Sermon was given at Sydenstricker UMC 5/14/2017
NRS Proverbs 1:1 The proverbs of
Solomon son of David, king of Israel: 2 For learning about wisdom
and instruction, for understanding words of insight, 3 for gaining
instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; 4
to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young-- 5
Let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill, 6
to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. 7
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and
instruction. 8 Hear, my child, your father's instruction, and do not
reject your mother's teaching; 9 for they are a fair garland for
your head, and pendants for your neck.
NRS 2 Timothy 1:1 Paul, an apostle
of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is
in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and
peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3 I am grateful
to God-- whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did-- when I
remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4 Recalling
your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. 5 I
am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother
Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 6 For
this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through
the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of
cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
In 2001 one year
before my mother passed away, I gave my first official sermon message as the
Lay Leader of Bethia UMC. It was on Mother’s Day and my mother was in
attendance that day. That is a bittersweet memory in that one year later she
was gone to her eternal salvation. It is I think the only sermon she ever heard
me preach. But I thought it appropriate that I resurrect that message on this
Mother’s Day since in this place I am gifted with many mothers who have made my
life better. We begin this message with Paul’s words to Timothy that remind us
that many of us are what we are today because our Mother’s laid a foundation of
learning and faith so many years ago. Paul tells Timothy that he is reminded of
a sincere faith that first began with his grandmother and then his mother and
now it lives within him. I remember years ago my grandmother telling me that I
would become a preacher. I thought she was funny and totally out of her mind.
Yet, here I am. Life has a way of changing people. Lord knows that my mom saw
tremendous change in me during the years we were together. Now my mother was as
amazed that I became a preacher as I was. She knew me in the early years and
watched me grow. I would say mature but there are those; including myself who
often wonder if I have ever fully matured. What fun would that be, right?
We are told in
Proverbs by Solomon to listen to the teaching. When I was young, school was
always a difficult thing for me, in part, because I wanted to be somewhere else
and to fly from the earliest of ages. So while the teacher was trying to teach
me I would be looking out at the window at some airplane in the sky and
dreaming of being up there. My mother would have this way of getting my
attention. You may have experienced this as well. You have to understand I have
been accused of being hearing challenged from an early age. She would call me,
especially when I was in trouble in a certain way that you knew you were in
trouble. It did not matter whether I was in the next room or ¼ mile down the
street, I would hear Mom say, Donald Andrew Jamison and I knew that there was
trouble for me coming. And you have to understand that my Mom was shorter than
me by the time I reached my teen years. But she had an equalizer in the broom
that was always close at hand. Mind you I would never call what she did as
abusive. She just was not going to take any grief from her children, especially
the boys who towered over her at early ages. So let’s sit back and listen about
Mom’s on this Mother’s Day. I believe
that women have a special taste of God’s personality.
LISTEN
L is for Love. Not
just any kind of love but agape love. Mother’s love their children
unconditionally. Oh, they might tell others the mistakes their children have
mad but let someone do something mean to their child and look out. A mother
loves her child regardless of appearance, personality or physical ability. Even
when that child causes his or her mother great harm, hurt and anguish, she
still loves them with all that she is. Mother’s see their child as their own
blood and flesh and that agape love is how God loves us.
LISTEN
I is for intuition.
I used to think my mother was Superwoman. She could see through walls and hear
miles away. I learned later that she simply had intuition that told her when I
was doing something I should not be doing. I remember when I was younger my
brothers and I broke Mom’s favorite candle. It was this tall thing that sat in
the living room and we had been rough housing as we often did. And we broke it.
So we glued it together and it looked good to us. That is until Mom came home
and immediately launched into us about who broke the candle. Or when we would
sneak in the kitchen to the cookie jar thinking we were being quite as mice.
She could be in the basement and yet she could hear that cookie jar open. Max
Lucado says that women have a sixth sense that we men did not get.
