What Would Your Mother Say?

sermon preached by the Rev. Sue Judson Hamly at Faith United Church, UCC, International Falls, MN

Text: 1 John 4:7-21

Just in time for Mother’s Day, I received an e-mail yesterday with a list of questions about mothers. The answers were provided by second grade school children and there are 2 or 3 for each question. I think you’ll enjoy them:

Why did God make mothers?
1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.

How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
3. God made my mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.

What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use string, I think.

Why did God give you your mother and not some other mom?
1. We're related.
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's moms like me.

What kind of a little girl was your mom?
1. My mom has always been my mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.

What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
3. Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?

Why did your mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my mom eats a lot.
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that mom didn't have her thinking cap on.

Who's the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.

What's the difference between moms and dads?
1. Moms work at work and work at home and dads just go to work at work.
2. Dads are taller and stronger, but moms have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend’s.
4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.

What does your mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don't do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your mom perfect?
1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.
2. I'd make my mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head.

As funny as those answers are, the kids also shared some truths about moms and some of the things most mothers probably say at some time in their kids’ lives. I read the text again and thought, a lot of what’s in our reading from the first letter of John is stuff that could also come out of the mouths of most mothers. How many of us ever heard our mother say…

“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside, I just finished cleaning!” or…
“Because I said so, that’s why.” or…
“Make sure you wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident.” or…
“It looks as if a tornado swept through your room,” or…
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times,” or…
“Stop acting like your Father!”[1]

Well, we laugh, but it is a somewhat nervous laughter, because it does reflect some of the ambivalence we might feel about mothers and our relationships with them. If we’re lucky, we have felt the love that is behind comments like these, and we’ve been blessed with wonderful mothers; but I also know people whose relationships with their mothers are less than ideal and sometimes even destructive, and it’s important to acknowledge that.

No one is perfect—not even the best mothers. In fact, one mother wrote a “telegram to God” because she was finding motherhood to be what it really is—one of the most difficult and demanding jobs there can be. She wrote, “I’m tired of being a mother. I’m confused and worn out. I’m doing a terrible job, and I don’t know where to go from here. I’ve had it. This dynamo of untamed life you call a child is too much for me. Take it back, and let me do something simple for you—like paying off the national debt, or running Congress, or achieving world peace!”[2]

When things are going well, though, mothers can be one of the best teachers of LOVE. There’s an expression that mothers love you even when no one else does. It’s sort of like the saying, “home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” Along the same lines, I think, mothers tell their kids that they have to love their brothers and sisters. “You may not like them very much right now, but they are your brothers and sisters, so you have to love them” or words to that effect.

And that is good advice. But people aren’t always all that great at following good advice.

Love is the best thing in the world, yet it can be one of the most difficult things to do, especially when someone else has a different opinion than we do. Obviously, the author of this letter knew well the problems of early Christian communities such as the Johannine community. One scholar says, “The debilitating effects of doctrinal disputes are well known, and doubtless the Johannine community had been seared by such disputes. If modern examples of such disputes are any indication of the dynamics at work within the community, we can surmise that members had taken sides, positions had become polarized, and heated debates had characteristically degenerated into … verbal assaults.”[3]

I don’t think it sounds much different from life in the typical American family with more than one child. And most mothers teach that family is important and you have to love your sisters and brothers anyway.

When they are at their best, mothers instill love and teach by example. As Christians, we are infused with God’s love if we are open to God—then God lives in us and we live in God.

It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. If we put God first, we will love all our brothers and sisters, because God is love and we live and love in God.

Jesus once said that anything we do—or don’t do—to one another, we do to him. This first letter of John is similar. It says “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

How many mothers have said something like, “When you’re mean to your sister, you’re hurting me”?

The First Letter of John goes on to say, “The commandment we have from [God] is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” And of course our brothers and sisters are ALL the people because we are all God’s children.

What would your mother say? AMEN.


Endnotes
[1] From a sermon preached by the Rev. Rich Smith at Westmoreland UCC, Bethesda, MD, on May 8, 2005. http://www.westmorelanducc.org/sermons/2005-1-6/05-08-05.html
[2] ibid.
[3] Preaching Through the Christian Year B, Craddock, Hays, Holladay & Tucker, p. 258.