I have a top 10 list of things that my mother taught me.
10. My mother taught me about the science of Osmosis.
Shut your mouth and eat your supper.
9. My mother taught me forsight.
Make sure that you wear clean underwear in case you are in an accident.
8. My mother taught me logic.
Because I said so, that’s why.
7. My mother taught me religion.
You better pray that comes out of the carpet.
6. My mother taught me to appreciate a job well done.
If you are going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.
5. My mother taught me about the weather.
This room looks like a tornado hit it.
4. My mother taught me about contortionism.
Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck?
3. My mother taught me humor.
When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.
2. My mother taught me behavior modification.
Stop acting like your father.
1. My mother taught me about justice.
One day you’ll have kids, and I hope that they turn out just like you.
By the time a child reaches 18, a mother has had to handle some extra 18,000 hours of child-generated work. In fact, women who never have children enjoy the equivalent of an extra three months a year.
A Junior High science teacher lectured on the properties of magnets for an entire class. The next day he gave his students a quiz. The first question read like this: “My name begins with an “M,” has six letters, and I pick things up. What am I?” Half the kids in the class wrote, “Mother.”
Mothers are teachers. Mothers are disciplinarians. Mothers are cleaning ladies. Some mothers are gardeners & mowers of lawns. And most mothers understand that baking cookies is more important than washing windows.
Mothers are nurses & doctors & psychologists & counselors & chauffeurs & coaches. Mothers are developers of personalities, molders of vocabularies, & shapers of attitudes. Mothers are soft voices saying, "I love you." And mothers are a link to God, a child’s first impression of God’s love.
[abrupt transition]
One of the things that gives me great pain is the amount of animosity that I sometimes sense between the Disciples Of Christ and the Independent Christian Churches. It saddens me that we who share so much of our heritage find it so difficult to learn from one another. As a Disciple, I admire their concern for sharing the good news and their willingness to engage with the culture. As a Disciple, the thing that I would most want to teach them is an appreciation for the role of women as leaders in the church and for the female images of God that we find in Scripture.
“Did you say the female images of God in Scripture? I thought the Bible was written in a male dominated culture and only used male images.”
It is almost as if we have been conditioned not to see the female imagery for God in Scripture. It is more common than you might expect, even in some very familiar passages. Let’s try a test. Besides the passage from Isaiah that I read this morning, I want each of you to stop and think of at least one passage where God is represented in a female role. Go ahead.
[pause] Did one spring to mind?
Dr. Margo Houts of Calvin College has compiled a rather extensive list of these references and I am very indebted to her work.
Here is one that you’ll remember. In Luke 15, God is compared to a woman who has lost a precious coin and is searching her house to find it. That parable is parallel to the masculine image of a good shepherd which appears with it. Leaving his 99 sheep, he seeks one that was lost. We don’t hesitate to think of God as the good shepherd, but we rarely think of God as the searching woman.
In Luke 13, there is another of these male female pairs. This time it has to do with faith. The male image is of a man planting a mustard seed and having it grow into a large bush. The companion female image is of a woman who is baking and places yeast in her bread to make it rise. We talk about faith of a mustard seed, but not the faith of yeast.
Other images based on traditionally female activities include God acting as a seamstress making new clothes for Israel. That’s in Nehemiah 9. God is frequently represented as a midwife attending to a new birth. See Psalm 22, Psalm 71, or Isaiah 66.
There are a number of comparisons of God to birds, especially to female birds. God is compared to a mother hen. Jesus does this in Matthew 23 when he says “How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”
It is not uncommon for us to see the eagle as an image of God. Linda and I will be rushing off after service today so that we can attend our daughter’s graduation from Asbury College. Their mascot is the eagle, chosen because it is an image of God. What we often don’t consider is that the eagle in that image is female. It is the mother eagle who bears the young eaglets and teaches them to fly. In this passage from Deuteronomy 32 God is like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. Or this passage from Exodus 19 - You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.
Isn’t it odd that God is represented as both an eagle and a hen. Those two seem so different. The eagle is associated with light and sunshine. It is majestic, and mobile, and soaring. It is adventure and courage. The hen is associated with the dark of the hen house -- a protecting mother in a quiet refuge from a hostile world. Mothers understand that those are two sides of the same coin. Sometimes mothers are providing support and encouragement for their children as they embark on great adventures. Sometimes those same children have been bruised by the world, and need to find a quiet place where they can be comforted. God cares for us in those two ways as well.
