Lester Start’s Works

1MOTHERS’ DAY

L. J. START

05/11/80

First Baptist Kalamazoo

The title of the sermon seems pretty tame — Mothers’ Day. Let me explain. Originally I had planned it to be Mothers’ Day and ERA – a bit livelier, you’ll have to admit. But then, I thought with the extras in the service I wouldn’t have time to do justice to the subject; besides, an issue like ERA requires one’s own political conscience and any brief comments are easily misconstrued — so my remarks will apply to the issue of the proposed equal rights amendment only tangentially.

And to be quite honest, Mothers’ Day is an occasion that makes me a trifle uneasy. The reason goes way back to the time when my wife and I were newly married — two or three years. Our first child was just two months old, and it was Mothers’ Day; as the day moved into evening, I noticed Clare became quieter and quieter. I sensed something was amiss, but couldn’t quite figure out what, until she told me quietly — with restrained tears — “You know, I’m a mother, too.” My response was logical, but ill-advised. “But you’re not my mother,” I pointed out, truly enough. “And the baby’s too young to know.”

It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t forgotten her birthday a month earlier, and if I had forgotten our anniversary a month later — well, I hate to think what would have happened. Anyway, this famous Mothers’ Day was what we call in the business a learning experience.

And it has left me with several deep convictions. First, wives and mothers are too often taken for granted. We forget the enormously important roles they play, just assume mothers are by nature like that and forget to call attention to our gratitude for their being as they are. Essentially, what happens is we take for granted maternal love and devotion, and fail to call attention to the personhood that underlies this maternal spirit.

That is why the passage from Proverbs read in the Scripture lesson this morning strikes one now as being so impersonal and sexist. The New English translation strikes the accurate note in its heading of this section — A Capable Wife. “Who can find a capable wife?” the passage begins. And then the verses describe how valuable she is; because of her work, her husband and children lack nothing. She toils willingly — and provides for the family like merchants’ ships bringing food from afar. She gets up before dawn while it is still dark to prepare food for the family. But a careful reading suggests that somehow not only does she work at home but she is able to buy fields and vineyards and work them with her earnings. Presumably, her husband is busy the while talking within the gates — she is the provider, the breadwinner, and the household slavey as well. She is praised for her energy and strength — and “her candle goeth not out by night”. The poor woman — the virtuous, capable woman — never puts out her lamp at night. She works all the time. One wonders how she provides all her services. She’s really good with the distaff and spindle, so she doesn’t worry about the cold. She makes plenty of coverings for the family and has enough left over for the poor and needy without. All of this somehow makes her husband important and well-known when he is sitting with the elders of the land. If she is working so capably, why shouldn’t he sit? She is weaving linen and selling it — God only knows when she finds the time — and making sashes to supply merchants. She eateth not the bread of idleness — it is hard to see how she finds time to eat anything besides the fruit of her toil and labors.

Now this may be a slanted appreciation of this section of Scripture. But this much is fairly said — it does reflect a sexist viewpoint from our perspective; but it also reflects a better image of woman, a freer, more respected view than would be reflected in other cultures surrounding the Hebrew tradition. The God-fearing woman is the capable woman who takes over even the tasks of the husband in being a good provider for the sake of others — even the stranger within the gates.

It is, I think, against such a picture of woman as subservient, as a second sex, noted primarily for her service to men and the family that women’s rights movements are directed. And I think there is a need to assert the value of the personhood of a capable, good woman, beside her utilitarian values. There are claims to dignity, attention, self-worth apart from the recognition of the menial and sacrificial roles of the ideal woman. There is good reason for women to demand equal rights, especially when there is not equal recognition in terms of pay or praise for the self-effacing contributions they make not only to the family but also to the general welfare. I can remember when college administrators thought it obvious that single women instructors were not entitled to the same pay as a family man — but single men should get more because they might become heads of family. There is reason to demand equal rights.

But there is a deeper problem in all of this. And the problem is that human solidarity as seen in the family and the larger society does not seem to be built successfully on the separate insistence of individual rights. There seems to be needed some insight into, some commitment to the larger cause of the family, or society. It is a sense of this larger commitment that shines through the description of the good woman in Proverbs. The problem seems to be that she is the one making all the commitments — and getting few of the rewards. This is probably why in the old middle-east tradition — and it is still a Muslim practice — a woman is paid a dowry when she marries. If it doesn’t work out, and she is divorced and rejected, at least she has some economic security to turn to.

But that marvelous 13th chapter on love in Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth shows a deeper basis for the family and society — and that is the spirit of love: love that is kind, patient, that doesn’t always insist on its own way, love that does not take offense easily, or keep score of wrongs done, love that is not envious of others or boastful, or rude, or crude, or selfish. As Paul says, there is nothing such love cannot face –there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance. It will never fail.

And this, of course, is the spirit of love we honor and praise in the ideal of motherhood. It is this that underlies the praise of the good capable woman of Proverbs. But it is a quality that should be shared by all in the family, and ultimately to some degree in the larger human family if we are to live together in the peace and promise of God’s plan for His kingdom. It is the spirit of cooperative and mutual love and concern for children –called by some today “parenting”. This is not just, as the movie KRAMER VS. KRAMER showed, a function of motherhood. And clearly there is a difference between biological generation and the parenting concern of love. Similarly, children in a family have rights — they have a right to health care and education, for example — and the state properly insists they have them — but a child’s relation to his family is surely more than a means of enjoying his rights! It is the message of the Bible, and the Gospel in particular, that reflecting the love of God is the only true basis for living together. And we honor mothers because they seem to be so faithful in reflecting that love.

In ancient China the Taoist religion taught a natural virtue, fellow feeling, on the basis of man’s ultimate relation to the principle of the order behind nature. Taoists attacked Confucian concerns with rules of morality, mutual obligations and rights, by saying when the Tao is lost, when virtue is lost, then there is talk of rights and obligations. And, I suppose, as every marriage counselor can attest, when the love is lost in a marriage, the mutual, self-less commitment to a higher principle than the self, then there is talk of lists of mutual obligations, responsibilities, rights, and duties, in order to live together for the sake of the children, perhaps. When love is lost, then there is concern for rights. But love transcends such particular demands.

Love does not abrogate rights — it does not wipe them out. Love must never degenerate into masochistic, slavish devotion, just as it must never be corrupted into sadistic interest in controlling the other. The failure of love results in the love of failure, and preserving one’s personal rights is an essential defense against that. Love does not negate rights, but it dethrones them, and elevates the self into a higher relation with the other, and with God. It is love that reconciles the desire to gratify our own interests with the sober sense of duty to others. Love lifts up, and purifies, and reconciles our motivations. Faith, hope, and love are the three things that keep our spirits high in energy and aspiration. But the greatest of these is love.

There is a text I find most haunting when I think of the theme of Motherhood. It occurs in the Christmas story when the baby Jesus is born, and the shepherds appear recounting all they have seen and heard from the angelic hosts. We read, “And Mary treasured up all these things and pondered over them in her heart.” Somehow this reflects to me, the mystery, the creative depths and silences of the eternal feminine — a reflection of God’s love. This we remember on Mothers’ Day.