IN CELEBRATION OF MOTHERS
ON MOTHERS’ DAY
I. Incidentals and remembrances of motherhood
Today is a special day, giving us a fine occasion to appreciate mothers for the difficult, often thankless, and so very important job they do. Mothers provide great comfort and stability for their children through their growing years and support in adulthood. In the fifth of the 10 commandments God said, “Honor your father and your mother,” and none would deny that good mothers are worthy of their honor.
So this is the day mothers are honored for washing dirty faces, wiping leaky noses, patching up bloody knees, kissing hurt places, changing the sheets in the middle of the night, driving kids to school and picking them up, never going to the bathroom alone without a child needing something, proudly watching them perform in musical or sports events, holding all the things their children runs up and asks “would you hold this for me, Mom?”
It’s a day of appreciation for mothers:
…making your children finish something they thought they couldn’t do.
…not believing them when their actions or even words said, "I hate you."
Motherhood is:
Wondering if promising and giving your child something they really want if they behave is bribing your children (or rewarding good behavior?)
Getting rowdy kids to settle down by tricking them into playing the quiet game (it must have been a mother who got that idea).
I read this somewhere: A mother talking to an old college friend said, "Before I was married I had 3 theories about raising children. Now I have 3 children and no theories."
II. Importance of mothers
Erma Bombeck wrote: For the first 4 or 5 years after I had children, I considered motherhood a temporary condition -- not a calling. It was a time of my life set aside for exhaustion and long hours. It would pass. Then one afternoon, with 3 kids in tow, I came out of a supermarket pushing a cart (with four wheels that went in opposite directions) when my toddler son got away from me. Just outside the door, he ran toward a machine holding bubble gum in a glass dome. In a voice that shattered glass he shouted, "Gimme! Gimme!" I told him I would give him what for if he didn’t stop shouting and get in the car.
As I physically tried to pry his body from around the bubble gum machine, he pulled the entire thing over. Glass and balls of bubble gum went all over the parking lot. We had now attracted a sizable crowd.
I told him he would never see a cartoon as long as he lived, and if he didn’t control his temper, he was going to be making license plates for the state.
He tried to stifle his sobs as he looked around at the staring crowd. Then he did something that I was to remember for the rest of my life. In his helpless quest for comfort, he turned to the only one he trusted his emotions with -- me. He threw his arms around my knees and held on for dear life.
I had humiliated him, chastised him, and berated him, but I was still all he had. That single incident defined my role. I was a major force in this child’s life.
Motherhood is demanding, infinitely important, and life-long. When her children are grown and have children of their own, a mother is still a mother.
This is a paraphrase of one mother’s observation: "We must realize the importance of our examples in the development of our children’s characters. We must realize that our children can see through the masks we put on. Our inner attitudes and thoughts will be revealed to our children by our actions, not just our words.”
The chances are, if you think you are fooling your kids, you are only fooling only yourself. Motherhood (and fatherhood) are too important to fool around with.
Elements in today’s society try to make women feel they should feel ashamed for being mothers and wives - that mothers and wives have settled for a lower, less fulfilling calling than those who have careers outside the home. But there is no nobler calling than that of a godly mother raising her children for the Lord.
• Our mothers bring us into the world.
• They nurture us.
• They provide for us.
• They raise us.
• They teach us.
• They discipline us.
• They love us.
III. Mothers in the Bible
A. When we think about motherhood there are some mothers in the Bible narratives that spring to mind:
• Jochabed, mother of Moses, went against Pharaoh’s decree to save her baby. (Exo 2:1-4)
• Let’s not forget the daughter of Pharaoh:
The child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. And she named him Moses, and said, "Because I drew him out of the water." (Exodus 2:10)
She took him as her son, knowing he was a Hebrew child under edict to die.
• Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel, vowed to God “if you will look on your servant with kindness and give me a son, “I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life” 1 Sam 1:24-28
• Paul mentioned how real and active faith was passed from generation to generation in Timothy’s family.
