FIRST (SCOTS) SERMONS THE STRENGTH OF STANDING BY

Transcription

1 FIRST (SCOTS) SERMONS THE STRENGTH OF STANDING BY Scripture Lessons: 1 Samuel 2:1-10; John 19:25b-27 This sermon was preached by Dr. L. Holton Siegling, Jr. on Sunday, May 13, 2018 at First (Scots) Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. John 19:25-27 Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, Woman, here is your son. Then he said to the disciple, Here is your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. Leader: People: This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God Let us pray Almighty and Everlasting God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of each of our hearts be pleasing, acceptable, and even joyful in your sight, for you are our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. It has been said that mothers have a way of teaching us about nearly every aspect of life. For example, mothers have a wonderful way of teaching us about logic, If you get grass stains on those jeans...oh, you ll regret having done so. My own mother taught me about genetics when she said, You are just like your father. Many of us can probably remember quite well the very tone and intonation with which some rather winsome anecdotes about life and living were spoken. Perhaps your mother offered those famous words, If you can t say something nice, don t say anything at all. And who among us have never heard the words: Don t cross your eyes, they may stay that way. I can still hear my mother s voice, Holton, Holton, strong and able, get your elbows off the table. This is not a horse s stable, but a first class dining table. Within our church family there are mothers who are in their 20 s and mothers who are in their 90 s. Some mothers have children who are in the nursery, while others may have children who joined our church family just last week as members of our Confirmation Class. Still, other mothers have students who are about to graduate from high school, and we do pray for them! 1

2 There are some mothers in our midst whose children have had children of their own, and, in some cases, mothers have had the rare privilege of knowing even their great-grandchildren. Of course, it should come as no surprise to know that we also have mothers present who have lost some of their children while others are fortunate to have living all the children that they birthed. We consider motherhood in a broader sense when we take into account those other remarkable women who are also among us today who have mothered other children, in the sense of providing love, and care, and compassion though they may not have literally and physically had children of their own. And then there are the children indeed there members of our church family whose mothers are healthy, and for that they can grateful, still others have infirmed mothers - mothers whose physical condition does not permit them to be with us this morning. But, friends, we all are here! And the reason we are here, apart from the grace and favor of God, is that we, each of us, had a mother. And so this Mother s Day morning, in a spirit of reverence and in the presence of the living God, we take time to thank God for that first person we ever knew or felt, our mothers. One of the earliest recorded accounts of the establishment of Mother s Day can be traced to the year 1872, when the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe, began sponsoring Mother s Day meetings each year in Boston. But the origins of Mother s Day can also be traced to Albion, Michigan, primarily because due to the actions of one Juliet Calhoun Blakely. The story as I know it goes something like this... On the 2nd Sunday of May, in the year 1877, three young men - each of whom were sons of staunch temperance advocates - they were found drunk on the streets of Albion. It has been suggested that they were victims of an anti-temperance scheme to get them intoxicated so as to publicly humiliate their cause. One of those young men was the son of the pastor of a local church. On that Sunday, which was also Juliet Calhoun Blakely s 59th birthday, the pastor was so distraught because of his son s drunkenness that he was unable to finish the service, leaving the pulpit area. Juliet stepped forward and invited the other mothers who were present to help conclude the service. Her sons were so touched by what she did they announced they would return to Albion each year on their mother s birthday to honor her. The beginning of the official observance of Mother s Day, however, is usually credited to Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia who, interestingly enough, was not a mother herself. As a child in Grafton, West Virginia, she remembers her mother s desire to establish a tribute for all mothers, both living and deceased. On May 10, 1908, on the third anniversary of her mother s passing, a church service was held in Philadelphia. That service functioned as a general reminder and thanks for all mothers and was held each year thereafter. If we do the math, there have been at least 110 such Mother s Days since that time, and more than a few sermons have focused on the Sarah s and Hannah s, the Ruth s and Rebecca s, but the lion s share of Mother s Day sermons have focused on a woman whose name was Mary. 2

3 I am, of course, referring to Mary the mother of Jesus. It all began for Mary when an angel named Gabriel came to her in that small northern village called Nazareth, in the sixth month. Mary was a virgin, yet it was by God s design that she give birth to God s own son by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now she was neither formally educated nor perfect in any sense of the word. She had no social status, so far as we know, little if any money, and yet God chose her, among all people, to be the mother of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As many of you who have children know full well, time flies when you re having fun; and in fact, even the Biblical narrative seems to move right along at an almost hurried pace to the point that, after the birth narrative, when we are first reintroduced to Jesus, he is around 12 years old. We d do well to remember that at that time, he s already astounding the elders in the temple; and I think that Mary, not only did she probably scratch her head in amazement as she stood there in the outer precinct, but I suspect that she continued to ponder in her heart the meaning of all that was happening. And then the Bible seems to fast forward once again and Jesus is full grown. I would add that just a few years before this morning s New Testament lesson, Jesus has been baptized by his relative, that child born to Elizabeth, whose name was John. And then consider this that from the time of his baptism until we pick up the story today, for less than three calendar years, was the entire encompassment of Christ s ministry here on earth. His miracles, his parables, his sermons, his teachings, his healings, all of this, it happened within the span of roughly thirty-six months. And then they crucified him. We recall in our Biblical history, most of the disciples, the ones upon whom Jesus should have been able to count, they were conspicuously absent at Golgotha. There were probably not too many Roman soldiers in that place either, just a small detail sent up there to do the terrible deed. For many of the people who knew Christ, they probably first of all had no interest in witnessing the death, and the slow and tortuous death at that; but more to the point, they probably didn t want to run the risk of being identified with someone whom the Roman soldiers and other Jews had tried and found guilty and sentenced to die, lest by association they too be arraigned, indicted, and crucified. For whatever the reason, most of the disciples simply were not there. They didn t show up. Ah, but the Bible tells us that Mary was, standing near the cross of Jesus. Now, what good does that do, we may ask? After all, Mary said not a single recorded word. She did not initiate a peaceful protest to voice her concerns. She didn t hand out signs, or march, or yell. She didn t remotely affect the method of capital punishment, as there would be many, many more crucifixions. If the truth be known, I seriously doubt that anyone - including those Roman soldiers - paid her a moment s attention. And why should they? Why should they pay attention to this tiny little lady simply standing near the cross of Jesus? 3

