Sidney UMC - Mother's Day/4th Sunday of Easter - 05/12/19 - Sermon - “Walking through the valleys of life”

Mother’s Day - Sunday 05/12/19 - Sidney UMC

Sermon Title: “Walking through the valleys of life”

Old Testament Scripture: Psalm 23

                                            

New Testament Scripture: Revelation 7:9-17

Gospel Lesson: John 10:22-30

          Welcome again my friends, my brothers and sisters, on this our Mother’s Day, and this the Fourth Sunday of Easter. Four Sundays after Jesus rose from the dead, to then appear to his disciples and others for 40-days, before ascending into heaven. This day is also the day that we honor mothers and all women. Whether or not a woman has her own biological children or not, most women are the mothers to someone, a pet, or have served in a mothering role. Today we honor mothers and all women who have loved, cared, given, and sacrificed for us and for so many. This means that today we don’t just honor mothers, but we also honor grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and even great-great-grandmothers.

          Since we are honoring, remembering, and focusing on mothers and the women that are or have been significant in our lives, I want to focus my sermon this morning on Mother’s Day.

          To begin this, I have a few questions for us to consider this morning. First, how many of us have or had mothers that would do anything for us? How many of us have or had mothers that would (or maybe even have) drove through the night to help us. Maybe your car was broken down, you were having a crisis, you became a Mets fan, or things were just not going well. In those moments of distress, your mom showed up.

          How many of us, when we have had tough days or tough times in our lives, we got good advice and help from mom? How many of us had clean clothes to wear, were taught how to live and behave, and maybe even had a lunch to take with us to school because of mom? How many of us, if we asked our moms for everything they had, they might actually give it to us. This is the love of a mother.

          How many of us here would not be the people we are today without our mothers? Now don’t get me wrong, dads are very important to, but today is mother’s day. We will celebrate Father’s Day next month on Sunday June 16^th. So dads and men be prepared for that!

          Some of us here might have also had mothers that we think weren’t very good mothers. This is unfortunately the reality for some. In addition to mothers though, maybe we can think of grandmas, aunts, Sunday school teachers, and other women that have been influential and impactful in our lives. In this way, I like to think of mother’s day as a day to honor all women. If we had good mothers, may we honor them today and always. May we honor grandmothers, great-grandmothers, great-great-grandmothers, and all the women that have helped to shape us, have loved us, and that have sacrificed so much for us. So while we come to praise God this day, today we honor mothers and all the women that have been impactful and influential in our lives. I would encourage you all this day to take some special time to reflect upon, to remember, and to reach out to any mothers or women in your lives that have meant so much to you. Today is about moms and the women that have impacted us and have loved us.

          Given all of this, why is my sermon for this morning called “Walking through the valleys of life”? Well, one of scripture readings from this morning, once again, is Psalm 23. This is a beautiful Psalm, and I read it at most funerals that I do. Psalm 23 is a Psalm that reminds us that God is with us during the trials and the hardships of life. This Psalm so often gets read at funerals, because we believe that God was with us, is with us, and will continue to be with us in eternity.

          I asked just a minute ago, how many of our mothers have been there for us when we were struggling or when we had a hard time in our lives? How many of us are grateful that our mothers loved us enough to be there when we needed them the most? In the same way that God promises to be us through the trials and tribulations of our lives, for many us, our mothers and or other women in our lives have been there for us.

          Let’s look again at what Psalm 23 says. It says in 23:1:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1, NKJV).

How many of us have or had mothers that made sure that we always had enough to eat, and that we were well taken care off? Now don’t get me wrong, many of us have or had great dads and men in our lives to, but today is Mother’s Day. For many of us, we can probably say that our mothers do or did everything that they could to make sure that we did not want or need. This verse from Psalm 23 encourages us to trust God to supply our needs, as many of our mothers helped to do or did this for us.

Psalm 23 continues on speaking of God, as it says in 23:2-3:

“He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake” (Ps. 23:2-3, NKJV).

The Psalmist is telling us that God is with us and will give us peace and comfort in our times of struggle and trial. The Psalmist is telling us that God is with us through all of our ups and downs. How many of us can say that our mothers, grandmothers, women in our lives, and etc. have done this for us? For some of us, our mothers and grandmothers do or did live the love of God through Jesus Christ is ways that impacted and even changed us.

Psalm 23 continues in 23:4-5 saying once again:

^“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over” (Ps. 23:4-5, NKJV).

        God promises us to be with us through thick and thin. How many of us have or had mothers like that? How many of us had aunts or grandmothers, or other women in our lives like that?

