Sermon 07 May 2022
Rev. Wesley Menke
Today is Mother’s Day, and I’d like to wish a very happy Mother’s Day to all of the Mothers. Motherhood is a very important vocation, probably the most important job any human being could do. Motherhood is also extremely varied. There are many different kinds of mothers.
Once, a few years back, I was working with a couple who was getting married. They shared with me about their families. I asked the groom about his parents. He said quite firmly and directly, “my mother is both my mother and my father.” He meant that she had so seriously taken her job to raise him, that he didn’t consider her to be a “single mother” but to be both. Wow! There are so many different kinds of mothers.
Some women who don’t have biological children are still mothers to children in their lives; taking on a role of caring for the children, they are sometimes called “other mothers.” This is probably how Dorcas was according to Acts 9. We find out about Dorcas who was a disciple and her life was committed to doing good deeds and acts of charity. That’s pretty much the definition of a mother: someone committed to good deeds and acts of charity day after day after day.
It’s impressive how they treated her body. They washed her, clothed her, and put her in a room for people to come and say goodbye. They send for Peter to come and be with them during this time of sadness and mourning. When Peter gets there they show him the clothing that she made for them. Then Peter asks everyone to get out of the room, and he when he is alone with her he says, “Tabitha get up!” She does. It’s totally remarkable and incredible that Peter has the power to bring someone back from the dead. It’s unbelievable! Peter has come a long way from denying Jesus and fishing. He is doing the ministry taught him to do, and he is performing miracles! Way to go Peter! This is a great example of the capacity each of us has as disciples of Jesus. We are not just passive beneficiaries we are co-workers with Jesus.
I do wonder, why? What is the purpose of bringing her back to life?. I think one possibility is that nobody else knew how to sew. What would Tabitha do with her new lease on life? Maybe she would take these extra days given to her and teach others to do the work that she had been doing. Maybe she would get around to teaching others how to sew. According to the text, the main purpose for this thing to happen was to impress upon people the power of Jesus, and thereby bring people to believe in the Lord. Verse 42 says that this miracle become well known in Joppa and so many believed in the Lord.
But what does that mean? To believe in the Lord? We can suppose that it means to believe that Jesus is the Lord, the king, the savior sent from God. To believe in the Lord is to believe in Jesus and everything that he stood for. It means to believe that he died on the cross for our sin; and rose again. It means to believe that we are saved by grace through faith, and not by our works.
Tabitha was a woman of great faith. We know that she had faith because of how she lived her life. She was committed to good deeds and charity. Good deeds and charity are not always easy. Sometimes when we do a good deed or an act of charity people may not appreciate it. Oftentimes we may feel that people don’t deserve charity, because they have made choices that got them into a not good place. But that’s the thing about grace: it is God’s unconditional love for all people whether they deserve it or not. People like Tabitha love unconditionally because they have faith that that is how God is.
While the miracle of Tabitha coming back to life is certainly impressive, it is really just the icing on the cake. So many people came to have faith in the Lord and the Lord’s grace because of the day in and day out love that Tabitha showed and gave. Her faith in action laid the groundwork for this miracle.
Unfortunately we live in a world that doesn’t always appreciate the everyday miracles of people like Tabitha, and women of faith like her. Recently I read a book titled, “I Bring the Voices of My People,” by Chanequa Walker-Barnes. In her book Walker-Barnes addresses the movement of racial reconciliation which has emerged out of evangelical Christianity. She criticizes racial reconciliation for it’s lack of vision and inclusion of women, especially women of color.
The reason why women are pushed are to the side is because of what Luther called works-righteousness. It’s that sinful temptation we all have to assume that salvation is something that you have to earn through careful religious obedience. Works-righteousness is quick to both burden women with the essential tasks of caring for the most vulnerable and then quick to blame them for not earning, performing, and providing for themselves. Women and mothers who often do the most important job there is: caring, are criticized when they don’t “make money.” They are expected to do everything and get nothing in return. That is the sinful logic of works-righteousness.
We see this play out in our current situation with church attendance. A couple of generations ago churches thrived and were bustling with young families and children in large part because there was time to volunteer. Today less and less families are able to do that. Parents have to work round the clock just to make ends meet. By the time the weekend rolls around if a person even gets a weekend, there is so much exhaustion that there is barely time enough to get to church let alone volunteer and teach Sunday School. So then what do we do as the church? Should we blame parents and criticize them? Maybe there’s another way.
What would it look like if we were so committed to support sacred calling of motherhood that we who have the time and resources to gather, what if we went to them? What if we packed up our communion kits, not just the pastor, but all of the baptized, and we called the mothers who are working one or two or three jobs, and we said, “Can I bring you communion? Can I help you with your kids?” What if we were the “other-mothers” that were sent out to be the village that helps to raise the children? That would be an act of faith in God’s grace!
One of the biggest jobs of motherhood is the laundry. I remember when I was newly married and even newly a father I was complaining to some colleagues about how one day the laundry wasn’t folded and put away correctly. The women pastors suggested that maybe I should help more with the laundry, if it made me so uncomfortable. There’s not rule anyhwere that says which gender the domestic duties must be completed by. But you know if you’ve never helped with the laundry much it can be intimidating what with the separating of types of clothing, then there’s choosing the temperature of water. I mean you got to be careful not to mess it up, you know what I mean? Maybe that’s why a lot of guys don’t do laundry we’re not smart enough to figure it out. Ha. Ha.
I’ll tell you what though, most of us would not try to wash our white linens in blood. That would not make sense. And yet that is exactly what we read about in Revelation 7. The great multitude of people worshiping God are clothed in dazzling white robes. We find out from one of the elders that they are the people who made it through the great ordeal and washed their robes in the blood of the lamb. So how is blood supposed to make something white?
It works because Jesus takes our sloppy work, our mistakes, our erroneously separated laundry, and God is able to make wonderful good things come of it. That’s what faith in God’s grace is all about. It’s not about us doing a perfect job, it’s just about grace. Remember that the multitude worshiping God and the lamb were not raptured away. If you’re good it doesn’t mean you get to cut out early. No the ones worshiping God and the lamb were the ones who suffered through the great ordeal. And it says that God will wipe away every tear from their eye.
It’s important to recognize that Mother’s Day isn’t an easy day for everyone. Some people carry great pain on this day. Pain of unrealized hope. Pain of loss. Pain of profound dissappointment or disillusionment. There is space for that today. But there is also hope that we will not be sad forever. Eventually the tears stop, they are wiped away, and there is joy.
Psalm 23 says that though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear. The Lord is a good shepherd. The Lord is not a harsh critic. The Lord is not a genie giving us all we desire. The Lord is a good shepherd guiding each of us. We will never be alone. Amen.
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