The boy with two moms.
Let me start off our time together with a simple illustration of a man’s perspective.
This is a JOKE…I thought it was just a tiny bit funny…I also thought it was a uncomfortably true illustration of some extremely rare and perhaps even extinct man’s point of view.
-- One day Adam (of Adam and Eve fame) and his boys were out for a walk and happened upon the Garden of Eden. One of the boys said, “Dad, what is that place?” Adam responded, “Guys, that’s where your mother ate us out of house and home.”
Aren’t you glad that men have changed and that no man would ever really think that way today?
I was searching for God’s seed of inspiration yesterday. I realized that every year I have a lot of trouble getting started on a mother’s day sermon. Not that I don’t know a mother’s love which is a vast topic. Encouragement, hope prayers., comfort and worry. I am blessed to have a mother that lived in a way to demonstrate all these and more. Thing like discipline and direction. I recall the words go get me a switch more clearly than I can recall the physical pain that followed.
So, if I have a full relationship with my mother why in the world would I have any trouble with coming up with a message?
I read an article this week that helped me to find a reason it is called, “Your Mother’s Day sermon, Pastor”. By Joe McKeever. The gist of the article was about his experience meeting with other pastors. As mother’s day approached he would ask his pastoral friends about an upcoming mother’s day sermon. He said that he was surprised to find that so many pastors of all ages have trouble with the subject. He added that his granddaughter reminded him of something that was the core of the problem.
This is what he wrote,
I was pushing my 8-year-old granddaughter Abby in the swing in her front yard, our favorite place. She and her twin Erin had been learning about childbirth from their mother. Abby was not liking what she was learning. “I’m not going to have children, Grandpa,” she said. “It hurts too bad.”
My first thought was to say, “If your mother felt that way, you would not be here. And if your great-grandmothers felt that way, none of us would be here.” But what I said was, “You’re right. It does hurt. But the pain goes away, and you’re left with this beautiful child, and you decide that it was worth it.”
The child looked me square in the eyes and said, “You’re a man. What do you know?”
Rev. McKeever said that he had to admit that she was correct. That the subject of being a mother is one that men are on the outside looking in. That no man can ever really understand what mothers go through physically or emotionally or even the challenges that they go through.
Men can never have a perspective or clear idea to be able to speak well on the subject.
So, I have a choice, ignore the subject or hope that God leads me to speak something meaningful out of manly ignorance.
That led me to consider the scripture we read this morning. It tells of a time when the Israelites were in slavery to Egypt. The people were exploding in number and The Egyptians were afraid of what they might do if Egypt was challenged by an enemy.
They tried to enforce a form of after birth abortion but the mid wives would not participate. The people grew even more.
Eventually, Pharaoh declared that all male children would be thrown into the
Nile River.
The people in power made a decree to protect themselves. Evidentially the people were complying with the order. If they did not I am sure that they would be punished and probably killed. The story picks up with Moses Parents getting married.
Enter in on stage right a Levite couple. They are the parents of Moses. In particular this is where we meet Moses’ birth mother.
She has a male child and it says that she saw that he was a fine/beautiful child.
I will dare to say that most mothers see the beauty and potential of their children immediately on arrival in this world. Moses mother was not different. She did not want to comply with the order and throw her son into the river.
She hides her child for as long as possible from the authorities. I guess for a while she keeps a pillow under her tunic. But she knows that that won’t fool anyone for too long. There will be crying and bathing and at some point overseers will look in on the slave worker.
Here we have a mother that wants to keep her child. While other families may feel the same they have to comply.
After three months she has no choice…May there were questions. Maybe there was some kind of inspection of all the homes and children coming up.
Johebed, Moses’ mother decides that they must comply or lose what they have. And even more likely the family may lose their lives.
Most Mothers will do everything possible will assume personal risk for their children.
-- A teacher was trying to teach her class a lesson about fractions. After the lesson she tested one of the boys who was in a large family. Johnny, she said, There are 6 people in your family. Your mom bakes a pie, and she cuts it up for you, what percentage of the pie will you receive?
Johnny, thought for a minute and said, One-fifth. The teacher said, Now, remember there are 6 people in your family, how big would your piece of pie be. And again the boy said, One-fifth. The teacher said, No Jonny, you don’t seem to understand our less on fractions. And Johnny respectfully said, You don’t understand my mom. She would have said, that she didn’t want any…
For too many women the pressure from the culture is hard and limited.
In our culture we are told that women can choose what to do with their bodies. It is legal to get an abortion. The pressure that is placed on them is that having a baby will ruin their lives.
Often young women have pressure to make a choice based on the loss of support from family and friends and church… trapping them on a life choice river bank.
I am not flatly challenging the reality that abortion is a real and legal choice in our culture. What worries me is that churches, Christians often leave women with so little choice. We offer judgment for their condition, for their relationships. The church is not prepared to offer care and support perhaps feeling like they are condoning sinful states.
Too often women are left with a black and white reality; a hard life full of struggle and suffering or a simple resolution that the news media calls choice.
Moses mother made a choice for life or at least the chance of life. She chose to try to find a way to save the life of her son even when it was not an option.
Moses mother was not ready to throw in the towel. She seems to have held on to a fantastic amount of hope. Hope based on a mother’s love.
I do not see that she had and direction of any kind of assurance from God that it would work out. .
She knows that there was a great chance that her son would die in spite of her hopes and actions.
So the command was that male children must be thrown into the river. The command doesn’t not seem to specify a place. There is not directive to make sure the child landed in the main current.
