A Person’s a Person No Matter How Small
TCF Mother’s Day Sermon
May 10, 2009
Good morning, and Happy Mother’s Day. Have you noticed that when you’re a mother, you tend to look at the world in a whole different way than you did before you were a mom? It gets to the point where you almost redefine the meanings of certain words. For example:
Feedback: The inevitable result when the baby doesn’t appreciate the strained carrots.
Sterilize: What you do to your first baby’s pacifier by boiling it, and to your last baby’s pacifier by blowing on it and wiping it with saliva.
Then, of course, there are the kinds of things you’d never hear a mother say. Things like:
• "Yeah, I used to skip school a lot, too"
• "Let me smell that shirt -- Yeah, it’s good for another week"
• "Go ahead and keep that stray dog, honey. I’ll be glad to feed and walk him every day"
• "Well, if little Johnny’s mamma says it’s OK, that’s good enough for me."
• "The curfew is just a general time to shoot for. It’s not like I’m running a prison around here."
• "I don’t have a tissue with me ... just use your sleeve"
For this Mother’s Day message, we’re going to do something we haven’t done on a Mother’s Day in five years. It’s been five years since we had a Mother’s Day message focusing on the important issues of life in our nation. There’s no better day to look at some of the issues surrounding the value of life than Mother’s Day.
For all the moms out there this morning, I believe that one of the best ways we can honor you, and mark Mother’s Day, is to call attention to the fact that you’ve done something that all of us men here today cannot do....You can bear life. Only God can give life, breathe life into us. But mothers are God’s instruments to bear that life, nurture its growth in the womb, bring it into the world. I hope this morning, with a little bit different kind of Sunday sermon, we can help equip you to understand the current questions in life issues, understand our biblical foundation for being pro-life, and have some ideas about how we can respond.
Of course, the classic passage of scripture, which reveals God’s creative work in the body of a woman, is this:
Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Here, we see God at work inside the psalmist’s mother...David writes – You – that is - God, knit me together in my mother’s womb. The reality that women who become mothers are God’s means for bringing new human life into the world has been under attack for more than 36 years in America, since before the legalization of abortion in all 50 states in 1973. The unborn could no longer call the womb a safe place after that, and that attack on life has only escalated in new and different ways since that time.
The most recent battlefront – and I hate to say this, but yes, it is a battle – but the most recent battlefront inspired the title of this morning’s message.
A person’s a person no matter how small.
You may remember the Dr. Suess story Horton Hears A Who. Written in 1954, in the inimitable style of Dr Suess:
the book tells the story of Horton the Elephant who, on the fifteenth of May in the Jungle of nool, hears a small speck of dust talking to him. It turns out the speck of dust is actually a tiny planet, home to a city called ‘‘Who-ville,’’ inhabited by microscopic-sized inhabitants known as Whos.
The Whos ask Horton to protect them from harm. Horton agrees to do this, proclaiming throughout the book that ‘‘even though you can’t see or hear them at all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.’’ In doing so he is ridiculed and forced into a cage by the other animals in the jungle for believing in something that they are unable to see or hear. Wikipedia entry
The irony of this story, when seen in the light of what’s happening today, is really quite striking. It reminds me of one of my personal heroes of the faith, William Wilberforce. He served in the British Parliament for more than 40 years. He became a Christian soon after being elected to Parliament in the late 1700s, and soon became active in a sort of pro-life movement of his day – stopping slavery and the African slave trade in Britain. He was ridiculed and criticized for his strong stand against the British slave trade and slavery. But he continued to work, to persuade, to advocate for the abolition of the slave trade and eventually slavery. Slavery was abolished in Britain three days before his death. So, I guess that makes him sort of like Horton the elephant.
It took a lifetime for Wilberforce and others to make a difference, and he stood up to the ridicule and criticism, because he spoke out about his belief that people should never be enslaved.
We’re in a similar situation today with life issues, and a similar moral issue. Imagine someone in Britain, or in America in the 1700s, saying something like, gee, I would never own slaves personally, but I can’t deny someone else the right to choose to own one.
But the biblical position is that a person’s a person no matter how small, or how black, how disabled, how old, how young, how mentally challenged, etc.
Though the ideological battle over abortion at all stages of pregnancy still rages, the most active front recently is embryonic stem cell research. Let me be absolutely clear here, because much of what you read or see on the news about this issue is anything but clear.
