Sermon - Mother's Day

1. My mother taught me to APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me about RELIGION.
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

4. My mother taught me about LOGIC.
"Because I said so, that's why."

6. My mother taught me about IRONY.
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

7. My mother taught me about STAMINA.
"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

9. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
"If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

10. My mother taught me about the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

11. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
"Stop acting like your father!"

15. My mother taught me about MEDICAL SCIENCE.
"If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to freeze that way."

17. My mother taught me about HUMOR.
"When that lawnmower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

19. My mother taught me about GENETICS.
"You're just like your father."

20. My mother taught me about WISDOM.
"When you get to be my age, you'll understand.

22. My mother taught me about FEAR.
"One day you'll have a child who'll do the same things to you."

            Happy Mother’s Day.  Today, we look at mothers in the Bible.  Our scriptures are filled with stories of people, of people learning what it means to trust God, to follow God, and to be God’s people.  We learn from these stories and are able to find ways to grow in our own faith through them.  These mothers that we are not biologically related to, these mothers that we will know really know, these mothers that sometimes don’t even have names, these mothers that had their own flaws such as jealousy, favoritism, distrust, and lack of faith.  And yet, and yet within their flaws God continued to work and bring forth God’s plan into the world.  And as we read these stories we can also see how even in disbelief and lack of trust, there are moments of strong faith, and an openness to being a part of God’s story. 

            I’ve always loved the story of the little boy Samuel, but before the little boy Samuel is born, his mother, Hannah, struggled with not being able to have children.  She prayed and prayed to God that she would be able to conceive.  Just as Hannah was barren, so were the people of Israel.  They were living in a time where people were not following the ways of God.  Even the priest Eli could not seem to raise God loving children.  Hannah came to the temple and prayed.  She brought her grief, her feelings of loss, her pain and prayed before God.  She brought her hopes and desires and prayed before God.  She models the ways in which we can be vulnerable before God, ways in which we can name both our human desires and our sacred hopes and she prays.  And then she makes a deal with God. If you give me a child, I will dedicate this child to you.  I will allow him to be raised for your purposes. 

People of faith do desire that their children will also grow up as people of faith, but to actually dedicate your child to God’s service seems a little extravagant.  But that is what Hannah does, after Samuel is born and is old enough, she brings him to Eli the priest to be raised in the temple for God’s service.  And Samuel becomes the first prophet that will serve alongside the first King of Israel.  Out of barrenness comes a new beginning, a new direction for the people of Israel.  They will finally have a king to unite them and to lead them and to form then into a nation and Samuel will be the prophet to keep the people holy, to remind them to worship the one true God and to leave the idols of the other cultures behind.  Out of Hannah’s faith, and her commitment to God, comes forth a spiritual leader that continues God’s work in the formation of God’s people. 

Can faith be passed down from generation to generation?  As a society that stresses independence and self-empowerment, we do seem to emphasize that we each come to faith on our own.  But, we don’t live in bubbles keeping our lives separate from each other, so as we engage relationships we learn from each other and our life choices are influenced by others.  As Paul begins his letter to Timothy, he lifts this up.  He names that the faith of Timothy has been influenced and nurtured through the faith of both his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.  And so, Paul is celebrating that faith has come to Timothy through the faith of his family. 

And so as Timothy is struggling with his own faith, Paul is encouraging him to have strength, to reach back not within himself, but to reach back to the faith of his mother and grandmother.  Who are the people in our own lives that help to anchor us in our own faith?  It could be a grandmother, or mother, or Sunday school teacher, or good friend.  It could be a grandfather or father or a pastor.  But it seems we all need, at times, to lean into the faith of someone else.  I had a friend in seminary share with me – we are surrounded here in this place by absolutely brilliant people, and if they believe in God and have dedicated their lives to studying the Bible, that keeps me strong in times of doubt.  The priesthood of believers, the great cloud of saints, the body of Christ, we, just as Timothy did, can be nurtured and raised in the faith and made strong through the faith of others. 

I found this interpretation of the 2 Timothy passage:  “Fan into flame the gift of God that is in you,” wrote Saint Paul to his beloved co-worker, Timothy. In each of us God has placed a gift. But, like coals burning under the ashes, sometimes God’s gift remains hidden. The challenge is to reveal it.

By praying, we can begin to discern the gift God has placed in us. In the silence of our heart, we discover that all God asks us is to welcome the gift of his love.

But it is also true that others can awaken the gift of God in us. When we look at ourselves, it can happen that we only see what we lack. That leads to discouragement. When someone looks at us with trust, it can transform us. That is how Timothy discovered his vocation. He was young (1 Tim 4:12) and rather timid (2 Tim 1:8) when he began to work with Paul. In spite of that, because of Paul’s trust in him, Timothy was able to go further than he could imagine. He went so far that he became a real support for Paul when he was in prison (2 Tim 1:4-5).

God himself is the one who awakens God’s gift in us. God believes in our humanity. He trusts us for what we are. God himself has given us “a spirit of strength, love and self-control” (2 Tim 1:7). 

But each gift involves a call. Now Timothy is called to give his life for the Gospel. He will be able to do it if, together with those who went before him (cf. 2 Tim 1:5), he places his trust in God’s power (2 Tim 1:8). God’s power is the resurrection, which causes life to shine out in suffering and which gives us the inner strength to dare to give our life for others.  

Samuel was given a call, he was called by God to be a prophet.  Timothy has a call to be a disciple of the Good News.  We have a call, we have a call to be the Body of Christ here in our community, to be people that plant and nurture seeds of faith in others, we have a call to continue to share the story of God’s love and to name the ways in which God’s love is transforming this world, one life at a time.  Amen.