A Mother's Day Sermon by Rev. Henley, May 8, 2008
Today is Mother’s Day--Happy Mother's Day to all today who are mothers!
Julia Ward Howe, a Unitarian, in 1870 called for a Mother’s Day so mothers everywhere in the world would call for world peace. Our reading this morning was her “Mothers Day Proclamation.”
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
…
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
In 1905 Anna Jarvis called for a Mother’s Day so everyone, everywhere, would take a day to honor their mothers. It is reported that Jarvis “… swore at her mother's gravesite … to dedicate her life to … establish[ing] a Mother's Day to honor mothers, living and dead…” (from about.com website)
“In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.”
Mother’s Day doesn’t seem to be what Julia Ward Howe wanted or President Wilson envisioned.
It bears some resemblance to Anna Jarvis’ call for a Mother’s Day to honor mothers. However, one article I read said that 9 years after she called for a Mother’s day, Jarvis said it had become too commercial. I remember reading a few years ago that Mother’s Day really didn’t “catch on” until the nation’s florists and greeting card companies became heavily involved in Mother’s Day.
And to attest to the “commercialization” of Mother’s Day, I found these statistics: [in Wikipedia]
This year for Mother’s Day “…Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts — like spa treatments — and another $68 million on greeting cards. Mother's Day will generate about 7.8% of the US jewelry industry's annual revenue in 2008. Americans are expected to spend close to $3.51 billion in 2008 on dining out for Mother's Day, with brunch and dinner being the most popular dining out options.”
Yes, Mother’s Day is today, a highly advertised, very commercial, and quite successful day for several industries in the United States, but so what. What is so wrong about that?
Throughout humankind’s story mothers were mostly breeders, in fact, in many places they were called breeders—my wife breeds as good as my best heifers—marry that … girl down the road, she’ll make a good breeder. Women lived hard lives and died young. If you look at many genealogies from the early days of our country, you would see that quite often, men had several wives. Oh, not because of divorce, unfortunately men had several wives because they died in childbirth or died from, simply, being worn out. It wasn’t until modern times, actually the last half of the twentieth century, and really in western culture that becoming a mother became less life-threatening.
So, why not, celebrate our mothers?
Mothers have a lot of responsibility. Whether they are in a family with a co-parent, or whether they are head of their households, our society looks for the mother to provide most of the physical care, as well as to engender good emotional health. Now we know roles are changing, but mothers remain primary care givers in most families.
And, the emotional and psychological well-being of our children, while it comes from both parents, and is affected by culture, in the beginning of lives, our mothers, by virtue of biology, “front and center.”
One mother, in our pop culture, comes to mind as being a good mother. It is Mother Gump of the Forrest Gump movie. Now, this was and still is an incredibly popular movie. No, it is not on the highest-grossing movie lists, nor is it on the top 50 movie list of the last century. But it is still popular. I’ve heard teenagers talk about seeing it at a slumber party, in the last few years, and many households have Forrest Gump in their movie collection.
A lot has been written about Forrest Gump, not only movie reviews, but critiques by philosophy and sociology professors. When you put in the movie in Google search, you get over three million hits. There are reports and papers on all aspects of the movie; from the acting to the philosophical message, to its “subversive nature.” And, I know that a lot of people think it’s silly. But in reality, scholars tell us it is a strong social commentary, both negative and positive, about our culture.
Today though, I want us to look at Mother Gump. A woman, who is alone, but not financially bereft. She has resources, a home large enough to be a bed and breakfast, and household help. She is a woman alone with a child. And a child who is mentally challenged—what does she do, how does she rear him?
When she was talking with her son, right before she died, she told him, “I did the best I could.” And isn’t that what most mothers do? The best they can. Now, we know that with some mothers, the “best they can” is not always healthy or safe for their children, and we need to pray each day for the countless mothers whose “best” is not good enough. Not only do we need to pray for those mothers, but we need to find a way to help, to make a difference, when and where we can.
Just as Eunice and Lois in our reading this morning from MOTHERS IN THE BIBLE, MOTHER Gump knew her responsibility. Knew to teach her son about God and life. But her child was challenged.
For most children, who are “normal” mothers can count on Sunday school teachers, school teachers, their peers, and even our culture to help with their growing up, but Mother Gump, innately, I supposed, knew that would not be true for Forrest.
It is clear that she wanted as much for him as any mother wants for her child, and she knew the way to help her son learn was to teach him lessons in short easy to understand sayings or aphorisms. As Forrest said many times, “Mama had a way of explaining things so I could understand them.”
