Kelly, apparently knowing full well that I was unprepared to preach for mother’s day—being a man who understands almost nothing about the subject, graciously offered me the opportunity to deepen my understanding while she went to the beach this week. That’s right—for nearly a week I’ve been flying solo with the girls, which is of course a joke you can understand only if you know both me and the girls in question. Indeed, today’s short sermon is mostly due to the fact that I have to get home and clean up before she gets back later tonight.

Mothers are amazing. It is well and good that today is a day marked off to say thank you to all those mothers out there, the stay at home moms, the working moms, the single moms, the struggling and victorious moms who give so much of themselves to their families, fulfilling the sacrifice of Christ in the most humble and incredible ways. To you all we say, “Thank you. We could not be who we are without your love and sacrifice.”

The Bible has much to say about motherhood. The story of redemption is full of many stories of women, women who took down and raised up kings, who preserved the people of God and who opened the way for exodus, conquest, and redemption. Along the way, many of these stories (though not all!) are stories of women who worked, wept, and waited for children—women who saw their place in the story of God as being related to their calling as mothers. That’s not at all to suggest that this was a single, homogenous sort of work. Indeed, stories such as Sarah, Rebecca, Hannah, Mary, Elizabeth, Bathsheba, Ruth, Jochebed and Zipporah testify to the diversity of paths that may all be called, faithfully, “motherhood”. “Motherhood” mysteriously takes many forms, as each person who finds that role to be part of her story works out what it means in her own context, in the face of her own challenges and amidst her own blessings. We do motherhood a disservice when we try to make it take one form. Indeed, no two moms are any more alike than any two sons or daughters. Mothers, be free, not to become just like the other moms you see, but what has called you to be in the life of your family. Learn from the example and wisdom of other women as well as you can, but do not try to become them. God did not give your children to them, but placed them in your care, entrusted them to you. You honor that trust not by simply imitating others, but by seeking out the gifts and blessings that you can uniquely offer your children. That freedom is not license to be irresponsible (this is just my way!) but is an immense challenge, that by struggling, collecting wisdom, and discerning what is right and faithful you can become exactly the mother God created you to be rather than a copy of someone else.

God gives us different mothers because we all have different needs and challenges. Some of us struggle to understand boundaries and responsibility, some of us struggle to find our independence. Some children need to be coaxed into hitting the books, some need to be coaxed out of them from time to time. Some of us need more help making friendships, some of us need more help understanding what it means to have boundaries in our relationships. Different mothers do things differently, and part of the challenge in this role—like in many of the things God calls us to— is figuring out what it means to do it as you. what does it mean to take all the things that make you unique and fit them to the unique challenges posed by your situation. Motherhood, as a calling, is intensely personal. But that doesn’t mean it’s all about you. Rather, if I have one challenge to give you today, it’s to learn the mystery that as personal as your calling is, it is not all about you. In fact, in the call to motherhood we can clearly see the challenge of what it means to be called by God to do anything, namely that we must learn to live as though the world does not revolve around us. In accepting any call of God we lay down any claim to our own self-interests, and place ourselves at God’s disposal. Hear that well: when I say that motherhood is not about you, I do not mean that it is all about your children, either. Rather, it is all about God. What you want or desire, as well as what your children want or desire, is not as important as participating in God’s story and mission.

Mothers do well when they teach their kids that the world revolves around neither the mother or the child, but for the sake of God’s glory and honor. In motherhood, you participate with God in his work to redeem the world, by teaching your children to hear and follow God. By providing for their needs you can become for them both the means and a symbol of his gracious provision in their life. By your speaking and living what you see in the scriptures, God’s word can again become incarnate before your children’s eyes, so that faith can take on flesh and become a part of the world made up of car pools and summer walks, the world of crazy schedules and bedtime stories, the world of soccer practice and lost shin guards. Your participation with God makes you a missionary to a world of crayons and swim meets, to the foreign lands of sidewalk chalk and middle school cafeterias.

Becoming a mother may not be the only expression of your role in God’s mission, but it can be a powerful one, filled with the miracles of supper and found shoes, the hard tasks of homework and the perils of prom. Paul in his shipwrecks was in no place as strange as those corners of the world a mother’s minivan takes her on her missionary journeys, and his heartbreak over the Corinthians scarcely matches the tears any mother sheds over the sorrows of the children God places in their hands.

