Steve’s Sermon – May 8^th

Well, it’s Mother’s Day. What a great day. What a fun day.

My kids are very excited about Mother’s Day. I think they should be cooking breakfast if those teenagers aren’t sleeping in. I’ll have to check on that later.

As I was preparing myself for Mother’s Day, I was asking myself if God were here and could speak to the mothers of the church, what would God say? And even more than just the mothers of the church, but the women of the church, because you know originally Mother’s Day was not just for women who had given birth to children. Originally Mother’s Day was for all women. More on that in a moment.

If God were here and could speak to the mothers and the women, what would God say?

I’ve actually spent the last two or three weeks trying to get myself into that space to try to listen to what God would say.

I heard several things. First of all, I heard God speak a note of incredible praise, a note of a tremendous amount of love, a tremendous amount of pride that God was so grateful that God had created women as one of the most beautiful gifts to the creation. And so if you are a mother today, if you are a women here in this sanctuary, I want you to hear above and beyond anything else God’s incredible love for you and admiration for the sacrifices you have made for your children and grandchildren. God gives you thanks.

There is more that God wants to speak. The past couple weeks as I have been preparing myself I have heard concern from God. It’s as if out of nowhere there have been different pieces of information, different data that has been given to me that has actually set me back a little bit and given me concern. Realize that our world, our culture is not safe. It is not a safe place to be a woman in our society or to be a mother in this society.

David and I had a couple conversations and David told me he was watching a news program where they were interviewing the FBI in the wake of this woman who got cold feet just before she was to marry and she disappeared. They found her in New Mexico. People have made many jokes at her expense and that is a story that has broken my heart. Here is a woman who is in tremendous pain. The FBI said that at any given moment in the United States there are 22,000 women that are missing. That is a very large town, a small city of women that in a blink of an eye are gone. They are missing. They might have been kidnapped, they might have been murdered. They may have gone into hiding to protect themselves. Twenty-two thousand women are missing. That is just one statistic.

Another statistic – at our In the Light service on Monday night, Tracy Dawson who is a laywer and a judge shared with us that last year alone in the state of Colorado, there were 30,000 divorces filed. Of those 30,000 divorces filed, 72% of them were filed by women. That is somewhere around the order of 18 to 19 thousand woman – like the town of Durango. Let’s say the town of Durango were all women, and these women felt like their marriages were either dangerous or destructive to their souls or their lives. They feel as though dramatic changes need to be made in their lives.

David Hartman told me a third statistic. He told me the progeny of women, their children are in danger in our society. The FBI reported that right now on the internet there are 55,000 individual children who are pictured in abusive ways. Read between my lines there. Fifty-five thousand individual children, that’s a city – a city of children who are abused in our society.

I could go on an on with statistics that women have to face, cancer rates, heart attack rates, crime rates and this is just in the United States. I am not talking about the Middle East and the world that women live in there – how they are oppressed. It is not a safe world for women.

So on Mother’s Day when we celebrate who are women are and we celebrate the mothers of creation, I think we need to hear God say a few other words, that God is concerned for the safety and well being of women. That is why there is another message that we need to raise up today on Mother’s Day for all of us to hear.

As I was studying and preparing for this sermon I was drawn to this passage from Acts where Paul and Simon meet Lydia by the banks of the river. It is from this passage that I believe God speaks to us. He wants to give you a message. Lydia was a purveyor of fine purple cloth and linen. Purple cloth was for the very very wealthy and the elite. It was the color of royalty. Lydia was a woman who dealt with the highest and the richest of society. Business was so well known throughout this region that in Homer’s Iliad, he made reference to Lydia. This incredible woman was in the market place. She was not in the home. She was out in the world.

I think on Mother’s Day what we need to hear is that God’s women need to be active and they need to be present to the world. Oftentimes when we thing of Mother’s Day we think of it as a celebration of those who have given birth, women who are raising children in their home. That is not what it was originally intended for. It was intended to be a celebration of all women, a call to action.

One of the first founders of Mother’s Day was Anna Jarvis back in 1858. She started these mother’s day work clubs – a gathering of women in the Appalachian mountains who worked together to eliminate poverty. When the Civil War came about, the mother’s day work clubs created medical camps. They were places of nonviolence for men from both sides who were wounded in the war. At the end of the Civil War, Anna Jarvis organized the Mother’s Day Friendship Day which was a call for radical peace. Anna Jarvis brought together the leaders from the north and the south for a time of reconciliation. Mother’s Day was originally about reconciliation and peace.

