"There's No Place Like ______"

Sermon, May 14, 2000 (Mother's Day)

Text: Isaiah 29:13-16

A man speaks frantically into the phone, "My wife is pregnant, and her contractions are only two minutes apart!" Trying to calm the man, and also seeking to discern how imminent the birth might be, the doctor on the other end asked, "Is this her first child?" The man shouts into the phone, "No, you idiot! This is her husband!" Happy Mother's Day...that story doesn't really relate to the sermon; it's just something I've been longing to use ever since I read it. But again, Happy Mother's Day...I'd like to read excerpts from the original U.S. Congressional resolution signed by President Woodrow Wilson May 9, 1914: "Whereas the American mother is the greatest source of the country's strength and inspiration...whereas the American mother is doing so much for the home, for moral spirits and religion, hence so much for good government and humanity...Therefore, be it resolved that the second Sunday in May will be celebrated as Mother's Day."

Historical accounts vary, but from what I pieced together, it was a woman living in Rhode Island in 1872 who is credited with first suggesting the idea of Mother's Day; her name was Julia Ward Howe. She was then living in Newport; you may know her better as the one who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. In 1872, Ms. Howe was actually quite disgusted with war; the Civil War had already wrought so much havoc and wastefully expended so many young lives, and the Franco-Prussia war was presently raging in Europe. Julia Ward Howe published a proclamation for a Mother's Day, hoping to rally and fan the maternal instincts of the mothers of the world (as well as those who loved and honored their mothers) to the cause of peace. However, it was a West Virginia woman by the name of Anna Jarvis who is considered the real founder of Mother's Day in America. The Civil War had ended when Anna was only one year old (she was born 1864 in Grafton, W. VA), and there was still very much tension and outright hatred between and among families in West Virginia; this was a region bitterly divided by the conflict. Echoing the sentiments of Julia Ward Howe, Anna's mother said many times that she hoped "sometime, somewhere, someone will found a Mother's Day." She was convinced that the bitter rivalries might abate if families would put their differences aside and just come together to honor and respect their mothers and all they stood for on at least one special day a year. When Anna's mother died, Anna decided to make her mother's wish come true. At her request her pastor at the Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia, held a Mother's Day service on the second anniversary of her mother's death; it was May 12, 1907. This service is recognized as the first Mother's Day celebration in the United States. Miss Jarvis continued to write letters, spend money and rally support for a national Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May, eventually resulting in President Woodrow Wilson signing that Congressional proclamation May 9, 1914, declaring the second Sunday in May as a national observance of Mother's Day.

I love the story about the husband who came home from work in the late afternoon to find total mayhem in his house. His three small children were outside, two still in their pajamas and one toddling about with an over-saturated, disintegrating diaper; they were all playing in the mud with the dog, flowers from the flowerbed were strewn all over the front yard, as were empty food boxes and wrappers. The door of his wife's car was wide open, as was the front door to the house. Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, cabinets and drawers were open, and a ice cream carton sat on the counter in a melted puddle. He quickly hurried up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife who was nowhere to be seen. He was worried that something serious had happened; racing through his mind were all sorts of scenarios: perhaps she had slipped and fell and was unconscious, perhaps she was seriously ill or worse. To his surprise and astonishment he found her lounging in the bedroom, still curled in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel, a half-eaten strawberry cheese cake on the nightstand. She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went. With an incredulous mixture of relief, exasperation and bewilderment he asked, "What in the world happened here today?" She again smiled and answered, "You know every day when you come home from work and ask me what I did all day?" Somewhat quizzically (and a bit warily) he replied, "Yes." She answered, "Well, today I didn't do it."

