As most of you know, I don't always preach a thematic sermon for special secular holidays such as the Fourth of July Sunday, Memorial Day, Mother's or Father's Day. It's also rare that I preach a sermon on a single theme, such as racism, war, abortion, pornography, poverty. But, hopefully, my sermons address all these pressing issues in the context of Scripture, as that scripture presents itself in the order of my preaching.

For you who wonder about that approach to preaching and the fact that we don't always get a special Mother's Day sermon, you'll be pleased that we've come to the place in our journey through Luke where Jesus talks about "Building a House." And what could be a better theme for Mother's Day?

Our Scripture lesson is the concluding parable of three parables that Jesus told in the last part of Chapter Six. The first was about the blind leading the blind, and the other is about bad trees being unable to bear good fruit. We are going to look at those parables in the sermon next week. It's the third of those parables at which we look today -- the parable about building a house. Jesus tells us that there is only one way to build a house that will be secure against the storms that will always threaten. You have to dig deep down, Jesus said, and lay a foundation on solid rock. Without a firm foundation, the house will be shattered by the storms that come.

To be sure, Jesus is talking about building the foundation of our life on Him and the rock of his Word. But what better place for that foundation to be laid than in the home. So, on this Mother's Day, I want to talk about building a house of life in the context of the family.

I can't imagine that you haven't heard or read Robert Fulghum's "All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten." It appeared in a number of different places, before it became the anchor piece in this best-selling book.

Listen to part of it again:

"All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Take a nap every afternoon. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the styrofoam cup -- they all die. So do we.

Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.Or, if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old you are -- when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together." (Robert Fulghum "All I really Need to Know I learned In Kindergarten", Villard Books N.Y. 1988, pp. 6-8)

Isn't that something?"

It's a touching, beautiful, and poignant piece because it is so profoundly true. We all know that the early years of a child are so important. Our attitudes, our personalities, our values, our habits, our principles -- perhaps above all, our self-esteem -- and to some degree, our IQ's, are shaped powerfully by what happens to us in the first years of early childhood.

So, what foundations are we to lay for the house we are building in our families. I recently came across a word from Sister Corita which I propose as an answer. Sister Corita is a Catholic nun who had an unusual ministry some years ago. I haven't heard of her in a long time. But back in the 60's and 70's, she was known all over the nation. She was an artist who designed and printed serographs – poster-like art that used common goods to grab our attention and communicate the Gospel -- Graphic drawings of loaves of bread, dancing trees, cans of soup combined with powerful words colorfully and dramatically presented witnessed to God's grace. Posters were her way of witnessing to God's grace. Her posters were very popular and communicated the Gospel in a mind-grabbing, heart- touching way. One of those posters carried this message: "There are three things that keep life from being so daily -- to make love, to make believe, and to make hope with the everyday common stuff and people around us."

Isn't that it? The answer to keeping life from being so daily -- but far more than that -- this is what mothers and fathers are to do with children in the home: Make love, make believe, and make hope. Let's look at those.

I.

First, make love. This is an essential foundation stone. Making love. Hearing that we immediately think of sexual love. Certainly we should not ignore the physical significance of love-making. "The truth of the matter is that you and I were once conceived through the passionate bonding of our mothers and fathers. Following such a conception, we had mothers who carried us within their bodies for several months. And without exception, each one of us was given that moment in time when our mothers labored to give us birth. There are no exceptions to this rule of being born." (Barry P. Boulware).

Sex and the sexual relationship of a mother and father is important aspect of home-building, and we should never diminish it. But I'm talking about far more than that when I talk about the building of a home through the making of love. Mothers make love in a very special way. Let's focus on that word “make” for a moment. "When love is absent, a mother makes love present. When love is harmed and wounded, a mother makes love new again. When love is tired, a mother makes love strong again. When love is lost, a mother makes love findable again." (Boulware, Ibid.)

But it's not just mothers who do that. We must all be committed to doing that within the context of the family, especially, but in all of life. When love is wounded, we need to make it well again. We can heal the wounds of love with forgiveness and attention. When love is wounded, we need to make it well again. When love is fading or when it's absent from a relationship, we need to put forth the creative imagination and unselfish energy to bring it to life again. When love is tired and when it seems to have gone the last mile, we can make love strong again by taking the initiative of caring.

Somewhere along the way, I may have reminded you of the story that comes from Victor Hugo's novel, Ninety-Three. After the French Revolution, just living and finding food was difficult. Not a garden had been left growing. A French Captain and a private walked across the fields, noting the devastation. When they saw something move behind a bush, the private poked his bayonet into a bush and out scrambled a woman with two children. All three of them were starving for food. The captain took a loaf of bread from his knapsack and handed it to the mother. She grasped it, broke it into two pieces, and handed one piece to each child. The private watched and then said to his officer, "Sir, it must be that the woman is not hungry." The captain replied, "No, soldier, it is because she is a mother."

What a picture. A mother giving everything for her children. It's a dramatic incarnation of love.

So, that's the first essential in building a house for the family -- make love. Where are the corners in your home where you need to make love? What are the relationships where love is fading and needs to be fed? Who do you know that is undernourished relationally who could be fed by your love? That's the first essential – “make love”.

II.

Then second: Make believe.

In proposing this formula and saying that we are to make believe, Sister Corita is talking about cultivating a sense of wonder. Being able to look at everyday common people and stuff and feel a sense of awe. G. K. Chesterton once said that the world does not lack for wonder, but only for the sense of wonder. And Blake pictured it as to how it might be:

To see the earth in a grain of sand, And Heaven in a wild flower.To hold the world in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.

