Sermon: A Lanyard for Mom

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"A Lanyard for Mom"

By Charles Rush

May 9, 2004

[The title is a reference to a poem by Billy Collins entitled "The Lanyard" which was read earlier in the service. It can be viewed at www.webdelsol.com/Five_Points/issues/v7n1/collins.htm ]

ppy Mother's Day. I have a special place in my heart for mothers with young children like my colleague Julie, who live with that constant, unrelenting chaos, the good kind. She was sharing with the staff the other day that her 3 year old son Matthew makes noise whenever she talks with her husband because it doesn't involve him.

I've been looking for a book for her called '5 Minutes Peace', a children's book that I read during that phase of my life. It is about a Mother who draws a bath for 5 minutes peace. One by one her children follow her in, hop in, turn the bath into surf. She retreats to the kitchen for a cup of tea. They follow her in, destroy the kitchen. On and on she keeps retreating until finally, for 2 1/2 minutes, she finally gets her 5 minutes peace. I hope for you 5 minutes of peace this day.

Come, let us now praise our Mothers. The star for the San Antonio Spurs, Tim Duncan, was most valuable player last year, and a graduate, I might add, of Wake Forest University. I saw him interviewed several years ago on graduating college. Tim was a great player at Wake Forest and there was pressure on him to skip his senior year and enter the draft early. He was surrounded by reporters all asking him why he stayed in college and finished his degree. Did you ever think about entering the draft early? "Never", he said. Why did you get your degree? For my mother of course."

There are dimensions of motherhood that are deeply, deeply impressed on us. When I was in graduate school in the early 80's personal computers were just breaking on the market. One of my neighbors bought one, set it up, decided to write his mother a letter, which he did. Perfect spelling, paragraphs all centered. He mails it, a week goes by, he calls her up. Finally he says, 'Mom, did you get my letter, what do you think?' 'It's lovely dear, I have it right here on the refrigertator.' Mid-twenties and your work is still up on the fridge. That's Mom.

In many ways, I think that God loves us like a mother in the bible, despite the fact that God is overwhelmingly referred to as He. Jesus used to say that God is the shepherd that knows her sheep. How different that is from contrived, impersonal world we live in much of our working lives.

The story is told of the legendary General of World War 2, General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was a great tactical military leader but he was widely regarded as a cold fish as a person. One of this public relations people came up with a plan to change that image after the war was over.

MacArthur was supposed to review the troops. So his PR people came up with the idea of having him recognize one the enlisted men during his review. They would get him all the information about this enlisted soldier, MacArthur would spend a couple minutes in the middle of the review waxing nostalgic about the battles in the South Pacific. The General bought the idea.

The PR people identified one soldier, prepped MacArthur on details about his service. They are going through the review, the assistant punches the General, points out the guy, MacArthur says, "Thompson is that you. I remember you when we were together on Corregidor." This, of course, came as a complete shock to the enlisted man, who was suddenly on stage in front of thousands.

He says back, "MacArthur is that you?" in feigned amazement. That cracked up the whole division and the joke was on MacArthur that day. No, much of our working life is spent around people that don't really know us very well, despite the appearances of interest.

But Mother's are different. Mother's know the little dent in the nape of your neck, those little folds of baby flesh in your legs. I read of a study done on Mother's whose babies were only a week old. They asked the Mother's to feel the back of the hands of three babies and to pick out which one was theirs. 70% of the time, they could pick out their own babies in the group.[1]

Jesus said that God knows her sheep and she calls them by name. She knows them inside and out. There is a way that Mother's have, when they do their job right, of communicating an unconditional acceptance of their children like unto that of God's unconditional acceptance. It makes kids feel secure. It makes them safe. Everybody needs that in their life. And the fruit of that bears itself out when they are older. When your grown children get in a jam or they have some personal issue that they want to unpack, at least in our household, they call for Mom. I'd be laying in bed, get a call from college, "He dad, is Mom there?" I'd tease them sometimes and say, "What's up, I'm available, I can interface, I can deal?" Long silence, "Dad, can you get Mom?"

One of the more profound teachings of Jesus is that God cares for us like a shepherd who calms her sheep, like a hen that gathers her brood under her wing. Isn't that what we really need? We need a place that is safe, a place where we are free to be ourselves, a place where we can process not only our dreams but our fears, not only our accomplishments but our failures. Mother's, or more often Mothering figures, create just such a space.

Freshman year in college, the RA was doing a routine inspection for fire safety, and found drugs in the room of one of the guys on our hall. It was a little of lots of things, the Dean was called in with the police. Someone saw him in the library, told him that the Dean and the cops were looking for him, and he panicked. He borrowed a car and fled. He didn't have a plan, of course. He was mortally embarrassed. He was afraid of going to jail. He was even more afraid of losing his scholarship. He was afraid of the gossip in his little home town in South Carolina. He was afraid his parents would find out. He drove and drove and somewhere just before dawn he ended up on the front porch of his Grandmother's house.

