5/11/58

What Goes on at Home?

Scripture: read Deuteronomy 6: 1-9; 20-25

Those who may have had time to spend most of their day near a radio this past week have found that Mother’s Day offers a great opportunity for commercial emphasis. All day long, one program sponsor after another has reminded hearers of the opportunity to remember one’s mother by gifts of flowers, candy, cosmetics, kitchen appliances, or new homes. I am not informed whether the paper or writing materials industries put on any considerable push for writing letters to mothers who are separated in distance from their remembering children. But the advertising media have left no uncertainty over the arrival of Mother’s Day on the calendar, and not much lack of suggestion as to what can be done by way of gifts for living mothers.

Mother’s Day started, of course, as a sentimental gesture. A woman who had spent a lot of time caring for her own mother took to wearing a carnation in honor of her mother. Others took up the idea, and the sentiment caught on -- red carnation worn by those whose mother is living, and white carnation by those whose mother has gone beyond mortal life.

Some have made this “bow” to their mothers in quiet and genuine appreciation, and some have made it an occasion for mawkish sentimentality. Some mothers have appreciated the attention; some have basked in it -- “eaten it up” -- and some have rebelled over it. One group of mothers who for several years had attended public ceremonies designed to honor them in their community, petitioned the civil authorities to cancel the ceremonies that year “so that they could stay at home with their families!”

So far as flowers are concerned, some wear them in honor of their mothers, others send the flowers to their mothers instead; some do both; some do neither. I hope to talk with my mother by telephone.

Of course the reminder that many mothers have made numerous loving sacrifices for their children; have poured much of their lives spiritually, mentally, physically -- into their children’s’ lives, is appropriate, not only for one day in the year but on any day. Sometimes it can be said that some fathers, some children, some uncles, aunts or neighbors deserve a measure of the same kind of remembrance. It can also be observed that some few women who have given physical birth to a child, or children, give comparatively little reason for any laudatory commendation on the care and nurture they have lavished, or rather neglected to lavish, on their offspring.

Churches took up the idea of Mother’s Day as an occasion of some worth. And the day is still marked on some denominational calendars. But the excesses of sheer, misguided sentimentality, and the uneasy resentment of women who dislike to have their wholesome motherly instincts and status exploited, have led to an increasing tendency to direct our thinking, on the second Sunday in May, toward the whole family of which, of course, the mother is a pivotal part. Perhaps this is a healthy emphasis. It seems especially worthy, that some thought be given to making the occasion a “festival of the Christian home.” And in a Christian home, there is appreciation and recognition by the family for the mother. There is also appreciation by the mother for the children. There is appreciation of wife for husband and husband for wife --- not on one day alone but on any day!

We have tried, in this church, to emphasize the family -- the Christian family. Our church has held occasional “family nights.” We have underlined parental responsibility for the Christian training of their children in Church School, and at home. And this emphasis should be heightened by parents. There is considerable assurance in the observation that this congregation is not a church of elderly folk only, or a youth church only, but a church of all ages --- a family church. It ought to be so.

Today we have music led by the church choir and the church school choir in further symbol of the fact that we are a family church -- a church of all ages and especially inclusive of the whole family. And so let us, for a little while, think about the family in the light of our Christian faith.

Years ago, the British queen, Victoria, was present at a meeting of eminent British scholars. Turning to the Prime Minister, who was at her side, the great queen asked, “Where do all these learned men come from?” To which the Prime Minister replied, “From babies, your majesty.” Well, learned people do come from babies, but so do all kinds of people. For good or ill, for greatness or degradation, a great deal of the destiny of people is shaped in their homes. Some grown folk look back upon their childhood homes with deep understanding and appreciation; some with tender nostalgia; some with conflicting emotions and turmoil. But almost all of us are aware of the central place of home and family in our lives.

The best men and women of the human race can usually testify to the ennobling influence of their homes. On the other hand, great numbers of lost men and women offer mute testimony to the ravages of homes devoid of love, or of residences that were not truly homes at all.

