Welcome on this Mother’s Day. For Mother’s Day I ran across a list of suggestions for improving communication in the family that I thought you might enjoy:
1. If you have tiny children who won’t give you their attention, simply place a long‑distance telephone call to somebody important, preferably their grandmother. Your toddlers will immediately climb up on your lap and become all ears.
2. If you have older children who avoid you like the plague, buy yourself some expensive bath salts, run a hot tub and settle in . . . Teenagers who haven’t talked to you since their tenth birthday will bang on the door, demanding your immediate attention.
3. Lure your husband into the bedroom and lock the door. The entire family will immediately converge in the hallway, insisting they must talk to you.
4. Get a job in an office that discourages personal phone calls. Your kids will then call you every hour on the hour.
5. Send them away to college, or let them move into an apartment. They can then be counted on . . . for long chats, during which they will expound at length on what wonderful parents you were, and what happened, because you certainly are spoiling their younger siblings rotten. (1)
Well, communication in the family is a constant challenge. And sometimes children pick up on messages we never intended to send.
Chuck Swindoll tells about a great big Mother’s Day card that looked like a third grader had printed it. On it was a little boy with a dirty face and torn pants pulling a wagon load of toys. On the front it read: “Mom, I remember the little prayer you used to say for me every day.” Inside the card was the prayer, “God help you if you ever do that again!” (2)
One woman tells about a friend of hers who has three boys. The youngest boy, Gregory, had just started school. A teacher commented to Gregory that she couldn’t believe he was already in first grade and asked what his mother did all day now that her three boys were in school.
“Cartwheels,” Gregory answered. (3) Some of you Moms understand.
In today’s lesson Jesus says, “I am the true vine and you are the branches . . .” I can’t help but think that is a good text for Mother’s Day.
We are connected to Christ in the same way a mother is connected to her children. I realize that not every mother feels this way, but most mothers would sacrifice their lives for their children in a heartbeat.
An anonymous author describes feelings that most mothers will relate to. Her words say it better than I could. Let me read them to you:
“We are sitting at lunch when my daughter casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of ‘starting a family.’ ‘We’re taking a survey,’ she says, half‑joking. ‘Do you think I should have a baby?’
“‘It will change your life,’ I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral.
“‘I know,’ she says, ‘no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous vacations . . . .’
“But that is not what I meant at all. I look at my daughter, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of childbearing will heal, but that becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will forever be vulnerable.
I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without asking ‘What if that had been MY child?’ That every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.
“I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub. That an urgent call of ‘Mom!’ will cause her to drop a souffle or her best crystal without a moment’s hesitation.
“I feel I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for child care, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think of her baby’s sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of her discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is all right.
“I want my daughter to know that everyday decisions will no longer be routine. That a five year old boy’s desire to go to the men’s room rather than the women’s at McDonald’s will become a major dilemma. That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in that restroom. However decisive she may be at the office, she will second‑guess herself constantly as a mother.
“Looking at my attractive daughter, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she would give it up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years‑-not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs.
“My daughter’s relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks. I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she will fall in love with him again for reasons she would now find very unromantic.
“I wish my daughter could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving. I hope she will understand why I can think rationally about most issues, but become temporarily insane when I discuss the threat of nuclear war to my children’s future. I want to describe to my daughter the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or a cat for the first time. I want her to taste the joy that is so real it actually hurts.
“My daughter’s quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. ‘You’ll never regret it,’ I finally say. Then I reach across the table, squeeze my daughter’s hand and offer a silent prayer for her, and for me, and for all of the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this most wonderful of callings. This blessed gift from God . . . that of being a Mother.” (4)
That about says it all, doesn’t it? When you are a mother you are forever connected to your offspring. So, says Christ, we are forever connected to him. St. Paul expounded upon this connectedness in Romans 8: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (38-39).
We are connected to Christ like a mother is connected to her child. Or in the words of our lesson for the day, “I am the vine; you are the branches . . .”
There is something else we need to see, however. God disciplines God’s children like a loving mother disciplines her children. Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful . . .” This is a difficult text. You can read it as a message of judgment or you can read it as a message of love, tough love. “Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes . . .”
In the book, God’s Little Devotional Book for Graduates, the author has an interesting passage on mother giraffes that might help us. The first thing to emerge at a baby giraffe’s birth, says the author, is its front hooves and head. “Minutes later, the newborn is hurled from its mother’s body, falls ten feet, and lands on its back. Within seconds, it rolls to an upright position with its legs tucked under its body. From this position, it views the world for the first time and shakes off any remaining birthing fluid.
