May 10

May 10, 2009

How We Give Our Children to God & He Gives Them Back to Us
a sermon on Exodus 2.1-10
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

Rarely do I preach what I call a traditional Mother’s Day sermon. I remember hearing them every year when I was young. The pastor would praise mothers and hold up a vision of the ideal mother. I guess it was to give mothers something to strive for and the rest of us a reason to be grateful to our mother. Even this sermon will not be like that, although it comes closer to the traditional type than I usually come.

I do think praising mothers is a good thing to do. Their job is not an easy one, but it is perhaps the most important job in the world. Give them credit. Some days just staying sane is a big accomplishment. Also, I do want to encourage mothers. I don’t think there is one ideal type. A mother ought not measure herself against an imagined picture of the perfect mother—especially if that picture comes from television. Instead, given her children and her circumstances, and sustained by God’s grace, she ought to do her best. No mother is perfect, but hopefully every mother can be good.

I am reluctant to preach the traditional Mother’s Day sermon for several reasons. First, and most importantly, what do I know about being a mother? I realize that as a pastor I often speak to situations of which I have no first-hand experience. I’m supposed to. I simply explain what scripture says about a topic. Also, I talk from time to time about Christian parenting. But the specific topic of motherhood is something different. It’s like a room with pink walls and purple curtains, and I feel like a trespasser.

Second, Mother’s Day is not really a Christian festival like Easter or Pentecost. I think Congress started it, although they may have been copying another country. On the other hand, God did invent motherhood, so one can make a case for it.

Third, a Mother’s Day sermon is not universally applicable. Some of us have a living mother and some do not. Some women among us are mothers and some are not. Some mothers have lost children. Mother’s Day is a hard holiday for many people, and I sympathize. Some women who do not have children are happy about it. Others are not. The maternal instinct is strong. It has to be. Raising children is so demanding that if the maternal instinct were not overpowering, too many moms would give up. So, many women find this inner drive to motherhood compelling, but they do not have children. If that is your situation, let me encourage you with the gospel truth that having children is not necessary to fulfillment as a human being. Jesus had no children, and he taught that in the resurrection, “They will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” [Mk 12.24]. Children are a blessing. Motherhood is a calling. Not every woman is called to it. You can be sure that if you are not called to motherhood, God has called you to something equally meaningful and fulfilling. I hope that helps, and I trust the grace of God is sufficient in this too, even if sometimes your heart aches because you feel you have missed something good. You have, but you have not missed the very best thing. In the resurrection God heals all wounds and redeems all broken dreams. If he can take our weakness and our faults and transform them into something beautiful, then he can certainly take your maternal instinct and transform it into something truly glorious. God is not finished with you yet. … About mother’s who have lost a child, I will have something to say presently.

This sermon is not the full-blown traditional kind, but it is about mothers. At the same time it is about the grace of God and learning to trust God. I was reflecting on motherhood and thinking about this passage of scripture. It is one of the great Biblical passages about motherhood, the others being Hagar bearing Ishmael, Sarah bearing Isaac, Hannah bearing Samuel, and Mary bearing Jesus. I was struck by how all these women, each in her own way, gave her child back to God; and then God gave the child back to her. And I decided that this is what parenting is about. God gives you a child. You give that child back to God. God gives the child back to you. Over and over. You can see how this is going to be about the grace of God and learning to trust God.

Let’s look at the scripture and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a familiar one to every Sunday school student. The children of Israel are in Egypt. They have been ever since Joseph saved the nation from famine. But now a new Pharaoh is in charge, and so much time has passed that he does not remember Joseph. He decides the Israelites are a nuisance, and he enslaves them. That’s not enough for him, though, because he’s scared he’s sitting on a demographic time bomb. There are too many Israelites, and more every day. So he issues a terrible decree: All baby Hebrew boys are to be thrown into the Nile. Here is where maternal instinct kicks in. The Israelite midwives refused to carry out Pharaoh’s orders. The Israelite mothers naturally refused, although ironically, Moses’ mother does put him in the Nile. Even Pharaoh’s own daughter will defy his instructions.

