Just about everybody has a story that involves Mom’s voice. Just about anyone can tell you something distinctive about the things Mother used to say. We can remember not only what she said, but also the way she said it, the tone of voice she used. It’s surprising how many of us can remember those things. Even people whose mothers died quite young can remember distinctive and special things. It seems we can’t quite shake off Mom’s voice. It stays with us. It hangs around like a perfume, fading and yet quietly present. It hovers in our minds and sounds off in our brains at the strangest moments. No matter how old we are, we can’t shake off Mom’s voice.
Even people who were not raised by their mothers deal with this. There was a mother-like figure, a grandmother, an aunt, an older sister, a foster mother, someone who took on that role, and that voice, that intonation, that way of expression, is still with us. Whoever we are and wherever we go, we can’t shake off Mom’s voice, however much we might want to.
And some do want to. For all the sentimentality we attach to Mother’s Day, the sound of that voice is not always pleasant. Sometimes it chastises us, and we feel guilty because we are not doing what Mom would have wanted us to do; we can’t shake off Mom’s voice, and it feels painful. Sometimes Mom’s voice haunts us, and we feel conflicted, because Mom’s voice was a voice of disapproval, and something in us won’t rest until we get a better word. Something won’t allow us to live in peace until we get our mothers’ approval. But it just won’t come. It’s always negative. It nags at us, and, as much as we’d like to, we just cannot shake off Mom’s voice.
A young woman is in love. There is a young man who has professed his love and wants to commit himself to marriage. But this young woman all during her childhood years heard her mother’s less-than-admiring assessment of men. She heard her mother criticize her father. She listened to her mother’s suspicions about her own father. Every time she went out on a date as a high-schooler, her mother would lecture her about how you know boys only want one thing, and then would interrogate her closely the next morning just to be sure. This young woman is in love. But because she can’t shake off Mom’s voice, she commits to a wedding but not to a marriage. Did you get that distinction? She commits to a wedding, to getting married. But she doesn’t commit to a marriage. She doesn’t commit to being married. She cannot quite trust her husband, even though he gives her no reason for mistrust. Because she can’t shake off Mom’s voice, her marriage is riddled with fear, suspicion, doubt, and mistrust. The outcome is devastating, all because she can’t shake off Mom’s voice, and Mom was nothing but suspicion.
A middle-aged man heard every day from his mother that there wouldn’t be enough money. There had never been enough money, even though Dad, now long deceased, had made a decent living. But Mom had always acted as though the family was on the fast road to the poor house. There had always been these little pointed comments about how Dad should have done better, but was not ambitious enough. There had always been these barbed insinuations that she could have done better herself, that she had had a chance at two or three of the more up-and-coming fellows of her day, but, well, she had made her bed and now must lie in it. Constantly this man had heard a litany of poverty from his mother, who, now, in her old age, was compulsively saving every dime and denying herself the most ordinary of luxuries, because there won’t be enough money. Enough money for what was never answered. But there won’t be enough money. Then the day came when Mom passed away; and there was enough money for the funeral; there was enough money to reconcile the medical bills; there was enough money to pay the taxes; and this son inherited a nice little kitty of several hundred thousand dollars. Now remember our thesis, however, that you can’t shake off Mom’s voice. What did he do? How did this son respond? Within two weeks after his mother’s funeral the driveway sported a new luxury car, tied up at the Annapolis docks there was a new boat, and his wife was prancing around in a fur coat! You may say, well, he certainly shook off Mom’s voice; he certainly left her behind. No he didn’t. No, he didn’t. He didn’t shake off Mom’s voice; he went into rebellion against it, but it was still ringing in his ears like the peal of thunder against a summer sky! His behavior was dictated by rage against Mom’s voice. You can’t shake off Mom’s voice!
Like it or hate it, for good or for ill, Mom’s voice is indelibly etched on our memories. The issue, then, is going to be twofold: first, in what kind of voices do Moms want to speak so that their sons and their daughters will hear positive, life-building messages? And second, since we do hear our mothers’ voices, all of us, what do we do with that, and, if it is negative and painful, is there good news for us?
I really have two sermons today. One is for mothers, and the other is for everybody who has had a mother. One sermon is for those whose voices we hear, and the other sermon is for those of us who cannot shake off Mom’s voice. And, guess what? Each audience gets the same sermon. Mothers and those who listen to mothers, both get the same message, but each from a different angle.