First his grandmother Lois demonstrated her faith; then his mother Eunice demonstrated her faith, giving Timothy a foundation of early training.
• Of course Mary, the mother of Jesus – Luke tells the story of Gabriel’s visit and Jesus’ birth.
Today I would like to consider two mothers who are not among those who usually come to mind—and then return to Mary of Nazareth.
B. Eve is a well-known figure but is seldom discussed as a mother, although she was the mother of all living people who have been and who will be.
• Her name, “Eve,” means “living.” (Adam gave her the name after he heard God speak of her offspring. Before that she was known as “woman,” because she was taken from the man.)
• Although God’s judgment was fair, I feel some sympathy for Eve, for as a mother she faced some challenges never faced by any other mother.
• She was the first woman to ever give birth to a child
That child was Cain.
God had said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.” (Gen 3:20)
• Did Eve have a clear idea what to expect when the time came for Cain to be born?
Eve was the first to know what it is to deliver and be a mother to a child.
• I wonder if she was afraid of child-rearing and motherhood… no one had ever done it before!
I wonder if she realized what an important and influential job being a mother would be.
Eve had three sons mentioned by name in Scripture: Cain, Abel and Seth. Genesis 5:4 tells us Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters in their life, but most of the focus is on these three boys.
• Cain murdered Abel.
• Eve is not only the first mother, but also the first mother to lose a child in death. Really, Adam and Eve lost two sons because her first child left and wandered the lands.
• It was through the line of Seth that people began to “call upon the name of the Lord” (Genesis 4:25-26).
To be fair, Eve--the mother of all living, destined to bring forth children in pain--may have been a better mother than we realize.
• It may be a bit unfair to define the original, prototype sinner by her sin rather than her motherhood, for in both, she was first.
• No one pioneered the calling of motherhood before her.
• She had no mother for a role model.
Someone might ask, “What about Cain? Doesn’t Cain’s sin show Eve to have been a bad mother?” No. Eve was also Abel’s mother, and Seth’s, and many others.
• And before she became a mother at all, Eve had learned a hard lesson and paid a terrible price for her sin.
• But Eve had also heard God himself say that “in her seed all nations of the earth were to be blessed.
• Cain’s sin does not erase the possibility that Eve was a good and loving mother.
C. Rizpah - one of Saul’s concubines. She had two sons by the king.
As 2 Samuel 21 opens, Saul is dead and David is the King, and a famine in Israel had been going on for 3 years. In the midst of this famine David, realizing that it was probably a judgment from the Lord, sought God’s face. The Lord told David the reason for the famine: "It is on account of Saul and his blood stained house; it is because he put the Gibeonites to death." What the Lord was talking about was a treaty that Joshua had made with the Gibeonites 400 years earlier (Joshua 9). Shortly after Israel had entered the promised land and defeated Jericho, Joshua swore in the name of the Lord that Israel would always protect the Gibeonites.
Saul’s abrogation of the treaty is not mentioned in the account of Saul’s life, but many years later when Saul was king, things changed. Towards the end of his life Saul was ruled by pride, self will and ungodly desires. He broke the treaty and killed many of the Gibeonites.
Later still, when David was king, God brought a famine on the land because Saul had broken the treaty Israel had made in God’s name. David called the Gibeonites to his throne room, and asked them what he could do to make amends for what Saul had done. What they asked for was for 7 of Saul’s decedents to be delivered to them, so they could kill them and disgrace the house of Saul. There is no indication that it was the Lord who instigated the Gibeonites’ demand. But David agreed to it and delivered the 7 men to the Gibeonites to be killed either on crosses or gallows.
There was a law (Deut 21:23) requiring that one who was hanged on a tree was to be taken down and buried before night. But the ancient law was set aside so that these 7 of Saul’s sons and grandsons might be left to hang in public view on the hill of Gibeah, shaming the house of Saul, until rain came and broke the famine.
