SPECIAL DAYS: Mother's Day

LESSON: 2 Kings 4.8-17

SERMON TITLE: A Mother's Faith

INTRODUCTION:

1. Mother's Day "Surprise" ⁽¹⁾:


The children told their mother she wasn't to lift a finger on Mother's Day.

They were going to do all the cooking.

Then they got out three pots, two frying pans, a double boiler, three mixing bowls, a chopping board, six measuring spoons, eight serving dishes--and Mom was delighted.

She insisted it was the best instant oatmeal she ever tasted.

1. Having the Last Word:


In the cartoon SHOE says to one of his co-workers:

"Look! We have a serious disagreement here. I think that it's time to use those four magic little words my mother always used to put an end to an argument:

'Go to your room!'"

MAIN BODY:

1. The Perfect Mother is a mythological figure which exists only in the minds of 50's television writers and nostalgic elders.


Stephanie Coontz, in "Modern Maturity", May-June 1996 Modern Maturity Report, In Search of the American Family, Where are the Good Old Days: Raising a family is hard enough without having to live up to myths, In fact, the American family is as strong--and as fragile--as it ever was, ⁽²⁾

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"The American family is under siege. To listen to the rhetoric of recent months, we have all fallen down on the job. We're selfish; too preoccupied with our own gratification to raise our own children properly. We are ungrateful; we want a handouts not a hand.

"If only we'd buckle down, stay on the straight and narrow, keep our feet on the ground, our shoulder to the wheel, our eye on the ball, our nose to the grindstone. Then everything would be all right, just as it was in the family-friendly '50s...

"But American families have been under siege more often that not during the past 300 years. Moreover they have always been diverse, both in structure and ethnicity. No family type has been able to protect its members from the roller-coaster rides of economic setbacks or social change. Changes that improved the lives and fortunes of one family type often resulted in losses for another."

Some observations:

"In 1745 Massachusetts, any child age 6 who did not know the alphabet was removed form the home and placed with another family.

"White Colonial families were also diverse: High death rates meant that a majority spent some time in a step family. Even in intact families, membership ebbed and flowed; may children left their parents' home well before puberty to work as servants or apprentices to other households. Colonial values did not sentimentalize childhood. Mothers were far less involved in caring for their children than modern working women, typically delegating the tasks to servants or older siblings. Children living ways from home usually wrote to their fathers, sometimes adding a postscript asking him to, "give my regards to my mother, your wife."

"During the Civil War, the number of orphans in almshouses increased by 300 percent. In 1825 there were two orphanages in New York State; by 1866 there were 60, but still not enough to meet the need. Homeless children swarmed the cities's street and "menacing the gentry."

(After the Civil War) "As women left the work force children entered it by the thousands, often laboring in abysmal conditions up to ten hours a day. In the North, they worked in factories or tenement workshops. As late as 1900, 120,000 children worked in Pennsylvania's mines and factories. In the South, states passed "apprentice" laws binding black children out as unpaid laborers, often under the pretext that their parents neglected them.

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"...for every Nineteenth Century middle-class family that was able to nurture its women and children comfortably inside the family circle, there was an Irish or German girl scrubbing floors, a Welsh boy mining coal, a black girl doing laundry, and black mother and child picking cotton, and a Jewish or Italian daughter making dresses, cigars, or artificial flowers in a sweatshop.

"By 1900, the U. S. Had the highest divorce rate in the world. Birthrates among the educated had plummeted to an alarming degree, prompting Teddy Roosevelt to call it "race suicide" in 1903. Some state legislatures passed laws prohibiting abortions in order to boost the nations birthrate.

"In the 1920s, for the first time, a majority of children were born to male-breadwinner, female-homemaker families....Numerous immigrant families, however, continued to pull their offspring out of school so they could help support the family, often arousing intense generational conflicts. African-American families kept their children in school longer than other families in those groups, but their wives were much more likely to work outside the home.

"In all sectors of society, these changes created a sense of foreboding, I Marriage on the Skids? Asked one magazine article of the times; What Is the Family Still Good For? Fretted another. Popular commentators harkened back to the 'good old days,' bemoaning the sexual revolution, the fragility of...family ties, the cult of youthful romance, and the threat of the 'emancipated woman." (This is the 1920s.)

"During the Depression, divorce rates dropped; desertion soared. Half of all births were in families on relief or making less than $1,000 a year.

From 1939 through 1945, "the GNP soared: from $90 billion in 1939 to $213 billion in 1945. So did divorces: from 264,000 in 1940 to 610,000 in 1946."

"Fewer than half of all teenagers who entered high school graduated.

"The social commentators blamed working women, interfering in-laws, and, above all, inadequate mothers.

We have come full circle with the blame game.