We need to cultivate that -- to open our eyes to the beauty of the world -- the courage and strength of others -- the overwhelming grace of God that permeates everyday events in our lives and in the lives of others.

Just recently, a shocking thought came to me -- I don't even remember the circumstances that surrounded the coming of that thought. All of a sudden, though, it was there. "Maxie, God is as close to you as He will ever be!"

I don't know how that sounds to you, but that was a shocking thought to me. I was not feeling particularly close to the Lord. In fact, I was going through a rather dry time in my spiritual life -- that is, in the feeling dimension of my spiritual life. This is confession time. I had come to a place in my prayer time, where it was difficult to keep my thoughts centered, and either verbalize or center my thoughts on persons and issues about whom I was concerned to bring those persons and issues into a prayerful relationship with God. I had begun a practice which is very meaningful to me. When I would be struggling with my prayer time with feeling the presence of God, I had begun to resort to singing -- just very quietly singing some hymns from memory. It was my way of worshipping and giving my attention as much as I could to the Lord.

Well, this shocking thought came to me. "Maxie, God is as close to you as he will ever be." Can you imagine how I struggled with that. It wasn't a happy thought, because I didn't feel close to God at all. In fact, I was getting anxious about the length of my "day time." I was afraid I might be moving into some dark night of the soul. Then it became very clear.

That's the way it is always. God is as close to anyone of us as he will ever be -- because God is intimately present with us who have given ourselves to Him, who wish to serve Him. The problem is we don't feel His presence. We don't acknowledge His presence. We don't exercise His presence.

Nothing is missing from God's side of things It's from our side of things that there is a void. So we need to practice making believe -- that is, cultivating our sense of wonder. Being able to see God. Opening our eyes to the beauty of the world, to the courage and strength that others express. Being present to the overwhelming grace that really is present in persons and in the everyday events of life.

But there's more here than cultivating a sense of wonder. Make-believe suggests the work of the family in instilling faith in children and sustaining each other in the cultivation of faith.

What are you doing, mothers and fathers, to make-believe in building the faith-life of your children? Faith is the solid foundation, the undergirding, the strong rock. Listen, parents -- grandparents, too. If you want to teach your children faith, the best way to do that is to let them see an experience of your own faith. Of course you are to teach them prayer. Teach them special prayers. Help them memorize scripture, but remember it's more important for them to see you pray and to hear you pray -- to see you read the Bible and to see you call upon Scripture for the sustaining of your life.

Encourage them to attend church and Sunday School, but you can't provide much encouragement in that arena unless you are in church and Sunday School yourself, and unless they see that you are excited about it.

Dr. Dick Murray is one of the leading Christian educators in America today. He was one of the persons with whom I shared the Committee with Bishop Wilkie when we were designing Discipleship Bible Study. He does a lot of training on the national level for Discipleship Bible Study. He teaches at Perkins School of Theology at S.M.U. He told a beautiful story about teaching his four-year-old grandson, Martin, the Gloria Patri.

"He said he had taught Martin "Old MacDonald" and "Row Row Your Boat" and decided that he needed to teach little Martin the "Gloria Patri."

So they got in the car, buckled up and rode through the streets of Dallas singing "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen." To the top of their lungs, Granddaddy Dick Murray and grandson Martin sang the "Gloria Patri" over and over and over...and they had a marvelous time. A short time later, they took Martin to "big church" for the first time...and when they got to that place in the service where the congregation stood together and began to sing boldly the "Gloria Patri"...Dick Murray said he felt a tug on his coat. Martin was doing the tugging and motioning for his granddad to bend down so he could tell him something. Dick Murray bent down and four-year- old Martin said excitedly in his ear, "Poppa! Poppa!, they are singing our song. They are singing our song." (Dr. Jim Moore, "What Are the Best Things We can Give Our Children?", June 18, 1989).

How beautiful! Dick had taught his grandson to make-believe. Faith had been transmitted from one person to another. That's the sort of thing that is to take place in the family, as we build our family house.

III.

Make love, make faith, and finally, make hope. Is anything more needed -- to be hopeful. It's an essential commodity at every stage of life. Children need it; teenagers need it; college students need it. Young adults need it. Middle-agers need it. Old people need it. We need hope.

In the late 18th Century in Poland, the Kaiser's forces were burning all the Jewish villages. They had burned one particular village to the ground. The town smelled of blood and smoldering ashes. The next morning one old Jew went down to the marketplace and opened his stall for business. A young man asked, "Old Jew, what are you selling?"

Standing there in the smoldering ruins, he said, "I am selling hope."

Millions of people are selling all sorts of things, spending millions of dollars to get us to buy what they offer. Where are those who will sell hope?

The market is there. Desperation and despair are everywhere. If we can sell water on a dry desert, we can certainly sell hope on the ash heap of destruction which many of our lives have become.

The family needs to be the setting where hope is cultivated, transmitted from one to the other. The family ought to be the place where when one person is down, another will be up and help lift the other up. The family ought to be the place where when someone is experiencing sorrow, there will be someone who can provide a bit of joy. The family ought to be the place where there will be enough love-energy and faith-energy, to kindle hope in every person.

So how do we build a family house with a firm foundation that will withstand all the storms of life? We make love. We make believe. And we make hope.

FINAL GREETING: Henry Ward Beecher said "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom" -- that could be paraphrased to read "The parent's heart is the child's schoolroom."