Here is something good from the pen of a high school girl. She had written this brief essay to be handed to her minister at the time she was a pupil in her church’s communicants’ class. The theme assigned was “What my home meant to me.” She wrote:

“My home is more than four walls and a green roof and a cement foundation; my home is love and warmth and comfort and happiness; my home is a little land off a busy highway; my home is a calm inlet near a roaring sea; my home is a star in an inky heaven. I guess it isn’t any different from other homes; the water softener is broken, the roof is leaky, the paint is cracking, the sidewalk is uneven, and we have trouble with the furnace. No, it isn’t different from thousands of other American homes, but it’s the place I love best because in it live the people I love best. For a house is made of stone and brick and wood and plaster, but a home is made of human hearts, of tears, of laughter, of deep understanding -- and I thank God that mine is just what it is!” That was quite a statement from a teenager!

It sounds as though that girl’s home is more than just a place where you can take off your shoes, ask for more soup, or dunk you bread in your coffee. And it appears vastly different from the unhappy one that was ready to break up. The children were made miserable over their parents’ unreconciled differences. And the husband and wife were at the point of seeking a divorce, when they went to see their minister. After telling the pastor that their home seemed to be floating toward the rocks, the wife said, “I don’t know what happened. The romance died somehow.” “Let’s be honest,” said the husband. “It didn’t die a natural death. We murdered it.”

Perhaps one of the answers to the problem of the unhappy home versus the happy one is the need to live, not just with each other, but in a Greater Presence -- a sacred potential! Members of a Christian home live not only in the presence of each other -- sometimes inspired by each other and sometimes irritated by each other. But, led by our Christ, they live in the presence of God the Father.

In a majority of Christian homes, the parents have stood, proud and grateful, at the baptismal font, holding children in their arms or by the hand, and have earnestly dedicated those children to God and promised to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. In that act of dedication, of reaffirming of faith, of commitment to Christian nurture, we have recognized the frailty of human nature, and our proneness to sin. We have also found an expression of God’s grace, a remembrance that He is available throughout life, in happiness and in sorrow, in betrayal and in obedience.

It is a recognition that much of this is to be learned by the child from the father and mother. In our church there is a very real sense in which the whole Christian congregation stands sponsor, with the parents, for the child who is baptized. But it is still the basic responsibility of the parents to train the child in the way he should go, and in what he should become.

Fathers and mothers are giving their children better food today than the children of some earlier generations had. The results is children who outstrip their ancestors in growth and health. The spiritual “feeding” should be better in this generation too, so that the children of this day may be able to measure up to the extraordinary demands of contemporary living.

For a time, there was an unhappy assumption on the part of some parents that a child’s individuality and responsibility for choice were best preserved by not identifying their children with any religion. It was assumed that when the children grew up, they would make their own choice of religious faith. Children drifted from church to church, if they went at all, attended Sunday School spasmodically, had no basic beliefs about God.

What parents did not realize was that they were giving their children a religion -- and a poor religion at that! Inevitably, inescapably, parents give their children the attitudes, values, and beliefs by which they live; and that is what religion is. It may be a poor religion centered in material possessions or social prestige. It may be a conceited religion centered in the self, committed to personal desires, and characterized by scornful indifference to others. It may be an ethical religion, centered on law, both civil and Biblical, with considerable sense of honesty, integrity and responsibility. Or it may be the Christian religion centered on the love of God as shown forth by Christ, expressed in loving God by loving other people in everyday contacts.

Parents who send their children to Sunday School on the theory that “it won’t hurt them,” and may possibly do them a little good, while the kids get out of the house so that one can have another cup of coffee and read the paper in peace, are missing by a wide margin the help that they can get from the church. An older minister of a couple of generations ago used to admonish his people, “Don’t send your children to church --- Bring them!” No Sunday School can do what the home must do. The home is primary. The church and church school serve as aids to the home and can seldom go much beyond that in the lives of most people. Modern parents are the descendants of ancestors to some of whom they look with pride. But most fathers and mothers need to know that it is more important to be ancestors than to be descendants.

And so many are starting new, or renewed traditions in their homes. Since home is the scene of our gradual, painful, hopeful discovery of right and wrong; the laboratory in which are performed experiments in justice, and forgiveness, these homes are setting at least 4 practices as a minimum essential for their Christian practice.

