MOTHER LOVE
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Texts: Acts 16:6-15, 40
In the black church tradition, there has been a lovely, time-honored custom of recognizing certain women in the congregation as “Church Mothers.” Now I’m no expert on the black church but I do know that these women have been venerated for their years of loving service to the church. They have provided food and care for the body and soul; they have brought wisdom and understanding to the life of their congregations; they have set the foundation on which the community rests. It may be the preacher who rocks the congregation with powerful, prophetic preaching but it’s the Church Mothers who gently rock the congregation in its times of need and celebration. It’s their mother love that nurtures and empowers the congregation to be all that it can be - and sometimes more.
When I think about Church Mothers, I think about Marie Pierce. Some of you may remember her from American Baptist women’s work in our region in days past. Marie was an impressive woman, tall and handsome, a force to be reckoned with. In the late 40s, she and her husband moved into the neighborhood behind Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church in Oakland, the first black family in that quiet, middle-class neighborhood. Their courageous move gave Pastor Harold Geistweit and the Lakeshore congregation an opportunity to practice its faith commitment by welcoming their new neighbors and supporting them as they settled into the neighborhood.
After her first husband died, Marie married a minister and moved away from the Lakeshore congregation, though not from the neighborhood. As a widow, in her 70s, I suppose, she returned to Lakeshore and that is where I met her. Marie’s presence was immediately felt in the church. An able leader, deeply spiritual, committed to enriching the life of her church family, she served in many roles, including a term as moderator. In those years, she enrolled at the American Baptist Seminary of the West where she earned a Master of Arts in Religious Values. She refused ordination by her Lakeshore family, but she let us give her the title of Traveling Evangelist when she went off to work for a couple of years for Bread for the World.
As I said, I am not an expert on the Black Church. Much of what I have learned about that tradition over the years was in the Lakeshore community. Somewhere along the line, I had heard about Church Mothers and I decided to apply it, somewhat playfully, to Marie. I knew it was a somewhat outdated concept, at least in our setting, and Marie was not the traditional Church Mother, but somehow the title stuck for me. Knowing Marie Pierce, working with her, sharing church life together through thick and thin, I came to appreciate some of the depth of meaning of the original concept of Church Mother. Marie, Mother Pierce, cared for us, challenged us, loved us as only a mother can. Her presence among us surely helped to shape the life of our congregation for many years, even after she was gone. Mother love – fierce and tender, protective and encouraging, chastening and empowering, has been, and continues to be, vital to the life of the church. Mother Pierce wasn’t the only one at Lakeshore in those days. There was also Mother Pete and Mother Trimble and Mother Evans and several others. I’m guessing they were all too modern and sophisticated to want to claim that title for themselves. As I said, it is kind of an old-fashioned, country way of seeing things, but whether they claimed the title or not, that’s how they functioned, at least from my perspective, in the life of the church.
I’m not going to embarrass anyone here this morning by calling out names or even asking you to look around, but I will ask you to take a moment to do a little of inventory of your own life in the church to see if there aren’t some Church Mothers who need to be celebrated for their gifts to you and the congregations of which you’ve been a part. Church Mothers are vital to the life of a congregation, even (maybe even especially) when the formal leadership falls to men. Mother love is an awesome thing – not something sweetly sentimental, not a Hallmark phenomenon. The prophet Hosea describes God with the fierce love of a mother bear protecting her cubs (Hosea 13:8). Mother love is a powerful thing that serves always on the side of life, that protects the innocent and challenges the guilty, that shapes community and fills it with both compassion and justice.
Lydia was an early Church Mother. When Paul came calling in Philippi, it was she who became the his first convert in Europe, she who was baptized along with her whole household, she who hosted Paul, Silas and their entourage in her home that became the first church on the continent. This is another of the remarkable Spirit-led stories in the book of Acts. Paul and Silas, full of missionary zeal, are eagerly seeking to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. They’ve checked on the communities Paul has begun in Asia Minor and are looking for new fields in which to minister. The Province of Asia? No, not the there! Perhaps Bithynia then? Not now! How about Mysia? Sorry.
