Praise for the Raising
Rev. Lindsay L. Fulmer
Ladera Community Church
Mother’s Day, May 8, 2011
Timothy 1:3-7
We drove up to the old Victorian farmhouse in Vermont, gabled and dark green, with a wide wrap-around porch shaded by elm trees. It was an historic farm, featuring re-enactments of 19th Century life. Men in straw hats worked the fields behind horse-drawn plows. A bonneted woman stooped over a garden plot. The entrance into the house was from the back porch, right into the kitchen. We stepped inside, and were immediately transported. Not back to any old-time kitchen, but to my grandmother’s kitchen in Berkeley. It wasn’t the worn wooden counters or pale yellow cupboards, but the smell. Apple cider vinegar mixed with a dash of cinnamon, bacon fat and the hint of over-ripe bananas. It smelled like Grandma’s house. Grandma Janette always had black bananas on top of her fridge, and a coffee can full of bacon grease on the stove. Bacon grease was the secret ingredient in her raisin spice cookies, kept them soft with a slightly smoky flavor.
There in that New England kitchen, far from home, suddenly I missed her so much. All five feet of her, with those blue eyes made Mr. Magoo large behind thick glasses, always in silky shirtwaist housedresses with sensible shoes, always glad to see you, quick to hug and to laugh 'til she cried. She was both soft and strong as steel, tender and tough. Fun – she let us bang away on her old Royal typewriter, take any gilt edge book we’d like from the big old glass front bookcase and read away the hours. Sent us out to scour the lawn for dandelions to feed her canary Chummy, or find four leaf clovers, which she would press in a book. She wouldn’t abide boredom. Life for her was an unfolding adventure and there was always something to do, someone to cook for, some project to undertake. College students rented rooms in the big old house, to bring in extra cash, and she treated them like her own – her boys, she called them.
She had been the church organist, a serious musician, and would let us turn on the motor for the big old six foot high organ in her back room – pull out the stops, press our feet on the big pedals and make the house rumble. She’d married the widowed minister, much older than she, helped to raise his teenage son. Then to have their own two children arrive late in life thrilled her no end. Story goes once having a group of church ladies over to lunch and lacking flowers for a centerpiece, she set my infant father, clad only in a diaper, in a tin tub atop the table, the early start of his center stage career. Ask any of my siblings or cousins: She had the gift of making us each feel special, appreciated for who we were, and truly loved, tireless in her enthusiasm, unflagging in her encouragement. I was thirteen when she died, and remembered being convinced there must be a God, and heaven, because my grandma believed in both, and God would not certainly not disappoint my grandmother. Faith in a God of all embracing welcome and unconditional love, I owe in large part to my grandmother.
Today’s letter from Paul to Timothy offers thanksgiving and praise to the women who raised him in faith, to his mother, and grandmother - a fitting tribute for Mother’s day. With gratitude we remember all those who have raised us up – who have mothered us. For truly, this is a day to affirm that we, each one of us, have many mothers. For we can count as mother the ones who urge us to “fan into flame the gift of God that lives in us,” who teach by their example, who provide support to the best of their ability, who encourage us to grow and stand by even when that means heartbreak and hard knocks, ready to lift us up.
This may, by pure grace, be our natural mother; and or when this is not so, may come to us, by grace’s gift, through others, so many others. I can still tell you Olympic 34995 was the phone number for my mom’s good friend Margie, another mom to call if I got sick at school and my mom wasn’t home. Or Ginny, another longtime friend, who taught church school and challenged us fourth graders to learn the Lord’s Prayer, the 23rd Psalm and Ten Commandments by heart. I’m grateful that now when times get tough, the words the Lord is my shepherd show up and I feel led by still waters, into fields green with hope. Ginny who always threw a party the day after Christmas for kids – with sandwiches and Jell-O cut into shapes and other special treats. We got so we looked forward to that party as much as Christmas. Or Gertrude, the widowed 85-year-old Peace Corp veteran who took me and my children under her wing after my divorce, and told my kids stories of her own hard upbringing and showed them how there’s always something to learn in every circumstance that can help you grow, and that can be used to benefit others. Or Janice, who noticed that as a skinny goofy kid I liked to skip and leap around a lot and suggested to my mom that I might like dance classes – which I did - and told me once when I was young that I could think of her as my guardian angel. And now I’m grown and she’s gone, I still do - even more – cherishing the spirit and especially the humor she shared so freely. So many mothers. So many.
To mother, by dictionary definition, means to exercise protective care, to give rise to. So it makes sense for reformer John Calvin to lift up the Church herself as mother, when he says “The church is the gathering of God’s children, where they can be helped and fed …and then, guided by her motherly care, grow up to (adult) hood in maturity of faith..1 In so many ways, by this gathering are we brought into relationship with one another to nurture and support one another – to mother one another. Here we find so many teachers, mentors, parents, guides, brothers and sisters in faith of all ages.
In an even broader sense, the church as mother is called to extend protective and proactive care to those most vulnerable and in need, to feed, shelter and defend even as a mother hen will put herself at risk to protect her brood. We remember today the women who rallied to set aside Mother’s Day as a day dedicated to the pursuit of peace. First Julia Ward Howe, who following the carnage of the Civil War, issued a “Proclamation for Mother’s Day” urging women to come together and work for peace, that no mother’s son would be brought up to kill another mother’s son. Her efforts were picked up by Anna Jarvis, who worked to establish “Mother’s Friendship Days” promoting reconciliation and healing following the Civil War. In 1908, the first official Mother’s Day was established, carrying forward the spirit of these women who lifted up a vision of universal motherhood, and a courageous call to nurture peace and compassion.
For the Spirit, as Paul reminds us, the spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. From the earliest days, when the emerging church faced grave threat and terrible persecution, the community gathered in the homes of the faithful. And who had authority and dominion over the home, but women. So we give thanks and praise – praise for all those women down through the generations who courageously protected, cared and fostered our fledgling faith. And we give thanks for this Mother church, which so provides, and pray that we will in our turn, give rise to others in faith, even as they have raised us up.
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1. Calvin, John, quote from “Christian Resources Today.” www.christian-resources-today.com.