That’s the situation. Moses is born into desperate times. His poor mother, Jochebed, hid him as long as she could. When the danger became too great, she tried something unexpected. She made a little waterproof basket, and put Moses in it. Why? Did she expect him to die, and she couldn’t bear to do it or see it herself? I don’t think so. Was she hoping someone would find him? Did she put him where the Egyptian royal women bathed hoping he would be found by a kind person? That seems risky, but maybe. Was she just trying to hide him where no one would look? Whatever her intentions, she certainly hoped for the best … and she trusted God. She had to. She was in the terrible position—the position no parent wants to be in—of not being able to protect her child. What does a person of faith do in a situation like that? She looks to God. I think we can see Jochebed placing Moses in the basket as an act, maybe not of faith, but at least of hope. If she was without hope, like Hagar, who set Ishmael off at a distance so she would not have to see him die, she learned what Hagar learned: God sees and hears. In any case, Moses was out of his mother’s hands and into God’s hands. Jochebed gave him to God. Scripture does not say this, but I imagine her praying while she made the basket. Praying when she placed Moses in the river. Praying all the way home. That’s just my pious imagination, but she did hide Moses for three months. She wanted him to be safe. The basket was an extreme measure, but done with love.

Jochebed gave Moses back to God, and God gave Moses back to Jochebed. The princess found the baby and fell in love with him. Miriam, his sister, offered to find a nurse. Naturally she got her mother. So Moses was safe; his mother took care of him; and she got paid to do it. And all this is just the beginning of the story. You know the rest, or if you don’t, you owe it to yourself to sit down this afternoon and read the whole book of Exodus.

I could bring in other biblical mothers, such as the Virgin Mary, who gave Jesus back to God many times—at his birth, in the Temple, when his ministry started, at the cross. But rather than look at more biblical examples, I want to consider four ways mothers today give their children to God.

The first way is birth. When God gives you a child, he or she begins as a very tiny little person growing inside you. Pregnancy and delivery are the first way you give your child to God—just by bringing him or her into God’s world. From the beginning, you are God’s partner in creating this new person. Fathers are also God’s partners, and hopefully yours too, but this is about mothers, so we’ll worry about fathers another time.

Bringing a child into the world is an act of either colossal stupidity or tremendous faith—at least in my opinion. So much of life is beyond our control. You do not control your child’s destiny. And the best you can do is to try to keep your child safe and raise her right. Your best is not always enough. Having children is a risky proposition. It takes faith. You have to trust that God’s grace is sufficient for this child.

This is especially true when a child is born with special needs. Sometimes parents know before the birth, sometimes only later. I admire parents who know a child will be handicapped, but they do not abort. This child too is a precious gift from God. They either know this already or they will learn it in time. I believe birth defects are one more way this world is not everything God wants it to be. But God does want the child to be, and I believe that at the resurrection, God’s will shall be done on earth as in heaven, so the child will be healthy and whole. Imagine in heaven a handsome, noble young man walks up to you, shining with the glory of God. Somehow you recognize him as a severely handicapped child you once knew. He says, “Thank you for caring for me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for valuing me when others did not.” I’m not playing on your emotions. You should know by now I don’t try to manipulate emotions from the pulpit. I consider this a likely scenario. I expect we will know one another in heaven. I suspect there will be time to thank those who helped us in this life. If I’m right, then those who cannot thank you now will be able to thank you then.

I once preached about giving thanks to God in all things. The next day the mother of a severely handicapped child called to ask me what I meant. “Should I thank God that Michael is this way?” she asked. I told her, “No, but thank God for Michael.”

God gives you a child. You take what you get. Then you give him back to God, and the first way you do that is by bringing him into God’s world.

The second way is, you teach your child the love of God. According to the Bible, parents have primary responsibility for teaching the faith to their children. The church, Sunday school teachers, youth leaders, and the pastor are under divine obligation to help, but the job belongs to the parents first and foremost. This means reading Bible stories to your children and teaching them to pray. It means teaching them songs about God. It means bringing them to church. It means having them baptized. It means teaching them to understand the Bible as a book about them. The God you meet in the Bible is active in your life, and this is the story of your people. It means teaching by setting an example. It means raising your children with virtue and integrity. It means a lot of things, and you already know what they are, you just need to do them. In all these ways you give your child back to God. You intentionally prepare your child to do great things for God. You know that God will call your child to faith in Jesus Christ, to holy living, and to ministry. Whatever special calling God might have for your child, you know he has these three. You want to help your child hear that call and be ready to obey.

