MAY 9, 1999

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Mothers Day

Sermon:

LOVE'S GREATEST DESIRE

JOHN 14:15-21

Worship Theme: We are called to share Christ's love with others

Scripture:

Our first reading this morning from the New Testament comes from the Book of Acts 17:22 -31.

Paul is in Greece when this is done.

The next reading is from the Epistle, from 1 Peter 3:13 -22.

The gospel reading comes from John 14:15 -21. If you would, and can, please stand with me as we hear the gospel. This is on the evening before Jesus= crucifixion, when he is speaking with his disciples.

The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Sermon:

This is Mothers Day and it is the day that we remember and honor and celebrate motherhood and those persons of whom we all have one -- that is, our mothers. We know mothers because of a certain air or sense that they have, a certain way that mothers act toward their young, and it is represented in all of that which is tender and gentle and caring. We think about Aa mother=s love.@ We reference that in our common speech. We talk about how gentle and tender and caring and loving mothers can be. That we see as the best from within mothers and we know that sometimes mothers get angry, we know that some sometimes they get extremely stretched out, and we=ll talk a little about that in a few moments.

Think about Aa mother=s love@ for a few moments and what that means. Jesus was not a mother. Oh, he understood and felt those things that mothers feel, no question about that. The greatest friend that women have ever had has been Jesus. The greatest friend that men have ever had has been Jesus. But we don=t always understand it that way. We sometimes think of Jesus as being the man=s friend. But we must also understand that Jesus understood and loved and cared for everybody, especially women, and one of the things that got him into trouble was his sayings about women.

On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus was talking with his disciples, giving them his going away address. He was talking to them about what they were going to face, and in the process of that, he gave them a new commandment. That commandment was that AYou love one another.@ And not only that, he said, AIf you love me, you will keep my commandment.@

I asked earlier in the children=s service if they had ever heard their mothers say, AIf you love me, you=ll do what I say.@ That=s the common translation of what Jesus said to his disciples. I=ve heard it. I grew up with that. AIf you loved me you wouldn=t do that.@ Or, AIf you loved me, you=d do what I say.@ That=s just a natural way of putting what we understand and experience from our mothers. Our mothers love us and they want us to understand that if we know how to love, we=ve picked up something from them. Loving seems to be a natural thing to mothers. And Jesus wanted all of us to love one another.

Let=s take that and apply it in some ways that will make some sense to you in a few minutes. I am reminded intrusively by my conscience of a story that Tony Campolo tells. He says that when he preaches in white churches he has difficulty understanding where he is with the congregation, but that he does not have that trouble when he is preaching to a black church because they always let him know how he=s doing. They=ll tell you, APreach on! That=s good! Say it again!@ He said one day he was struggling with a sermon and he knew it wasn=t going well, when all of a sudden this sister all the way in back said, AHelp him, Jesus, help him!@ He knew then that he was in trouble and she did, too.

What I want us to think about is this that Jesus said to his disciples. AI want you to love one another.@ And then he came back and said, AIf you love me, you=ll keep my commandment.@

Loving one another is not easy, and for a mother to love a child is not always easy. Oh, it=s nice and easy when the child is first born, when the child has not developed all of those oppositional attitudes that they will have the ability to develop. And as you love this child and as time passes, and as the child gets older, the child does not act in ways that always fits a mother=s expectations.

And all of you boys, I know, are not too much different than I and have done some things along the way that your mother did not want you to do. You did not do some things she wanted you to do and you=ve done some things she did not want you to do. All of us have done that. And occasionally we do something to the point that makes the person angry at us, so we have been punished or disciplined in some way for not being obedient.

When you think about loving one another, you put yourself on the line as brothers and sisters having to deal with each others= oddities -- we call them egocentricities -- those things that are just kind of unique and that can be very, very irritating. But as you think about it, you love one another, mother loves child, child then AIf you love me, you will keep my word. You will do what I ask you to do.@ And the child does not really want to always do that, especially if something is more tempting than doing what mother has asked you to do.

Chores are high on the list of those things that a child doesn=t want to do. But by doing those things that your parents ask you to do as a child, you learn how to do things even when you don=t want to because that=s what most of life is going to be about. That is, doing things that you don=t really want to do, but you have to do them anyway. So you learn to obey whether you want to or not. But if left to your own wishes, you wouldn=t do that -- you wouldn=t engage in that. So whenever your mother asks you to do something, that does something to you. It sorta sends you away. Gives you a chill sometimes. But then that=s not all of it.

If you love me, do what I ask you to do -- that=s tough -- but then Jesus said, AI want you to love one another. That=s my command that you love one another.@ Now loving one another or brothers and sisters sometimes is not easy. It can be very difficult.

