12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
- Exodus 20:12, The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.
In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:
Since
1886 the Statue of Liberty has towered above
The French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi devoted twenty years of his life to the building of the statue, personally supervising the raising of the $4,000,000 needed to complete a work of such magnitude. When the subscriptions lagged, Bartholdi pledged his own private fortune to defray the running expenses and practically impoverished himself over the work.
When Bartholdi began his search for a model whose form and
features would embody what he hoped to reproduce as “
What an honor to be viewed as the face of freedom for well over a century! What an honor to be the symbol of opportunity for millions who have passed by on crowded ships as they journeyed to a new world! But above all, what an honor to be held in such high regard, what an honor to be so dearly loved, what an honor to be memorialized in such a meaningful way by one’s own child!
It is all but impossible for us to match the grand scale of Frederic Bartholdi, but today we honor our mothers in our own unique ways. For Christians Mother’s Day is also a day of thanksgiving because we recognize the source of this great blessing.
God himself established the family. God gives women the ability to become mothers. God gives women the wisdom and gentleness and patience to be good mothers. And the Lord spoke about the relationships between parents and children long before Hallmark was printing its first Mother’s Day cards.
On this Mother’s Day, we are not just celebrating a national holiday. We are here to thank and praise God for the gift of Christian mothers. And our gratitude will show itself as we seek to put into practice the timeless words of the Fourth Commandment (altered slightly to fit the occasion)...
HONOR YOUR MOTHER
I. She is God’s chosen representative
II. She is God’s channel of blessing
There
is a Jewish proverb that says: “God could
not be everywhere, and so he made mothers.”
Theologically, this statement is incorrect. God is omnipresent. God is able to be everywhere at the same time
because he is God. But if the words were
changed slightly, they would reinforce an important Biblical truth: “God is everywhere, but in this world he chooses
to work through his representatives.”
God is represented on earth by many different types of authority figures: elected officials, judges, police officers, pastors and teachers, and fathers. But today we focus our attention on mothers. Not everyone present today is a mother, but every one of us has a mother. And in the fourth commandment God makes it clear that we are to honor them.
So how do we do that? How do we honor our mothers? Do we buy them flowers? Do we take them out to dinner? Do we volunteer to clear the table? Do we tell them how much we love them?
In our sermon series on
the Ten Commandments last summer, I came across a quote that sheds some light
on this question. Martin Luther said: “To
honor is a much higher thing than to love, for honor includes not only love but
also respect, humility, and awe...” (from Luther’s Large Catechism). Honor connects words with actions, and
actions with attitudes. “Honoring” your
mother means showing love and respect for her in your thoughts and words and
actions.
This sounds simple enough, but the very fact that we have to have a special day on the calendar called “Mother’s Day” means that honoring our mothers isn’t a given. Something interferes with that perfect parent-child relationship. Something pits sons and daughters against fathers and mothers. That something is sin. And parents are partially to blame.
Do you remember when you received the startling revelation that your mom and dad didn’t know everything? Can you remember the day you found out that your parents were not perfect? Everyone is sinful, and that includes mothers. Moms can be selfish. Moms sometimes say things they later regret. Moms are not always the loving, understanding solid rocks of the family that we want them to be. And for that reason it is not always easy to honor them.
The cycle of sin began with our first parents Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Since then generation and generation of sinful parents has produced sinful children. Because we are born in sin, we are by nature hostile to God. Because we are by nature God’s enemies, we also rebel against the people he has placed over us.
Instead of honoring God’s representatives, we dishonor them. Instead of obeying our parents, we disobey them. Instead of giving our mothers the love and respect God demands, we take advantage of them. We neglect them. And we take them for granted.
There is only way to break that cycle of sin. And there is only one person who is able to break that cycle of sin, Jesus Christ. In his earthly relationships, including his relationship with his own mother, Jesus demonstrates that he is both a perfect son and a perfect Savior.
Jesus’
mother may be the most famous mother of all time. And the Bible tells us that Mary was a
God-fearing woman. When the angel told
her that she had been chosen to give birth to the Messiah, Mary responded in
humble faith: “May it be
to me as you have said” (Lk.
But
Mary was not a perfect person. And she
was not a perfect mother either. She
showed her lack of understanding when she found Jesus in the temple: “Son, why have you treated us like this” (Lk
As a child, Jesus was obedient to his parents. As the sinless Son of God, Jesus obeyed his heavenly Father’s will. Even when he was dying on the cross, Jesus made sure that his mother would be cared for after his departure. This act of love is just one more example our Savior’s perfect obedience of all the commandments, including the fourth commandment, on our behalf.
But the most important thing Jesus ever did for his mother,
the greatest gift our Savior ever gave to anyone, was something he didn’t
do. When he was praying in the
Because we have forgiveness of sins through Jesus’ blood, because we have the hope of eternal life, we have a new lease on this life. We look at the world differently. We look at our relationships differently. We look at our God’s representatives differently. When we view them through the eyes of faith, our mothers are channels through whom God gives us many blessings.
When God established the family, he also created a special bond between mother and child. Isaiah picked up on this intimate relationship and used it to illustrate the Lord’s relationship with his people. “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you” (49:15)! And later he writes: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you” (66:13). Mothers are God’s models of compassion.
If you were to imagine a picture frame in your mind with the title “The Compassionate Mother” at the bottom, what would your picture look like? Maybe it would be the scene of a mother putting a bandage on a freshly scraped knee. Perhaps it would be the image of a mother holding a sick child in the middle of the night.
Whatever your picture might look like, God is in the background. God works through mothers to take care of us. Depending on the situation, they are our doctors, our chauffeurs, our referees, our cooks and our counselors. They take the time to listen. They put others before themselves.
But far more important than wiping tears or wiping noses is the spiritual role that mothers play in the lives of their children. A mother lays the bedrock of faith as she brings her child to the baptismal font. A mother builds a solid foundation as she teaches her children the simple songs of faith that will never be forgotten. A mother constructs strong and sturdy walls of faith as she shares Bible stories before bedtime. A mother equips her children for lives of faith as she leads them by word and example.
If you are a mother, you might be feeling a little bit overwhelmed right now because God has given you some serious responsibilities. You are supposed to be a role model in the family. You are supposed to care for your family, both body and soul. But what about you? What about your needs? Who is going to take care of you?
To
the mother who is trying her hardest to be in three places at once, to the mother
who is at her wit’s end, to the mother who is weighed down by a load of guilt
because she feels like a failure, to all the moms in this world who are just
plain tired, Jesus says: “Come to me,
all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28).
Jesus says to all of us: “Give me your fears and insecurities, your failures and frustrations. Give them all to me. I will give you the wisdom to make wise decisions. I will give you the strength to meet every new challenge. I will give you the patience to serve in love.
When we stop relying on ourselves, the burden is lifted from our shoulders. When we put our trust in God and his promises, there is nothing we cannot do. When Christian love motivates Christian mothers, they will be blessed and they will be a blessing to others.
Anna
Jarvis is recognized as the mother of Mother’s Day in the
Less than ten years later Anna Jarvis was campaigning again, but for a very different reason. Because she saw that Mother’s Day had been so corrupted by commercialism, she filed a lawsuit to stop what she had started. “This is not what I intended,” she said. “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit.”
Anna Jarvis was half right. Mother’s Day was not created to boost the bottom line of flower shops and department stores and card companies. But Mother’s Day is not just a day of sentiment either. It is more than a day we set aside to say and do nice things for our moms. We are here this morning to thank and praise the Lord for the gift of God-fearing Christian mothers. Honor your mother because she is God’s chosen representative. Honor your mother because she is God’s channel of blessing. Amen.