You know how they say that behind every good man there is a good woman? Well, they used to say that. That is a pre-feminist proverb. Now they say that alongside every good man there is a good woman, like Newton’s Law, equal in force but opposite in direction!
But I certainly find it true that partnership in families is critically important. If I personally have accomplished anything at all, I give credit first to my Lord and second to my true life-partner, to whom, as of this coming Sunday, I will have been yoked forty years. Forty years! I hope that for her it has not been forty years wandering in the wilderness. She has threatened from time to time to ask the Diaconate for the pulpit so that she can tell you who I am at home!
But I will take the old proverb a little farther. Not only are life partnerships important, but will you agree with me that behind any good person there is a good parent? At least one good parent, and we would hope for two. But one parent, as often as not the mother, stands out as the key influence. When most of us look back, we acknowledge that what she did, for good or for ill, shaped us. We were formed in her womb and we were powerfully influenced by her values. Behind every person there is at least one influential parent.
Now let’s drop back yet one more step. Let’s think about that parent. Behind every parent there is a defining experience that drives that parent’s attitudes, and thus also affects the child. In the life of every parent something happened – maybe several things, but some special thing happened that gave shape and direction to that life. Some critical incident that made that person what she or he is, and that critical incident then goes on to influence the children of the next generation. Behind every parent there is a defining experience that drives that parent’s attitudes, and thus also affects the child.
I’ve told you before about my own father. I’ve told you how his life was shaped by several critical incidents. He had one year of college about 1920, but didn’t have any more money, and had to quit. He went to work in the construction business, but that business floundered, and there was still no money for education. He went off to Texas to work in the concrete pipe industry, but he caught malaria and had to come home. He expressed interest in studying for the ministry, but his family would have none of that. He studied music and had an opportunity to sing professionally, but other family responsibilities put a stop to that. Critical experiences. All of those things made my father very careful about his finances, and they also made him value education. I don’t remember our ever having any discussions about whether my brother and I would go to college. Whether we would go was never at issue; it was only about where we would go and how we would pay for it.
Are you surprised, then, that I still take every moment I can get to read something or learn something new? Are you surprised that I am impatient with folks who are ignorant and plan to stay that way? With a background like mine and a parent like mine, of course those are my values! A critical incident in a parent’s life shapes that person in such a way that the children are shaped too.
Oh, by the way, if my son and daughter were here, they would say that that also explains why their father is cheap. I think I’m frugal. They think I’m cheap.
Behind every child there is a parent with a critical incident that has profoundly shaped that parent’s life. And that incident shapes the child’s life too.
There is an odd passage hiding in the otherwise obscure genealogies of the Bible. First Chronicles is a little-used book in the Old Testament. It is burdened down with boring family trees and long-winded descriptions of the construction of the Temple. Who needs that? So we don’t pay much attention to First Chronicles.
But hiding in the fourth chapter is a mini-biography, a short profile. It’s about a man named Jabez, and particularly about the prayer Jabez offered. These two verses interrupt the long, sleepy list of names, and get our attention. In fact, a man named Bruce Wilkinson rediscovered the prayer of Jabez some thirty years ago, and has written about the power in the prayer of Jabez. I want to acknowledge Bruce Wilkinson’s insights about this prayer, but I also want to push back one step from it and think about Jabez’ mother. Remember, behind every child there is a parent with a critical incident that shaped that parent and therefore continues to shape the child.
The story of Jabez, the whole thing, in just two verses. Dear old Jabez never appears again in the whole Bible. This is it:
Jabez was honored more than his brothers; and his mother named him Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” 10Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!” And God granted what he asked.
Now Dr. Wilkinson, in his little book on the prayer of Jabez, develops the four ideas that are in this little but powerful prayer. He urges us to pray like Jabez:
1. First, praying for a blessing for ourselves, a big blessing; we are to claim what God wants to give us and not be modest about it;
2. Second, praying for God to enlarge our territory, for God to give us more to do, more opportunities to make a difference, an enlarged life;
3. Third, asking God to be with us, for God’s hand to do what needs to be done, because we need Him. We ought not to be satisfied with what we can do on our own, so we are to pray for more of God’s power; and
4. Finally, asking that we be protected from harming ourselves or others.
Jabez’ prayer asks for great blessing, for enlarged responsibility, for more of God’s involvement, and for protection. I’ll preach that for you some day. It’s good stuff.