What happens if your child does not? Christian parents agonize when their children grow up and reject the faith. You want for them the assurance that comes from trusting Jesus Christ. Here’s the reality, though: You cannot believe for your child. You cannot give her faith. All you can do is ensure she knows the gospel, set an example yourself, and provide good role models in other Christians at church. The rest is up to God. So you pray, and you keep praying. I suggest not being too pushy and definitely not manipulative. Keep pointing to the beauty of the gospel and how Christian faith makes sense of our world and our experience. In this way too, you give your child back to God.

So both by teaching the faith to your child and hoping he will believe, you give him back to God. Hopefully God will give him back to you, one way or another, in due time.

The third way we give our children back to God is launching them into the world. Your job as a mother is to prepare your child to be a responsible, functional adult to the fullest extent to which she is capable. Eighteen years from now, you are going to send that baby you are holding off to college or into the workforce or into the military. You won’t be there to hold her hand or make things OK, so she’s got to be strong.

Pushing your little one out of the nest can be hard emotionally. And I suspect it is harder for mothers than fathers. I saw a cartoon in which a young man was waiving goodbye to his parents as he left for college. Both parents were crying. The mother was imagining him as a baby in her arms. The father was realizing that with his son away, he would have to cut the grass himself.

Difficult though it may be, it is necessary. When you launch your child into the world, what you are really doing is giving him back to God.

The fourth way we give our children back to God is death. This is by far the hardest way. The death of a child is different from all the other ways of giving him back to God because God does not ask for this one. In the Bible, God condemns child sacrifice in the strongest possible terms. The purpose of the story about how Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac is to protect children. If Abraham, who was God’s best friend, did not do this, you don’t need to either. That’s the message. I do not believe God takes our children from us. I believe we lose them because the world we live in is broken. God wants you to give birth to the child growing within you. He wants you to teach your child the faith. He wants you to launch your child into the world as a competent adult. But he does not want your child to die. In a world where God’s will is not done as it is in heaven, however, children do die. This church knows this all too well. We have many parents who have lost a child.

At the same time, giving your child back to God in death is like the other ways in this respect: When you bring a child into the world, so much is out of your control; you have no choice but to trust that child to the grace of God. When you teach your child the faith, you cannot believe or make a commitment to Christ for her; you have no choice but to trust her to the grace of God. When you launch your child into the world as an adult, you cannot control either what life throws at him or how he handles it; you have no choice but to trust him to the grace of God. When your child dies, you have no choice but to trust your child to the grace of God. The similarity comes in your weakness and God’s strength. You are not able, just as Jochebed was not able to protect Moses. Like her, you trust your child to the grace, the goodness, and the power of God. You are not able, but God is able.

I do not know why God allows this world to be the way it is. I know it will not always be so. Christ has died, and Christ is risen, so God’s kingdom will come. I believe God will create a future that will redeem all the suffering that we experience now. I cannot imagine how that will work, but I trust it is so because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. God too knows something about the death of a child. He must be a very wonderful God indeed to go through that and redeem it so beautifully. The death of a child is a pain like no other, but you can trust God to be strong where you are weak. You can give your child back to him one last time, confident that he will give your child back to you—not now, not as a child, but at the resurrection. The child you have loved—and God has loved—is safe in the grace of God.

As I said, Mother’s Day is a hard day for many people. I’m not sure I can take many sermons like this one. Motherhood is hard because it is a constant cycle of God gives your child to you, you give your child back to God, God gives your child to you, you give your child back to God. My little survey did not exhaust the countless ways this happens. Over and over goes the pattern, with the same twin engines driving it: God’s grace on one side and our need on the other. God gives you this precious gift. You do what you can. You cannot do enough, so you trust the grace of God. The grace of God is sufficient.

That’s the story of motherhood. It’s also the story of fatherhood … and ministry … and life. Whether you are a mother or not, I pray that life will teach you to trust the grace of God. Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com back to sermons