THANKFULNESS
MOTHER’S DAY
DR. JIM DIXON
MAY 13, 1990
MARK 15
Frederic Bartholdi was born in Colmar, France in 1834. He was an architect, a painter, and a sculptor. His 70 years would have passed without notice, except for one fact, it was Frederic Bartholdi who designed the Statue of Liberty towering over Ellis Island near the entrance to New York Harbor. Every year more than 2 million people visit the Statue of Liberty, and for them it is a symbol of freedom and opportunity. But for Frederic Bartholdi, the Statue of Liberty was more than that. For him, it was a means of honoring his mother, whose face he sculpted as the face of liberty. I think it’s safe to say that none of us here will ever build statues of our mother. Certainly not a statue that stands 150 feet high and weighs 450,000 tons. But all of us here, all of us, are called to honor our mothers.
The Bible says, “Honor your mother and father that it may go well for you that you may live long on the earth.” This morning, I would like to share with you two ways that you can honor your mom. First of all, we can honor our moms by thanking them. We can honor our moms with grateful hearts. We can honor our moms through appreciation and through the giving of thanks. In Luke, chapter 17, we’re told how our Lord Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem and he came to the border of Samaria and Galilee. There, at the border, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and they shouted, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.” And we’re told that Christ did have mercy on them and He healed them, but only one came back in gratitude and thanked him. Only one. Jesus said those famous words, “Did I not heal ten? Where are the nine? Has no one come to give thanks but this one?” I think that all over America and in this room today, there are probably a lot of mothers who ask that same question, “Has no one come to give thanks?” Sometimes children seem ungrateful. Moms do a lot of work.
Northwestern University has determined through recent studies that the average mom in the course of her life prepares 35,000 meals. 35,000. The average mom in the course of her life makes 10,000 to 40,000 beds. She cleans 8,000 plumbing fixtures. She vacuums a carpet 170 yards wide and 1,700 yards long. With her husband, the average mom ultimately spends more than $200,000 on each child. And of course, there’s all the washing, ironing, counseling, teaching, worrying, praying, and chauffeuring to every corner of the city at every hour of the day. It seems to me that somebody ought to stand up and say thank you. And who better than a mother’s own child? The problem is that a growing number of children are not thankful in this country. A growing number of children are not grateful to their mom or for the things that she has done. In fact, a growing number of adults in this nation do not look back on their childhood with gratitude towards mom. A growing number of adults in America look back and view their mom in terms of the injuries that their mom has brought to them, the emotional damage, the psychological damage.
It is a fact that hundreds of thousands of people from Hollywood to New York are going to counseling today to try to undo what moms have allegedly done to them. Now, I don’t mean to mock counseling. I believe in counseling. I thank God that we have counselors and psychologists and psychiatrists and certainly I would never want to belittle or minimize child abuse, a great tragedy in this country. Certainly, there are people who need to go to counselors to deal with past wounds and get them taken care of that they might get on with life. But I think in the midst of all this, a lot of moms have received a bad rap. Moms are stereotyped as wounders rather than healers. And I have to say, most moms, I believe with all my heart, most moms are healers. They’re healers. I’m sure that all moms make mistakes and some moms are better than others, but most moms have sought to heal.
Now you see, the world has a false view of humanity. The world has a false view of sin. The world has a false view of human nature. Many people in the world believe that children are born innocent. They believe that children are born like brand new computers and that moms are the computer programmers that either put good programming or bad programming into an innocent computer. Or they may view children as virgin soil at birth, and moms either plant weeds or they plant flowers and it’s up to mom whether the child becomes a flower garden or a weed patch. Many people in the world today think that children are born in innocence, they’re born straight, and if later in life they become bent and crooked, something must have happened in their parenting because they were straight at birth and maybe mom is at fault. I hope you understand this appraisal of the human condition is not biblical.
The Bible says we’re born warped. We’re born in sin. The Bible says sin has impacted creation. At birth we are damaged physically, the very cells of our bodies are not perfect at birth. We are damaged physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. We’re not like new computers; we have bad and good programming. We’re not like virgin soil; we have weeds and flowers and yet, God has given the flowers and the good programming. But it is this fallen world in its sin and the impact of sin upon the creation that has caused bad programming and weeds. We’re not born straight, we’re born bent, and we’re born crooked. Being a mom is hard work from the very beginning. And I hope you understand, I believe with all my heart, most moms have tried to water the flowers and tried to pull the weeds. Oh, I think it’s true that sometimes moms by mistake, and dads too, have watered the weeds, and maybe planted a few. But most moms have tried to water the flowers and pull the weeds.