But today I am stepping back one step and asking us to think about the woman, the mother, into whose life came some critical incident, and it shaped her son. It made Jabez what he became. Jabez took hold of it and became someone God could bless. What about the mother?
His mother named him Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” The name Jabez literally means, “He gives pain.” His mother named him Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” What did this mother do to or for her son?
I
First, Jabez’ mother was not afraid to single out this child and to recognize that there was something special about him. Jabez’s mother saw his uniqueness and allowed him to be himself. It says, “Jabez was honored more than his brothers.” Now that isn’t much information, but it suggests something powerful. It suggests that we need to watch for those special qualities that each child has, and lift them up. Out of a household full of brothers, something stood out about Jabez, and his mother was not afraid to grow it.
I praise God today for parents who equip each child to develop his own God-given abilities. I praise God for parents who are sensitive to each child’s interests and talents and do whatever has to be done to help them grow. Too many children grow up in an atmosphere of neglect. Oh, it isn’t physical neglect. They have food and shelter and clothing. But they are neglected in other ways. Nobody stops to listen to their aspirations. Nobody cultivates those early interests. Nobody encourages those positive inclinations. We will never know how many gifted children never develop into much, simply because nobody listens, nobody pays attention, nobody sees their potential.
When I was nine years old, my three-year-old brother would toddle over to the unused piano sitting in the corner, and he would fumble around until he found the sounds he heard on the radio. You remember the old NBC chimes? NBC stations would identify themselves, sort of like Metrorail, with N – B – C. At three years of age, my brother could hear those notes and find them on the piano. My parents took notice of that. They started him on piano lessons when he was four years old and could barely perch on the piano bench. He certainly couldn’t reach the pedals. But because they were listening, they knew they had a unique talent there. Jabez was honored more than his brothers, and Bob was honored more than Joe when it came to music, and that’s all right. That’s good. Parents need to sense the uniqueness of each child and honor that.
But now it’s one thing to give piano lessons to a four-year-old and see if he likes it. It was another thing, in a few years, when baseball diamonds were summoning and girls were clamoring and there were so many other things to do – it was another thing then to keep a teenage boy moving forward with playing the piano. My parents used to wonder whether they ought to push him so hard. Even when my brother went on to earn his Master’s in music at Julliard and his Doctorate in Church Music at Southern Baptist Seminary, they asked themselves whether their influence was too much. Maybe they forced their son to take this route. Maybe he would have preferred something else.
That’s unanswerable, of course. But what my parents did for my brother and for me was to support us in our uniqueness and to cultivate a place in which we could hear and respond to God’s call on our own. Probably we would not have responded to God’s call if they had not listened to us, watched us, given us what we needed, supported us, prayed for us, and nudged us when we faltered.
Jabez’ mother jump-started Jabez when Jabez was honored more than his brothers. She took his uniqueness seriously.
II
But Jabez’ mother did something more for him. Jabez’ mother did him a great favor by identifying her own pain and sharing it with him. Jabez’ mother did something extraordinary for her son when she got in touch with her own pain and was not reluctant to trust her son with the legacy of pain.
… his mother named him Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.”
What did she mean, I bore him in pain? Obviously, there is the pain of giving birth to a child. But there is nothing unique about that. Every mother experiences that. Why this mother, this pain, this child?
Well, we don’t really know. But we can make some guesses. We can guess that maybe this mother’s pain was sharpened by the circumstances of Jabez’ birth. The whole chapter here in First Chronicles is taken up with fathers and sons, fathers and sons. Every son’s father is named, except this one. Jabez’ father is not identified. I wonder – does that mean that she was not married, and that was painful? Or does that mean that the father no longer figured in the family – maybe he had died, maybe he had skipped out, maybe he was irresponsible. We don’t know. But the fact that he is not mentioned might point us to this mother’s pain.
Who knows? Maybe it was the weight of responsibility that she felt. Jabez had brothers; how many we don’t know. There may have been sisters, too. Too many kids in too short a time with too few resources and not enough help. Maybe this young mother, old before her time, was in emotional pain, seeing her future going down the drain, knowing that personal freedom was never to be hers again, sensing that others disapproved of her and her one more child. Who knows? But there was pain.
