5/13/56

Scripture: II Timothy 3; also Deuteronomy 5: 16; 6: 1-9, 20-25.

Many of us remember, from childhood, that the second Sunday in May is remembered as Mother’s Day. And many of us have been glad to mark it with tokens of affection and remembrance for our own mothers.

There are some who wince a bit over the sentimentality that tends to get mawkish over Mothers in general, and over the commercial aspects that take over the idea. It is a tribute of questionable value or sincerity to wax eloquent over mothers in general, or even a mother in particular, just because of the biological fact of maternal parenthood. There is a deserved tribute of appreciation that comes naturally from one whose mother has been a continuous and unfailing source of spiritual strength and dependable faith. More particularly may one’s appreciation of Mother be properly expressed by those who have made honest effort to live as a good mother hopes each of her children will live.

But there are enough women who have borne children, but who have taken little enough responsibility for training them in the way they could go, to nullify and make ridiculous, any general blanket of praise for all mothers just on the basis of parenthood. And there are enough children, particularly those growing or grown into maturity who do little enough to honor their good parenthood so that any mere sentiment about Mothers on one day a year would be pretty hollow.

Some of us are glad that there has been a trend in later years to mark Mother’s Day as a "festival of the Christian home" in which the good Mother who deserves recognition is remembered in the setting of the good family.

Though the Mother is centrally important to a good home, it takes more than mother to achieve it. It takes the children; it takes the father; it takes the others who may reside there, or who come and go frequently in the bonds of affection.

John Howard Payne’s lines: "Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home" strike a responsive chord in the hearts of hosts of people. Yet home is not just house or surroundings - humble or palatial. Home is people -- Father, Mother, brothers, sisters; whoever is there is the family, the people, the home.

The home is the oldest institution on earth, older than the school, older than the church. It has existed from the time of the appearance of mankind in creation. It is founded upon the marriage of one man and one woman. We read in the book of Genesis: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." [Genesis 2: 24].

The home which God intended is a place where each has his known place; each has a sense of belonging; each feels he or she is wanted, and wants the others; each has a zeal for the integrity, purity and security of the home.

This is the time of year when numbers of young couples are planning their marriage and the establishing of their own homes. All over the country, and right here in this church, too, during the spring and summer (and at other seasons as well), young couples will stand in the sanctuary, hushed in silent reverence, while they make the most earnest kind of pledges to God and each other, as the basis of their marriage from that time forth, so long as both shall live.

There is a tradition in fairy tales, and often in our contemporary motion pictures, that romance culminates in marriage, and that of course, once married, the couple live happily ever after. But it seems that sometimes marriage becomes the end of romance, rather than the beginning of it. It should become the beginning of the most satisfying kind of fulfillment possible in life, and it may be so if groom and bride, husband and wife, understand that the wedding is the beginning of their life that is to be, not just accepted but built, by the love and continuing effort of both.

Marriage is an adventure, with its ups and downs. It requires growth in personality and constant adjustment. And it is the business of the married couple to do their growing together. Wives need to understand the complexities and the demands upon their husbands at work and in community life, as well as the making of the home. But husbands need just as surely to understand their wives’ role in housekeeping and home making and community, and in the career jobs that many have nowadays.

One survey made by Bryn Mawr College points out that an average farm wife works 68 hours a week in household tasks, and that the wife in small towns and in the city works even longer hours each week at household tasks.

One wonders how many a young man is realistic enough to propose marriage to a charming young woman by asking: "Would you be willing to work 68 to 80 hours a week for me for nothing more than a share of my wages?"

The prospective bride of modern times is sometimes asked: "After you are married, are you just going to keep house, or are you going to work, too?"

It would be well to recognize that home-making is really a full time occupation for a great many, a career with its well defined tasks and its own rich rewards.