And while we are in the animal kingdom, Hosea compares God to a mother bear who is fierce in her desire to protect her young. The image of God as a mother bear robbed of her cubs may be a feminine image, but it is anything but passive.
In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, and Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, the phrase that we translate as Holy Spirit is grammatically feminine. While one should not draw too much from this grammatical happenstance, that may be why the Holy Spirit often is associated with feminine images. The Holy Spirit is comforting, consoling, groaning in child birth, warm, and inspiring.
I have left for last the images of God as a human mother. God is a women in labor in Isaiah 42. God is a mother suckling her children as in Numbers 11. God is a mother who can not forget her children in Isaiah 49. God carries Israel in the womb in Isaiah 46. God is a mother who comforts her children as in the passage we read from Isaiah 66. And there are more.
We do a disservice to the nature of who God is when we focus on a few selected aspects of God’s character and ignore the others. We need to present the entire Biblical image of who God is. For too much of our history, we neglected the female images. That was wrong. So where do we go from here?
There has been a strong push in recent years to use gender neutral language when referring to God. To a point, I agree with that. When we talk about God as God or God as creator, there is no reason to associate a gender.
Still, I think that we have, at times, gone too far. I don’t want to pray “Our Parent who is in heaven” when the Greek really does say “Our Father.” And while I think it is a good idea to include songs with female images in our hymnal, or even to add verses with female images to existing songs, I object to the extent to which we have changed the words to familiar hymns in order to make them conform to modern sensibilities of political correctness. And there are those who would have us go farther. I have actually had a Disciples minister suggest to me that we should never use hymns written in 4/4 time because, no matter what the words say, such hymns are marches which are inherently militaristic and masculine.
The problem is not that we need to do away with masculine images. The problem is that we need to provide as full a representation of God as we possibly can. God is infinite, and as such is far beyond our ability to fully comprehend. God is neither male nor female, but we are all created in God’s image. The best that we can do is to describe aspects of God’s character is a way that communicates to our world.
The aspect that we are talking about today is that of a mother. I’m aware that Mother’s Day is a difficult time for some here.
Maybe you want to be a mother but you can’t be for some reason. Perhaps some of you have not had the best mother in the world so the image is not positive. Many of you have had a mother who has died Some mothers have lost a child to death
Some mothers feel the pain of a wayward child this morning. You are wondering what that child is doing and if they are safe. And, some of you are flying solo as you work hard to nurture your child’s faith Mother’s day may be tinged with some resentment toward an absent father.
We can do nothing but use earthly images to describe the character of God, but whenever we do we run a risk. Our earthly images always fall short of who God is. Today when we talk of God as mother, we are talking about motherhood at its best, better than we have ever experienced.
It is from our mothers that we learn the meaning of unconditional love. She may be disappointed, even angry, but her love doesn’t end.
She would give or do anything for her children. That doesn’t mean that she is a soft touch, she can be tough, but she acts with our best interest in mind.
She encourages us to greater independence. She want her children to take risks and try new things. Often, because of her support, we do more than we think we can. On those occasions when we try and fail, she kisses the boo-boo, dries our tears, and sends us out to try again.
In short, the Gospel of God’s love for us is seen in the acts of a loving mother.
Four scholars were arguing over Bible translations. One said he preferred the King James Version because of its beauty and eloquent old English. Another said he liked the New American Standard Version for its literalism and how it moves the reader from passage to passage with confident feelings of accuracy from the original text. The third scholar was sold on the New Living Translation for its use of contemporary phrases and idioms that capture the meaning of difficult ideas. After being quiet for a moment, the fourth scholar admitted: “I have personally preferred my mother’s translation.” When the other scholars started laughing, he said, “Yes, she translated the Scriptures. My mom translated each page of the Bible into life. It is the most convincing translation I have ever read.”
Mothers, thank you for being the incarnation of the gospel in our lives.
I want to close this morning by reading a poem entitled, “My Mother.”
Your love, I know—I’ve seen your tears;
You’ve given to me my life.
You’ve walked through hours and days and years of heartache, toil and strife.
To see that I could have the best that you could give to me,
You gave up needs and often rest—
You viewed eternity.
To do His will my highest call and by your special care I stood and walked and did not fall.
You held me up in prayer.
Though strands of gray may brush your hair, and miles divide our way.
I know that by your quiet prayer you’ve helped me day by day.
You’ve shown me how to give, to share to put my own needs last.
You’ve helped me see and be aware that life is so soon past.
To spite your love I would not dare, for there’s not another who spreads her gentle love and care like you—My Loving Mother.
