children takes a certain technique. We’ve been persuaded that there are correct methods, which, if we use them, will produce the kind of children we want. Some of us read and followed Dr. Spock. Others enrolled in PET, parent effectiveness training. Still others tried something called transactional analysis. My own parents were devotees of a popular magazine writer named Angelo Patri. I really don’t know what this guy taught, but I do remember that suddenly Angelo Patri wrote an article in which he said that he had changed his mind about punishing children. Patri said that he had decided that physical punishment was not effective and should be stopped. Well, by then I was about eleven years old and thought, Man, if you were going to change your mind, why didn’t you do it about five years ago and save Joe a lot of grief?! But my parents got all wound up about changing their parenting technique!
Well, techniques come and techniques go. Fads and fashions in parenting show up from time to time. And they have their uses. There are insights in all of them. But, as I read the Scriptures, the lasting message you want your child to hear is a message of faith. “The faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and then [lived] in your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” A faith that lives, that sticks around long after every lesson has been forgotten and every parenting technique has been consigned to the ash heap.
So that means, mothers, and fathers too, that the best thing you can do for your child is to cultivate your own relationship to God. The most lasting and most positive thing you can do for your child is to grow in your own faith. After all, you cannot teach what you have never learned. You cannot give away what you do not have. Like that hapless dodo of a few days ago, I could write everybody in this congregation a check for three hundred sixty billion dollars and could hand them out at the back door, but tomorrow when you took that thing to the bank it would bounce back faster than a rubber boomerang! I don’t have that sort of money and cannot give it to you. Just so, you cannot share a faith you do not have. The best gift you can give your child is for you yourself to nurture a dynamic relationship with God. That child will see that and hear that. It will not just be teaching that boy to read the Bible; he will sense that his mother knows the Lord of the Bible. It will not just be making that girl go to Sunday School; she needs to feel the presence of the Lord at home, in her mother’s life. And so when Mom speaks, it will be with the voice of faith. It will be a voice that has been cultured in the halls of heaven. You can’t shake Mom’s voice; therefore you can’t deny Mom’s faith.
That’s the sermon for the moms: speak with the voice of your own authentic faith. That is what your children will not shake off, no matter how far they seem to wander. That is what they will finally hear and it will bring them home. Mom’s deep, abiding, genuine faith.
II
That’s the sermon for mothers. Now the sermon for those who have mothers. It’s much the same. It’s the other side of the coin. You and I cannot shake Mom’s voice. We have been conditioned by the attitudes we got way back when. But that does not mean that we can get where we need to go on the strength of Mom’s voice alone. Nor does it mean that we can do nothing about the negatives in Mom’s voice.
“I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you, [Timothy].”
I said a moment ago that no mother can give what she does not have. And that’s true. But it is also true that we cannot just get faith by hanging around faith. We cannot adopt somebody else’s faith. It has to be our own. So just because you were born in a Christian home, with a godly mother and a praying father, just because you’ve been in church since they carried you in in their arms, that does not mean that you have a relationship with God. As one wit put it, “Just because a cat was born in the garage, that doesn’t make it a Cadillac.” No, we still have to come to the Lord on our own. Nobody else can do this for us. It’s our response, our choice. Faith must live in us.
But if Mom’s voice is not faith-filled; if Mom’s voice is harsh and critical, still I do have good news for you. The good news is that there is the heavenly Father’s voice that says, “I love you. You are my child.” You and I do not have to be victimized forever if we cannot shake off Mom’s tormenting voice. There is one who calls Himself our Father, and who loves us with an everlasting love. There is one whose redemptive love cuts through all the garbage messages and who loves us just as we are.
There is a gracious Spirit, who, when we are afraid, assures us; when we have a tortured conscience, forgives us; when we struggle against our own failures, empowers us; and when we face our fears, encourages us. There is one whose love is constant; whose voice is tender; whose heart goes out to us. Hear Him. Listen to the Spirit. Let the Spirit’s voice override every negative message with which you have had to live, for you are God’s child.
My earliest memories of my mother go back to when I was about four years old. Every sound that goes through my mind from those years is a noise that told me I was not good enough. My earliest childhood memory is of being made to sit on a bench at the local grocery store because of something I had done. I don’t know what that was, and probably I needed to be benched, but it’s not being benched that sticks in my mind so much as my mother’s voice: harsh, accusing, impatient. Go past four years old – I was never good enough. When I was a little older, and was given the chore of stoking the coal furnace and taking out the ashes, I was never careful enough about the mess. When I became a teenager and was supposed to mow the lawn, I wasn’t thorough enough about sweeping up the clippings. When I got to college and was paying my own tuition and buying my own books and supplies, then I wasn’t saving enough money. When I announced I was going to seminary to enter the ministry, that’s when she played the trump card: I wasn’t a good enough Christian for that. And when I said I was going to get married, it was, “You’re not mature enough.” The message from my mother that I cannot shake off is that I am not good enough.
And to a degree that still victimizes me. It still shapes a great deal of who I am. I work hard, trying to get everything just right. When I preach, I kick myself around for forgetting some line or flubbing some phrase. Some of that is that nagging message that is still rattling around in my cranium, “You’re not good enough.” I am victimized by Mom’s voice, and cannot shake it.
But, praise God, overriding that, there is the good news. There is good news for me and for you. For day by day, moment by moment, we hear the Spirit’s voice and come to know that He loves us and affirms us. We come to know the greatest of truths:
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
No, I can’t shake off Mom’s voice, telling me I am not what I ought to be. But I can listen intently to the Spirit’s voice, empowering me. God did not give us a spirit of cowardice.
I can’t shake off Mom’s voice, telling me I’m not good enough. But I can listen hungrily to the Spirit’s voice, loving me unconditionally. God did not give us a spirit of cowardice.
I can’t shake off Mom’s voice, snapping at me and telling me I ought to do better. But I can hear, down deep in the secret places of the heart, the voice of the Spirit, offering me His gifts of confidence and power and love.
We can’t shake off Mom’s voice altogether. It will always be with us. But this one thing I know and know not only in my mind, but in my very soul; not only in my conscious thought but also in my heart of hearts:
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
That voice, the Spirit’s voice, I cannot and will not shake off.