A fellow with a mind for statistics asked his wife, "How many times a day do you go up and down the stairs in our house?" After a bit of calculating, she gave a figure for the average day and he multiplied it by days and years. He figured that, at that rate, she would probably climb the equivalent of 12,000 trips up and down the Washington monument during her lifetime.

Would any young man ask his bride to do that; or to wash 150,000 cubic feet of dirty dishes. Taken a few at a time, they may not be so bad as that; but at best it is an assignment that sometimes calls for some help.

Would a young man ask: "Are you willing to contract with me to wash and iron the clothes on a line 47 miles long with two extra lines of specialty items for each baby?" Well that, says this statistical researcher, is the long line that is involved in the process of building a successful household home life.

And not all the gadgets developed to make housekeeping easier can be counted on to eliminate the wife’s burdens. For the gadgets have to have care, too. Is it easier to make coffee for a family of 10 or 12 in one big pot, or in three or four small coffee-makers to be watched and washed and polished?

In many homes it is one pair of hands that cooks the meals, packs the lunches, bathes the children, puts out the cat or feeds the canary; one person who orders the food or shops for it, sets the washing machine going, bakes the birthday cake, keeps accounts, defrosts the refrigerator, answers the telephone and the doorbell, turns off the stove under the pot that is about to boil over, opens the doors, soothes the ruffled brow of the child that has had a squabble, and so on.

The wife and mother in many homes is nutritionist, child psychologist, expert buyer, motion-study expert, and social engineer all in one. If her husband sees her as free to plan her own time he ought to reexamine his understanding of her contribution. Perhaps she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.

He may expect her after her 80 hour week to be cheerful and refreshing to his wearied life, with plenty of leisure to minister to his jagged nerves after his 40 hour week in the office or plant. Now of course that is somewhat overdrawn. But there is enough truth in it to raise our appreciation to an understanding that the wife and mother needs the understanding and helpful hand of husband and children in the family, if she is to have left in reserve the emotional resources which they hope for, and expect from, her.

Marriage is more than just the contract that the law recognizes. The home is a sharing of duties and of understanding, of planning and effort. There is a division of labor in the household, but a core of common endeavor, and appreciative understanding.

True love makes people vulnerable. It is part of the high adventure of marriage and home life to assume the risk of being hurt. And it is part of the solemn obligation of the home to avoid and minimize the hurts; to build the mutual helpfulness that engenders happiness. Not only does a good mother put herself out for the children and the father, but they should be putting themselves out for her and for each other.

If young couples learn the art of truly possessing each other in affection and trust, they are not likely to be thrown by the having, or lack of having, other things.

If they determine, from the start, that they will build their lives together on the religious conviction that they hold together, their family life will be more solidly and happily enduring. The husbands and wives who go together to the same church, and take their religion actively and seriously, have a vastly better chance of staying away from divorce court than have others who pay little attention to religion.

The idea of living happily ever after does not happen automatically. It is an achievement of the mature self, and between mature selves who build together, in loyalty and deep moral sensitivity, a common life.

Now the Christian home, which we celebrate on a meaningful Family (Mother’s) Day, is illuminated in several Bible accounts.

(1) Let us look back 3,000 years to a time when the Israelite people were enslaved in Egypt. On the bank of the Nile river lived one family of five that like others of their tribe, were enslaved and poverty-ridden. Inwardly they were rich in their faith in God. Amram and Jochebed must have been remarkable people; for their children became remarkable people who brought blessing to others: Miriam, the prophetess; Aaron the high priest; and Moses, the law giver and leader of his people. [Exodus 6: 20].

There were none of the conveniences and gadgets of our homes in that ancient Hebrew household. But love was there; and faith in the ability and character of the children; and dependability of the parents. Deepest of all was their unquenched trust in God and their sense that they were accountable to the Most High.

Good parents are the most priceless heritage for any children. No lavishness of things or other resources can possibly take the place of parents who give them a godly home.

It is imperative that children be taught, by the word and the example of parents, to distinguish between the false and the true, so that they can make right decisions. We can contribute most to their welfare of the future, by surrounding our children with the ideas and ideals of our religious faith. And this is frankly and honestly a "conditioning process."

