May 10, 1998
John 13:31-35
There are many ways to look at Mother's Day. I see it as an opportunity to celebrate family love. It doesn't have to just be birth mothers that we honor. At least we can think again about how important our loved ones are to us.
Children often see things a little differently from what we might think. David Heller wrote a book called DEAR GOD: CHILDREN'S LETTERS TO GOD. He eavesdrops on some children's prayer-letters in which they talk about family. For example:
Dear God, Thank you for my parents, my sister Anita, and for my grandma and grandpa. They are real warm and special. I forgive you for my brother Phil. I guess you didn't finish working on him. Sean (age 12)
Dear God, My mom is acting weird because she is getting old. Can you take back a few gray hairs? That would help bring back the house to normal. Thanks for what you can do. Mike (age 9)
Dear God, You light up my life. So do mom and dad. I hope you like this. I am not sure what it means. Luv, Toni (age 7)
Dear God, My mom tells me a story about you every night. Last night she told me how you always remember your mother on her birthday. And you give her divine gifts. I think she was kidding me and herself. Love,Holden (age7)
In my early years we always had carnations on Mother's Day. We may not have had any money, but my mother saw to it that my sister Ruth and I had red carnations to show OUR mother was alive— and she and Dad wore white carnations in honor of their mothers who had died. It seemed somehow sacred and "official"— that was the way to observe Mother's day.
Mother's Day still is a good way to honor all that is best about mother love and family love. But it has to be much more than carnations and cards. Anna Jarvis, the West Virginia woman whose crusading got her state to adopt Mother's Day in 1910, and the whole nation to adopt by 1914 later became very bitter over the heavy commercialization of Mother's day. She told a reporter she was sorry she ever started Mother's day. In fact she was arrested for disturbing the peace at a War Mother's Rally when she protested the sale of carnations. "This is not what I intended," she was quoted as saying. "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit."
Mother's Day is an opportunity to honor far more than just birth mothers. Anna Jarvis herself, the founder of Mother's Day, never was a birth mother. And one of the most beautiful real-life stories in our nation's history was about a boy who was born in Kentucky, moved early to southern Indiana where his mother died. When his father brought home a new bride the little boy was very upset, almost frantic. He didn't want to accept a step-mother. he was afraid he would forget his birth mother.
But the boy's step-mother was a kind Christian woman. She read to him every night. She nursed him when he was sick, and held him on her lap a lot. As time went by he came to realize he could love this new mother without losing his love for the mother who had died. He came to call his step mother his "Angel Mother." Later on Abraham Lincoln would say, as 16th President of the United States, "All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother."
This day of celebration of family love falls on the 11th Sunday in our Ashes to Fire Pilgrimage with Jesus, and is the day when we hear His greatest commandment— what some call, "The Eleventh Commandment." "A new commandment I give you," Jesus said, "That you love one another."
In two brief sentences that commandment is spoken three times, just to make sure the disciples would hear and understand.
First Jesus said it: This is my command! Love one another!
Then Jesus told them HOW they should go about it: As I have loved you, so you are to love one another! Like Jesus! As He loved!
Finally Jesus told them that this was to be their identification badge: By THIS, He said— by THIS shall all know that you are MY disciples— if you have love one for another!
Wonderful are the steps we have been following— we began with believing, then confessing, then repenting. We went on with openness or vulnerability before God, with humility, and to complete surrender. We rejoiced in the resurrection, and went on to obedience, and to reaching out to others. last Sunday night we talked about wounded healers. but now we are at the heart of the whole scheme: WE ARE TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS JESUS HAS LOVED US!
This is on a different plane now even from The Golden Rule. Jesus is not saying, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!" He is saying, "Love one another as I have loved you!" He has just finished washing his disciples' feet. He is about to die on the cross of Calvary for their sins, and for yours and mine as well. And he says to them and to us: LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.
This kind of self-giving love is what soul-health is all about! It lifts us out of self-pity and self-absorption, and brings us into a working partnership with Jesus Himself. I close with a little story by Eddie Ogan:
I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money. By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home.
A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially. When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1. We made $20 on pot holders.
That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering. The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before. That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church!
On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet. But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich. When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20. As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes!
Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills. Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash.
We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd never thought we were poor. That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor.
I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn out shoes and felt so ashamed I didn't even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor! I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.
We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor.
We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse.
At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?" We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering. When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."
Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100." We were the richest family in our church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been poor again. I've always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus!
Prayer: Heavenly Father, You have shown your great love to us by giving us your Son, Jesus Christ, who has himself loved us and given himself for us. By your grace, help us to obey this Great Commandment, and love as Jesus has shown us so to do. This we ask in His Name who with the Holy Spirit lives and reigns with You, One God, world without end. Amen
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Dr. Russell Metcalfe is Pastor Emeritus of the Wollaston Church of the Nazarene. Permission to reprint or publish this material is GRANTED as long as the reprinting or republishing is not-for-profit.
You can access more of Dr. Metcalfe’s sermons at his scripturally indexed sermon archives web site. Now with MP3 audio sermons and audio bonus material. http://russellmetcalfesermons.nazarene.nl/Sermons/Sermons.htm