This must have been difficult and frustrating time for the erstwhile missionaries – enough to make them want to give up and go home. The Spirit kept slamming doors in their faces. Have you ever felt like that – desiring to do something, perhaps even something for God, yet finding yourself frustrated in your efforts to get it done? Did you just give up or did you keep pounding on the door or did you turn to God and say, “OK, what then?” Often the problem with our plans is that they are not God’s plans. Our intentions may be good and our desires noble, but if we are not in tune with God’s way, our best efforts are futile. We may come up with brilliantly logical plans for organizing our lives and moving into the future, only to come up against a vision from God that calls us in an entirely different direction. We don’t know if Paul continued to be so full of his own passionate zeal that he, initially, neglected to listen for God’s word, to watch for God’s guidance. Or maybe he was calling on God daily, patiently or impatiently, waiting to be shown the way. Whatever his state and process, it again took a dramatic vision to get his attention. David Forney writes that “…our well-conceived scripting of God’s vision…is a very different affair from receiving from God a vision” (David G. Forney, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, p. 474.) Paul and Silas may have had a plan, but it was not God’s plan for them.
Eventually they find their way to Philippi and there by the river on a Sabbath morning, they find a group of the devout gathered for prayer. “Oh God, send someone to help us.” Is it remarkable that it is a group of women? Perhaps for the time and culture it was, but then, how often has it been mother love that kept faith alive and community faithful? This is no new phenomenon. And, to Paul’s credit, he did not disdain to sit down to teach this group of women deep in prayer. Whether it was religiously and culturally acceptable for him to do so or not, he recognized a faith community when he encountered one. He was not going to let this missionary opportunity get away. He was not at all reluctant to share the good news whereever it might take root, grow and bear fruit.
Now Lydia was not a Jew. Apparently she was among that group of fellow-travelers, sometimes known as “God-fearers” or, as the NRSV says, “worshipers of God”. There are some remarkable juxtapositions here. Lydia is a person of economic means and social power. She is apparently a successful business owner. Only the elite classes wear purple cloth. She has her own household. No husband or consort is mentioned. On a somewhat smaller scale, think Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina or Carol Bartz, politics aside. She was a woman of means and influence. She had a lot to lose by hanging out with these religious and cultural outsiders. And yet, here she was. She wanted more, something different. She was one of those people whom Jesus lifted up when he said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” Here she was, down by the riverside, with this group of women from all walks of life and every social station, all equal in the eyes of God as they knelt to pray.
However, I do think that, from the start, Lydia was Church Mother material. She was gifted to protect the welfare and sustain the life of the new faith community of which she quickly became a part. It took her no time to respond positively to Paul’s good news. It was the gospel for which she had hungered and thirsted. She recognized it right away and was baptized into the Jesus’ Movement, bringing her household with her. Have we heard the old, old stories so often that we sometimes forget their power to transform life? Do we lose sight of how good the good news is for one who hungers and thirsts for it? Lydia reminds us of the power of the gospel to turn one’s world right side up and make one whole.
My guess is that Lydia was gracious and hospitable before she ever encountered Paul and the gospel. Maybe one reason she caught on so quickly was the way the gospel spoke to her already essentially compassionate and hospitable nature. She threw open her home to these foreign strangers, grateful for what they had given her and eager to know more of what they had to teach. And, as we will see next week, when they came out of prison at the end of this chapter of Acts, she was there to welcome them again. The word about hospitality for strangers and prisoners is too obvious to need much comment here. It does make you wonder what good news certain residents of Arizona, along with others who are hell-bent on keeping strangers out, might be missing in their inhospitality? Who might be moving in their midst who will never get the chance to share their gifts – a cure for cancer, a way to peace, a cup of water, a dedicated teacher, a brilliant artist – because there is no room?
Mother love has no tolerance for inhospitality. Where God guides, where Jesus teaches, where the Spirit moves, there is room for the stranger, for the prisoner, for the outcast and marginalized. The reign of God is characterized by radical hospitality. Mother love lifts up all her children and wishes the best for them. Mother love provides sanctuary for all her babies and calls them to be all that they were made to be. Mother love calls to compassion and grace, wisdom and understanding, peace and justice. God send us more Church Mothers - of any gender - mothers like Mother Pierce and Mother Lydia, who live with open minds and open hearts and open arms, who live to mother us on our way into the realm of God. Amen.