Happy Mother’s Day

You know, Mother’s Day usually presents me with a challenge as a preacher. I find it difficult to fit this important secular holiday’s liturgy. No where, have I come upon lessons in the prescribed lectionary. I’ve also felt that it is very unfortunate because Mother’s Day reminds us of a truth that we so easily forget. No person is self-made. We are indebted to others for the essential parts of our lives, our looks, our values, much of our personalities -- they all can be traced back to our relatives. No matter how much we would like to take credit for what we have become, Mother’s Day reminds us that others have a lot to say about who we are. And what kind of person we are today.

Now one of the things I’d like to talk to you this morning is that in the same way we come together on any given Sunday, we are being reminded that our faith is not a product of our own. We didn’t dream up the Christian faith, we are indebted to a bunch of people for our Christianity. When we went to Sunday School or here in Kids Word, we learn about those Biblical heroes; those persons who really are our great-great-grandparents in the faith. And yes, we are dependant on our mother’s and other relatives, we too are dependent on these persons.

So the first thing I want to say to you this morning is that none of us are self-made believers. Our religion is one that is handed down. Another thing about this religion of ours, just like our mothers and fathers and other relatives, we didn’t choose them. Think about it for a moment. You didn’t choose your relatives, after all who would choose an Uncle Joe who had so many problems with alcohol and drugs or who would choose their Cousin Sally, who’s been married so many times we don’t know what to call her present attachment! I have an Uncle Donald who never amounted to much and I can recall my mother saying "watch out or you’ll end up like Uncle Donald." I sure didn’t choose Uncle Donald, but I have certainly heard enough about him to probably have gotten some of his virtues and vices and so it is with our great-grandparents in the faith. When we read about them in the Bible, and our tradition is pretty honest about these characters, when we read about them we say to ourselves we might turn out like them.

If you remember some of the Bible stories, these heroes might not be the kind of people who we’d like to have known as relatives. Think about it --- Sarah or David or Sampson, or even Paul. Not many of these were model citizens, not many of them would we choose to hang on our family tree. Sarah, the grandmother of the whole nation, she was a manipulator, a schemer, and she had a very dysfunctional family. David made a mess of his marriage and then there was Sampson who went off the deep end and finally ended up destroying himself. And then there was St. Paul, who wrote so beautifully in our first lesson, but you have to remember that Paul had a wicked temper and he also had some problems with women. Now these people may look saintly in some of the Bible stories, but if you had to look over them at the breakfast table, I’m not so sure how pleased you’d be.

Two things that I would declare to you today. First, although you didn’t choose them, God did. And second, they did do important things for God and that’s why we remember them here in the church. Let me take you one step further. Just as you didn’t choose Sarah, or Sampson, or Paul as your grandparents in the faith so too, you didn’t choose Jesus as you Savior. He came to us and not the other way around. John’s gospel that I just read, quotes Jesus as saying, "you did not choose Me, I chose you so that you might bear fruit." The gospel make it very clear, that God has chosen us that God has fed us, God cares for us so that we might be free to look after others, our tasks, our tasks are God’s love with the rest of the world.

Now in a little while we are going welcome three members of our family, who are about to make their first communion. Now my guess is that these three youngsters are not aware of the importance of this step in their spiritual journey. They might even think that they made this step on their own or with their family’s help. But the truth of the matter is that God chose them to be instruments of His Grace way before they went to class with Shivaun; way before their parents said something like "wouldn’t you like to receive the bread and wine with the rest of the family?" God chose them. It’s as if God were saying "Hey Chase, hey Katy, hey Nicholas -- I love you. And therefore I am going to offer you this Holy Communion so that you can be strengthened to be a special agent of mine."

Chase, Katy, Nicholas, wherever you are today, downstairs or upstairs, this communion is about to do something to you, God willing, is about to tell you that He loves you and He wants you to leave here and love others.

A clergy friend at the end of a worship service, always surprises people. Instead of saying the usual thing, let us Bless the Lord, or let us go in the Name of Christ, or whatever we usually say in this church. He says, "Now let the service begin." He’s reminding people that God expects people who are worshipping to bear fruit, in other words to go out from church to share love of God with all of God’s creations. My friend always claims that this is where the real service really begins. It begins when we start, when we leave our pew and we start to love all of God’s creatures. Another friend of mine, I think I’m trying to impress you all that I have at least two friends, this other friend of mine who use to be a popular speaker in church -- he used to talk about God’s demand of love for all creations. And whenever he talked in church groups, the people would stand up and begin to question and say why, why should we love people or things that are different from us -- why should we love strangers, why should we love those that would do us harm, why should we love the Hitler’s and Ben Laden’s of the world? Instead of directly answering, my friend in the spirit of Jesus would tell them the parable. He would start by saying, this story comes from India. It’s about an old man sitting in the shade of Banyan tree. Banyan trees have large roots and the old man saw that a scorpion has become helplessly entrapped in the roots of the tree. So he reached down to extricate the scorpion, and each time he reached down to try and do this, this scorpion would lash out with his tail and sting him painfully, and he would try and grab back his hand, and finally his hand became so very swollen that he had no longer been able to close his fingers, and so he sat back to rest for a moment and try to bring the swelling down someway -- and he heard /some laughter in back of him -- and it was a young man in back of him and the young man said to him "you’re a fool wasting your time to help a scorpion that can only do you harm." The old man replied "simply because it is the nature of a scorpion to sting, should I give up my nature which is to love and care for all of God’s creatures?"

God chose each one of us. He put it in our nature to care and love. So remember, remember, Jesus said I have chosen you, I have chosen you to bear fruit.

Amen.

© 1998 - 2008Saint Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Palm Desert CA" All rights reserved.  Please contact the church for permission to use any of this material