When I was growing up, I played a little baseball and I didn’t play it well. I played in elementary school, fifth, sixth grade and that was the end of my baseball career. I played second baseman and I played it with sheer panic. I remember whenever the batter came up, I was hoping that the batter would hit the ball to the shortstop or the third basemen or the first basemen or to the outfielder, but not to me. It always seemed like the ball came to fast. And it seemed like it took a weird bounce, just before it got to me. It would hit me in the face, the shin, or go right under my glove. That was embarrassing and humiliating. I wondered a little bit about my hand eye coordination. I didn’t feel great about myself. My mom though, she always thought I played great. I remember one day I was walking off the field and going to the car. My mom was in the car and as I was walking towards the car, my mom had a big smile on her face. I said, “Mom, what are you smiling at?” She said, “Son, you’ve got a great walk.” And, she really did believe I had a nice walk. She liked the way I walked. I thought, this is great, I catch baseballs with my face, but I’ve got a good walk.
My mom was just trying to water a few flowers. I think most moms are like that. I believe that with all my heart. How many times do moms say to their children, “No, your nose isn’t too big or your nose isn’t too small” or “No, your ears don’t stick out far. They’re just right for you” or “Your hair looks great today. No, it really looks great. I’m not saying that just because I’m your mom” or “You’re handsome, you’re beautiful. You got a great personality.” How many times do mom’s say these things to their children? Trying to water a few flowers, trying to build a little self-esteem. But children are like dry sponges, they just can’t get enough and they’re still dry. It’s hard work. Being a mom has to be hard at times when you see your children grow up and blame you for their low self-esteem. Maybe you made a few mistakes, but probably you tried.
I think of the passage of scripture found in Matthew’s gospel, the 15th chapter, where Jesus took the disciples and He went up into the region of Tyre and Sidon into the region of the Gentiles. He didn’t go there to minister to the Gentiles. He just wanted to get away from the Jewish people and be alone with His disciples. When He reached a little village, a Gentile mother came to him, a Canaanite woman. She came to him desperate, begging, pleading because her daughter was ill. She said, “Lord, have mercy on me.” She said, “Lord, have mercy on my daughter.” Remember how Christ said He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? The woman continued to beg and Jesus said, “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs.” Difficult passage of scripture. Perhaps Christ was testing this woman’s faith and love for her child. The woman said, “Yes Lord, but even the dogs have the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Jesus marveled, and said, “Woman, great is your faith.” And the Bible tells us that in compassion, Jesus was moved. The Bible tells us that Jesus healed this mother’s daughter.
I believe with all my heart that through the centuries, most moms have longed to see their sons and daughters healed. We can’t count all the hours, all the days, that moms have come to Christ pleading that their children would be whole, that their children would be healed. And I believe with all my heart, if we’re going to honor mothers, we need to say thank you. If you’ve got wounds and you’ve got bitterness and you kind of feel like, “Well, mom didn’t always treat me the best and she planted weeds and she put some bad programming in there.” You need to deal with that, try to put it behind you, work your way through it, and then give thanks and begin to focus on the good things your mom has done and the good things your father has done. The Bible says in 1st Corinthians, chapter 13 that, “Love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs.” Love keeps a record of rights. So go to your mother and thank her for the good things she has done.
Secondly, and finally today, if you honor your mother, you must bless her. Thank her and bless her. How do you bless your mother? It says in Proverbs 31 that a godly mother will see her children rise up and call her blessed. They will rise up and they will bless her. How do you do that?
I want to tell you two stories. They illustrate how we can bless our moms. The first story concerns Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln once said, “All that I am, all that I ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” Those words sound kind of mushy to me, but Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a mushy guy. His mother died when he was only nine years old. Only nine. But he said he would never forget his mother’s prayers for him. In fact, Abraham Lincoln said that he carried his mother’s prayers for him with him, always. He said he would never forget how his mom believed in him. Only nine years old when his mother died, and yet he knew she believed in him.