I don’t know of any followers of Christ who are opposed to stem cell research. But most often, when you see, hear, or read a story about this issue, there’s no clear distinction made between embryonic stem cell research and other kinds of stem cell research.
So, as followers of the One who said “I am the truth,” I believe it’s important for us to truly understand the facts – the truth. Most of the time, you hear or read the basic phrase “stem cell research,” more often than not, what’s being written about or spoken of, is actually embryonic stem cell research. This is when a human embryo, just a few cells a few days after conception, has cells removed from it for the purpose of medical research. This means the embryo, which is really a days-old baby-to-be, who needs only time and safety in a mother’s womb, to mature into a baby 40 weeks later, this human life, is killed.
Now, the research using cells from these killed embryos is for a good cause, which is apparently what makes it palatable for some, who’ve decided that it’s acceptable to destroy unformed human life for the purpose of research that might save their fellow human beings some pain, suffering or death.
You have Nancy Reagan advocating this kind of research, after living with her husband, former President Reagan, in his declining years, when he suffered from Alzheimers. That’s one of the diseases they hope to cure eventually with this research. You have a popular actor like Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, also advocating for this kind of research.
But here’s just one of the problems, from a purely practical standpoint. After more than a decade of embryonic stem cell research, not one positive development has been found. Not one successful clinical trial using embryonic stem cells has yielded a potential treatment. Not one. Zero. Zip. Nada.
On the other hand, to date, with more than 70 individual diseases, scientists have had some very promising results in clinical trials as a result of using adult stem cells, or stem cells collected from umbilical cord blood. This includes various kinds of cancers, autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s, a disease my daughter Lisa has, some cardiovascular diseases, and many other diseases and illnesses.
Another wrinkle in this discussion includes another term you probably haven’t read or heard much. Induced pluripotent stem cells. iPSCs for short. iPSCs are stem cells developed from adult stem cells, including something as simple as skin cells, and no more difficult to obtain than a blood draw. Scientists discovered just a few years ago that you could induce adult cells to what’s called a pluripotent state. Now, embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, too. That’s why they’ve been so attractive to use for research. Pluripotent cells have the capacity to become many other kinds of cells in the human body, bringing a tremendous opportunity to treat many diseases.
I’m not in the habit of using anything from America’s high priestess, but this video clip from Oprah just a few months ago tells us a lot.
Play YouTube Video clip from Oprah featuring Dr. Oz Mehmet: :32 to 2:02
The whole stem cell debate can be very confusing, so I’ve had Debbie make copies of a document explaining more about iPSCs, and you can grab one after the service if you’d like. We don’t have time to get into even more issues on the horizon, such as the intentional cloning of embryos for the purposes of this research, which is currently illegal, but being advocated by many.
Let me be clear, though, about what this is. That means researchers want to create embryos for the express purpose of taking the cells, which means killing the embryos, and using the cells for research.
So, we have this doctor on national television telling us the stem cell debate is over. Yet, we continue to see the push to use embryonic stem cells for research. Why is this? Why, when so many Americans find this morally repugnant, when embryonic stem cell research has not proven nearly as promising as many had hoped, when other kinds of stem cells are much further along in providing the path to treatments and cures, do many continue to insist that we destroy human embryos for the purposes of research?
I can only come to one conclusion. The issue isn’t so much what will bring real treatments and cures most quickly. The agenda is the devaluing of life – the abortion agenda. And there truly is an agenda at work. The more desensitized we are to the destruction of unborn human life at any stage, the more other parts of the anti-life agenda can move forward.
Part of the reason for this includes the fact that there’s a huge abortion industry in our country. There are almost 1,800 abortion providers in the U.S. An average abortion done at 10 weeks costs $413, but the cost range is from $90 to $1800. That doesn’t include abortions done later in pregnancy, which are much more expensive. Do the math. In the latest year figures were available about 1.2 million abortions were performed in 2005. source: Alan Guttmacher Institute
That’s actually down from 1.3 million five years earlier. If we multiply that number by the average cost, it’s a more than $51 million industry annually.
But more importantly than the money, if that’s possible these days, this is also a worldview issue. We cannot underemphasize the critical nature of our worldview, and the impact of our worldview on such foundational issues as life.