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2. We observe Mother's Day as a day to honor mothers and motherhood.
1. Each Mother desires each child to whom she give birth to live up to the potential that the child possesses.
2. We could call this to be wholly human and wholly alive.
3. This is the themeof an important book by the Rev. Dr. John Powell, Fully Human, Fully Alive.
1. To accept one's self.
1. To be able to stand in front of the mirror and say,
2. "This is me." and "It's ok to be me."
2. To be one's self.
1. To be able to be free from pressures to conform to other's concepts or points of view.
2. To hold one's own understanding of the world, and opinions about it's value and operation.
3. To lose one's self in loving.
1. To be able to love and love truly and deeply.
2. To see the value in one's self and others.
4. To believe.
1. To believe in something strong enough to be willing to commit yourself to it.
2. I have a toothache so I have been going to the dentist to get my tooth fixed.
1. I had better believe in the dentist.
2. If I do not the results will not be too attractive.
3. We come to believe in God and in the church because we see the necessity and importance of our spiritual life.
1. We come to understand that all the good and positive principles of life and relationships come from our religious heritage.
2. We ignore them at our peril.

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4. If Mothers could have their way, would they desire for us this last step in becoming wholly human and wholly alive?
1. It is, TO BELONG
1. To be a part of something.
2. To join with other people for a purpose or a cause.
3. To have a sense of community
2. Community is a union of persons who have something in common; who mutually share their most precious possession - themselves.
1. These people are for one another.
2. They know and are open to one another.
3. They share in love their persons and their lives.
1. This description may contain some apprehension.
2. It is potentially possible to develop such a state of belonging.
3. It's up to the individual to determine not to live in continuing isolation from the rest of the people.
3. For each of us, what is being described is a "place called home."
5. We all need such a place.
1. 2 Kings 4:8-37, NRSVA


⁸One day Elisha was passing through Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, who urged him to have a meal. So whenever he passed that way, he would stop there for a meal. ⁹She said to her husband, "Look, I am sure that this man who regularly passes our way is a holy man of God. ¹⁰Let us make a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that he can stay there whenever he comes to us."

1111One day when he came there, he went up to the chamber and lay down there. ¹²He said to his servant Gehazi, "Call the Shunammite woman." When he had called her, she stood before him. ¹³He said to him, "Say to her, Since you have taken all this trouble for us, what may be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?" She answered, "I live among my own people." ¹⁴He said, "What then may be done for her?" Gehazi answered, "Well, she has no son, and her husband is old." ¹⁵He said, "Call her." When he had called her, she stood at the door. ¹⁶He said, "At this season, in due time, you shall embrace a son." She replied, "No, my lord, O man of God; do not deceive your servant."

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¹⁷The woman conceived and bore a son at that season, in due time, as Elisha had declared to her.

¹⁸When the child was older, he went out one day to his father among the reapers. ¹⁹He complained to his father, "Oh, my head, my head!" The father said to his servant, "Carry him to his mother." ²⁰He carried him and brought him to his mother; the child sat on her lap until noon, and he died. ²¹She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, closed the door on him, and left. ²²Then she called to her husband, and said, "Send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, so that I may quickly go to the man of God and come back again." ²³He said, "Why go to him today? It is neither new moon nor sabbath." She said, "It will be all right." ²⁴Then she saddled the donkey and said to her servant, "Urge the animal on; do not hold back for me unless I tell you." ²⁵So she set out, and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel.

When the man of God saw her coming, he said to Gehazi his servant, "Look, there is the Shunammite woman; ²⁶run at once to meet her, and say to her, Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is the child all right?" She answered, "It is all right." ²⁷When she came to the man of God at the mountain, she caught hold of his feet. Gehazi approached to push her away. But the man of God said, "Let her alone, for she is in bitter distress; the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me." ²⁸Then she said, "Did I ask my lord for a son? Did I not say, Do not mislead me?" ²⁹He said to Gehazi, "Gird up your loins, and take my staff in your hand, and go. If you meet anyone, give no greeting, and if anyone greets you, do not answer; and lay my staff on the face of the child." ³⁰Then the mother of the child said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave without you." So he rose up and followed her. ³¹Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the face of the child, but there was no sound or sign of life. He came back to meet him and told him, "The child has not awakened."

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³²When Elisha came into the house, he saw the child lying dead on his bed. ³³So he went in and closed the door on the two of them, and prayed to the LORD. ³⁴Then he got up on the bed^£ and lay upon the child, putting his mouth upon his mouth, his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and while he lay bent over him, the flesh of the child became warm. ³⁵He got down, walked once to and fro in the room, then got up again and bent over him; the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes. ³⁶Elisha^£ summoned Gehazi and said, "Call the Shunammite woman." So he called her. When she came to him, he said, "Take your son." ³⁷She came and fell at his feet, bowing to the ground; then she took her son and left.

1. With faith in God the child is restored to life.
2. A child is restored to his mother.
3. This is an incredible example of a mother's love.
4. There is a place called home.

1. We are children of the family of God.
2. This is home, and God promises a heavenly home.