I believe it was back in the late sixties that economists from the Chase Manhattan Bank were recruited by divorce attorneys to try and settle the economic worth of the typical housewife's duties. The economists estimated that the average American housewife spends 99.6 hours each week carrying out all the varied domestic responsibilities of the average middle-class home...99.6 hours! I'll leave you to figure out the math of what it would cost to contract out those duties to child-care workers, launderers, chefs, shoppers, house cleaners, seamstresses, financial managers and a bevy of other services required to run the typical home. "Whereas the American mother is the greatest source of the country's strength and inspiration...whereas the American mother is doing so much for the home, for moral spirits and religion, hence so much for good government and humanity..." Friends, this is not a day invented by Hallmark to sell more cards (although it is the third-largest card sending holiday), or a day invented by Bell Atlantic to increase revenue (in fact, I once read that telephone companies actually make more money on Father's Day...because the highest number of higher-revenue collect calls take place on that day!). Motherhood deserves to be honored. The work of the mother is invaluable, it is instrumental, it is crucial; in fact, there just aren't enough adjectives to describe the importance and high calling of motherhood to the functioning of a healthy civilization! Listen to just three of the hundreds of quotations I came across this past week: (1) This familiar proverb from South Africa: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation and its destiny." (2) The great Napoleon was once asked what could be done to restore the prestige of France. Without missing a beat, he replied, "Give us better mothers! The future destiny of the child [and therefore, the nation,] is always the work of the mother." (3) George Washington, our first president: "My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her."

Is motherhood still a respected and revered calling in this day and age? Is the same reverence for motherhood the prompted the Congressional proclamation of 1914 alive and well in the year 2000? Contrast George Washington's and Napoleon's quotes with the young woman who recently wrote to "Dear Abby" describing her mother as "...a professional woman who collected a husband, a daughter and a dog to enrich her life." She went on to write, "...and the only one not damaged by this enrichment was the dog." In an excellent, insightful book appropriately entitled There's No Place Like Work, author Brian Robertson makes the point that "We're working harder than ever in America today, but the old Protestant work ethic has nothing to do with it. Once we worked to support spouse and children. Today, we work in spite of them. Once we worked as a means to an end. Today, work and career are ends in themselves. Obsessed with personal fulfillment, dads and moms are fleeing home and hearth, abandoning natural ties to their children and replacing the social support of home and community with that of the workplace. The nation's social center has uprooted itself from the home and planted itself at work. The home has been transformed from haven to hotel, and the social consequences are staggering." His main premise is that the home is increasingly becoming little more than a boarding house where the occupants leave for jobs or day care centers or schools and check in for food and sleep at night. Isn't it telling that our representatives and legislators seem to be looking for more and more ways to enable families to afford to send their children to day care rather than looking for ways to enable parents, particularly mothers, to afford to stay at home with their children? Is motherhood still a respected and revered calling in this day and age?

The late Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once told a delightful story that some of you may have heard: One night some years ago, two teenage vandals broke into London's prestigious Harrod's department store. Their vandalism did not involve stealing or damaging any of the merchandise. Instead these two ingenious pranksters broke into the store and what they did wrought havoc in the store the next morning. All they did was simply rearrange the price tags. They switched the price tags around. The price tag on the scarf worth $20 was switched with the price tag on the mink coat worth $2000, and on and on throughout the store they went, switching all the price tags on the merchandise. With a diabolical glee, they then hid in the store and waited until the next morning to see the look of shock, delight or horror on some of the shoppers who were coming to buy that merchandise! Pandemonium reigned at Harrod's that day as opportunistic customers wrought havoc on the store's profit margin, and as harried clerks and managers scrambled to save losses and the store's reputation.

Doesn't it seem to you, as it seems to me, that some diabolical prankster has come into our world and switched all of God's price tags around? That some evil force has broken into the store of life, so to speak, and put a very high price tag next to items that are of really low value, grossly overvaluing things that are not really important; and a cheap price tag on things that are immensely valuable, grossly undervaluing things of precious and lasting worth? That high price tags were placed on things like possessions, gratification of appetites, personal fulfillment, professional prestige, power; and very low price tags next to things like our relationship to God, corporate worship, attention to and time with our family and loved ones, giving primary care and attention to our children? In many, many respects, I think we find ourselves living in the very "upside down" world the prophet Isaiah described (Is. 29:16): "You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'He did not make me'? Can the pot say of the potter, 'He knows nothing'? We need to learn to value things as God values them, we need to learn how to invest our lives and love and time in things that really matter, in things of eternal value. And God puts an inestimable price tag on the worth of the eternal human souls housed in our children. Author Linda Burton wrote: "In the past 20 years, we have fostered a generation of young people who have heard nothing but put-downs about child-rearing and motherhood. They have been massively encouraged to 'do something more important' with their lives. Mothering has no prestige. While we as a nation continue to respect motherhood, we [seem to] have little respect for our mothers." It would seem that our culture has "liberated" women right out of the genuine freedom they once had to oversee the home, rear the children, and pursue personal creativity; we have been somehow brainwashed to believe that the absence of a titled, payroll occupation enslaves a woman to mediocrity and imprisonment within the confines of a home. Who switched the price tags? One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of car you drove, or what kind of house you lived in, or what your clothes looked like; but the world may be better because you were important in the life of a child. The lives of our children will go on to affect other lives, and those lives will affect other lives, and on and on it goes for generations! No matter how important a career or job might be, the truth of the matter is that more often than not, in a few months or years after we leave a vocation, we will be replaced and will not be missed. Not so with the vocation of mother. The loss of a mother can has a profound effect which can last generations.