Since we, as followers of Jesus Christ, believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God, and as such, life at any stage is precious - after all, as Jim Grinnell pointed out a few weeks ago, God loves special needs people, and the unborn definitely have special needs - it follows that we would stand against the taking of innocent, unborn, human life. We’ll look at some specific references to support this in a moment.
But there are other worldviews at work here. A secular or materialist worldview takes a utilitarian view of life issues. A disturbing example is a recent article in U.S. News and World Report. In it, the columnist says that the recession is forcing more abortions, because people decide after they get pregnant they can’t afford another child. This is classic situation ethics – that is, some rules don’t apply in some situations, because there’s no such thing as absolute rules.
Writing of the trend that there are more people having abortions because of the economy, the columnist points out that the media’s full of stories portraying this trend as something of a tragedy. Her contention is that it isn’t tragic. Then she tells the story of an unmarried California woman who got pregnant because she initially wanted to, but because she had three children, and she felt they couldn’t afford a fourth after her boyfriend lost his job, she decided to abort her fourth child. Here’s what the columnist had to write about this:
Yes, it’s sad that this unwed, pregnant mother of three had no money for bus fare. It’s terrible that her boyfriend lost his job. It is heart-wrenching that she fell to tears in the doctor’s office. But in the long run, can we not agree that an unwed couple’s decision not to bring a fourth child into the world when they are having trouble feeding themselves and three children is no tragedy? It’s actually a fact-based, rational decision that in the end benefits the three children they already have and society as well.
Bonnie Erbe, U.S. News and World Report April 1, 2009
I don’t know about you, but I find such an attitude absolutely frightening. The headline of this column was In a recession, abortions are not a bad choice.
I want to say this morning that, as a follower of Christ, I believe abortions are always a bad choice. That’s again because, as we mentioned earlier, we are all made in the image and likeness of God. The foundation for what we believe is very clear in the Word of God - that life in the womb is worthy of our protection and valuable.
1. The pre-born or unborn are called “babies” in Scripture. In the New Testament, we see examples of this:
“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb...” (Luke 1:41)
If you look at the original language, the same word is used for babies after they’re born - in Luke 2:16, where it talks of Jesus the baby in the manger, it’s the same word. In scripture, there’s no distinction between born and pre-born babies It’s the same in the Old Testament - after Rebekah became pregnant, we read in
Genesis 25:22 The babies jostled each other within her
The only distinction made is age - personhood, humanity, is never in question.
2. The life of the preborn is protected by the same punishment for injury or death as that of an adult.
“If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely…if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life.” (Exodus 21:22-23)
The unborn are viewed in this passage as just as much a human being as the mother. The abortion of a fetus was considered murder.
3. Preborn children have a propensity to sin, just like us.
“Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5).
4. Personal pronouns are used to describe preborn children.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart…” (Jeremiah 1:5).
The baby isn’t described as an “it”. God says “you.”
5. God calls people to ministry even before they are born - as we saw in the previous verse, and also here:
“Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name.” (Isaiah 49:1).
6. God creates the preborn.
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13).
7. God knows the preborn intimately and personally.
“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body…” (Psalm 139:15-16)
I think “unformed body” could be referring to when the Psalmist was an embryo. Clearly, they didn’t understand the science then, but it was clear to them that something tiny inside mothers grew into a baby. So, even the Psalmist knew that – a person is a person no matter how small. These verses establish the humanity of the unborn. But let me mention a couple of other things.
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Yes, animals are part of God’s creation…yes, we are to be stewards of God’s creation. I’m not for animal cruelty.
But we humans are unique in creation. God did not create animals in His own image. It’s interesting that some have an issue with the OSU med school’s use of animals in their medical research, but the push for using embryos in medical research goes on.
Psalm 8:3-9 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? 5You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: 7all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, 8the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
Human life was created in (lit.- meaning “in essence as”) the image of God. This image was given only to humans (Genesis 2:7). “Image” is used figuratively here, - the Word is also clear that God doesn’t have a human form.
But, being created in God’s image means that we humans share, though imperfectly and finitely, in God’s nature. That is, we share in the readily transferable attributes of God. We’re not omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, as God is. But we can share in His truth, wisdom, love, holiness, justice. These are God’s attributes we humans alone share with our creator. Because of this, we have the capacity for spiritual fellowship with Him.
