Occasional Sermons

My grandmother, God rest her soul, was an expert bargain hunter. That woman really knew how to pinch a penny. And expertise, in bargain hunting and everything else, requires years of experience, such that a thing becomes second nature. My grandmother over the years developed a seemingly innate sense of the precise value of a diamond in the rough. And her reputation preceded her. She had only to arrive at an estate sale or auction or garage sale, and the crowds parted and let her have her way. She always walked away with what she wanted at the price she wanted. No one could rival her. I like to think that in my own small way I am a chip off the old block. I like to think that I too am an expert bargain hunter. After all, I watched the master at work. I am always trolling for a steal. I even schedule my morning run around garbage pick-up days to potentiate the discovery of treasure discarded in the parkway. Of course,garbage is the ultimate bargain because it’s free. Last week then, I had to run to a discount store for a few “essential” necessities, and I made my usual pass down the clearance aisle. To my delight and excitement, last year’s swimming apparel was marked 75% off. I was in need of beach wraps for the girls for the upcoming season, and it seemed truly a case of “seek and you will find” because there were three of them - all one size fits all. At the sale price they were five dollars, and since I had the remains of of a gift card from the store, I only had to shell out two dollars for all three beach wraps. A fair day’s work, I congratulated myself. Yes, I was feeling good about my achievement until I got home and had the girls try on the “one size fits all” beach wraps. My girls, though they are the same age, happen to be very different sizes. One girl is on the tall side, one girl is on the short side, and one girl is of medium height, after the fashion of The Three Bears. The beach wrap for the girl on the tall side fit her like a sausage casing. It was so tight that within seconds she had laceration marks around her neck. The beach wrap for the girl on the short side, was, so to speak, swimming on her. It was so big on her that it formed a train behind her. Of course the beach wrap for the girls of medium height actually fit her, but she claimed it was “lame,” so my achievement was a bust, and I was out two dollars. I did learn one thing from the experience, however. I learned that one size does not fit all. One size may fit the majority, but one size does not fit all. And this applies to more than just clothing. In fact it applies to just about everything. It applies to the lifestyles we choose to adopt. It applies to the vocations and avocations we pursue. It applies to the way we configure our families. It applies to the company we keep. It applies to our fashion sense of lack thereof. It applies to the abodes we make our homes. It applies to the ways we enact our roles. It applies to if and how we create intimate partnerships. One size does not fit all. There is no one way to do and to be. But there’s a problem with this, and it has to do with the fact that one size fits the majority. The majority then often expects that because one size fits them, that it must fit the minority too. And so they exert pressure upon the minority to conform - to deny that they are different, to deny their individuality, to deny their uniqueness. The minority is then at risk of being driven to a place of self denial and self contradiction to prevent being maligned or marginalized. Personally it seems ridiculous that people should be pressured to be what they are not. And the ridiculousness becomes compounded when the Bible is conscripted to support what we can label the “one size fits all tyranny.” Because in fact, the Bible wants nothing to do with it. For one thing, look at the wide assortment of “sizes” of its characters: Ezekiel, who, in an era when long hair and beards were the style, shaved every hair off his head and face with his sword? And the Lord put him up to it. Or Hosea, who married a prostitute and embarked upon the quintessential non-traditional marriage? And again, the Lord put him up to it. Or Solomon, who took for himself a thousand foreign wives? And the Bible never faults him for it, only that he worshiped their foreign gods. And don’t get me started on Jesus of Nazareth. Suffice it to say that we worship him for his uniqueness. They’re simply not “one size fits all” kind of folks. But more to the point, the overall message of the Bible wants nothing to do with the ”one size fits all tyranny.” There are places in the Bible where its truth breaks agonized and clear. Proof texting - or choosing a sentence here or there from the Bible to support your own preconceived biases (and those biases are usually formed of hatred and fear) - is always bad. But at the same time, there are places in the Bible which really manages to capture its overall spirit. “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself,” would be such an example. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” would be another. And today's words from Jeremiah would be yet another. “This is the covenant I will make, says the Lord, I will put my law within them. I will write it on their hearts. “ Jeremiah envisions a new covenant between God and God’s people. A true covenant. The true covenant, a covenant written upon the hearts of believers. But the timing of Jeremiah’s words was beyond strange, because the nation that had once been Israel lay before him in ruins. And Israel had not thought of itself as just any nation. Israel had thought of itself as God’s nation. The nation of Israel had been the very axis of Israel’s faith. But Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, shed no tears at the ruin of the nation of Israel. He declared that the axis of Israel’s faith would now be what it should have been all along = the hearts of believers. What Jeremiah was saying was that the nation of Israel should never have been the axis of Israel’s faith in the first place. Nor should that axis have been any preexisting majority of any kind, - whether it be the nation, whether it be race, whether it be ethnicity, whether it be orientation, lineage, or stature.. But solely the hearts of believers, wherever they came from, whatever they looked like, whoever they happened to be. This, Jeremiah was saying, would be how God would covenant with God’s people. This would hardly seem to buttress the “one size fits all tyranny.” As I said, the Bible wants nothing to do with it. Today is Mother’s Day, the day, obviously, on which we honor the institution of motherhood. And so, what application has all (or any) of this to the institution of motherhood? It has plenty. Too long, I think, we have held an idealized view of the institution of motherhood in ways that are sentimental or nostalgic or anachronistic. We have envisioned the ideal mother as Betty Crocker rolled into June Cleaver rolled into Laura Petrie - rather one size fits all. But whenever there exists a one size fits all mentality, there is too the threat of the "one size fits all tyranny.” Let us turn again to the biblical character to see if the mothers of the Bible fit this mold? There are the mothers of Bethlehem who wept inconsolably as Roman soldiers massacred their infant sons. There is Elizabeth who struggled with infertility her entire life until she was finally granted a son in her old age, a son she would live long enough to see beheaded. There is Hagar who along her her son Ishmael were driven from their home into the desert where Hagar begged God that she not be forced to witness her son die from thirst. And of course, there is Mary, a poor teenager who found herself pregnant, and who came to learn that the son she bore would be lost to her for the sake of the redemption of humankind. Hardly one size fits all. And let us turn too to the axiom that we may derive from the Bible’s overall message, that relationships must take root not from any preexisting majority, but between sympathetic hearts of individuals. And let then reconsider the institution of motherhood - set the ideal against reality, so that we may honor the woman who is raising children by herself, the woman who has been forcefully separated from her children by the law of the land, the woman who balances and juggles her vocational calling with the demands of child rearing, the woman unable to conceive who becomes a surrogate mother to the children in her sphere, the woman whose children have moved on and left her with a hole in her heart, the woman who exigency drove to give her child up for adoption, the woman who adopted that child, the woman who has lost a child, the woman who is raising her children's children. And yes, too, Betty Crocker and June Cleaver and Laura Petie as well. The point is, on Mother’s Day, we are called to honor all women who are possessed of a mother’s heart, and that depth of love that can only spring form the source of all love -- the God of Jesus Christ. Amen.

On my last trip to our family farm, I was out for a morning run on the beautiful and nearly untraveled country roads that surround it. Suddenly a preternatural howl pierced the air. I stopped dead in my tracks. My blood ran cold. I looked around me and saw nothing. I had no idea whatsoever what to do. As far as I know, there is no manual for what to do when you’re out in the middle of nowhere and a preternatural howl pierces the air. Come to think of it, the only manuals for what to do are for things you can pretty much figure out by yourself. My first response was irrational – “Demonic forces are abroad.” My second response was more in the direction of rationality – “It must have been the scream of a bird high overhead.” I was about to continue my run when I heard it again. It was just as blood curdling as before, but it sounded slightly less preternatural. It was coming from a declivity to the side of the road. I grabbed a stick to arm myself and peered down. The howl was coming from a cat. It looked like the feline version of the Hound of the Baskervilles. It was scrawny and scraggly and mangy, its face grotesquely contorted as it let out another howl. Then I saw what it was howling at. A huge raccoon was squared off against it; about a foot separated their faces. As far as I know, there is no manual for what to do when you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you encounter a huge raccoon squared off against a cat. One thing was certain. I couldn’t let nature take its course. The cat didn’t stand a chance. So I thrust my stick in the direction of the raccoon, trusting that it wouldn’t attack me, that my mere human presence would scare it away. But neither the cat nor the raccoon even noticed me, so intent they were with one another. I grabbed some stones and began to pelt the raccoon. After a few good shots, it ran off. It was then I saw what was really going on. Under the cat there was a litter of three kittens, and a litter newly born. They were in a wet knot, their eyes shut tight. The cat had been driven, no sooner than having given birth, to protect her young. Suddenly, I felt kinship with the cat as a fellow mother. I felt grateful that I had never been driven to protect my young, but noted that if the day should ever come, the preternatural howl is an effective means. I ran back to the farm for all that I was