In 1997 my dear wife wrote in the Fisherman's News (the church newsletter) about the comment she heard on talk radio: "I heard a call from a high school girl, whose question to the host was: "If you could give me just one piece of advice, what would it be?" The host replied, "If you were my daughter, I would tell you to use good judgment when you hear that the modern woman of today can 'have it all.' You can, indeed, have it all. But not all at the same time. If and when you do marry, and if and when you have children, spend as much time with them as possible. If at all feasible, stay home with them. Put your career on hold. Because caring for those children -- being a mother -- is the most important thing you will ever do." Ann went on to write: "I spent more than a decade in the career world, including challenging international work in Washington, D.C. and gratifying service as a missionary in Europe. There was fulfillment, excitement and even a bit of glitz, but none of it compares to the thrills (or the demands!) of being a mom to 5-year-old Lydia, 3-year-old Stevie and our baby, Hannah." Susannah Wesley, the brilliant and well-educated mother of Charles and John Wesley (and 17 other children!) described her commitment to child-rearing and motherhood: "There are few, if any, that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime of life in hopes to save the souls of their children, which they think may be saved without so much ado; for that was my principle intention." Mrs. Wesley was concerned about the eternal salvation of her children, to be sure, but she also concerned about their salvation in the sense of salvaging, i.e., making the best use of the "materials" available, in this lifetime! Few parents realize what great service they are doing for basic civilization, for society, for human culture and for the kingdom of God when they give energy and attention and devotion to providing a shelter for the family and to providing good mothering. As someone expressed it so succinctly (and unfortunately, I don't remember the source): "No professional pursuit, no matter how glamorous, challenging and/or rewarding, so uniquely and completely combines the most menial tasks with the most glorious opportunities as does motherhood."

It is true that many perfect career opportunities may come and go during the child rearing years, but there is one opportunity that will absolutely never, ever come along again -- the job of rearing our own children and allowing them the increasingly rare opportunity to grow up at home. If pursued with energy, intelligence, imagination and love, mothering has as much challenge and opportunity, perks and incentives as any corporation, plus something no other position offers: working for people you care about the most. The mother has a hand in building something far more magnificent than any cathedral -- the dwelling place for an immortal soul. A Spanish proverb says, "A rich child often sits in a poor mother's lap." It's not money and things and toys that make a child rich...it is the love and nurture of dedicated parents. Again, one hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of car you drove, or what kind of house you lived in, or what your clothes looked like; but the world may be better because you were important in the life of a child. Good lives just don't grow with minimal maintenance; good lives are built by people who care.

I'm out of time, in fact, I think I'm way over time. I close with this: as mentioned during the Time With The Children, someone once wrote that the three sweetest words in the English language are mother, home and heaven. If you think of it, these words interrelate. One reason I believe God places such a high price tag on the value of motherhood is that motherhood gives what may be the ultimate object lesson of our true Home in the Kingdom of God. "Mother" was our first earthly home. This engulfing body of love, attention, devotion and care brought us into the world, and continued to engulf us in love, attention, devotion and care. But our first home AND our final home, is in heaven, and in that heavenly kingdom we will be eternally and thoroughly engulfed in the love, attention, devotion and care of the God who created us. No matter which direction the culture around us may be heading, no matter how high a price tag others may put on things of relatively little value, may we as a church continue to honor, promote, revere, value and esteem the high calling and privilege of motherhood...this ultimate object lesson of the Kingdom of God.