(1) First the family has at least one meal a day all together. The dining table comes back into importance. Around the table for at least one meal a day (more if possible) is found the only opportunity for many families to be together. Without some “togetherness” the home doesn’t really exist. Some fathers even change their jobs so that they may bring this togetherness to the home. And parents plan vacations, not as an escape from the kids, but as a family time to be made precious for all of them. Eating at least one meal a day together is a basic essential to many folk in having a home.

(2) Second; these families who take their Christian home seriously want prayer in their experience. Specifically, they offer their thanks before they eat the meal together. Parents who do not have grace at table teach their children, do they not, that God has nothing to do or at least very little to do with food, shelter, and the common needs. Many a child, or youth, or grown man, now says his thanks to the Lord because he learned at the table of his childhood, that the Lord of life is involved in food, as well as the father whose efforts earned the food and the mother whose hands and plans prepared it.

How fortunate is that home where grace is sincere and full of meaning, the form being perhaps changed from meal to meal. Perhaps the father prays at some times, possibly the mother some times, often the children saying grace from time to time in words they have learned, or better yet in words of their own choosing. Sometimes a few lines from Daily Devotions may be read -- or a verse from the Bible read or recited. Now and then a family will repeat a Psalm or other passage memorized from the Bible. And no one thinks it strange or out of place if the 4-year-old, in his turn at grace, wants to thank God not only for the food but for the man who delivers the milk or the barber who cuts his hair!

Christians who gather for at least one meal a day, and who return their thanks for that meal and for all of life’s benefits, are making a good beginning at Christian home living.

(3) Third, the family does well to make something of spiritual value out of some special occasions that come into the life of the family -- somebody’s birthday, the arrival of a new baby, a wedding of someone in the family - the baby’s baptism - perhaps Mother’s Day - maybe the moving into a new house -- graduation day -- visits from relatives and to the house of friends. Many parents use these occasions for expressions of the Christian faith, making real the recognition that God has a concern for the fullness of all these things -- that The Divine is to be included in our hopes and joys and problems and plans as well as our fears and sorrows. One family makes it a point to thank God together for their yearly vacation -- not at the end of it, but at the beginning of it -- just before they drive away on whatever trip they may be taking!

Parents express their real religion in the attitude they have toward these special occasions which come to a family. Tying these occasions to our Christian hope is regarded by many as a third basic essential for having a good home.

(4) Fourth, the family should attend worship services regularly as a family, in the house of God. The children are more ready for public worship than many think. They are older than we realize, and the time for teaching is shorter than we imagine. No one knows fully the value of the family together at worship in the sanctuary.

In his “Memoirs of Childhood and Youth,” Dr. Albert Schweitzer told readers that, in his opinion, the most important thing his parents did for him was to take him to the worship services of the church.

“From the service in which I joined as a child,” he says, “I have taken with me into life a feeling for what is solemn and a need for quiet and self-recollection without which I cannot realize the meaning of my life. I cannot therefore support the opinion of those who would not let the children take part in grown-up peoples’ services until they, to some extent, ‘understand’ them. The important thing is not that they shall understand, but that they shall feel something of what is serious and joyfully solemn. The fact that a child sees his parents full of devotion and has a feeling of devotion himself; that is what gives the service its meaning to him.”

Of course the worship of God should be dignified and orderly, reflecting the majesty of God in His house. Parents and all worshippers can reflect careful thinking on this matter by the very way in which they enter the sanctuary and prepare for the beginning of worship.

And God is fully as much concerned about what happens in “our” houses as with what happens in “His.” For not alone the church, but even more particularly the home determines our decisions and demonstrates the religion which we share with our children.

Faithful Jewish parents have known this for more than 2,000 years, have taught their children, in their homes, the symbols and meaning of their faith, have chanted regularly: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Jesus learned all of this, and much more, in his Jewish home. And he added another phrase to the ancient creed: “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He made this one of the two great commandments. [Luke 10: 27-28].

So may we make it the guideline of our lives -- by our own living in our homes and neighborhoods -- parents teaching their children, and children learning Christian ways in the family.

After all, is there any better way to honor the Mother, or any one else in the family, than to maintain a home that is basically, really Christian?

[Prayer] So, our Father, be our God not only in our sorrows and desperation, but in our hopes and joys. Amen.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, May 11, 1958

Wisconsin Rapids, May 12, 1968