The substance for these messages comes from Paul’s second letter to the young man Timothy. It identifies the voices that Timothy was listening to:
II Timothy 1:1-7
I
The first message today is for mothers: What is it, exactly, that across the generations grandmother Lois and mother Eunice had said to Timothy? What had been in the voice that Timothy now was listening to? Had Lois and Eunice taught him good morals? Maybe, but that’s not what Paul says. Was it fine manners? Perhaps, but that’s not what this passage mentions. What did Lois and Eunice say to Timothy? In addition to the high moral standards and the fine manners and the common sense, and in addition to the messages about spending your money wisely and looking out for the wrong kind of girl and eating your spinach and always wearing clean underwear, the usual Mom messages .. beyond all of those messages, the thing that Lois and Eunice communicated to Timothy was faith. Faith. Trust, confidence in God, and hope.
In other words, Timothy’s Mom’s voice spoke not so much ideas as a relationship. Mom communicated something more subtle than ideas and more fundamental than rules. She communicated an atmosphere of faith. She expressed and embodied hope and confidence in God. What you ultimately want your child to hear is not just rules and regulations and habits and behaviors. What you want your child to hear, knowing that he cannot shake off Mom’s voice, is that wonderful assurance that God is truly in Mom’s life.
You see, we’ve been persuaded in our time that raising children takes a certain technique. We’ve been persuaded that there are certain correct methods, which, if we use them, will produce the kind of children we want. Some of us read and followed Dr. Spock. Others enrolled in PET, parent effectiveness training. Still others tried something called transactional analysis. My parents were devotees of a popular magazine writer named Angelo Patri. (Angelo Patri, sounds like a liturgical chant, doesn’t it? We receive the offering and sing the Angelo Patri.) I really don’t know now what this guy taught, but I do remember that suddenly Angelo Patri wrote an article in which he said that he had changed his mind about how to punish children. The guy said that he had decided that physical punishment was not appropriate and should be stopped. Well, by then I was about eleven years old; man, if you were going to change your mind, why didn’t you do it about five years earlier and save Joe a lot of grief?! My parents got all wound up about having to change their technique!
Well, techniques come and techniques go. Fads and fashions in parenting show up from time to time. And they have their uses. There are insights in all of them. But, as I read the Scriptures, the lasting message you want your child to hear is a message of faith. “The faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and then in your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” A faith that sticks around long after every lesson has been forgotten and every parenting technique has been consigned to the ash heap.
So that means, mothers, that the best thing you can do for your child is to cultivate your own relationship to God. The most lasting and most positive thing you can do for your child is to grow in your own faith. After all, you cannot give away what you do not have. You cannot share what you do not know, you cannot teach what you have never learned, and you cannot give what you do not have. I could write everybody in this congregation a check for a million dollars and could hand them out at the back door, but tomorrow when you took that thing to the bank it would bounce back faster than a rubber boomerang! It wouldn’t be real; it wouldn’t be authentic. Just so, you cannot share a faith you do not have. The best gift you can give your child is for you, yourself, to nurture a dynamic relationship with God. That child will see that and hear that. It will not just be teaching that son to read the Bible; he will sense that his mother knows the Lord of the Bible. It will not just be making that daughter go to Sunday School; she needs to feel the presence of the Lord in her mother’s life. And so when Mom speaks, it will be with the voice of faith. It will be a voice that has been cultured in the halls of heaven. You can’t shake Mom’s voice; therefore you can’t deny Mom’s faith.
That’s the sermon for the moms: speak with the voice of faith, not the voice of do’s and don’ts. And grow your own faith.
II
Now the sermon for those who have moms. Guess what. It’s much the same. It’s the other side of the coin. You and I cannot shake Mom’s voice, we say. We have been conditioned by the attitudes we got way back when. And that’s true. We can’t shake Mom’s voice.
But that does not mean that we can get where we need to go on the strength of Mom’s voice alone. Nor does it mean that we can do nothing about the negatives in Mom’s voice. Just because we can’t shake Mom’s voice, that does not mean, if Mom’s is a pleasant and faithful voice, that we’ve got it made. Nor does it mean, if Mom’s is a negative voice, that we are forever victimized and cannot go beyond it.
I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.
A
Faith must live in us. We must nurture our own faith. A faith that lived in our grandmothers and our mothers will die unless it is nurtured and brought to life in us. No one can have a proxy relationship with God. No one can do this for you. This you must do this for yourself.