When she wanted to teach him equality, she said to him, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you they’re better than you Forrest.
And when she wanted him to accept himself as a person she said, “Forrest, you’re no different than anybody else is. Did you hear what I said, Forrest, you’re the same as everybody else, you are no different.”
On the other hand, when the doctor put braces on Forrest, because his back was as crooked as a politicians! Mother Gump didn’t want Forrest to feel “different” or “less than” his school friends, so she told him his shoes were magic and they would take him anywhere!
When she wanted to teach him how to judge a person’s character, she taught him to look at a person’s shoes. “Mama always said, ‘There’s an awful lot you can tell about a person by their shoes, where they go, where they been.’” There was no way Forrest could have ever learned critical skills of character judgment, but to teach him to look at people carefully and with some thought, looking at their shoes was a discernment he could learn.
Forrest learned from her a philosophy about money and wealth, “Now mama said there’s only so much fortune a man really needs, and the rest is just for showing off!”
And Mother Gump knew that no matter your I.Q. a person would make mistakes, or have regrets, and would need coping skills. She taught Forrest to deal with what life gave him and then move forward, “You got to put the past behind you before you can move on.”
And for those times when she knew rude people would say something about him being stupid, she taught him, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Stupid is as stupid does. He used it in response several times in the movie, and it was always an appropriate response to an inappropriate observation!
All parents teach their children these aphorisms. We find evidence of aphorisms from many ancient cultures. Proverbs, one of the oldest books of the Hebrew Scriptures, probably close to three thousand years old is a collection of sayings that were used to teach the early Hebrews how to live right. Mother Gump was in good company. It is also in Proverbs where we find unusually positive characterizations of women. But scholars have known for a long time that the earliest Hebrew writings and the wisdom literature around the 600s before the Common Era were especially positive about women.
Proverbs 31 has several descriptions of good women:
[25] Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.
[26] She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
Yes, Mother Gump was in good company. And her teachings served Forrest well. “Mama had a way of explaining things so I could understand them. Mama was a real smart lady.”
She taught him about living AND dying.
When she was dying, Forrest walked in to her room and said,
“What’s the matter, Mama?” Forrest asked.
“I’m dying Forrest. Come on in and sit down over here.”
“Why are you dying, mama?”
“It’s my time. It’s just my time. Oh, no, now don’t you be afraid sweetheart. Dying is a part of life. Something we are all destined to do. I didn’t know it, but I was destined to be your mama. I did the best I could.”
“You did good mama.”
“Well, I happen to believe you make your own destiny. You have to do the best with what God gave you.”
“What’s my destiny mama?”
“You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself. Life is like a box of chocolates, Forrest, you never know what you’re going to get.”
Mother Gump, did the best she could.
Mother’s Day may not be what Julia Ward Howe or President Wilson envisioned, but our Mother’s Day that honors our mothers. Maybe it is a little more commercial than Anna Jarvis would have liked, but so what, our mothers are worth it.
Each of us can remember something our mothers taught us, simply, but profoundly. My mother’s “saying” to me was, “Lillie Mae, no matter what, you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
I now invite you before we have our chocolate candy communion, to come to the microphone and share a saying or aphorism you learned from your mother.
Today is Mother’s Day.
We honor our mothers’ living presence or loving memory.
We have chocolate candy, the kind Forrest Gump held when he was sitting on the bench waiting for his bus to take him to Jenny. We also have red licorice for those who do not like chocolate. Please come up the center aisle and return by the outside aisle.
Reading
“Eunice and Lois” from Beverly Whitaker, MOTHERS IN THE BIBLE
The Apostle Paul loved Timothy as if he were his own son. He writes to him, (II Timothy 1:5 "I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.") Eunice and Lois seem to step right from the pages of the Bible to tell us that nothing is more important in a mother's life than the early training of her children. We can be sure such children knew well the stories of the Old Testament, and recalled the Books of the Law and the Prophets. Undoubtedly, Lois and her mother had steeped Timothy in a knowledge of all the great judges and the most loved prophets as well as the wisdom in the Psalms and Proverbs. You can almost hear them repeating some of those verses to each other, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Or, "She that bare thee shall rejoice." (Proverbs 22:6.) Another might have been, "I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths." (Proverbs 4:11.) Timothy was only about fifteen when he left them to go with Paul and Silas to preach the gospel. We can only imagine the pride coupled with sadness they experienced as they told him goodbye. Copyright ©2007-2008 by Beverly Whitaker, MA