I have a brother. In fact, I have four brothers and we all have one sister. And that one brother that=s next to me is close enough to me in age to give me some competition. Our next brother is five years younger than he, so I didn=t have much competition from him. Being the oldest I could have my way pretty well. But the one just eighteen months younger than I, he gave me trouble. And sometimes he would want to do the things I wanted to do when I didn=t want him to do it. And we would get into fusses. No. We got into fights. And we would actually end up hitting pretty hard on one another until our mother got there. And that stopped that in a minute. But I didn=t like him and I didn=t like him doing the things I didn=t want him to do when I didn=t want him to. You=re following all of that, aren=t you?

That=s the way it was. But you=re supposed to love one another. Oh we would fight. We would do things, and then we would sort of forget it. You never really get over those fights, you just forget it. Because neither one is wanting to say it=s my fault. Or that was a bad deal. You just let it alone for a while. It=s sort of like if you leave it alone long enough it won=t hurt or seem so bad, and then you can go with what=s happening.

Unfortunately that=s what we do a lot in our human relationships. Instead of working it out and getting it to heal we just sort of leave it alone for a while and hope that it will scab over and we can get some healing some other way and we won=t have to do anything with it. But then what happens? The next time you have a conflict, or at least we did, you try to make up for all that was held up from before and was much more violent the next time. You all never did that, I=m sure. But we did.

Love one another. And among the siblings there has to be that love for one another. It=s not easy. And when a mother sees that hatred -- almost -- between her two children, it breaks the mother=s heart. Now it=s not easy for the mother to love us and if we=re doing that sort of stuff, it=s even harder. How can a mother love me if I=m doing the opposite of what she wants? Jesus said, AIf you love me, you=ll keep my commandments. If you do what I tell you to do.@ Parents do the same thing. We break our mother=s hearts when we don=t.

One of the things that a mother helps us to develop is a conscience. A conscience. That innermost self that tells you when you are doing what=s right, and that innermost self that tells you with a ringing of bells and lightning and thunder in your awareness that you=re doing something that=s wrong. Mothers help to develop that conscience. When your conscience begins to hurt, you can do one of two things:

You can get it cleaned up and let it heal naturally, or you can put some salve on it that has an anesthetic effect and you can salve your conscience and make it not hurt. And you can go on with your bad deeds. It=s unfortunate when we do that. It=s unfortunate whenever we=re hurting from our conscience and our conscience is telling us we need to shape up or do something differently. It=s unfortunate when we get some kind of malarkey to smooth it over and soothe it over and anesthetize it and we don=t hurt any more. We do what we call a Ajustification of ourselves@ in our behavior. And we don=t hurt as bad, and so we keep on going. It is much better, much healthier, for us to look straight at the wound and clean it up and then work out that whichever is causing the conscience to be yelling at us to change our ways and our habits. Mothers help develop that conscience within us. The conscience that says Athis is right@ and Athat is wrong.@

You know, when I think about all the mothers that have been involved in my life, I think about my own mother. I think about all the women in the church, I think about the women who have been teachers to me through the years. Most all of these have been mothers. And mothers sometimes carry more than one job. Being a mother is a job in itself. Being a housewife is another, and a wife is another, and a worker is another. You can go on and on with all these duties and tasks in things that a mother does. And as we see our children growing and as these children become independent thinkers and citizens of the world on their own, they begin to do and see things and act ways that we are appreciative of and sometimes that we are not so appreciative of.

So when we think about what is the greatest desire of love -- or love=s greatest desire -- let=s analyze that for a few moments, knowing that mothers help make us who we are. But the consciences they give us is that which tells us whether we=re doing right or wrong.

Jesus said to his disciples, AI want you to love one another, and I want you to love me.@ Did you ever play the game with your children called Who Do You Love? Who Do You Love Most? Who Do You Love Next? And the little child eagerly participates in that and gives you answers. You bounce them on your knee and everything is well. Who do you love the most? It=s a thing, sometimes, to see this happen. You do it in fun, you do it in order to get their response, you do it in order to feel what they feel, their arms around your neck and all that excitement. Who do you love the most? When we are doing this with our children, we are giving them opportunities of expressing their love. Again, what is it you want most from the child? What do you want for that love you=re giving to the child? You want them to love you in return! Love=s greatest desire is to be loved. And everyone of us, we want our children to love us. Mothers want their children to love them.

