-
Contact Info
- Office Hours
- M-Th 9-12, 1-3
- Closed Friday
- Telephone
- (503)640-1775
- Address
- 168 NE 8th
- Hillsboro, OR 97124
- Directions
-
Email
- General Info
- Office
- Spire
- Webmaster
- Gwen Drake
- Pastor
- Sandra Hunter
- Director of Family
- Ministries
- Lefty Schultz
- Visitation Pastor
- Laura Lillegard
- Office Manager
- John Hiestand
- Music Minister
- Youth E-mail
- Youth Ministry
- Oregon-Idaho UMC
- Main UMC Website
- Boy Scout Tr #240
Sermon - May 13th, 2007
If You Love Me, Show It
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: John 14:20-29
Today is one of those special Sundays. Robert Fulghum says this about Mother's Day and the church. "For 25 years, the second Sunday in May was trouble. Being the minister of a church, I was obliged in some way to address the subject of Mother's Day. It could not be avoided. I tried that. Mind you, the congregation was quite open-minded and gave me free rein in the pulpit. But when it came to the second Sunday in May, the expectations were summarized in these words of one of the more outspoken women in the church: “I'm bringing my mother to church on Mother's Day, Reverend, and you can talk about anything you want. But it had better include mother, and it had better be good!'" She was joking--teasing him; but she also meant it!
Mother's Day is one of those high holy days of the year, almost up there with Christmas and Easter. But I want to acknowledge that for some this day holds ambivalent and even painful feelings. Memories of losing a loved one may rise to the surface. Unhappy memories of an estranged or strained relationship may surface. And finding just the right card for complicated relationships may be next to impossible. This is not an easy day for some.
According to some research that Mark Trotter did, Mother's Day was started by Anna Jarvis in honor of her mother, a social reformist. Her mother whose name was also Anna Jarvis organized mothers in 1858 to bring sanitation into small towns and villages in Appalachia Following that, during the Civil War, she organized mothers to care for soldiers on both sides of the war. After that she started a movement to stop men from solving their disputes with violence. She was quite a woman and she was Methodist. You see, we Methodists believe that we not only need to be right with God, we need to also do good in the world. John Wesley said, "There is no holiness apart from social holiness." In other words, if we love Jesus, we need to show it.
The words of Jesus read today are known as his last discourse. It is his love letter to the disciples. The words are words of preparation, words of assurance, words of good-bye. He addressed them with terms of endearment, "Little children," he said, "I am with you only a little longer." I can imagine how Jesus felt. Maybe it is like taking your first child to first grade on the first day of school or like taking y our son or daughter to college. I cried when I took Abbe all the way from Dallas to Willamette University in Salem --those 14 miles felt like 1,000 when I drove home that day.
Jesus had deep feelings for his disciples. There was a time he cried, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...(Luke 13:34). Jesus was being like a mother to his disciples, like a parent about to let go of his children. He was worrying about them. He was trying to relieve their worrying. He was preparing them for his departure. He was giving departing words of wisdom. He was comforting them. He was giving them something positive to look forward to. He was letting go. He was talking about transition. He was talking about changing roles and relationship. Something mothers know a lot about.
I haven't appreciated my mother enough. I'm starting too. Being a mother has helped. She was a farmer's wife while I was growing up. She filled the cellar with canned fruits and vegetables and potatoes every summer and the freezer with corn. She cooked and cleaned and shopped and sewed. She put up with me taking off on a horse ride regularly. I seldom told her where I was going or when I was going to be back. One time I rode all the way to town and back. It took me the whole day. It was getting dark when I got home. She didn't say anything. She just gave me this very frustrated/worried look I will never forget. As a mother now, I wonder how she did it. I think she was afraid of horses; but she never tried to discourage me from riding.
Somehow, magically she got the four of us kids in town for our piano lessons, sports practices, swimming lessons, 4-H meetings, or whatever. The roles were very clear in my family. My Dad did all the farming. My Mom did everything else.
When my father was killed in 1967, before the seeding was done, my Mom was left with a lot of advice and help from neighbors, my Dad's diary, a domineering mother-in-law who had to know everything, and us kids to help figure things out. The horses became my responsibility. We grew up fast. And we didn't do much talking about how our life had changed
My relationship with my Mom during this time was pretty rough. I had very ambivalent feelings for her and I missed my Dad terribly. I wanted to be like my Dad, not my Mom. He and I are a lot alike in sharing a love of the land and animals. So, the greatest gift my Mom gave me was when she packed her bags and left for seminary at Berkeley, California at age 52, when I was 19. I was secretly proud of her. I told my friends that I was going to be a P.K.
I saw her change in seminary. I still remember the first time I heard her swear. I was shocked and told her not to do that! She did not even apologize.
She wrote this about her seminary experience, "My parents named me Grace--a beautiful and loving gift and it was enough. My name had been responsible for my survival during the first months of seminary. The students, in response to my story of being there, began calling me 'Amazing Grace.' They did it so affectionately that it became the source for confidence and self-esteem at a time when I had very little and God was very distant. They were not interested in my family history, my success and failures, I was simply 'Grace' and through their acceptance I was able to experience-- at 52 -- that kind of cradling due an infant. All of my life seemed then a gift from God -- my name the greatest gift of all."
My mother was one of 20 women in a class of 60 at Pacific School of Religion. She was the oldest student, "starting from scratch" to become a pastor. She graduated in 1975, the same year I graduate d from college. She served churches in Union/North Power near LaGrande, Filer and Ashton in Idaho. She retired in 1986. That year Abbe was baptized at Annual Conference and I was ordained. She wrote this to Bishop Cal McConnell about the meaning of that event. "The high event [of Annual Conference] was the baptism. I thought you were extraordinarily thoughtful to invite both Gwen and me to lay our hands on the child's head. The powerfully dramatic impact came when you carried Abbe into the congregation, among the people of Annual Conference--laity and clergy from local churches, general church people, missionaries--a group representative of the five continents of our earth and most nations. You charged them to be family to [Abbe] and to claim her as family. You literally gave her to the world in all of her vulnerability and innocence, and called the world to be responsible for her and to her. For me in that moment, Abbe became more than just one baby, my grand-daughter, Gwen's daughter, s he was at the same time representative of all the world's young, helpless, and vulnerable, and through her, the occasion of her baptism, you were calling us all to a sense of responsibility for the kind of world we would and could create for one another, especially future generations. It was for me a clear call to work for peace, a call to accept the challenge to be part of a solution to the world's ills in the name of God, in the name of Christ, and in the name of the Holy Spirit. That moment became a very high moment in my own spiritual journey. Retirement brought me face to face with open doors for others tasks."
She also wrote this about my Dad, "The moment had pathos as part of its content. Except for the death of a generous and sensitive man, Gwen's father, my husband, the coming together of these events as they did would not have happened. I can not say, 'thank God for the death,' by any manner of means. I can say, 'Thanks be to God for accompanying us through the experiences of life's traumas, and enabling us to build new lives and travel new paths, and to know that, truly, we do not walk alone.'"
Jesus told his disciples, "If you love me, show it by doing what I've told you... Because a loveless world is a sightless world.” He said, “My parting gift to you is peace." He was leaving them. He was like a parent letting go of his children telling them that they would be okay. Giving them last minute instructions. Telling them to remember who they were and who they belong to. Telling them to show the world what it means to love one another.
Amen.