I said a moment ago that no mother can give what she does not have. And that’s true. But it is also true that we cannot just get faith by hanging around faith. We cannot just adopt somebody else’s faith. It has to be our own. As somebody put it, “Just because a cat was born in the garage, that doesn’t make it a Cadillac.” And just because you were born in a Christian home, with a godly mother and a praying father, and just because you’ve been in church since they carried you in in your crib, that does not mean that you have a relationship with God. That’s something you have to have for yourself. Just because you can’t shake Mom’s voice, and Mom’s was a faithful and positive voice, remember that you have to come to the Lord on your own. Nobody else can do this for you. It’s your response, your choice. Faith must live in you.
B
But, on the other side of the coin, if Mom’s voice is not so good; if Mom’s voice is not faith-filled; if Mom’s voice is harsh and critical, caustic and unloving, then I have good news for you. I have hope for you. The good news is that there is the heavenly Father’s voice as well; the hope is that there is God’s voice that says, “I love you. You are my child.” You and I do not have to be victimized and held down forever if we cannot shake Mom’s tormenting voice. There is one who calls Himself Father, who loves us with an everlasting love. There is one whose redemptive love cuts through all the garbage messages and who loves us just as we are. There is a gracious Father, who, when we are afraid, assures us; when we have a tortured conscience, forgives us; when we struggle against our own failures, empowers us; when we face our own fears, encourages us. There is one whose love is constant; one whose voice is tender; one whose heart goes out to us. Hear Him. Listen to Him. Let this voice linger; let the Father’s voice override everything else.
My earliest memories of my mother go back to when I was about four years old. Every sound that goes through my mind from those years is a noise that told me I was not good enough. I can remember being made to sit on a bench at the local grocery store because of something I had done. I don’t know what it was, and probably I needed to be benched, but it’s not being benched that really sticks in my mind quite so much as my mother’s voice: harsh, snippish, accusing, impatient. I was not good enough. I was never good enough. When I got into elementary school, and was given the chore of stoking the old coal furnace and taking out the ashes, I wasn’t careful enough about the mess. When I became a teenager and was supposed to mow and trim the lawn, I wasn’t thorough enough about sweeping up the clippings. When I got to college and was paying my own tuition and buying my own books and supplies, I wasn’t saving enough money. When I announced I was going to seminary to enter the ministry, well, that’s when she played the trump card: I wasn’t a good enough Christian for that. And when I said I was going to get married, it was, “Humph. You’re not mature enough.” The message from my Mom that I cannot shake off is that I am not good enough.
Do you know that that victimizes me some? Do you see that that shapes a great deal of who I am? You all say that I work too hard, trying to get everything just right. If so, some of that is that nagging message that is still rattling around in my cranium, “You’re not good enough.” I am victimized by Mom’s voice, and cannot shake it. Ask my wife, who all too often, when she asks me to do something for her, endures my response, “I know it won’t be fast enough or good enough or whatever enough.” I’m still listening to that childhood voice. (If you want to get really analytical, factor in that my wife’s name, Margaret, is the same as my mother’s name, also Margaret. “Calling Dr. Freud, calling Dr. Freud”!)
But, praise God, there is the good news. There is good news for me and for you. For day by day, little by little, moment by moment, I hear the Father’s voice and come to know that He loves me and affirms me. I come to know the greatest of truths:
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
I can’t shake off Mom’s voice, telling me I am not what I ought to be. But I can listen intently to the Father’s voice, empowering me. God did not give us a spirit of cowardice.
I can’t shake off Mom’s voice, telling me I’m not good enough. But I can listen hungrily to the Father’s voice, loving me unconditionally. God did not give us a spirit of cowardice.
I can’t shake off Mom’s voice, snapping at me and telling me I ought to do better. But I can hear, way down deep in the secret places of the heart, the voice of the Father, offering me His spirit of confidence. God did not give us a spirit of cowardice.
I can’t shake off Mom’s voice altogether. It will always be with me. But this one thing I know and know not only in my mind, but in my soul; not only in my conscious thought but also in my heart of hearts:
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
The love of God is richer and broader, finer and deeper, than any other voice I can hear. God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn, but that we might have life. God did not give us a spirit of cowardice. God loves. God affirms. God builds. God gives life. God’s voice is the one I must hear. God’s voice, I cannot, I will not, shake off.