Mothers, may God bless your work, not because it is easy or rewarding, but because it is His work, because it is part of His mission, for the sake of His glory.  For your calling to be a mother is not about you, or even your children. It is one place where, mysteriously, we become co-workers with God, his ambassadors of reconciliation. Motherhood is about God, and God’s work in the world. You may say about your work as mothers what Paul mysteriously says about his own ministry (2 Cor. 6:1), “As we work together with him…”. This is the mystery of life, the mystery of ministry, the mystery of motherhood. It is a partnership with God, something that he gives us to do, but something that he also does with you and through you. In motherhood, you participate in God’s work. May we all listen to the call of God, so that wherever he bids us to join him, we may joyfully and faithfully follow, for the sake of his glory.

Amen.

This week’s sermon is on the burning bush theophany, and the ensuing call of Moses and his remarkable dialogue with God.  One part I’m not going to spend much time on is the set of excuses that Moses offers as he hesitates to accept the immediate call of God.  Moses questions how he can possibly be the one chosen for such a task as freeing God’s people, he wonders if the people will question his authority, if they will ask who has sent him. He argues that he is not eloquent enough to fulfill God’s mission, and finally he desperately says what he’s been thinking all along, “Lord, please send someone else.”

Moses is convinced that he doesn’t have the ability to do what God asks.

In a way, he’s right.

In fact, Moses had already attempted to intervene on the Hebrews’ behalf, and failed.  He had already experienced the limitations of his own abilities to create justice, had already had his authority rejected, many years ago. Perhaps like many of us, Moses thought of his failures before as a sign of what would happen if he tried again.  And so, he didn’t. He withdrew and was content to live as an exile in Midian rather than risk his life and fail again.

So his excuses aren’t without any basis.  But that doesn’t make them right. The major difference this time around isn’t that Moses is more eloquent or wise, it’s that this time he acts on the behalf of God.  The one fact Moses can’t get around is God’s promise, “I wil go with you.

The question isn’t “What can we do?”

The question is “What can God do with us?”

]]> http://www.stevenhovater.com/wordpress/2010/06/excuses-excuses/feed/ 0 http://www.stevenhovater.com/wordpress/2010/04/a-steward-of-gods-grace-to-whom/ http://www.stevenhovater.com/wordpress/2010/04/a-steward-of-gods-grace-to-whom/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:40:12 +0000 stevepvc http://www.stevenhovater.com/wordpress/?p=432728079 Continue reading →]]> Yesterday, in the senior adult Bible class, we were hacking on Ephesians 3 a little bit.  Such a dense piece of scripture!

The section describes Paul’s identity in some interesting ways, and one of those in particular caught my attention.  Paul is a steward of God’s grace, particularly God’s grace to the gentiles.  As he proclaims the mystery which he has received, he is acting not just as a conduit for God’s message, but a manager, a caretaker of the grace of God.  He stewards that grace in relationship to the Gentiles freely, but also with skill and wisdom.

That responsibility, the stewardship of grace to the Gentiles, was a very concrete concept for Paul.  It is as a steward, charged with a responsibility of grace, that he interacts with Gentiles who have names and faces.  They aren’t just a general race, but the actual persons he knew, love, and with whom he struggled.  they are the people who would gather in house churches in particular cities like Corinth, Philippi, or Ephesus.  These weren’t mythical cities, but actual particular locations, with streets and buildings, noises and smells.  And to the people in those cities, Paul understood himself to be bound by a sacred charge to demonstrate, declare, and dispense the grace of God.

Most of us who understand ourselves to be disciples of Jesus understand that we have a role in passing on God’s grace to others.  It is critical, though, that we move from that understanding, with it’s nameless faceless “others“, towards understanding that we have been charged with extending grace to specific, particular people.  We can easily think of ourselves as “stewards” of God grace, but the important questions to ask is, “I am a steward of God’s grace to __________?”

I am most plugged into God’s call for my life when I have some names and faces to go with that question.  The further away I get from being able to be specific, the closer I get to understanding it as a general “others”, the further I move from real engagement with God’s mission.

Think about it.  Pray about it.  Meditate on it.  Scan facebook, drive around your city and look around, look through your cell phone’s address book, but start getting your head around this critical question:

Who is the flesh and blood embodiment of your mission to extend God’s grace to the world?