LISTEN
S is for
sacrifice. Can you think of anyone more sacrificing than a mother? I know life
has changed in the years that we have lived, but I bet that in your house the
woman is still the keeper of the house and if there are children, for the most
part, the keeper of the children. We men go to work and come home, mow the yard
and take out the trash only after being told three times to do so. Women wear
many hats. They clean the house, do the laundry, do most if not all the cooking
and they are the taxi drivers for the children to their activities. And we
could go on and on about the things women do for us as we go through life. Well
today we say thank you for all you do. We are reminded that sacrifice is the
center piece of God’s love for us.
LISTEN
T is for
teacher. Moms are our first teachers. They are there to teach us to walk and
teach us to talk. I have read that the first seven years are the most
influential years of our lives. We learn many of our values and our basic
skills in those first seven years. And it is our mothers who provide that
profound teaching. Maybe the greatest loss of the modern age is that when I was
growing up, it was my Mom that made sure I went to church on Sunday morning.
But mothers teach us how to read, how to write, how to get along with one
another, they teach us about our culture and about our language. It was my mother
who taught me to read and used to tell me that I could do anything in life if I
studied, prayed and persevered. Solomon reminds us of this when he tells us
that we are not to forsake our mothers teaching.
LISTEN
E is for
expectations. Mother’s expectations for her children are always higher than the
standards the world sets for us. She believes in her heart that we can be
better than we are. She believes in her heart that we can achieve better than
she has achieved in life and sets out to help us achieve those expectations.
Mother’s want their children to make something of their lives. How many times
have you heard your mother say, you need to study and make something of your
life? Or as my mother used to tell me, you can be anything you set your mind
to. Some of the greatest of those we have encountered in life credit much of
what they achieved to their mothers. Michael Jordan, former President Bush and
Baseball great Nolan Ryan all credited their success to their mothers. A mother
will allow for imperfections but will always expect the best from us. God’s
expectation of us is nothing short of perfection. Now God knows that we are
imperfect, that is why God sent us Jesus. But God expects that we all are
striving on a path to perfection.
LISTEN
N is for never.
A mother never gives up on her child. It is back to that agape love thing. A
mother stands by her children even when they get themselves in the worst kind
of trouble. Mother’s do not give up on their children even when their children
give up on themselves. There was a mother who son brought shame and fear simply
because he was born even as he brought her great joy at his birth. He forced
her to give up everything in order to protect him as he grew up. He frightened
her on more than one occasion but we know about this one. For those of you with
children, have you ever been somewhere and all of sudden in the blink of eye
your child was not beside you? Remember that fear and anxiety? This woman’s son
rebuked her on more than one occasion and in the end provided profound sadness
as she had to deal with is death. You might ask who this woman is but I think
you already know that it is Mary, Jesus’s mother.
For you see,
God gave us mother’s to allow us to see God’s personality. God created humans in God’s own image, but
what are God’s attributes
There is no
greater love than the love for us that God has!
God’s love is the true unconditional love, never wavering or ending. God
loves us from the moment that we are created inside our mother’s womb until the
day we take our last breathe and even beyond that into eternity itself. I
suspect that is why God grieves when we deny God. And yet God loves us so much
that God gives us that choice. God is intuitive – all seeing and all
knowing. God knows our thoughts, our
dreams, and our actions often before we even do them. I have heard God
described as being able to see every possibility of every choice we will ever
make. God has given the ultimate sacrifice in death on the cross. There is no greater love than to give one’s
life for another. Jesus loved us all the same, whether Gentile or Jew. God does
not distinguish between rich and poor, black and white, cultured and raw.
Jesus, God, was our first teacher and continues to teach us valuable and important
life lessons throughout our lives. God has set the expectations for our lives.
Even though God understands that we are imperfect, God pushes us to be better
and greater than anything we can personally imagine. But probably the best
attribute of God is that God never gives up on us.
LISTEN
LISTEN – let us
pray
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