Genesis 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
This is a significant verse, too, in light of the meaning of life and the sanctity of human life. God’s breathing the breath of life into us changes our form into a living being (lit., “a living soul”). This made us spiritual beings, with a capacity for serving God and fellowshipping with God. We humans are unique in God’s creation. We are special. All of us, from the embryo a moment after conception, to the developing fetus, to the newborn baby.
And on through life - the mentally challenged, the deformed or diseased, the elderly, even the dying. We’re all God’s special needs people.
So, we’re in this battle for the hearts and minds of Americans to define the value of life, and the future of these issues. And hopefully we’re convinced of our position and well-informed about the issues. But where does that leave us? What’s a pro-life Christian to do?
1. be informed
Hopefully this morning’s a start – but it’s not enough. There are a wealth of resources available…good books, magazines, websites, videos and more, to keep us fully up to speed on these issues. And the debate doesn’t stay the same, there are always new wrinkles to it, so don’t assume what you knew 3 or 4 years ago is sufficient. I can recommend many resources to you. There’s no excuse for not understanding the issues.
2. be willing to be there for friends or family
The battle primarily will be won or lost at the hearts and minds stage. And that’s where your friends and family come in. You may know someone pregnant and contemplating abortion. As such, you’re on the front lines of this battle. Your position is strategic – there at the point of decision. It’s the same reason that pregnancy centers are so effective. Be available to friends or family. You can make a difference. If you have a friend who’s pregnant, you can be the difference between life and death for that unborn child.
Now, this can be a tough one, because as Christians, we don’t necessarily want to condone the sin that got our friend pregnant. But I don’t believe that standing by a friend who’s pregnant is necessarily condoning the sin that got her there. I think, in a very practical way, it’s showing the compassion of Christ for a sinner, .... and standing in a real way for life... encouraging this sinner, not to compound one sin with another, even more devastating sin - by taking the life of your own child.
We haven’t even touched on the tragedy of post-abortive women, who remember the pain of taking the lives of their unborn children for years to come. There may be women here who’ve had abortions. I could stand here this morning and tell you it’s OK, but it’s not, and deep inside, you know it.
Yet, I can also stand here this morning and tell you that there’s forgiveness, there’s healing, there’s restoration, at the foot of the cross. Let’s be the kind of congregation that’s truly pro-life. One that stands for life, one that shows compassion for the sinner, one that makes a difference in this national holocaust, one life at a time.
3. get involved in pro-life ministry
There are many ways you can do this. We can all pray – if you’re willing, you can get on the list of people who pray regularly for pregnancy centers in Tulsa like Mend, like Crisis Pregnancy Outreach, and others. Not a one of these centers is in competition with the other, and actually, they work together often. You can also give – this morning, on Mother’s Day, we have an opportunity to do just that, as Diane explained earlier. Finally, you can volunteer. I realize God doesn’t call all of us to these practical ways to be involved, but if He does, I encourage you to respond to His voice.
You don’t have to be a trained counselor, but you can still help. If you can use a paint brush, you can do what the McEndarfers have done – help paint the offices of a pregnancy center. If you can sort through clothing, you can do what Shirley McWilliams has done, and help organize clothing for mothers and their babies. The point is, you can do something, and it does make a difference.
4. speak up
That may mean a letter to the editor, or a discussion with a friend. It may mean holding your elected officials accountable for their positions on life issues.
Just a brief word about the place of politics here. Politics is not unimportant. Laws and court decisions clearly can have a big impact on issues of life. But we cannot put our trust in these things. Did you realize that we’ve had openly pro-life presidents about 20 of the past nearly 30 years, and there are still more than a million abortions each year?
But the numbers have begun to come down – perhaps largely, and I admit this is anecdotal – but perhaps largely because of the efforts of centers like Mend and Crisis Pregnancy Outreach and their ongoing work on the front lines with women in crisis, at the point of decision whether or not to give their unborn child life.
So, yes, politics plays an important role, but it is not the answer. We have a role. We cannot be silent. We must speak up. So let’s do it lovingly and compassionately, with deep conviction.
On this Mother’s Day, let’s be grateful for our own mothers who chose to give us life. Let’s rejoice at the gift of life, a gift from God. We’re thankful for the children God has given those in this church. But let’s not succumb to abortion fatigue – growing weary of well-doing about this foundational issue of life.
And let’s never forget the more than 3,000 mothers who, on any given day this year, will choose death for their unborn children, rather than life. It’s a national holocaust. It continues every day. Let’s not give up the fight.
Pray