I only know that hiding behind the fashionable doors of the Takoma community are a thousand painful family stories, and that the secret agonies of parents weigh down on their vulnerable children. The statisticians tell us that abused children become abusive parents. The children of divorced parents are more likely themselves to show up in divorce court some day. There is a great deal of hidden pain in parents and in families.
The special thing about Jabez’ mother was that she was in touch with her pain and she shared it with her son. She even named him out of her pain! If you know something about Hebrew naming practices, they named their children for the things they expected their children to be or to become. When Jabez’ mother named him, “He who causes pain” she was warning him that there was something in the family system that was going to haunt him. There was a skeleton in this family closet, and he was to watch for it. She got in touch with her own pain and she trusted her young son with that knowledge.
There is no greater gift we can give our children than the gift of ourselves, the story of our own lives. Two or three years ago, in one of our Black History Month observances, several of you were asked to tell your stories, your experiences with the painful days of segregation and discrimination. As I listened to those stories, I gained a deeper understanding of those who had suffered. Hearing someone speak about being denied access to a seat on the train or a place in the classroom because of the color of their skin helped me know the lingering pain that is still there and still shapes lives. Just knowing the stories of people who stood boldly for the rights of humanity while they themselves were being called everything but a child of God told me important things about the pain of the past. If that was a critical moment for me, hearing these stories, how much more their children needed to know their parents’ pain! How much more, if we are to have a generation committed to justice, must our children hear those painful stories!
There is no greater gift we can give our children than the gift of our own stories, pain and all, so that they will understand. His mother named him Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” In touch with her pain, she jump-started Jabez.
III
And finally, whatever else it was that Jabez’ mother actually did for him, this much we know: she jump-started Jabez as a man of faith. She set him up to be a man of prayer. She fixed it so that he would turn to God in faith. She jump-started Jabez in his relationship to God.
Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!” And God granted what he asked.
Jabez prayed, “Oh that you would bless me.” Was it because she didn’t have much to give him? Was it that she didn’t have enough money to feed those hungry mouths, of whom Jabez was the last and the least? I don’t know. But she jump-started Jabez to turn to God and ask for what he needed. Maybe our problem is that we have gone out and made enough money that we can give them what they need and they have never understood that it comes from God and that we must ask Him for it. Jabez’ mother, in her poverty, turned her son from complaining about not having the latest clothes and turned him to God to ask for blessings. Jump-starting Jabez.
Jabez prayed, “Enlarge my border”. Give me more to do. Was it that she had to keep him close by? Oh, if you are tending a bunch of kids all by yourself, you cannot let any one of them out of your sight for a minute. Maybe she kept him close by her side so that she could care for him and make him feel secure. And once Jabez was secure he could pray that the Lord enlarge his territory. People who are insecure do not ask for more to do. Insecure people are scared of what they have right now. Only people who know that they are loved and are secure pray for great Kingdom tasks. His mother gave Jabez the security of knowing that she loved him unconditionally, jump-starting Jabez to pray for greater responsibility.
Jabez prayed, “That your hand might be with me.” He prayed for the power of God in everything he was to do. Was it that he had to fend for himself so much? With a single mom and a bunch of brothers, he had to try to do things he was not equipped to do. He didn’t have everything done for him, and there wasn’t anybody to show him how to do it. So little Jabez must have needed help with the simplest of things, and had to ask for it. Is that where Jabez learned to pray for the hand of God to work in his life? He couldn’t indulge in “Mother, please, I’d rather do it myself.” Oh, this mother got her son into the right prayer habits; she jump-started young Jabez into knowing that he needed God for everything.
And Jabez prayed, “Keep me from hurt and harm.” Protect me. Was it that as he saw what she had had to go through, he knew how vulnerable life could be? Was it that as he heard her pain and watched her struggle, he learned how precious life is? Was it that as she put him on her knee and sat by the fireside, as she told him the stories of the God of Israel, that he learned that life is fragile?
Might it be that on this Mother’s Day the mother to honor is not the successful career woman, the enterprising bureaucrat, the woman whose house is immaculate and whose hair is perfect? Might it be that on this Mother’s Day we look not to the mother who has it all together and whose carefully orchestrated plans assure her of perfect well-scrubbed children? Might it be that today we honor obscure, fragile, lonely, pain-filled, truth-sharing, honest, mothers? Mothers like the nameless mother of Jabez? The mother whose son God blessed – all because she jump-started Jabez?
