Sunday is Mother's Day, and I will once again preach about mothers, or mothers at their best, or at least about the power and beauty of a mother's love.
In many churches, sermons about secular holi-days (e.g. Father's Day, Independence Day, Memorial Day) are commonplace. They're expected. If it's Veteran's Day, members expect to see veterans stand up and receive the applause that is their due. If it's the 4th of July, they expect to sing patriotic songs, and if it's Mother's Day, many of them bring their mothers to church so that they can be recognized, if not honored, by their pastor's message and the music they hear. After the worship service, many families find their way to the best Mother's Day brunch they can afford. but before they get there, they want to hear how wonderful mothers can be. I knew this from the beginning, of course, but I resisted it. I wouldn't preach about mothers on Mother's Day... in part, because I had issues with Mother's Day myself... and in part, because our lectionary does not include passages for Mother's Day. For instance, this Sunday's lectionary passages are from Acts 9, Psalm 23, John 10, and Revelation 7. They're wonderful passages, but they don't say a word about Mother's Day.
Given the number of special days we celebrate as a society (think of President's Day and Arbor Day), you can see that deviating from our lectionary too often would break down it's liturgical flow altogether. It's better, I thought, to stick to our own calendar. After all, the church chases the world in too many ways as it is, and what is more, many of us did NOT have good mothers. In fact, some of us had terrible mothers- drunkards who abandoned us, women who showed no interest in what we did or who we were, mothers who criticized us at every turn- and we don't want preachers telling us anything about a mother's love. Also, some of us have just lost wonderful mothers, and our pain is great. It's bad enough that we have to sit in church with all of the mothers who have joined their families- we certainly don't need to hear about how great it would be if we had a mother with us as well. In short, if mothers are too be celebrated, it should be done by their families, with a little help from Hallmark, candy stores, flower shops, and the aforementioned buffets.
That's what I thought when I started preaching. But it didn't take me long to discover that the people in our pews didn't agree with me! For many of them, a mother's love- at least at its best- was as close to an unconditional love as they'd ever known. Mothers were as sensitive, as forgiving, and as sacrificial as Jesus was- or at least they could be- and they didn't want to hear any other message on Mother's Day. Notwithstanding all of the reasons why I should stay the lectionary course, I found that, for me at least, ignoring Mother's Day was sort of like pulling the mask off of the Lone Ranger or spitting into the wind. It simply didn't work. So, I worked through my own painful memories-finally deciding that my mother did the best she could- and I began to preach about a mother's love on Mother's Day. Every now and then, someone will tell me that Mother's Day is not on the church calendar...but most of the others don't care. And if you asked the conservative Christians that I've been blessed to serve here in the Midwest, they would tell you that any fool would know that Mother's Day is most definitely a "holi-day."
Shalom,
pk
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