Those 7 men had mothers.
Two of those men were the sons of Rizpah.
Rizpah took sackcloth and spread it on the hillside where the bodies of her sons hung, and from the beginning of the harvest until the rains fell (a period of 6 months), Rizpah kept watch over their dead bodies so that scavenger birds would not feed on them by day, or other animals by night.
Even in death, Rizpah protected her children.
For 6 months this devoted mother fought off birds and wild animals day and night, protecting the decomposing bodies of her sons from further disgrace and humiliation.
There was much she could never do for her sons now, but what she could do as a mother was much. As we look at the striking sacrifice of this wonderful mother, we see Rizpah as an inspiring example for all mothers today.
I think most mothers here today would do as Rizpah did.
What was it that drove Rizpah to that grotesque scene on the hill?
It may sound cliché, but only one thing answers:
Only a mother’s unbreakable love—even for her long-dead sons--could drive her to such action.
Rudyard Kipling heard of this mother’s self-sacrificing love for her sons, and wrote his poem title "MOTHER O’ MINE." Here are a few lines from it:
If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother O’ Mine, Mother O’ Mine.
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother O’ Mine, Mother O’ Mine.
Rizpah’s sons, who likely had no part in their father’s betrayal of the treaty, were disgraced as criminals.
But Rizpah knew it was not her sons’ sins, but Saul’s whose guilt was borne by her sons on behalf of the nation for the shame of the Saul’s actions.
Was Rizpah rewarded for her actions as a devoted mother?
If you read on in 2 Samuel 21 you find that King David heard of her devotion and in response to it reversed his earlier action, and gave her sons an honorable burial in the tomb of their fathers.
Rizpah’s love and sacrifice were rewarded by the king and to this day, have astonished those who hear her story. It has been 3,000 years, but Rizpah’s devotion has never been forgotten, nor will it be as long as the world stands.
D. Mary, a far better known mother, was God’s own choice to be a mother for his Son.
God sent the angel Gabriel to an humble cottage in the little Galilean village of Nazareth, where he visited a maiden named Mary and told her that she was highly favored by God, and though a virgin, she would bear a son by the Holy Spirit.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.
Why this peasant girl in obscure out-of-the-way Nazareth? What was so special about Mary that had so caught the Creator’s attention?
She may have been a child by today’s measures, but God saw her as the mother he wanted for his Son. She was the chosen mother to bring Jesus into the world and nurture him through the childhood and adolescent years, until he became the adult Jesus we know.
We see little of Mary as a mother during Jesus’ childhood and nothing during his adolescent years. But we know that Mary was a very special mother who was there for her very special son. She knew from the angel’s visit that Jesus was a very special child, who as a man would have a world-changing mission.
The cross was a gruesome place where the lowest of the low were executed. But there hung the innocent Savior of the world.
Mary’s son.
And there, by the cross of Jesus was his mother, where she would remain until his death. Mary could have run away like most of the disciples… but she didn’t. Mary could have pleaded with both the Jewish and Roman authorities for her Son’s life… but she didn’t
As much as it hurt, Mary allowed her son to save her soul.
Mary could have done so many different things, but in the end she stayed by her Son and waited for death to release him.
I reject the notion expressed by some that Mary was confused, disillusioned, and angry that her special son’s phenomenal beginning had come to a seemingly ignominious and calamitous end.
I believe that because of the angel’s visit back in Nazareth, which she never forgot, on some level Mary understood what so many failed to grasp, then and now.
Waiting at the cross, perhaps Simeon’s prophecy to Mary when Jesus was a baby came to Mary’s mind: “a sword will pierce even your own soul.”
Can you imagine Mary’s joy on resurrection morning when she and Mary Magdalene and other women went to the tomb with spices for his body to find it gone, and heard the angel say “He is risen.”