4 Ah, but what other role could she play? And was it not yet enough? Think about it, of all the faces that I am sure Jesus wanted to see through his blood-shot eyes, it was not the face of the big fisherman, the rock, though he certainly loved Peter. It was not even the face of John, that beloved disciple who recorded this event, though we know that he was there. You know I don t think that it was any of those faces that Jesus wanted to see. No! I think he wanted to see the face of a woman - Mary, his mother, and praise be to God, he saw it! And the reason He was able to see it is because she was there! She was standing by. Simply being present is more of a ministry than we may ever know. Many folks know about a ministry in our church family called Stephen Ministry. It is a simple ministry, one wherein someone going through a difficult time is partnered with a caregiver. And sometimes the greatest gift of a Stephen Minister when they come alongside a care receiver it is not their words of wisdom, though they are clearly well versed in the stages of grief. Sometimes the greatest gift they offer is to do nothing more incredible than simply taking that journey and being present. That s what Mary did, and she didn t have any training. Nothing in her life prepared her for what she was going through. She simply welcomed her life and the life of her Son, his calling and hers, and she embraced them, she honored them. Mary s journey as a mother undoubtedly brought her great joy, but that joy came at a very high price for her journey also brought her unimaginable sorrow. Nevertheless, I believe that if we could ask Mary today, if we could ask any mother for that matter, they would tell us that they would not trade being a mother for any sum of money that this world can offer. You see, there is no price tag that can be placed on seeing glimpses of God in the everyday, experiencing more love than our hearts can hold in the form of noodle framed poems, flowers under refrigerator magnets and backwards written letters on hastily written Mother s Day cards. We can t put a price tag on knowing that in the eyes of a child there is no one greater, no one smarter, no one stronger. A mother, after all, has the power to heal a boo-boo, can scare away monsters from under the bed, can patch a broken heart, all while policing a slumber party --- and all without once counting the cost. A Bishop put it this way...said that when he was a young boy, never dreaming he would be a preacher, living on the Western Plains out in Oklahoma, where fruit was a rarity, he remembers a time that his dad, a Methodist circuit-riding preacher, brought home four apples. He gave one to each of his three young boys and placed the big red one of equal size upon the mantel for his wife, the mother of the three boys. Quickly the three boys devoured the apple given to them and then sat, as most boys would, eyeing the big red one on the mantel. The mother, seeing the covetous liquid mouths of the 4

5 three boys, walked over and picked it up and then she took a knife and split it into three equal pieces and gave one to each of the three boys as they ran out to play in the front yard. One of the boys said to another, Isn t it strange mother doesn t like apples? The boy that said that when he was seven years of age later became a Bishop and said at age 70, Isn t it strange that mothers who like apples, like little boys better. And the truth be known, opening one s heart to the joy and the pain of loving someone else is not limited to mothers or fathers, or even parents. On the contrary, such a love and faithful presence in the life of someone else is open to all of us as we too seek to stand near the cross of Jesus. We would do well to also remember that Mary was not alone at the foot of the cross. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, he was there too, and Jesus, looking at them both, said, Woman, here is your son. Then he said to the disciple, Here is your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. Isn t that amazing? Mary was not John s mother and John was not Mary s son, and yet theirs became an altogether different relationship from that moment forward. For John, taking Mary into his home, looking after her in her remaining years, it had nothing to do with biology it had everything to do with theology! It had to do with the belief that God in Christ calls us to care for and, in fact, honor our mothers and our fathers with our talents, and, yes, even as we do this day, with our treasure. The church has always affirmed a measure of mutual dependence within the Body of Christ, and this certainly holds true for our mothers, for we are dependent upon them for the life they have lived and for the faith they continue to share. Hear this, and whether that is our experience or not, they are dependent upon us for the care we can offer - the compassion we can render. Friends, I have found that one of the greatest witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the extent to which the church called forth models for the world the importance and the strength not only of standing by our Savior, but also our neighbors and especially our mothers! Let us pray Gracious God, thank you for being present with us in all times and in all places. Help us by your grace, to be present ourselves, and to give unto all of your children, be they young or old, fathers or mothers, may we give unto each the time and touch and prayer that would be for them a blessing. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 5