          As I was getting ready for this Mother’s Day service, I read the scriptures over for this morning, and as I read Psalm 23, I keep thinking, “God’s love for us is unfailing”. Then I thought, “Well don’t so many mothers, grandmothers, and women in our lives fit the mold of what the Psalmist says God is like?” Don’t get me wrong, our mother are or were not perfect, and they have or had their faults. There not God. For some of us though, our mothers, our grandmothers, and the other women in our lives showed us the love, the hope, and the caring of God through Jesus Christ like no one else. Some of us can say that we have more faith, more hope, and more love, because of these women that are or were in our lives.

          As I was re-reading Psalm 23, I thought of my own mom, my Grandma Winkelman, and others. This Psalm once again ends with 23:6-7 that says:

^“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever” (Ps. 23:6-7, NRSV).

         

          For some of us, we could or can always go home when we needed to. For some of us, we could home and mom would be delighted to see us. We could back into our old bedroom with those old posters and others things, and we were welcomed. Many us are and were loved and cared for. For me, as I read Psalm 23 in getting ready for this sermon, I just thought that for many of us it probably connects well to mothers and those women in our lives who have done so much for us.

          In our reading from the Book of Revelation for this morning, we once again hear about the second coming or the return to earth of Jesus Christ (Rev. 7:9-17, NRSV). In this scripture once again, we have a glorious image of people praising Christ. We hear how on this day there will be no more hunger, no more thirst, no suffering, Christ will lead us, and he will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev. 7:15-17, NRSV).

          This scripture is I believe, a prophetic image given by God to the Apostle John of what the second coming of Christ will look like. When we hear of the love and the regard that Christ will have for us in these end time moments, many of us might think of how our mothers, our grandmothers, or other women have or continue to love us. Many moms want to make sure that you are fed, not thirsty, not suffering, and not crying tears of sorrow. I don’t believe that the scriptures that we were given for this morning then, were a mistake. It is amazing to me how God pulls all of these things together, and we can honor moms and the other women in our lives.

          So how can I tie our gospel reading from John 10 into this message for this morning? Well once again the gospel lesson says:

“At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one” (Jn. 10:22-30, NRSV).

         

          In this gospel lesson, some of the Jews are asking Jesus if he is the Messiah, and it so, to just tell them already (Jn. 10:22-24, NRSV). Jesus says I have told you, you don’t listen and you don’t believe me (Jn. 10:25, NRSV). Jesus said, he is one in the same as God the Father. Jesus says that he is the incarnation of God, and that he gives eternal life.

          If we’re honest, how many of us at times never listened or still don’t listen to our mothers? They told us over and over, and we just don’t listen to them. Yet when things go bad, we say things like, “But mom! Why didn’t you tell me or warn me!” Your mom then says, “I have told you this at least 100-times!” In the gospel reading for this morning once again, Jesus tells them he is the Messiah, but they just don’t listen, they just don’t believe him. I bet some of us have been guilty of not listening at times to what mom told us, what grandma told us, to what that wise woman in our lives told us. Maybe your mom said something like, be very careful driving through this town, the police monitor the speed zone changes very carefully. Then you walk in the house one night looking grumpy. Mom says, well what’s wrong. You say, I got a speeding ticket when I got into the village, because I didn’t slow down fast enough. You then say to your mother, “You know mom, you could have told me about the speed zone!” She then says, I have told you that 100-times!

          So for me, as Psalm 23 says, my mother has walked with me “through the valleys of life,” as have other women in our lives. On this Mother’s Day, this day that we honor all women, I would like to close with a story about mothers. This story is called “The Mountain,” and is taken from Jim Stovall’s, You Don’t Have to Be Blind to See. I don’t know if this is a true story, but here is how it goes:

“There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. The mountain people invaded the lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains”.

“The lowlanders didn’t know how to climb the mountain. They didn’t know any of the trails that the mountain people used, and they didn’t know where to find the mountain people or how to track them in the steep terrain. Even so, they sent out their best party of fighting men to climb the mountain and bring the baby home”.

“The men tried first one method of climbing and then another. They tried one trail and then another. After several days of effort, however, they had climbed only several hundred feet. Feeling hopeless and helpless, the lowlander men decided that the cause was lost, and they prepared to return to their village below”.

“As they were packing their gear for the descent, they saw the baby’s mother walking toward them. They realized that she was coming down the mountain that they hadn’t figured out how to climb. And then they saw that she had the baby strapped to her back. How could that be?”

“One man greeted her and said, “We couldn’t climb this mountain. How did you do this when we, the strongest and most able men in the village, couldn’t do it?” She shrugged her shoulders and said, “It wasn’t your baby.”

On this Mother’s Day, I can say that my mother and other women in my life have truly helped me to make my sermon title of “walking through the valleys of life” a reality for me. I am grateful for my mother, grandmothers, the many women that have been there for me, and my many church moms that I have. I hope and pray that we take some time today to thank, to remember, and to honor moms and all women. Today is Mother’s Day. Praise God, and amen.