Then the next woman, Julia Ward Howe who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, was the one who called for dignity of women to protest the cruelties of war everywhere and to gather for a call to peace. She called for a national day of peace for all women. She wrote this statement, “Arise then women of this day, arise all women who have hearts, say firmly our husbands shall not come to us reeking with the carnage for caresses and applause. Arise women of peace.”

Her daughter also named Julia Ward Howe was the one who approached President Wilson and petitioned for a national Mother’s Day. It was Woodrow Wilson who called for the second Sunday of May to be the national Mother’s Day. Do you know what happened? An anti-suffragette movement came in against these women who were calling for peace. So instead of being a day for women who were active and present in the world, it became a day to celebrate mothers who stayed at home with the children.

Anna Jarvis the founder of Mother’s Day was so angry with Woodrow Wilson that she filed a suit, a petition that Mother’s Day should be halted and stopped. Instead of it being run by women, suddenly Mother’s Day was being run by men in an effort to keep them in the house barefoot and pregnant. Do you know that Anna Jarvis was arrested at a Mother’s Day celebration and she spent the rest of her life in a sanatorium?

Women, I want you to hear this call. We are a world at war. We are a world at war over your children, we are warring for you and for your lives and for your souls. I heard crystal clearly God say women, be present to the world. On this Mother’s Day, rise up. You need to know that God has given you unique gifts, abilities, strengths that the world needs.

I talked with Rebecca earlier this week and I asked what do you think is the uniqueness that God has given women? She said it is the fact that He has made us emotional, relational, and caregivers. Rebecca said God cannot do God’s work if women are silent with their gifts.

So today, on Mother’s Day, I want you to be proud of your gifts and I want you to find ways to step out into the world and use your gifts. There is more that God wants to say. God looks at you and sees the strain that is put upon you. I have seen in my own household, how my children completely deplete the strength of my wife. Raising kids is no easy business. Being a grandparent is no easy business. The older the children get, the more complicated the problems become. I yearn and long for the days of timeout.

My wife is exhausted sometimes and I see other women who are exhausted. That is why I hear God say on Mother’s Day, women I need you to take care of your souls. This passage with Lydia, Paul and Simon go to the river to pray, to worship and when they go there, who do they find already there worshipping? Lydia. Lydia is already there with the other women. And the text says that God opened up her heart to hear Paul and Simon preach.

Women how does God open up your heart? What is it you do that puts you in a place that lets God speak to you and nurture you. Is it prayer? Is it contemplation? Is it journaling? Is it music? Is it running, working out, lifting weights? Is it hiking? Is it biking? What is it that you do that fills your soul? Do you give yourself the permission to set aside the time to take care of you? Are you worthy enough to take a Sabbath break and fill your soul? God needs you. God can’t use you if you are depleted. God needs you so filled with God’s spirit.

That is why on every single Mother’s Day I try to find a way to charge the men to make sure that your wives, the women in your life are given this sacred time. What can you do to carve out time for your spouse, your friend, your significant other to have this sacred time?

God is calling you because of God’s great concern to take Sabbath on Mother’s Day. Not only today take a Sabbath, but everyday find a way to take a Sabbath.

And one more thought – God says, women lead the church. One of the greatest misnomers we are finally beginning to break is that we think women have been called to be silent in the church. We read these passages, these pseudo passages attributed to Paul. Paul did not write these passages. Other people wrote them and used his name. For Paul, women were active in church. For Paul, women were leaders in the church. Lydia told Paul to come to her house and that she would lead a church. Paul took her up on it. Lydia had a huge church that she ran, as did Phoebe, as did Eunice and this huge long list of women who ran the church during the first century.

Women are not to be silent in church. Women are to speak, to lead. Women you are called on Mother’s Day to be leaders of the church. How are you active right now leading the church? For me, I am excited that here at Columbine United Church we celebrate the leadership of women. Terri Townsend will be our next council president. We have women on the church council and in other leadership capacities. I feel like the pastoral leadership took on a whole new day when Rebecca joined us. I believe now we model to young girls and probably more importantly to young boys that God speaks to and through women.

On Mother’s Day, you need to hear that you take a back seat to no person, to no man. God needs you. The world is a dangerous place. Your progeny is in danger. There are women in other cultures who are suffering. We need to be working for their release. We can not work for their release until you are released.

God loves you women and mothers on Mother’s Day. God loves you. So much more important is what God would say, if God was here – I need you. I need you women. I need you.

Happy Mother’s Day.