may 10, 2009

Anna Blaedel
First UMC, Osage, Iowa
10 May 2009
John 15:1-8
1 John 4:7-21
Mother’s Day


This morning I want to tell you a story about my mom. As is the case with so many things in life, she is better at telling this story than I. Perhaps some time she will share it with you, in her own words. Until then, bear with me, telling a bit of her story of “coming to faith,” as she calls it. Hers is a story of conversion, into Christian discipleship. And without this story, without her or her faith, I would likely not be in this pulpit, or any pulpit, today.

My mother is a woman of deep faith. Though she was raised in the Methodist Church in Burlington, Iowa, as a child, dropped off for Sunday School each week, her family rarely made it to church together. According to my mom, the family only worshipped together when one of the five children was in a church program during the service. As so often happens, as my mother grew up she stopped going to church, stopped seeking out ways to deepen and practice her faith. My mom remembers thinking that she grew up with good Christian values, that she was a good person, after all, and had no real need for it. It being God. Or faith. Or the gospel. Or the collective life of the Church. She believed in God, but didn’t feel committed to her faith or its practice. In fact, it wasn’t until my family moved to the Bible Belt that my mom dedicated her life to doing God’s work in the world, deepening and proclaiming and practicing her faith in her daily life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, and in any good conversion story, you need to know more about what she was converted from, and what she was converted to. Let us pray: O God, may the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, our strength, and our redeemer.

My family moved to De Ridder, Louisiana, when I was 4, and my sister was not yet 2. You should know, De Ridder is in the Guinness Book of World Records, for having the most churches per capita, of any place in the world. Unlike most people in De Ridder, my parents were not churchgoers, not at the time. But with this move, their world was turned upside down. New in a small town, they knew no one and had no community of support. My parents’ marriage was already on the rocks, and now overwhelmed and stretched almost to the breaking point they found themselves on the verge of divorce. My mom’s father, her core source of strength, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Their life was falling apart, their need was suddenly great, and they did not know where to turn. One Sunday, “because there was nothing else to do in that blankety-blank town,” they went to church. And their lives, my life, have never been the same since.

In the United Methodist Church in De Ridder, my parents encountered God’s grace, made known to the world through the love of neighbors. People brought meals to their door, because they were new. When they found out my parents’ lives were falling apart, people began to pray. Whole churches prayed for my family, and for my dying grandfather. While this initially struck my mom as awfully presumptuous, she began to see it as an act of love. She and my dad committed to looking for and finding the sacred worth in each other, and found that doing so saved their marriage. Neighbors cared her as she watched her father die, and promised to comfort her following his death. When we got word that my grandfather was near death, my dad happened to be out of town at a medical meeting. It was our neighbors who drove my mom 3 ½ hours to the airport in the middle of the night, and our neighbors who stayed with my sister and myself so our mom could be with her dying father. It was there that I was baptized into the Christian faith, along with my sister. We moved from De Ridder after only 10 months there. In De Ridder, my mom learned three lessons she would spend years instilling in me. 1) Fear is not of God. 2) Everyone is created by God, beloved, filled to overflowing with sacred worth. 3) Love your neighbor, no matter who God gives you as your neighbor.

When the Army moved us from De Ridder, Louisiana to Fayetteville, North Carolina, these lessons of faith were quickly challenged. Shortly after we moved into our new neighborhood, we got new neighbors ourselves. Our new next door neighbors—a radiologist and anesthesiologist—were wealthier than most of the neighborhood. My sister and I quickly made friends with their two sons. They were the kind of neighbors children love. They had a swimming pool in their backyard, complete with a slide. They had the best toys available. They even had a black lab, kind and gentle and patient enough to put up with us trying to sit on his back and ride him like a horse. Yet, we were the only kids in the neighborhood allowed to play with the children living next to us. They were black. And while this was only about 20 years ago, racism was and is still alive and strong, and many people couldn’t, many people still can’t, look past skin color and see sacred worth. Recall the Word of God in 1 John, chapter 4. “Those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from Jesus is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