IV. A Good Mother
I can’t tell you how to be a good mother. I’ve never been even a mediocre mother.
But I am an authority on what a good mother is like.
Let me tell you briefly some things about mothers.
I know because I experienced it from one of the best mothers God ever placed on the earth, and I observed it close up in my wife, as she gave our children a kind of nurturing care that was far beyond my ability to provide.
1. She is selfless and protective, like Rizpah
2. She is there for her children in their darkest hours, like Mary
3. She applies discipline only as an expression of love
I remember hearing a story many years ago of a man who observed a mother shopping in the grocery store with a small child riding in her shopping basket. As they passed through the produce section the child reached out and raked the oranges, dislodging twenty or thirty oranges that tumbled to the floor. As the mother hurried to pick them up, she said, “Kathy, we have to do this, bear with me for a while, and then we can go.”
Later, the man noticed the same woman shopping on the aisle with crackers, and saw the child reach out and knock a display of crackers over, spilling a dozen or so boxes to the floor. The mother sighed and said, “Kathy, please just hold on while I finish shopping for the things we have to have.”
The man took an interest in what was going on and took special notice of the remaining part of the shopping scene. When they mother passed by the peanut butter, the child raked a hand along the jars and sent half a dozen jars to the floor, breaking them and making a mess of peanut butter on the floor. The weary mother rolled her eyes heavenward and called for a cleanup, she said, “Kathy, I know you’re tired but we’re almost finished.”
As the purchases were being checked out, the child swiped a hand across the chewing gum and candy rack, knocking gum and candy into the basket and onto the floor. The exasperated mother said, “Kathy, just hold on a few more minutes and I promise we’ll be finished and out of here.”
The man quickly finished his purchase and approached the woman to assist her in loading her purchases into her car, and said, “Ma’am, I want to compliment you for your patience in dealing with your young child Kathy.” The woman replied, “Thank you, but my daughter’s name is Sally. My name is Kathy, and Sally and I have some business to take care of shortly.”
There was a mother about to do her duty and apply some loving discipline.
Even in discipline a good mother’s child knows he/she is loved.
I remember my father telling me as he prepared to discipline me,“This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.”
My inward response was “No it’s not!
4. She gives children boundaries. Limits are needed and children seek them until they find them.
A good mother is consistent in the application of discipline while taking into account extenuating circumstances. To be effective, boundaries need to be reasonable (though they often will not appear so to the child), and must be consistent as to what the boundary is and must be consistently applied.
5. The good mother never complains to her children about the demands of motherhood. The reason is obvious.
6. She loves her adult children still if they stray from the straight path that their mother walked and taught.
No matter what, a mother’s love never fades. No matter what.
No matter what.
It is captured in the words of the touching song, “Little Boy Blue.”
I will be there for you when the whole world
Would turn its back and leave you all alone,
‘Cause in my soul your song is always singing,
And here within my heart of hearts, you’ll always have a home.
This does not mean that a good mother condones or approves of their childrens’ sins (and a good mother understands the difference).
Never, never, never does a good mother say to gain leverage on a child’s behavior:
“If you do thus and so, don’t come home.”
Some of us have mothers who could have given up on us…but they hung in there for us.
Someone has said, “The love of a mother is stronger than steel, softer than down, and more resilient than a green sapling on the hillside. It closes wounds, melts disappointments, and enables the weakest child to stand tall and straight in the fields of adversity.”
V. Wrap-up
Mother’s Day is a day to honor those women in our lives who have made an eternal difference.
A mother’s love, even at its best, is simply one expression of the love of God, a faint reflection of all that we can confidently expect of him, both in this life and the next.
And I believe that one of the most beautiful sights in the world is a mother who lets God’s greater love flow through her to her child, blessing the world with
• her sacrifices
• the tenderness of her touch
• constancy of her loving care
To the Moms who raised us, protected us, supported us, instructed us, and stood by us through thick and thin …we say “Thank you for being my mother!”
