Sermon Cloud

This is my first Mother’s Day with you, since I became your pastor. So I feel a little explaining may be helpful to you. At least I have a need to be perfectly honest about how difficult it is for me to preach what might be traditionally expected as a gushy Mother’s Day sermon.

Let me explain a couple of things. It would be naive of me to assume that all of you had wonderful, super-loving mothers and that I should simply be profuse in my praises of all mothers. As a pastor, I have come to learn that many people in the congregation had very difficult childhoods, and very difficult relationships with their mothers. Very many have a kind of love-hate relationship with their moms. Therefore, for me to stand up here and for 17 minutes go on and on about how great motherhood is, and how wonderful all mothers are, would be both insensitive and inaccurate. There are several women in this audience today, whom I know closely, whose experience with their mothers was at the very least disappointing, and in truth is more accurately portrayed as unkind or even spiteful, which many of us cannot even imagine, but is a harsh reality.

I am also aware of the many women in the congregation who never had children. Some by their own decision chose not to have children, but to give their lives in other means. Some women were unable to have children, and Mother’s Day has always reminded them of the great emptiness of their lives.

And finally, for all the young women in their child-bearing years who are still trying to get pregnant, still longing to hold a child of their own in their arms, or who have lost children to miscarriage and stillbirth, the topic of how wonderful motherhood is, may be for them practically unbearable. And since I am the compassionate pastor of all the congregation, I must be sensitive to all of you, and not take a Sunday to just speak to those of you who were blessed enough to have good mothers, or who were blessed enough to be able to have children and grandchildren.

One last comment: I did have a wonderful mother, one who by most measures was a saint, and one who was the most loving most gracious woman I have ever known. I loved my mother greatly. In 1989, she was broadsided in a car accident, and she was killed instantly. This has made each Mother’s Day a bit painful for me, as I still miss her greatly and feel as though in some ways she was taken away from me, too soon. She was only 63.

Now, all of us are, who we are today because of our mothers in some significant way, both positively and negatively. I pray that the majority of you had a positive, loving and nurturing relationship with your mother. But even those of you who had difficult moms, are who you are today because of them and how they lived and acted toward you.

My own dear, sweet mother, did not get along with her own mother. In fact, she could not stand her. She once told me that she vowed when she left home, that she would do everything oppositely from her mother, when she became a mother. My grandmother was loud, obnoxious and imposing. She was oblivious to other people’s feelings, and she drank too much. So to make my point, even bad mothers have a way of molding their children, either by copying their mother’s bad habits, or by vowing to live differently.

Mothers therefore have a profound and important role in the lives of their children and to those of you who are mothers or grandmothers or great-grandmothers, you have a great responsibility toward the children in your life.

Ideally, you who are mothers are deeply faithful, highly committed followers of Jesus Christ. I pray that all of you strive to emulate the love of God which we see in Jesus, and that your love for your children and grandchildren is as unconditional as God’s love. Your task, because you are the ones with the greatest influence on your children’s lives; your task is to show them complete love, complete acceptance, complete affirmation, and gentle but firm correction. In the most ideal of settings, mothers model for their children what perfect love feels like.

Sadly, many mothers are merely human, and fall short of this ideal. Okay all mothers are human, but most at least strive to love their children fully. But even the best mothers fall short from time to time and so their lives have to be an approximation of God’s love. But the more we love our children completely, the more we reflect the love of God, and the easier we make it for our children to believe that God can love them completely and sincerely.

I would like to be able to say that mothers are God’s gift to the children of the world, and most are. Our place is not to judge our mothers, or to judge the job that other mothers are doing. Our place is to be the best mom we can be, because in the end, no one has a greater influence on children than mothers. This blessing of influence also carries with it a huge spiritual responsibility.

As you all know, my dad is a retired pastor. He inspires me and his ministry served as a significant model for the way I do ministry today. However, it was my mom, whose love, caring, time, conversation, nightly prayer time with me, and whose faith most molded my own spiritual journey. It was my mom who laid the foundation of faith in my life. It was my mom who would discuss life with me theologically. It was my mom who explained how God works, and why we should live and act in certain ways in order to please God and serve others. I may pastor like my dad, and even preach like my dad, but it was my mom who shaped my personal faith in Jesus Christ.

I love the passage that was read from 2nd Timothy. Paul is encouraging his young protégé to hang in there and keep the faith. Paul is telling him how proud he is of who he is and how faithful he is serving, and he shares that his faith is part of a heritage handed down from his grandmother and his mother and now has come down to him. Paul wrote in verse 5: 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.

Mothers and fathers both have responsibility for passing on their faith to their children. It is not solely the mother’s job. In fact, in households where the father has no faith, or never talks about his faith, or never comes to church with the family, undermines significantly the faith of his children, especially his sons. He gives the impression to both his sons and his daughters that faith is for women and not for men.

Mothers have great influence on their kids in some areas, and fathers have great influence in others. It is best when the influence of both parents together reinforce a love of God, and a commitment to Christian faith and practice.

Today, in most mainline Christian churches, we also celebrate a day called The Festival of the Christian Home. This is the day when we lift up the power and the importance of Christian households and lift them up as the brightest hope for transforming the world. Mothers and fathers together, have the power within their hands to determine if their children will have faith in God, or only a set of Christian practices. Santa Clause and Easter bunnies do not keep children safe or out of trouble, or give them a resource for the dangerous times of their lives. Only a faith in a living and present Jesus, born at Christmas, crucified on Good Friday, and raised on Easter for their sakes, will save our children.

When a mother loves her children unconditionally, her children learn about the unconditional love of God much more quickly because they’ve experienced it. When a mother does not love her children as God does, then her children grow up questioning and doubting whether God could love them fully either. This is a huge responsibility and a huge privilege.

Mothers have been given a unique and special place in the lives of their children. That special place was given to them by God, for the purposes of positively shaping and influencing her children. You who are mothers have this rare and critical privilege of being the greatest influence of all over your children. I pray that you will use it rightly, and in a godly manner, so that you will be to them a guide, a mentor, a teacher and model, and that you will lead them into a faith in our Savior Jesus Christ.

IF you choose to be this kind of loving, nurturing, faith-fostering mother, your children will thank you and love you, and appreciate you for the rest of their lives. IF, however, you choose to squander this high privilege, and live a life before your children that disheartens them, discourages them, and leaves them to their own devices; you are likely to pay a very high price in the end, both in the failure of your children to love you back, and in the disappointment you will be when you come before God, and you see him face to face.

Mothers who love God, and nurture their children are indeed worthy of our praise and thanksgiving. Mothers who love God and pass on their faith to their children are worthy of all the highest accolades a woman can receive. Mothers who love God and lead their children to Jesus are worthy of so much more than flowers or a card, or dinner at a restaurant. Mothers who love God and who nurture the faith of their children, are worthy to hear, “Well done, you good and faithful mother. Come into the joy of your heavenly Father, which has been prepared for you from the beginning.” That’s what I wish for all of us, no matter what our parental status may be. Amen.