Soon the Army moved us again, from Fayetteville, North Carolina to San Antonio, Texas. When my mom met our new next door neighbors, she was scared. Sally, the mother, wore a backward baseball cap, and always had a lit cigarette between her fingers or her lips. In her very first conversation with my mom, Sally rolled up the sleeves of her shirt to show my mom the bruises on her arms, bruises her oldest son left when his anger burst out of control and he hit his mother. My mom was scared for her safety, for the safety of her two little girls. She talked to my dad about moving. And when, because of Army housing logistics, moving wasn’t an option, she prayed. My mom heard God speak to her. “Love your neighbor.” Surely you don’t mean these people, God. Not these scary, violent, bruised people, my mom pleaded. “Love your neighbor, whomever I give you as your neighbor,” she heard God reply. So my mom set to work, trying to learn how to love them. We learned that Aaron, the son who left bruises on his mother’s arms struggled with Bipolar disorder, and that he was learning to control his outbursts with medication, and behavior therapy. It was Aaron who gave me a ride to a dentist’s appointment when my mom’s car broke down. It was Sarah, Aaron’s little sister, who practically joined our family. It was their father, the lay leader at the community’s Jewish synagogue, who went with my mom to her Bible Study to teach about the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament, and who gave my mom a beautiful Study Torah when we were to move again. “Those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from Jesus is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

By the time we moved from San Antonio, Texas to Ames, Iowa, (only the Army moves people as often as the United Methodist Church moves us pastors!) my mom knew that a central call of her Christian faith was to love her neighbors, difficult as this task might first appear. So, when touring the house that would become our home, she asked the realtor about the neighbors living closest to us in the house immediately behind us. The realtor became silent, and the tension was palpable. “Well,” she said, “it’s, um, two men.” Long pause. “You mean, they’re gay?” asked my mom, sensing this was the story behind the awkward silence. “Yes,” said the realtor, quick to follow this with, “But they’re very nice people.” Two gay men. Parents, with two adopted sons. My mom took a deep breath. And found herself thinking, “Well, God. You’ve given me a new challenge. I’ve never known any gay people. (So she thought, at the time). If I’m going to be able to love them, I need to get to know them.” And she did, and so did all of us. And, my family learned better how to love each other from them, these two gay men and their family. “Those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from Jesus is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

Before I ever read the passages from scripture we hear as this morning’s lectionary texts, I learned their teachings from my mom.

And it shouldn’t surprise me, or you, that these core teachings of the gospel were passed down to me from my mom. The bible abounds with passages depicting God as mother, caring for, teaching, guiding, and loving her children. A mother bear, in Hosea, a mother eagle, in Deuteronomy. As a comforting mother and nursing mother and woman in labor in Isaiah. As the Queen of Heaven in Jeremiah. As a calming mother in the Psalms, and as a mother hen in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Does this surprise you? I promise you, it’s there!

In the 15th chapter of the gospel according to John, the image of the vine is the central symbol. Jesus is the vine, and our Creator is the vine grower. The vine is meant to show how the life of Christian community is shaped by love, intertwined with the abiding presence of God, and of Jesus. Love defines the community’s relationship to one another, and with God. To bear fruit is to keep Jesus’ commandment to do acts of love. Our Creator’s love for Jesus is mirrored in Jesus’ love for the disciples. And Jesus asks us, commands us, the living body of Christ, to mirror this love through our lives, in word and action.

And then, this poetic, prophetic text from 1 John, chapter 4. To affiliate with God, we learn, is to affiliate with love. Those related to God practice love. I learned this bible verse not long after my parents came to faith in De Ridder. My mother played children’s Praise tapes on our family’s summer car trips cross country. And I still remember the tune that carried these words of love…

(sung) Beloved, let us love one another
for love is of God, and everyone who loveth, is born of God
those who loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.
Beloved, let us love one another. 1 John 4:7-8.

From God to my mother, from my mother to me, from me to you. Three lessons in faith, and faithfulness.

One. Fear is not of God. The call to faith requires courage, to be sure. But fear (of what others will say, of what will be required of us, of the changes love may call us to make) does not help us live faithfully. Remember the words from scripture: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…”

Two. Everyone is created by God, beloved, of sacred worth. If it were not so, would it be written, over and over and over again? “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”

Three. Love your neighbor. No matter who God gives you for a neighbor. Black, white, Asian, Latina. Mentally ill, or addicted. Christian, Jew, or Muslim. Straight, or gay. The greatest commandment. The law that trumps all others. Love God, and love your neighbor. “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from Jesus is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

I do not claim to know all there is to know about the Bible, about God, about faith, about how to love, and how to be loved. I certainly do not know all there is to know about being a mother. But I do know this: that it all boils down to love. The Word of God. The gospel. Jesus’ commandments. God, the Father and Mother of us all. How to live faithfully, and become Christian disciples. It all boils down to this: Beloved, let us love one another.

May it be so. Amen.