She opened the front door in her robe, gave him a big old hug, like she had been expecting him at 4:30 in the morning for a month. She led him into the kitchen, put on some tea and got out some sweet bread. They sat down together at the kitchen table, had a couple sips, and she said to him, "baby what's on your mind?" And it all came tumbling out because he was safe there. He knew that even though she didn't approve of his behavior, she would not hold him in judgment. She would support him come what may, help him sort out what was important and what was not. She would call up the courage and help him face a difficult situation. Spiritually, at the end of the day, isn't that what we really want? What we need? Jesus taught us that God is like that. She knows us. She calls forth in us character. She makes us stronger. Where do you go that you can be your full self?

Jesus taught us that God is love and that through love we might find life, not simply life, but life abundant. Mothering figures in our lives model for us not only how to make others feel safe but also connected. They show us how we receive by giving first.

Most of us are pretty much like Lucy in the comic strip Peanuts. Lucy says to Charlie Brown, "Why do you think we're put here on earth, Charlie Brown?" Charlie says "To make others happy". Lucy is quizzical. She says, "I don't think I'm making anyone very happy… Of course, nobody's making ME very happy either. Lucy becomes indignant and roars, "Somebody's not doing his job!!!"

A lot of us think like that because there is an underlying dimension to our society that encourages relationships, particularly among men, that operate on a quid pro quo basis. You do this for me, I'll do that for you. These relationships are much easier to manage and you don't have to be emotionally involved in them. It is more transactional like a business deal and we men, in particular, are more comfortable having that space. Men's men are like that still, cowboys, not too different from John Wayne that travel through life. They have relationships sure, but not too deep, not so deep that they won't keep on moving. I loved D. H. Lawrence's characterization of the novels of Ernest Hemingway, another man's man. He said, the moral of his work could be summed up in one phrase: "Avoid one thing only- getting connected (to anyone)". It sort of works, but not very well. This approach is designed to limit damage. It is afraid of being hurt.

I like C. S. Lewis' comment on this approach. You might have seen the movie Shadowlands about Lewis' life. He was a rather aloof scholar at Oxford until he met his wife in the middle of his life and discovered the wonder of being deeply loved and learning to love others. The movie walked us through the time that she became ill and finally died from cancer that broke Lewis' heart. Lewis later said, "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love… is Hell."[2]

I think Bill Coffin is probably right. He once said that "the woman most in need of liberation is the mother in every man." We need help becoming connected and staying connected.

I was recently reading a story of a dentist who was working with AIDS patients in the early 80's, when hysteria about AIDS infections were probably at an all time high. She was pregnant at the time and she described how people were literally afraid to touch AIDS patients and how many people scolded her for working in an environment that was so dangerous to her baby's health.

But touch was not dangerous and spiritually was what those patients really needed. She was very intentional about not wearing protective prophylactic gear except when she was in active work. When visiting with the patients, she made sure she shook their hands, put a hand on a shoulder as she listened. She was interested in the humane touch that they craved. [3] Spiritually, she made a connection. How important that is.

And how important to stay connected. Anne Parker recently shared a poem about three generations of women that stayed connected spiritually through a common Bible handed down from one to another. We don't do that much anymore, but perhaps we should, there is a power in that connection. Perhaps more than ever, we are looking for ways today to spiritually connect down the generations. We need that guidance and undergirding. This is what the poem said [4]...

They went together

Those wrinkled hands and tattered book.

And something in the awe with which she held it

Made me think she held a sacred fire.

The old brass-bound Bible came to her from her mother,

And hers before that, too,

Through more generations I know how to reckon-faded

Cracked, worn with use.

I wonder how it felt do hold the past within her hands-

How many broken hearts found

Comfort there, how many searching minds were fed; how many fears

Were calmed in its reading; what songs of joy were hummed over it;

What secret tears sill stain its pages.

I loved to hear her talk to God.

And when she prayed, I sometimes imagined I felt God near. It was

A very safe place to be- with God and her.

I liked her God so wrapped up in the small goings-on of daily life- not too

Far away and busy with eternal things to take notice of one

Small child.

The Bible became mine today, and my smooth hands look somehow out

Of place- and somehow right at home.

Like her I hold the accumulated joys and sorrows of my heritage and join

My life with theirs. There is a strength to it-forged by faithful living

In the presence of a loving God. The line still holds- all those who

Have gone before, myself, and those who are to come.

We are connected. And that is the way that connection is our life line for love and faith. It calls to mind that wonderful thought in 2nd Timothy where the author says, "I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you Timothy. For this reason I encourage you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of hands; for God did not give us a Spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline" (2 Timothy 1:5-7).

So come, let us praise those Mother's and Mother-figures that have hovered over us, who know us and accept us, who make us safe and keep us connected, who have lighted the fire of love and faith in us that makes us strong and fills us with courage. Let us praise the divine Spirit that animates them and has blessed us that we might pass it on to the next generation. May God bless you all and this day, may you find 5 minutes peace. Amen.

[1] From Dynamic Preaching, May 1992, v. 7, no. 5, p. 10,11.

[2] Ibid., vol. IX, no. 5, p. 10-11.

[3] http://www.workplacespirituality.info/DentistryCalling.html

[4] From http://www.westparish.org/sermons/SR20010812.html (now gone) which attributed it to Marie Livingston Roy, “The Legacy”, Accent on Youth, vol. 17, no. 1 (Fall 1984), 3, reprinted in Imaging the Word, United Church Press, 1995, 43.