It wasn’t easy to believe in him because, he was kind of skinny, scrawny, thin, awkward, and more than a little bit ugly. He had less than one year, less than one year’s formal education. And his life was filled with failure. Three times he was defeated in Congress. Twice he ran for the Senate and was defeated. He knew what it was like to be fired because he was fired from his work more than once. He knew what it was like to be bankrupt, broke, and in debt because all those things happened to him. He knew what it was like to fall in love with a woman to have the woman totally reject him. That happened to him many times. He knew what it was like to experience the death of a little child because he experienced the death of his little child. He knew what it was like to be snubbed by his peers and to be mocked and even despised by multitudes because that was true of him. But through it all, he never forgot there’s one person who had believed in him; and that one person who had believed in him was his mother. So he said, “All I am, all I ever hope to be, I owe to my mother.”
For Abraham Lincoln, because his mom had long since died, those words were a kind of eulogy. He was eulogizing his mother. And the word eulogy comes from the Greek word “eulogia,” the biblical word that means blessing. It’s the word that means to bless. If you want to bless your mother, you must eulogize her. And the word “eulogia” means good word. To bless somebody, to eulogize somebody is to say something good about them. If you would bless your mother, you need to eulogize her before she dies, not only afterwards. You need to say good things to her and good things about her. That’s the meaning of the word bless. It’s a choice you have to make. You must choose to say good things to your mother and choose to say good things about your mother. And that’s how you bless her biblically.
There’s another Greek word or biblical word for blessing, and it’s illustrated through another story. The final story concerns a picture that probably many of you have heard of, a picture called Whistler’s Mother. Whistler’s Mother is one of the most famous portrait paintings in all the world; painted by James Whistler in the city of London in 1872. He had his mother pose against a gray wall. He called it arrangement in black and white and it became his number one portrait. And by this James Whistler made his mother famous but, he never made her happy. He never made her happy because he wasn’t the kind of son she prayed for growing up. He had been rebellious, he had been disrespectful, disobedient, and as an adult he was wild. He mocked everything his mother believed in and stood for. He denied and renounced Jesus Christ. His mother loved Christ. He gave his life to promiscuity, and in the course of James Whistler’s life, he would go on for years and never contact his mother. In her final years, when she was dying of respiratory illness, he never talked to her once. She received no happiness.
James Whistler had a brother. His name was William Whistler. He was a medical doctor and he gave his mother great happiness. He gave her happiness by the way he lived his life. He loved Jesus Christ, was a committed Christian. He gave his life to the service of Christ and to the service of people for Christ’s sake. And during the Civil War, it was William Whistler who cared for the wounded all day and all night, week after week, and much weariness black or white. He cared for those people. He made his mother happy. She was proud. As the years went by, he was always considerate of her needs. When her husband died, and she was all alone, it was William Whistler who had her come and live with him at his house in Philadelphia. Later in life when he lived in London, he brought her there and he provided for her, considered her needs and what would make her happy. In the final years when she was ill, he’s the one who cared for her, it was Whistler’s brother who blessed Whistler’s mother.
In the Bible, there are two words for bless. The word “eulogia” which means good word. There’s also the word “makarios” which means happy. To make happy is to bless. When Jesus gave the beatitudes, and he said, “blessed are the peacemakers.” He used this word “makarios” which means happy. If you would bless your mother, you must not only eulogize her, meaning you must not only say good things about her and to her, but you must seek her happiness because that’s what it means to bless. It means to make happy. But that’s a choice, a choice you have and a choice you have to make. Do you really want to honor your mother? If you do, you need to have a grateful heart and you need to give her things. If you do, you need to praise her, say good things to her and about her, and you need to seek her happiness. It’s a commitment you’ll never be sorry for doing.
Anna Jarvis is called the mother of Mother’s Day. She’s the one who fought to establish Mother’s Day here in America. She never married. She never had a child. She was never a mother. But, of course, she had a mother. Her mother died on the second Sunday of May, 1906. She longed to honor her mother and to see all mothers honored. So this day was set aside in this nation to honor mothers. Honoring moms is not something that you can do in a single day. It’s something that you need to do all year round. And the promise of scripture is clear: honor your mother and father, that it might go well for you. Let’s close with a word of prayer.