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As a rule I do not do mother’s day sermons. Today I make an exception. One of the things we all remember from our time under our mothers’ direct care are the sayings we heard over and over again. Here is a tongue-in-cheek list of sayings famous biblical children might have heard from their mothers. 10. Samson! Get your hand out of that lion. You don’t know where it’s been! Yes, mothers have special phrases they can’t resist speaking to their children. They also have lists. Mothers’ lists are long, and always growing. At the top, in capital letters, you might find two words: MUST REMEMBER: Write thank-you letters ... Buy new ballet leotard for Emily (blue, not pink) ... Return call from sister... Trim son’s nails ... Return Snow White video to library ... Be nicer, more patient with daughter, so she doesn’t grow up to be a needy neurotic. This is just one of the "must remember" lists compiled by Kate Reddy, the working mother at the heart of Allison Pearson’s best-selling novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It. Mothers around the world can certainly relate to her endless lists, compiled while walking through life in what she describes as a "lead suit of sleeplessness." And on this Mother’s Day in particular, we can all be thankful for the many ways that time-and-sleep-starved mothers everywhere keep numerous balls in the air while being pulled in a thousand different directions. "I have to try to remember," Kate confesses. "Someone has to." Her husband isn’t much help, because if she asks him to hold more than three things in his head at once, you can see smoke start to come out of his ears…. the circuits all blow. Women are meant to be great at multitasking, says Kate. Most men are not. When a friend named Jill dies of cancer, she leaves her husband a sheaf of paper containing 20 pages of single spaced type. It bears the title Your Family: How It Works! "Everything’s in there," Jill’s husband says to Kate, shaking his head in wonder. "She even tells me where to find the bloody Christmas decorations. You’d be amazed how much there is to remember, Kate." But she isn’t surprised at all. What mother would be? As a mom, the Mary of today’s scripture is not much different. She, too, has a long list in her head as she and the family take Highway 101 back to Nazareth from Jerusalem. With the festival of the Passover now over, her mind races ahead to washing ... cleaning ... trash disposal ... gifts ... social events... sewing ... cooking ...negotiating relationships ... caring for children ... Wait a minute: caring for children? Where’s Jesus? Do you remember the movie, "Home Alone"? That moment en route to Paris when the mother realizes her young son is home alone? The panic, the grief, the guilt. A cartoon in the Saturday Evening Post showed a young boy about five or six years old talking on the telephone, saying, "Mom is in the hospital, the twins and Roxie, Billy, Sally, the dog, and me and Dad are all home alone." Being home alone can be defined as life without Mom. Mary doesn’t know it yet, but son Jesus is home alone in Jerusalem. The family is now a day away from Jerusalem, and no wonder Mary panics when she cannot find Jesus among the friends and relatives. She and Joseph had assumed he was in the group, but when he doesn’t turn up they race back to the city, their hearts pounding like jackhammers. For Mary, feelings of shame sweep over her as she thinks about forgetting Jesus. How could she have failed to check on him before leaving the city? She knows that Jesus is a special-needs child. She knows that she is, as theologians would later call her, the theotokos, the Mother of God. And now God is, missing! How big is that! We think that we have crises. The dog leaves a big surprise on the new carpet! A kid on the soccer team is bullying your 6-year old. But this mother has lost God! She has no idea where God is and it is her motherly duty to find him. How could she not know where her 12-year-old son is? It takes Mary and Joseph three days to find their son, and when they do he is in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Mary is overwhelmed by a mixture of astonishment, relief and anger, and she says to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." To which Jesus says, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" (Luke 2:46-49). At first glance, Mary’s words make more sense than the response made by Jesus. We can understand why she snaps at a boy who wanders off from the family, causing them intense anguish. We can relate to her frustration with a kid who sits around the temple for three days, acting as though nothing is wrong, while she and Joseph are overwhelmed by feelings of helplessness, anxiety, and fear. We won’t blame her at all if she says to Jesus, "Why can’t you be more like your younger brother James, and stay close beside us?" We can identify with James, the kid brother who lives with Jesus. This is the James whose ossuary, burial box, made the national news last year. At the time, Jay Leno joked about Mary making a typical introduction of Jesus, "This is our oldest child who is, as you know, our Lord and Savior." Then, turning to her younger son, she says, "And this is James, who’s still in carpentry school." Well, Mary isn’t thinking "Lord and Savior" at this particular point. In today’s passage, Jesus is not in the temple. He’s in the doghouse and she’s got him by the ear, herding him back to the ox cart. Can’t you picture little brother, James, making faces at Jesus behind her back? But that’s not the end of the story. The real value of today’s passage is found in the words of Jesus, not Mary. "Why were you searching for me?" asks Jesus. "Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" This is a reminder that the true family of Jesus is bigger than the nuclear grouping made up of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, James and the other siblings. The most important family for all of us to consider is the far-reaching family of God. Jesus reminds us that his "Father’s house" is our one true home. It’s a place of listening and learning, teaching and questioning, growing and developing and deepening our relationship with God and with one another. This house is more than a temple, more than a congregation, more than a denomination. It’s any place, really, any place in the world where we make a profound and personal connection with our Creator, and where we grow in faith and love. This is not to say that a mother’s house is unimportant. Far from it. There are lessons in goodness and mercy and faithfulness that are best learned in close-knit families, but these learnings should not be trapped forever within the home. Everything Mary did for her child Jesus helped to prepare him for his work in the world, and it wouldn’t have been right for her to prevent him from going out to serve his heavenly Father. True, she wasn’t ready for him to leave the family quite so early. Age 12 is rather young. But she had to let him go. A mother’s house can be solid preparation for life in the Father’s house. Jesus knew this, which is why he felt so comfortable among the teachers of the temple, and why he appeared to be so surprised when his parents came looking for him. "Why were you searching for me?" he asked them. "Didn’t you know that this is what you’ve been preparing me to do?" Mothers and fathers today should keep this in mind as they raise their children to adulthood. The lessons they teach should not be designed to insulate their children from the world ... or to keep them intensely focused on the affairs of the family ... or to make it hard for them to break away from mom and dad. Instead, the work of the nuclear family should prepare children for service to the worldwide family of God. But there’s another lesson from the story of Jesus in his Father’s house: Listen! ... Listen to the children! Jesus says to his parents, "I must be in my Father’s house," and then his mother treasures all these things in her heart (v. 51). Mary begins to see the plan that God has for Jesus, and her openness to this plan enables Jesus to increase in wisdom, and to become the savior God wants him to be. We parents cannot figure out the meaning of daily life on our own. It is important to resist the temptation to try to gain control over every moment of every day. If we become too obsessed with managing ourselves and our children, we will squeeze the vitality out of this wondrous life we have been given. A young boy wanted a bicycle very badly. All his friends had one. Finally his mother suggested he take his concerns to the Holy Mother Mary in prayer. Johnny wrote his prayer out on a piece of paper before he went to bed, and prayed, Mary, mother of God, could you see that I get a bicycle? All my friends have one. Amen. He placed the prayer next to his statue of the Virgin and went to sleep. The next morning when he didn't have a bike, he wasn't discouraged, and he repeated the same steps that night, and every night for the next week, with the same disappointing result. Finally he took his statue of Mary, wrapped it in a towel, and hid it in the back of a dresser drawer. When he went to sleep that night he prayed: Jesus, if you want to see your mother again, I better get that bike! So remember: Focus on God’s family, not just your own. Let go. Have faith. Loosen up. Trust God. Waste time. Listen to the children. This is God’s Family, and How It Works. |
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05.11.03 - Your Family: How It Works (Luke 2:41-52)
