Where’s Mom
Luke 15:11-32
Today we are here to worship the Lord but we are also celebrating Mother’s. Today is their day. Cards have been sent or given and dinners will be prepared and eaten in honor of those women who hold a special place in many hearts.
As children we don’t really see the significance of our mother’s until either we are out on our own, raising our own children or still remembering our mother’s words in retrospect. It is then that we begin to sound like them.
“Don’t run with that (fill in the blank). You could trip and put your eye out.” “If you keep making that face it’ll stick.” “Don’t run in the house.” “Your going to wear that?” “Your not going to wear that!” “You can’t go into the pool yet. You have to wait an hour after you eat. . . because you’ll get cramps that’s why.” “Yes, we’re almost there.” “Don’t chew with your mouth open.” “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” “No you can’t have that (fill in the blank), it’ll spoil your dinner.” “I don’t care what so and so’s mother said. Your not going.” “Don’t put that in your mouth. You don’t know where it’s been.” “Because those vegetables are good for you.” “If everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn bridge would you?”
Mothers make us civilized. We are born with a wild natural will. We’re inclined to sling the dog around by it’s tail, fry ants under a magnifying glass, play with dirty insects, self inspect our diapers. Not long after we arrive, we insist on running willy-nilly stick in hand, lollipop in mouth, into the street, toward the open flame, and those ratty goats at the petting zoo.
It’s no wonder we think of mothers as saints. Loving us when no one else could or would, hugging us when we were sad, and cautioning us against that tempting gum under the restaurant table top. Where would we be without them?
Some of us most certainly would not be where we are today at this very moment without our mothers.
We all have heard the parable about the prodigal son a number of times before. We have heard about the father and the other brother. But there is someone missing. Where’s Mom?
That is what I want us to focus on today as we read the story of the Prodigal. Where was mom? She was probably where most mother’s are beside her husband taking care of her family in the midst of crisis.
She may not have agreed with her husbands decision to allow her baby to leave home before she thought he was ready.
She knew what trouble lay ahead for him. Yet she stood silently by and allowed him to go. It isn’t until later that we find out what she was really thinking.
She writes in her journal: “Where’s my son?” She begins to think how disorienting it is that one of her children has left the world that she and her husband had raised them in. The world of faith. Here begins an unexpected and painful season for her.
She remembers the thirty six hours of labor she went through to bring this child into the world. Nothing could have prepared her for the pain of childbirth. Nothing will prepare her for the pain and grief her son will bring her on his journey. It will shake up her well ordered, and biblically packaged existence.
Was she aware of the early warning signs. Mother’s know when your out with your friends smoking a few blunts, snorting a few lines and drinking a few beers. They lie awake until you stagger in from your ever increasing late nights. They think back on your childhood and try to see the little boy or girl in the person they see now.
Like this mother, my own mother spent many nights laying in her bed wondering what her children were doing. She knew with each one of her children that we were not where we should be. Each one of her children walked away from the faith that they knew to go into the far country.
Before my mother went home to be with the Lord she took comfort in knowing that each of her children knew the Lord.
Like my mother this mother probably remembered when her son would ask questions about faith and tell her he was afraid to die. She probably along with her husband explained that we need not fear death because of the relationship we can have with God. She remembers how her son and husband knelt down and prayed. How he was deepening his relationship with the Lord by studying the Torah.
But it was in this young man’s teen years that he began to drift away from the faith. She probably began to wonder like so many mothers wonder, “what went wrong? What had I done to turn my child against me?”
Mother’s today like the prodigals mom can find comfort in Isaiah 1:2-3 (Read verses).
If God can and does experience this kind of heartache then the wanderings of your sons and daughters aren’t necessarily due to your failures.
The unseen mothers disorientation became spiritual resolve. She resolved to do battle for her son’s soul. She was going to wage a campaign against the Devil to rescue her son. She would go into his room and pray for him. However she was unprepared for the emotional disorientation that would happen. It was here that once again Isaiah spoke to her (Read Isaiah 62:1).
Fatigue sets in quickly when all out war takes place. A fact this mother would soon learn. This mother became discouraged like many of you when no visible signs of results in your spiritual battle were or are taking place.
Maybe you’ve felt like Psalm 73 (Read Psalm). Your so discouraged that you lie awake at night and pray for your children. When you do fall asleep and wake once again you are not rested. You hear the Devil whisper in your ear, “It doesn’t do any good. Why don’t you just stay in bed and sleep in and be rested.”
It is at times like these when you feel hostility and rejection and your “intimate relationship” begins to suffer, probably like this mothers relationship did with God.
Find comfort the way Augustine’s mother did. Her name was Monnica. Augustine wrote in his confessions about the prayers his mother lifted up on his behalf,
“Thou sentest thine hand from above,
drewest my soul out of that profound darkness,
(as) my mother, thy faithful one,
weeping to thee for me. . .
discerned the death wherein I lay.
And thou heardest her, O Lord;
Thou heardest her and despised
not her tears when, streaming down,
they watered the ground
under her eyes in every place
where she prayed; Yea, thou
heardest her.
The Lord sent Monnica a dream showing her a shining youth coming toward her, cheerful and smiling upon her. This was interpreted to mean that where Monnica was Augustine would be. However it was not until Augustine was 32 years old that he stood where his mother stood in the Lord. It was many years after her vision.
Some of you have not been comforted by dreams and visions about your children and we can safely surmise the prodigals mother had no such comfort either. Maybe hearing about a fellow prodigals mother and her story will help you sleep tonight. “Thou heardest her, O Lord.”
I want to close with this. A friend of Ruth Graham’s once told her: “You have the right to ask the Mighty One to do more for your children than he could if you were with them. Open your mouth wide.” You must decide to stop focusing on your children’s choices and start focusing on God’s trustworthiness.
When this parable was read today you focused on the father and the two sons. Approach it as a struggling mother looking for some help. Where is Mom?
Her absence makes perfect sense. Prodigals, by definition, assert their autonomy in a way that most dramatically severs the intimate parental bonds. And in many cases, that intimacy goes back to the heart of their mothers. That severing leave mothers without a role. So they retreat, emotionally disoriented, physically fatigued, spiritually embattled. (Father’s probably do too, but that’s another message.)
You must realize that the role of a tormented mother needs to give way to that of a trusting daughter waiting on God in faith. That doesn’t mean that you stop praying and weeping for your children.
The mother is not a player in this parable because she is probably where many of you have been throughout the stages of your journey with a prodigal: behind a closed door, looking out a window, waiting for her son to come home.
Earlier I told you that my mother like this mother had her child return to his faith. Today some mothers may not be able to say this is true for them.
Today God wants you to put your faith in Him and become that trusting daughter.
