Mother’s Day. The day when women who aren’t mothers but wish they were feel the burden a bit more; the day when guilty husbands serve breakfast in bed and make a bigger mess than it’s worth; the day when mothers reflect again on the whole business and decide it’s worth it after all.
Motherhood in a Mess
But motherhood has gotten bad press for the last couple of decades. We have been through some strange phases; perhaps not as neatly packaged chronologically as I will present them. We went through the time of embarrassed silence in society, when a woman, asked what she does, replied, “Oh, I stay at home and raise the kids. I’m a mother.”
Then came the syndrome of the failed mother; the mother is responsible for all kinds of insecurities and failures in the child. Who hasn’t read some novel about the overbearing, domineering, perfectionist mother who irrevocably scarred her child’s psyche for life? Was that Norman’s problem in Hitchcock’s Psycho? — you remember, the guy who ran the hotel and had the hobby of stabbing folks in the shower. Perhaps that was the problem of whoever it is that’s always back in those terrible Friday the 13th movies. Anyway, we went through a phase of saying that if you can’t cope, you can always blame it on mother.
Then came the women’s liberation movement, with some women not only rejecting motherhood, but womanhood, too; and trying to be like men. And from the mixed wisdom and foolishness of various women’s emphasis groups has come a time when many women are appreciating the fact that they are different from men, and they are celebrating the fact that they are specially created for the bearing of children. So that now we are seeing a fad, featuring your favorite movie star, in which she decides she wants a child — not marriage, perhaps not a husband — just a child. She wants the uniquely female experience of bearing a child, cuddling it, nursing it, possessing it.
That is an odd, foolish, sad, and tragic trend. It is, among other things, using a child as a thing for the woman’s gratification. It is disregard for God’s intention for motherhood and society and His blueprint for the home. But this phenomenon of the deliberately incomplete family, this twisted view of motherhood, is instructive for our society — it says motherhood is accepted again, it emphasizes a sickness in our culture, and it can set us to thinking about motherhood as God intended. For there is motherhood; and there is motherhood.
Motherhood and Lordship
Let us think about motherhood as God intended, under the Lordship of Jesus. We have made it tough — we Christians — for the women in our homes, our churches, and our society to be effective mothers. Aside from blaming them for all the emotional quirks of their offspring, we have often set up an impossible emotional picture of the role of mothers, a mold into which we pour each woman. Yet no woman is perfect, no mother is perfect, any more than any man or any father is perfect. That which makes a woman a successful mother is not how comfortable she is with the Mother’s Day card image, but rather her own sense of personhood, of personal worth, of being loved, of being in God’s will in the matter of motherhood as in all other areas of life. The only way any woman can be the kind of fulfilled, fulfilling mother that God intends, is to let Jesus be Lord in her life.
The Motherly Character of God
Now we easily speak of God the Father, and readily confess that most fathers are poor reflections of that fatherly nature of God. In the light of Jesus’ claim of Lordship in your life, I raise a question this morning to mothers: Are you an effective reflection of the motherly character of God? I see I have your attention now! No, I am not calling God she or Mother God or anything of the sort. I am calling your attention to motherly attributes of the character of God that we say little about.
This was not always the case. The motherly attributes of God were a strong theme in the writings of the Church fathers and the medieval churchmen. We find it in the works of Augustine, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Anselm and others. One scholar, Richard Stauffer, has pointed out recently that Martin Luther’s favorite image of Christ was that of the mother hen protecting her chicks. But even more important than the way these great Christian thinkers saw the character of God is what the Bible teaches us of the motherly character of God.
In
What are some of the positive qualities of motherhood? I think immediately of security. The door slams as Junior charges in after school, and the echo of the door is his yell, “Mom!” He wouldn’t say, “I need to know you’re here for my security,” but that’s what’s going on. Did you lose any days out of your childhood because of the temporary absence of your mother? I still remember the week my mother was in the hospital for surgery; everything seemed strange and different and out of kilter; I felt lost. Mothers mean security.
Mothers also bring healing to the family. One of my favorite images of my wife through the years is that of the way she was so often hugging our children and wiping the tears from a skinned knee and kissing it, saying, “That’s all right; it will get better before you get married.”
Mothers not only bring security and healing to the family; they bring a sense of belief in the child. There is a book in my library, purchased thirty-five years ago, whose dedication has always reminded me of my mother; it is a little book by Frank Mead, and the inscription says: To Mother who, thru the hard years, smiled and stood fast while others smiled and turned away. Godly mothers are like that. Mothers almost always have the middle name of sacrifice. From the journey into the dark valley with the possibility of no return on behalf of a little one, to nursing in illnesses, to taking in washing to pay college costs; mothers sacrifice for their children, and do it gladly. It seems mothers are always giving; pouring their lives into the children.
And we can see so transparently so many of these qualities in the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she accepts, when only a young girl, the strange news of motherhood; as she makes the journey not just to Bethlehem, but into the dark valley, and not in a sterilized hospital but in a dirty stable. We see that motherly protection as she flees to Egypt; we see her standing by Him in humility at Cana, and in broken-hearted love standing beneath Him at the cross. Those qualities, the highest qualities of motherhood — security, protection, healing, belief in the child, sacrifice, and yes, discipline — are motherly qualities women have because they are created in the image of God. Look with me at some scriptures which show us these motherly qualities of God.
Turn to
Now examine
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem … how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” Jesus is saying, “I have the kind of motherly love for you that a mother hen has for her chicks; I would have gathered you to me, under the protection of my wings; but you would not respond to my call!”
In
So the lesson is that God is like a mother, is it? Well, in a sense. But more correctly, the godly mother is simply reflecting the character of God. The lesson is that every mother ought to be a mother who acts, as nearly as possible, toward her children like God acts toward us, because her finest motherly qualities are an extension of the character of God. Yet, no mother, in your own strength, can reflect the motherly qualities of God as you ought; no mother, in your own strength, can be the redeeming force in your child’s life that you ought to be, without a holy and sanctified relationship to God yourself.
I close with one other image of motherhood, found in
So I ask all the mothers: Is Jesus the Lord of your life? Have you experienced the motherly love of God, strong, deep, sacrificial? Are you reflecting into the lives, the precious souls committed to your keeping, that your love and discipline and faith in them and sacrifice are all a reflection of a deeper love of God for each child? Is your life lived daily in the presence of God? Or is your life stuffed with soap operas and secular goals? Do you have the desire to pour your life and your faith into your children in such a way that they will know and love God?
You can be a biological mother without Jesus as Lord; but you cannot be a channel of the highest blessings of this world without Him. Would you this day make Jesus Lord of your life?