So, instead of getting it over with, by sending her husband to handle this situation.
We read how she made a boat out of reeds and tar and she gently placed it in the reeds on the edge of the river. Not in the current that would quickly move the boy out of sight. But, he would remain in a protected spot.
I suggest that she has a real trust in God. He had a hope that God would do something and save her son.
She placed the make shift boat near the royal skinny dipping spot. A place protected from prying eyes. A place for people with power to have privacy.
I am guessing that she was unable to watch whatever happened. But she had her 5 or 6 year old daughter, Miriam to watch from a distance.
Technically, she was in full compliance with Pharaoh’s order. She had no power or choice to do anything else.
-- The story continues with Pharaoh’s daughter coming out for a bath. Her attendants were walking on the river banks. The daughter finds the child, identifies that he is a Hebrew. She has compassion on him.
This was some cute kid. She was not turned off by his race which automatically made him a slave.
She has the power to save the child. I could not find a reference to if she was married and perhaps barren or that she just took on the child like some take in a stray kitten. What seems clear is that she wanted to keep him and not just pus the little boat into the current.
Miriam jumps in and offers to get “some” Hebrew woman to come and nurse the baby. Pharaohs’ daughter agrees. It is obvious that this child needs to be fed and is too young for other foods.
Can you imagine the scene…momma,. Momma. The princes sent me to get you….She pulled brother out of the river. Come quickly,
-- What did you tell her?…nothing…just that I could fined he some help.
Miriam brings Jochebed back. And not only is she able to nurse her own son under the protection of the Pharoaoh’s daughter but gets paid to do it.
She had to be thinking that God is good….
Jochebed is a mother that trusted God and with the help of the woman that would become an adopted mother ultimately saved the Hebrew people.
Jochebed was able to trust God enough to release her son into God’s care on the river bank and then again when the boy was old enough to leave his nurse and go to the Pharaoh’s household.
I wondered how much additional time Moses mother gained before she let him go again.
I read where the Roman Catholic theologian an teacher suggests that children were weaned between 6 and 12 years old. That seemed very long to me. I found a comment from a woman saying that most people doubt the accuracy of that estimate based on the facts that Jerome was a monk that love an ascetic life. Basically, he was an unmarried man.
Jewish historians suggest that two years of age was more typical.
Jewish Tradition also indicates 7 names assigned to baby parents and family The last one being Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter.
His adopted mother takes him and raises him in the royal household with a royal education. This second mother provides Moses the tools and life skills that he will use the rest of his life.
Moses birth mother gave up her son because she loved him so much and gained at least two years of time with him. I believe that it was potentially even more as she probably worked around the daughter’s household. Moses seem to have a basic relationship with his brother and sister later.
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So where does all of this go toward today’s mothers?
It become more and more clear that we live in a world that accepts and even encourages death to satisfy basic fears in individuals and the culture.
People make choices of who should live and die, sometime the government and sometimes a parent. Wither we consider abortion in US and Europe or suicide bombers in the Middle East or the limited number of children allowed in a family in China our world chooses death and the easiest to deal with are overwhelmingly infants.
The two women in our scripture today are both real mothers. They are both women that loved babies.
Not all women do,
I once read the story of a woman who went shopping for swimsuits with her mother.
In the department store, though, she was having a hard time finding one that fit. After trying on at least 10, all to no avail, she grew increasingly frustrated.
Trying to calm her, her mother said "Look at it this way: what would you rather have – the husband and three children who adore you, or a swimsuit that fits?"
Before she could answer, a faceless voice from the next dressing room stall replied
"I want a swimsuit that fits!"
I will suggest that God does not design every woman to want children.
However, God selected two women that did best they could for the child they received.
God still selects women today to be others and gives the instincts to be a real mother. Ream mothers don’t always get easy choices. Real mothers choose to do what is right.
Real Mothers are special people.
Real mothers would like to be able to eat a whole candy bar (all by themselves) and drink a Coke without any "floaters" in it.
Real Mothers know that their kitchen utensils are probably going to end up in the sandbox.
Real Mothers often have sticky floors, dirty ovens and happy kids.
Real Mothers know that dried play dough doesn’t come out of shag carpets.
Real Mothers sometimes ask "Why me?" and get their answer when a little voice says, "Because I love you best."
Real Mothers know that a child’s growth is not measured by height or years or grade.
It is marked by the progression of Mama to Mom to Mother...
Real mothers are an integral part of our lives.
We wouldn’t be who we are without our mothers.
All Glory be to God!
Youngest Mother competition
Would X and Y please also come and serve on this panel. In this little quiz there are not any right or wrong answers so don’t get stressed over that. All we are doing is comparing what you heard from your mothers in the past or perhaps have said yourself as you passed down wisdom to your family.
Here is the way it works, I am going to start a situation and start a sentence and let one or all of you finish it.
1. Anytime were going out she would remind you:
Put on clean …… ……………(Underwear)
WHY? ……………… (In case you get into an accident)
2. At home in the evening, sitting or laying in the floor:
Don’t sit too close to the ….. (Television)
Why? …………………………… (It’s bad for your eyes!)
3. At the supper table you hear…
Clean your …….(plate)
Why? (There are starving children in India, Africa (insert Favorite),
who would love to eat that.)
4. If I asked, Mom Can I go to Vince’s, Billy somebody’s houses she would say
ASK ….. (your father.)
Will you please let out panel of experts know that we appreciate their participation? (Little Gift)
