SERMON FOR-MOTHERS DAY
SCRIPTURE READING: Deuteronomy 5: 16
GOSPEL READING: Matthew 15: 21 - 2 8
"Should Mothers Be Honored?"
Deuteronomy 5:16
16 "Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Today is Mothers Day. It’s a special day that was set aside in 1914 by presidential decree to pay homage to our mothers. But should mothers be honored? Of course the fifth commandment tells us that we should, but what have mothers done that is so special that we should have a national day of honor for them?
When I studied philosophy and logic at the University of Puget sound I learned that before entering a study or examination of any subject you should first define, your terms. I have always felt that a good rule to follow; therefore, before we discuss whether or not mothers are worthy of honor, we must define what is a mother.
Some will tell you that any female that gives birth to child is a mother. Is that true? The Holman Bible Dictionary defines a mother as: a female parent who carries, gives birth to, and cares for a child. Please note that it says, "and cares for." I have my own definition that is based on what I have seen. My definition is "A mother is that female that gives birth to, cares for, loves, and teaches good moral concepts to a Child. She also sets aside her own desires for the benefit of that child."
Many women have given birth to children only to immediately push the child to the side as something that gets in the way of their doing their own thing. Those women do not live up to the definition. They are not mothers.
True mothers on the other hand are the women who give birth to a child and provide a home, food, love, and moral example. They are there for the child in times of sickness, loneliness, trouble at school or with friends, and during good times too. They laugh with their children and they cry with their children. There are also those women who did not give birth to the child, but nonetheless provided all of these things. I think we could all easily name a few of those women. They might be grandmothers, aunts or even strangers who adopt.
Now let’s take a look at some things the mothers we know about have done.
I’m going, to start with my own mother because I have personal knowledge about her. My memory goes back a long way. I remember momma in the 1930’s sitting late at night after the rest of the family had gone to bed., She had a basket full of her family’s worn socks in her lap. She had a tool called a darning ball, and she had special needles called darning needles. She would put the darning ball inside a sock at the place where the hole was. Then she used the darning needles and thread that matched the material in the sock to weave a patch over the hole. When she finished you had a hard time telling there had been a hole there.
I remember laundry days. Momma would put pails of water on the wood burning kitchen stove. When the water was, hot she poured it into big round mettle tubs on a bench. Then she stood a scrub board -this was a piece of corrugated metal mounted in a wood frame-she stood the scrub board in the tub, took a piece of dirty laundry in one hand and a bar of lye soap in the other, dipped the laundry in the hot water, rubbed it with the soap, and then scrubbed it up and down on the scrub board until it was clean. After that the laundry was dipped up and down in the other tub of water to rinse it. When all that was finished she took it outside and hung it on the clothes lines. Those were rope strung between two poles. The laundry hung there until it was air dried.
This was an all day job, except for time outs to fix meals for her family. And the next day would be ironing day -another all day project when the irons were heated on the stove.
I think it was around the time I was five years old that life got easier for momma. She got a washing machine.
Laundry was a two day a week project; darning socks was an every night job, and then there was all the other things that had to be done like house cleaning, caring for the garden in the summer, and helping her children with school work. Truth is, I have very few memories of my mother enjoying some leisure time until the late 1940s.
I think my mother did more than enough to have a special day in her honor. And I’m sure that most of you can say the same about your mothers.
What about other mothers? The bible is full of stories about mothers and the great deeds that God did through them.
Let’s start with the first. Her Hebrew name was Chavvah (We say Eve) which means "Life giver." Eve, after she and Adam were driven from Eden, bore Cain and Able, and had to suffer the agony of having one son murder the other. She later bore other sons who became great nations. We always remember Eve as the one who first gave in to the devil’s temptings, but perhaps she should be honored as the mother of the human race.
Let’s also remember Abraham’s wife Sarah who bore a son at the age of ninety. His name was Isaac. Isaac married Rebecca who became the mother of Joseph who took his father’s family into Egypt. I think Sarah should be honored.
The woman Jochebed was among the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt. She gave birth to a son at the time when Pharaoh ordered that all male Hebrew children were to be killed upon birth, Jochebed, at the risk of her own life hid her son, and eventually put him afloat on the Nile in a basket. The baby was found by Pharaoh’s daughter who adopted him and named him Moses. If Jochebed had not risked her life to save her son, Moses would never have grown to become a great man of God through whom we received the Ten Commandments. I think we agree: Jochebed should be honored for being brave enough and smart enough to save the life of her son Moses. Should we honor the mother of Moses?
Our Gospel reading this morning tells about a Canaanite woman who refused to give up when at first Jesus rebuffed her. Dispite all of His seeming put downs, she persisted until Jesus, in response to her great faith, granted her request and healed her daughter. Can we agree that Canaanite woman is worthy of honor?
Mary was probably betrothed to Joseph when she was still a teenager. Becoming pregnant out of wedlock by somebody other than her betrothed put her in danger of being stoned to death. Even so, she submitted to the will of the Lord, and gave birth to the savior of the world. She nursed Him, nurtured Him, watched Him grow into manhood, saw the beginnings of His mission, and was there at the foot of the cross when her darling child was crucified.
Should we honor our mothers?
I found a story that I think tells us something about true mothers. The story, told by retired sheriff Mike Cook, Coos County, Oregon, comes from an article he read. He doesn’t say where he read it.
Sheriff Cook says, "I just read about a cougar attack in Canada where a young mother was out with three of her children on horseback when they were set upon by a cougar. They were on their way to join her husband and oldest child for a week-long camp out. Now remember, in Canada you can’t carry a firearm unless you have a permit to hunt with it, and handguns are a real no-no, so they were unarmed. Seems this big cat jumped not once but twice at her seven year old son’s horse in an attempt to drag the rider off. Well the boy fell and the cat jumped on him and bit down on his head. That’s when his mother did a very heroic thing. She grabbed a big stick and attacked that cat, the animal released her child. While she did battle with the cat she yelled at her two other children to get their brother and run for safety, as the horses had all taken off, and they were left afoot.
The children grabbed the brother and ran to the vehicle they had left about one mile away. They then went to a nearby camp for help and happened to get a man who had a shotgun who went to help the mother. When he got there she was still fighting with the big cat and he fired a shot into the ground to scare the cat. It worked but the cat turned on him. The shotgun had jammed, so he retreated, attempting to clear it, which he finally did just as the cat charged. He fired and hit the cat. It then ran off and was later tracked and found dead.
He then ran to the young mother’s side. She was still alive and asked him, ’Are my children safe?’ He told her they were and then she said, ’I will die now,’ and she did." Should we honor mothers?
As I look around this room, I see you mothers, and I know you. Some I have known longer than others, and some that I know are not able to be with us today. I know about your heartache when your child died. I know about your pain when something went wrong in your beloved child’s development. And I know about the horror of seeing you child inflicted with a terrible and incurable disease. I know your anguish and worry that your child has not received the Lord. I also know how you have kept on going with life even when it sometimes just didn’t seem worth it all. I know about your faith.
You mothers are the silent heroines in our midst. God knows you and loves you. We also know you and love you, and we are ready to answer the question.
Should mothers be honored? The mothers we know certainly should, and so we do honor you.
Do we all agree?
God Bless you mothers on this, your special day.
