We all know what mothers are supposed to want on Mother’s Day. A card is great, whether professionally made, with a beautiful picture on the front and a sentimental poem on the inside, or maybe home made, decorated inside and out with crayons that are handled with more love than professional skill.
Mothers like a break from cooking. Breakfast in bed is great, even if the milk is running all over the tray by the time it gets up the stairs. Restaurants will be swamped in a couple of hours with families treating mom to a dinner out.
This week the Tribune had an article that said some mothers are getting gift certificates for Botox treatments and iPods for mother’s day. But most of us get off much easier than that.
We get off real easy. Salary.com calculated what you would have to pay to hire someone to do what stay-at-home mothers typically do. They do the work of cooks, child care providers, housekeepers, van drivers, nurses, and home managers. Salary.com figured that their base salary should be $43,000 a year. But that’s base salary, for a 40 hour week. Have you ever heard of a mother of small children who worked just a 40 hour week? They figured mothers average 60 hours of overtime a week, putting a fair salary up to $130,000. And moms who have outside jobs still put in huge hours at home, on top of their outside work.
Motherhood is an important job. And even in the best of circumstances, a demanding job.
But not many mothers get to attempt mothering in the best of circumstances. And this morning I want us to take a few minutes to try to look at the world through the eyes of mothers in difficult circumstances. So much of our news comes to us through the eyes of the interests of party politics, who came out ahead in the last skirmish on capital hill, or the interests of big corporations, where power and profits are the primary focus. How much wiser we would be to see the world through the eyes of mothers. No person should be seen as a mere statistic or just a potential customer, or a social problem to get out of the way.
Mothers look at their children and want the best for each one. And that’s not far from the way that God looks at this world, each person as his child, wanting the best for each and every one.
How different this world would look if we could learn to see those around us through a mother’s eyes, or the eyes of God, one person at a time.
To help us do that, I’ll ask Ed to come and read our scripture for us, Luke 4:16-21, a key incident in the life of our Lord Jesus. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Our God, like a mother, cares deeply for those who are poor, held captive, blind or oppressed.
Let me tell you about one of my favorite members from a church I served in another town. Her mothering was never easy. Her husband was an alcoholic and he took on their son as a drinking buddy until he was an alcoholic, too. And that put their son in a horrible position. He really needed serious treatment for his drinking. But because he was an alcoholic he couldn’t hold a good job. And because he couldn’t hold a good job he didn’t have insurance to pay for the treatment he needed. He did stupid things when he was drunk. He was in and out of jail repeatedly. And he would sober up in jail, but there was no serious program to help him get to the root of his problems. So he was caught in this endless cycle. Sober up in jail. Get out and find a crummy, shady job. Start drinking. Then back to jail. And of course, this isn’t an isolated case. Most of those in our prisons are there due to substance abuse problems, trapped in the same cycle.
One day this dear mother learned that her son had tried to kill himself in jail. His prison job was in the kitchen and he tried to kill himself by eating broken glass for several days, then drinking Drano. His esophagus was severely damaged, but he survived.
The best mother’s day present ever for that mother and many thousands of other mothers in her position would be for our state to go beyond just punishing people. Stop treating them as just problems to push out of sight. And make a serious investment in substance abuse programs and remedial education programs to help them cope when their sentence is complete and become productive citizens.
And churches can help, too. Part of our apportionments go to support Prisoner Release Ministry that befriends those just released from prison, gives them training in job skills, help in finding a real job and emotional support until they are on their feet. It’s on a small scale, but it has been a life saver for many former prisoners.
I love the story I read of a group of Christians in Washington DC who set up a summer camp for children whose fathers had been shipped to a private jail way over in Youngstown, Ohio, far away from their families. These Christians got a bus to bring the children closer to their fathers for a week. The kids did normal summer camp things at a camp nearby for half the day, swimming, games and other activities. But they spent some time each day in the prison with their dads, doing crafts, playing games and rebuilding relationships. The kids put on a talent show for their dads on the last day. The warden was so impressed with the change in the inmates that he and the staff chipped in for pizza for a party on the last day. One of the inmates said at the end, “I will never come here to prison again. My daughter’s life depends on it.”
That’s not a bureaucratic response to the problem of crime in America. It is a human response. It’s a Christian response.
Can we learn to see our world through mothers’ eyes? Can we ask our elected government leaders to go beyond locking criminals away and give them opportunities to be restored?
Every mother has dreams that her children will grow up strong and healthy and capable, with full opportunities to use every gift that God gave them.
But the path to success in life goes through the schools, and the quality of education in Illinois is so uneven.
Because most of the funding for education in Illinois comes from local property taxes, there is a huge variation in the quality of schools between neighborhoods where people are wealthy and neighborhoods where people are poor.
Is it that the poorest school districts have half as much money to spend on their students as the wealthiest Illinois districts? No, far past that. One third? No, the poorest school districts in Illinois survive on less than a quarter of the budget per student of the budget of the wealthier districts. Less than one quarter.
And often the wealthy districts have kids who grew up speaking English, who have parents who are college educated and can give them good support in the studies and who live comfortable lives so their kids can eat a good diet and live in quiet, secure homes.
And the poor districts have the added work of educating many children who are still learning to speak English, whose parents didn’t get far in school and are stretched to the limit just to survive.
So often the schools that have the most work to do are doing it with the least money. And that means the teachers are overworked with large classes and heavy work loads that make it almost impossible for them to give any students personal attention. It means that teachers burn out. It means facilities get run down. It means that old textbooks get used over and over again. It means that those extra programs like sports and music and art, that can be just the thing to bring some children alive, get cut out. Many Illinois school districts are in serious financial distress. Chicago, alone, has over 130,000 children in schools that have been officially labeled as failure schools.
Can you feel the hopelessness of mothers in those schools who want the best for their children and know they’ll never get it?
Out of the 50 states in the union, Illinois is at the bottom, in last place, for equity of spending per student. We need to do better. Every child deserves a chance. We can’t afford to neglect any of them.
And of course, once we leave the shores of the United States, the stresses on mothers only get so much worse.
To give just one example, this week the Chicago Tribune reported that the United Nations estimates that 300,000 children could die of starvation this year in Ethiopia. After years of civil war and unrest there is another drought. The government is ineffective. It’s really hard to deliver emergency supplies. And it’s very possible that 300,000 children could die this year. Can you feel the heartbreak of their mothers, desperately trying to find food for their children, watching them waste away?
Remember that when we chip in over here to help in such situations, and there are many of them now, a donation that’s small for us can mean life for a child, and really makes a mother’s day.
God doesn’t see the world through the eyes of business or government or high society. He sees the world very much as a mother does, with care for each and every person who hurts. May God help us to do the same. AMEN
