Sermon given by Rev. Patricia Farris John 10:11-18 Nothing says “Happy Mother’s Day” like a brand new baby! Hats off this morning to the gray whales moms who are migrating up the Pacific Coast towards Alaska this morning with their newborn 2400-pound babies. Imagine that! Closer to home here among human families, we rejoice this morning as a church family in the birth of Lila Flanders, weighing in at 7 lbs., 7 oz., the newest baby grand-daughter of Phil and Claudia Flanders. That little one is already being showered with the love of her parents and grandparents. She is being cradled in the prayers of our Shareringers Group and her wider church family, people she may never meet or know, whose love for her is already including her as the newest member of a great community of love. And this community of love incarnates God’s love for her and even long before she can possibly know what it means is showing her how to receive love and how to love others. It’s how we learn how God loves us. As Julian of Norwich put it in the 14th century: “In love God clothes us, enfolds and embraces us; that tender love completely surrounds us, never to leave us.” We know that newborns respond to touch, to smell, to taste, to sound and to sight. The most fortunate babies in the world have parents and grandparents and caregivers who understand that and who enrich their environment and their interactions from the very beginning of their precious life by holding them, and reading to them, and singing to them and talking with them in such a way that a little conversation actually occurs as the baby learns to respond with movements and crying and expressions long before actual words have been learned. A nurse who works with newborns has said that “the manner in which the mother holds, feeds, and touches her child constitutes [the baby’s] first consistent learning experience. With her, [the baby] learns to relate to outside stimuli—hopefully [ ] learns love.” This is how loving bonds are first developed between newborns and those who love them. Loving words and beautiful sounds and observant listening help the little one to recognize love. Baby Lila and all the little ones are just starting on this journey and we pray for them all this morning, and for the mothers who cherish them. As they love and grow in love together, I offer them this beautiful blessing called “A Mother's Beatitudes:”
It’s not easy being a mother, I don’t have to tell you. And so we pray as well today for fathers, for grandparents, for all the loving family and friends who will help nurture the babies and children along the way and who lend their faithful support to mothers striving to do their best. And in blessing mothers, even our own, where it is needed, we pray forgiveness and healing, we pray for acceptance of less than perfect mothering, for we know that God’s love, pardon and assurance is available to all and that new beginnings are always possible and that most kids learn how to love and thrive anyway through the grace of God. Now, the kind of love that we learn in God is a very special kind of love. Of course, we know that “learning love” takes not only the whole of a lifetime but also the experience of God’s everlasting and abiding love on the other side of the veil of death as well, far beyond into the glory of everlasting life. This is love that embraces each of us. It is love that is nurtured in each family. And it is love that turns us outward, to share that love with others, to love as we have been loved. As we read this morning in John’s Epistle: “We love because God first loved us. 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. The commandment we have from God is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” It’s hard enough to love the brothers and sisters we see, sometimes, isn’t it? I love that story of the Sunday school teacher who was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to "honor" thy father and thy mother, she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without missing a beat, one little boy (the oldest of his siblings) answered, "Thou shall not kill." Right. It’s hard to get along with the brothers and sisters we see. But even moreso, what about the ones we don’t see? The ones we know are out there, in need of God’s love, but maybe we’d rather not see? At a recent fund-raiser for our local YWCA, I had a chance to talk with Allan Young, the Director of the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Monica. He told me that in this Recession, they are seeing more and more families in need of their services, many more than they can respond to. And he told me about the numbers of single moms living with their children in their cars, pleading with him to allow them to park in his lot so that at least they’ll feel safe at night and can sleep unafraid. It may surprise you to learn that 40% of the homeless in our country are single mothers and children. That image of mothers sleeping in their cars with their babies and their children is haunting me this Mother’s Day and I believe we can and should do something about it. After all, we are followers of a savior born to young parents who had left their home and found themselves without proper shelter on the night of his birth. As people of faith, as followers of Jesus of Nazareth, we have the welfare of babies and children and mothers on our hearts. As United Methodists, we follow John Wesley’s admonition to join heart and hand, believing that the love of God is always linked with love of neighbor, that personal and social holiness are but two sides of the same coin. We can support the YWCA and the Boys and Girls Club and Upward Bound House and the urban ministries of our United Methodist Church. We can speak up and ask that some of the federal Homeless Stimulus Funds now available to our city be directed to services for homeless children and families. And we can pray that one day, all God’s children might have the chance to sleep safe and to know love and grow in love. The love of God that we first learn as tiny babies, the love that is nurtured in our homes and families, is a love that teaches us to love all the babies and children whose names we may never know even as we love each precious newborn born into our immediate orbit of love. May the blessings of Mother’s Day fall upon them all. John Wesley’s hymn-writing brother, Charles, put it this way, in a beautiful hymn:
This is a beautiful Mother’s Day. We pray love to over all prevail, love that never, never fails, love immense, and unconfined, love to all of humankind. AMEN. Notes: Julian of Norwich quoted in Ward and Wild, Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year B, p 138 Leonora Zearfoss: “A Mother’s Beatitudes” Allan Young, Director, Boys and Girls Club of Santa Monica Charles Wesley, From Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), No. 8, "The Beatitudes"© Patricia Farris, 2009. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved. First
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