Attitudes are tremendously important. How parents meet everyday problems and situations as well as the great crises in living, makes powerful impact on the impressionable child. We can set the tone and outlook on community relations, war and peace, on sex, on race, and all human relationships by viewing each from the eternal standpoint; or with reference to the Word of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. There must be a sense of wonder at the sacredness of human life.

There is no substitute for parental guidance, and example. The teaching of the church, important as it may be, is but a supplement to the influence of the home that God meant.

(2) We look with keen interest at the home in which our Lord grew up. We often wish that we knew more of those years that remain silent in history between his birth and his mature ministry.

But we do have an important glimpse in the book of Luke. At the age of 12, Jesus returned from the home up in Nazareth to Jerusalem, accompanying his parents on their pilgrimage to the Holy City. We read that he was obedient, and that he "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." [Luke 2: 52]. It was a full-rounded development in wholesome community relationship and family life.

God exalted Mary and Joseph in making them the guardians of our Lord’s development. God exalts fathers and mothers everywhere in the responsibility to train, guide and nurture the lives entrusted to their care in families.

Jesus grew up in a lively childhood. We read of at least 4 brothers in the household -- James, Joses, Simon and Judas, and at least 2 sisters in the home. The whole atmosphere in the carpenter’s home was devout dutiful and obedient. It must have been a home of great love, to have been later reflected in the depth of Jesus’ feeling about God as "father."

Without doubt, Jesus went to the synagogue for training in the Scriptures, so much of which he seems to have memorized and hidden in his heart. but a major portion of his guidance must have been right in his home where parents obeyed the God-given admonition: "All these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently unto your children, and shall talk of them in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." [Deuteronomy 6: 6-7].

In this home atmosphere, the finest life to visit this planet grew up. And it is a perfectly possible and normal kind of pattern for all other families!

(3) In a letter which Paul wrote to a young man who became his assistant in the preaching of the gospel, we have a glimpse of another godly family. Timothy was raised in Lystra. It appears that his father, a Greek, had died, and that his mother, a Jew, became a Christian. Paul had been entertained in the home and had been impressed by the godly atmosphere there. Timothy had been instructed in the sacred writings by his grandmother Lois, and by his mother Eunice. Paul reminds the young fellow that his sincere faith was instilled in him by the example and precepts of those devoted and spiritually minded women. And he urges Timothy to continue to believe the things that he has learned and to remember from whom he learned them.

There are those who advocate that a child must not be conditioned religiously, but must grow up unprejudiced, to choose religion for himself. It is a disastrous philosophy!

An English deist, calling on Coleridge, had some bitter things to say about instruction in Christian homes. He would certainly not prejudice his children for Christianity or for Buddhism or atheism, but would allow them freely to grow up and then open the question and decide for themselves. Later in the day, Coleridge showed him the poet’s garden. He remarked how selfish it was of the gardener to plant roses and violets and strawberries. How much finer would be the garden if the weeds and thistles and anything else that appeared might grow until September, when, without any conditioning, the soil could make its own choice as to whether it wished to support roses, strawberries, or something else!

Why should parents be afraid of instilling right ideas in the lives of their children? Indeed, are we not derelict if we fail to do so?

We must teach our children the secret of peace, of safety, of spiritual victory, of trust in the guidance of God. We are not sufficient to ourselves; we are helpers in the process wherein God expect us to water and cultivate the seeds which he has intended and planted.

"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him." This is the setting in the Christian family, for honored motherhood, for fatherhood, for the role of husband and wife, for children, both sons and daughters. The family that is to fulfill its destiny, is the Christian home under God, who instituted it and approves it, and requires its fulfillment. Amen.

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Wisconsin Rapids, May 13, 1956

Wisconsin Rapids, May 8, 1960

Wisconsin Rapids, May 14, 1967