worth. My mom saw me barreling down the driveway and said, “Nice pace,” she said. “How was your run?” “Oh, unremarkable,” I replied. I didn’t want her to contravene my intentions. I procured a big box, some old towels, and heavy gloves, and jumped in my van. I returned to the fateful spot. There were by this time six kittens. The cat put up no fight as I lifted the new family into the box and relocated it to a safe corner in the barn. That cat and I have become soul mates. I swear she understands that what I did was from one mother to another. And it’s true enough, really. My instinct as a human mother may be more developed and complex than hers, but our common instinct to protect our children is indeed a biological response that all mothers share. This is not to be reductive about the mystery and miracle of motherhood. It is, rather, to celebrate the mystery and miracle of motherhood as something that inheres in our biological beings. Oddly enough, Scripture dwells very little on these matters. By deduction one could argue that the Old Testament at least jibes with what I have said about motherhood. The prologue to the book of Genesis declares that God created all that here is; that his creation bears his purposeful wisdom and order; and that it is good. Ergo, this biological mother love, you could call it, is created by God. It bears his purposeful wisdom and order and is good. It is something to acknowledge him for, and to thank and praise him for. When we turn to the New Testament for its teaching on motherhood, again there is not much to go one. But what’s there is something of a mood wrecker. Recall for instance this morning’s gospel lesson. Jesus was out among the people – teaching, challenging the religious leadership of his day, as he was want to do. A woman in the crowd, called out to him with unbridled enthusiasm, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” But Jesus, in what can only be construed as a rebuff, rejoined, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” And it is not only here that Jesus had distressingly forceful and seemingly hostile things to say about motherhood. How about these words from the very next chapter of Luke’s gospel, “Do you suppose I came to grant peace on this earth? I tell you no, but rather division. They will be divided – father against son, mother against daughter….” The New Testament teaching on motherhood may constitute one of the few times that Christians, who in my experience, and to my dismay, seem eager to bypass the Old Testament to get to the New, given the choice would probably opt for the teaching of the Old Testament. But of course, this is Jesus speaking and so we must, as he always put it, have the ears to hear him. So what does Jesus mean by these difficult teachings? Jesus, rest assured, does not speak as one hostile to motherhood. Jesus in his ministry showed great compassion to mothers. When a widow had lost her only son and his body was being carried from the house, Jesus, deeply moved, comforted her and raised her son from the dead. When a Gentile woman, a woman of a people traditionally hostile to the Jews, begged Jesus to cure her daughter, he did so. And Jesus clearly loved his own mother. In one of the most poignant passages of the whole New Testament, Jesus, nailed to his cross and seeing his anguished mother at his feet called to his beloved disciple, “Behold your mother.” Jesus, dying, wanted to ensure that his mother would be cared for, and so entrusted her to his beloved disciple. Jesus affirmed motherhood, and he loved his mother. But there is something that Jesus valued more than any familial tie, and that is the kingdom of God; the kingdom to which he has called us to become citizens. That kingdom first. That kingdom foremost. That kingdom with no prior or higher allegiances. Indeed, that kingdom as the interpreter of all other allegiances. One must not put his hand to the plow and look back. One must not even stop to bury his dead, so urgent and utmost was Jesus’ call to the kingdom of God. And that kingdom is founded upon God’s love – a love that transcends familial ties, a love that shows no preference or partiality; a love that is all encompassing and all embracing – a love that is universal. Jesus knew the human heart so well. He knew that love such as a mother’s could easily tend toward interest in her own children to the exclusion or at the expense of others. In the zeal of her love, she could make her family the thing in itself -- clannish, self-contained, and closed off – a proud bulwark over against others, rather than the place where her children learn the love of the kingdom of God. It is here that Jesus spoke a cautionary word to mothers. The Christian mother then will discipline the tendency of her love, the tendency rooted in her biological mother love, so that it is controlled by the love of the kingdom of God. This means that she will strive to raise children who will love not only within the family, but who will reflect the love they have received in the family out to others – out to those who are in such great need of love – the poor, the ailing, the heartbroken, the hopeless, the lonely, and even out to their enemies. The love of the Christian mother has been created by God at the deepest level of her biological being, but as that love is recreated by the love of the kingdom of God, it is set free to be what love is meant to be and what true love is – that is boundless. As the Christian mother opens her heart to the boundless love of the kingdom of God, she might well be amazed by the depth, breadth, and height of love she finds there, and what can be accomplished for her children and for her world through it. Amen.