“The mother giraffe lowers her head just long enough to take a quick look at her calf and then she does what seems to be a very unreasonable thing: she kicks her baby, sending it sprawling head over heels. If it doesn’t get up, she kicks it again and again until the calf finally stands on its wobbly legs. And then what does the mother giraffe do? She kicks it off its feet! Why? She wants it to remember how it got up.
“In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd and avoid becoming a meal for lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs. The best way a mother giraffe has of ensuring that her calf lives is for her to teach it to ‘get up quickly and get with it.’”
It makes me glad I’m not a giraffe. But the author’s point is, of course, that the mother giraffe is engaged in tough love. There are certain demands that every parent must make for the welfare of his or her child. There are certain rules that must be enforced. No loving parent is going to accord a child absolute freedom. Such freedom could be deadly. Every loving parent has to say “No” from time to time. It’s not easy. Sometimes it really does hurt the parent more than it does the child. But love sometimes says, “No.”
More and more, child experts are recognizing the need for discipline in child-rearing. Newsweek magazine had a cover story sometime back on the effects of overly permissive parenting. For example, they cited a survey that showed that children expect to ask their parents nine times for something new before their parents give in. And parents do eventually give in. In fact, parents are spending more and more for nonessential items for their children. Parents spent $53.8 billion in 2004, $17.6 billion more than in 1997. (6) Love sometimes says, “No.”
At other times it may say “Go.” There comes a time when children must accept responsibility for their own actions. A term has crept into our vocabulary, “helicopter parents” parents who hover over their children and never allow them to learn that actions have consequences.
I can’t say with absolute authority what Christ meant when he said that God is a gardener who prunes the branches that are unfruitful. But I do know we live in a lawful universe. You drive your car off of a cliff, don’t expect God to reach out a hand and catch you in the air. God loves you, but actions have consequences.
There is a moral law in this universe as well. You live a life of deceit and wrongdoing and sooner or later it will catch up to you. It’s a lesson we never seem to learn. God will forgive you for your sin, but God does not cancel the rule of consequences. Galatians 6:7, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” That’s harsh, but friends, that’s the way the world works. Even secular culture has a phrase for it, “You play, you pay.” My guess is that God designed a world of consequences to help us grow up, to help us mature not only as physical beings, but as emotional and spiritual beings. Whatever the reason, you can be sure God’s motive was love, the same love that motivates the good parent.
Now, please do not misunderstand what I am saying. If you have an accident, even if you were at fault, that is not a punishment sent by God. God doesn’t reach down and punish us for our sins, just like He doesn’t reach down and pluck our car out of the air to save us. Please understand that. God does not select people and punish them. Jesus was very clear about this. God “sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). But neither does God repeal the laws that run the universe when we’ve done wrong. We have to live with the consequences of our actions, for good or for ill.
But here’s the good news for the day: even our worse actions cannot destroy the love God has for us. That’s what the cross is all about. We can take God’s own Son and nail him to a tree and God will still love us. That’s the meaning of grace. The bond between ourselves and Christ can never be broken. He is the vine, we are the branches.
Psychiatrist Ross Campbell says that the most important question on a teenager’s mind is this: “Do you love me?” In all kinds of ways, through his or her behavior the teenager is asking: “Am I lovable? Am I worthy of being loved? Am I OK?”
Jesus says to us, you never have to worry about that question with God. You are loved. The best selling book of many years ago asserted that “I’m O.K., You’re O.K.” Well, sometimes we’re not O.K., but still we are loved. God loves us unconditionally. God sent His Son to die for us and that makes us worthy of salvation. That’s the good news for the day: God’s love for us is eternal. Like a mother’s love for her child. He is the vine, we are the branches. Stay connected to Christ . . . for heaven’s sake.
1. Teresa Bloomingdale. Cited in God’s Devotional Book for Mothers (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook Communications Ministries, 2005, p. 92).
2. Day By Day (Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 2000), p. 130.
3. good-clean-fun-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
4. Dr. Mickey Anders citing a lectionary listserv.” http://www.mickeyanders.com/Sermons/Sermon20000514.htm.
5. (Tulsa, OK:Honor Books, Inc., 1995), p. 237.
6. Peg Tyre et al., “The Power of No,” Newsweek (September 13, 2004). Cited by Tommy Nelson, The 12 Essentials of Godly Success (Nashville, TN:Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), p.188.