I know that sometimes mothers engage in behaviors and act in certain ways that would embarrass their children. And the children, then, tend to go away and that=s unfortunate. But the desire of love is to be loved and so, I believe, every mother wants to be loved. She wants to feel that response from the child that says, AI love you.@ Too often we forget it. As children, we forget it. We forget the love that they have given us. We forget that they want love back. Oh, we sometimes tip our hats at them, say a Ahowdy do@ now and then. But it=s the love that counts. The caring. Every once in a while we go into nursing homes and various places and when we walk in we see, sometimes, women whose children live far away. She hardly ever sees them. We get a feeling of emptiness and lostness. We want to do something about that.

I occasionally visit a person in a nursing home in another section of the state and that person tells me that the most important thing is for someone just to sit and talk with her. Needing the love. Needing the love from someone else. But that love we want as mothers, and even as fathers, is the love of the child back to us.

Jesus said, ALove one another, and keep my commandments. When you do that, you prove that you love me.@ So today as we come to celebrate on Mothers Day, as we enter into this special festivities -- and many of you are here visiting with your family and so on -- I want to tell you about some things that you can do. Some gifts that you can give. These are gifts you might give to your mother. It may not be easy, but they are gifts that you can give and they don=t cost you a penny. That=s the best bargain you can get, money-wise. Listen to the eight gifts that do not cost a cent:

First of all is the gift of listening. But you must really listen. No interrupting. No day dreaming. No planning your response in response to what she=s saying. Just listening. Hearing the heart and the soul of this person who has given you life. Listening.

The second gift is the gift of affection. Be generous with appropriate hugs and kisses and pats on the back and hand-holds. Let these small actions demonstrate the love you have for this person who is special. You can do that with your friends as well. Or with your family. All of these can be applied to other people. And if your parent or mother is not here and like mine has passed on, think about these and do them with other persons who are appropriate.

The third thing is the gift of laughter. The gift of laughter. You know we see cartoons all the time and sometimes people will clip out little funny things and stick them in my box at work. You can do the same thing. The gift will say, AI love to laugh with you.@ We can do that with one another in the family, as well.

So the gift of laughter we can give to someone and it doesn=t cost us a cent.

The fourth gift is the gift of a written note. Thanks for helping me out. A handwritten note may be remembered for a lifetime. It may be something that changes a person=s whole life. Just a note.

The gift of a compliment is gift number five. It=s simple. It has to be simple and sincere to be effective. Just say to someone, AYou look great in red, or blue, or whatever the color is.@ Or, AYou did a super job.@ Or, AThat was a great meal.@ Just something that lets them know that you complement them and it may make the person=s day.

Sixth is the gift of a favor. Every day we could go out of our way to do something kind to someone else. That=s a gift. It doesn=t cost us. It=s just a favor.

The gift of solitude is the seventh gift. There are times that we know the other person needs to be alone, when he or she needs private time. It=s better to just leave them alone. We need to learn how to be sensitive to those times and give the gift of solitude when it is needed by others.

The eighth gift that you can give that doesn=t cost you anything is a cheerful disposition. The easiest way to feel good is to extend a kind word to someone. Really, it=s not that hard to say, AHello,@ or AThank you, have a good day.@ Not hard to do that at all. Just to have a cheerful disposition. Smile. Doesn=t cost you. It=s easy.

So those are the things: gifts of listening, of affection, of laughter, of a written note, a compliment, a favor, solitude, and a cheerful disposition. They don=t cost you. But they help others tremendously.

It is not always easy for a mother to love us, because in the loving of us they have to put up with all of our stuff. I close with this story.

One of those memories that I have of my own that I confess is the experience once of working on an automobile after we had driven from Kansas City to my grandmother=s funeral. The engine blew up, so we had to change out the engine.

Now we didn=t change them out where I grew up the way you do today. We didn=t take it to the garage and tell them to put a new engine in it. We went to the junkyard and found one that was a similar make and model and we got that one at the best price we could. We brought it home in the back of a pickup truck and then we got a wench and put it over the limb of a tree and we pulled it out and we put it in. So far, so good.

So here I am, in my twenties, with my brother and my father. My dad leaves where we are and goes inside where my mother is . . . because it is raining. Natchez is still in Mississippi and has those things we call thunderstorms.

And in the middle of a thunderstorm there is lightning. And lightning is striking here and there. And I=m under a car and there=s rain dripping in my face and water running under my back and lightning striking at the trees. And my mother=s inside and wanting me to get in the house.

She cried because her son was doing a foolish thing. She loved me and she cried.

It=s not always easy to love us as children, but we=re grateful to God for a mother=s love that keeps on loving us and keeps on telling us, ALove one another, and keep my commandment.@ Amen.