If I were to give a mother’s day sermon, I imagine that I would be a little stressed about it. I wouldn’t be totally sure about what to say and it might keep me awake a few nights the week prior.
I would hope this would be a result of the fact that I would want to say what was in my heart rather than what was easy to talk about. It might be 2017, but that doesn’t mean words like equality, rights and worth have, as of yet, been fully realized. We still have work to do in our lives on the issue of women and men and culture and church. Equal still does not seem to end in equality.
Also, if I were to preach a mother’s day sermon, it would have to be honoring the past and pushing towards a future that lifts the lid of potential beyond anything I have seen in my lifetime. I would have to talk about the dreams that are in my heart for the loves of my life. It would have to be centered on Jesus, while trying to express to my lovely wife why I will always be in her corner. It would have to give power to the words I speak to my daughter every morning before school.
It would have to matter.
I would probably have to read it too, because I would want it to come out precise.
I would probably begin by pointing out that, regardless of whether or not you believe in its message, the Bible’s teachings seem to be continuously one-upping the culture around it in terms of the role of women in society.
It has within its arc, a trajectory of empowering women with more and more freedom, rights and authority. It may not seem like it to the casual reader – the old testament is way confusing at times. However, the more we understand the culture at the time it was written, the more we see how it was incredibly progressive in its trying to protect women in society. Jesus seems to be the biggest instigator of this idea. He was unashamed in valuing women wherever He went. It’s why they followed Him in droves, no one had ever talked the way He did about them.
It was a driving force in everything Jesus did, but it was not a new concept.
In the book of Genesis, the story of the very beginning of everything, it talks about the beginning of life this way…
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27
In a culture that viewed women as property – possessions of a man with little rights to their name -the Bible proclaims that in both genders we find imprinted the image of God. In other words, only through a combined view of both are we able to see a complete view of what God is like, and in both genders, God makes humanity complete.
People much smarter than me termed this idea as the Imago Dei: the image of God. It refers to the idea that each of us reflect who God is in the similar way a shadow reflects an object. It is not a complete reflection, but it helps us see what the object is like. One theologian I read phrased humanity as a “phantom” of the divine.
In each other, we see glimpses of the creativity of God. Glimpses of the divine. Not that we are divine, but in humanity we see the fingerprints of God’s image. His likeness.
It’s a little like one of my favorite art techniques – the method of Stippling. It’s a form of drawing where the artist uses dots or specks of various sizes and groupings to create an incredible portrait. A close up view underwhelmingly reveals a collection of dots.
…but when you step back and take in the whole painting, the effect is stunning.
Each of us seems to be like a dot, a speck.
By ourselves we show a part of the painting, but not the entire canvas. Yet, as a collection of people, races and genders we reveal an amazing picture of God. Male and Female, each playing the roles God has given us.
But that word…roles…creates such a tension, doesn’t it? I write it out, and I can hear the assumptions that get loaded on the back of it with what I do or do not mean by it. Culturally, we live in this tension of trying to consistently seek to redefine roles.
Everyone seems to ask, “what does it mean to be a man or a woman…now?”
There used to be a time when I would drive to a store named Blockbuster, and in this store would be shelves of movies. I could wander around and after a few minutes settle on a movie, pay the 18 year old at the checkout desk, drive back across town and spend the night watching the movie on the couch while my dad asked me every five minutes what was even happening in Lord of the Rings. Good times.
Now if I’m in the mood to watch a movie, I pick up my phone and click the Netflix app. I instantly (or not instantly, depending on the wifi situation…) have access to thousands of movies, tv shows and can binge watch to my heart’s content. But I have noticed something odd. When I start browsing Netflix, it almost always ends in me watching nothing. Not because there are not enough choices, but because I have almost too many now. I spend so much time trying to decide, that I eventually give up and typically go do something else.
For the first time in history, mothers, non mothers and my daughter have an almost dizzying array of options before them. What do you choose?
For men, the way the women around them answer that tension creates a tension in their own lives. How do we even begin to support the women in our lives without appearing as uncaring, or worse…like a chauvinist?
At this point, let’s be real, the chauvinists in the crowd have all stopped listening. I am already eagerly awaiting their anonymous comment cards. Please limit the misspellings this time around…
The reality is, the roles are actually changing, and the best husbands and men I know caught onto (and supported) this idea long before I did.
They have come face to face with the reality that having the boy’s parts in the relationship and possibly being paid more does not make you a leader in your home or sphere of life.
You can try to turn the clocks back, but my hunch is that it will only make it worse. To which some guys have asked, but doesn’t the Bible say women should “submit to their husbands…?” It does, but the meaning is not what you think it is.
This passage refers to the way God centered relationships work, both parties following God and serving each other. Not much is written about how, after the submission part, Paul talks for a longer section in the book of Ephesians (chapter five for those following along…) on how husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Literally, to die for her.
It’s a hard point. Because of the example of Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross, there is not much room to squeeze an argument into these verses. Essentially, to honor women, we as men have to give up our lives. Not in a one time, movie ending scene, but daily.
Our daily decisions matter.
It involves one type of decision to get married, it then involves a completely different set of decisions to stay married. They sound similar, yet how they are worked out is different. Every one of our mother’s knows it is one thing to have kids, it’s another to raise them.
Speaking only for me, many of us as men have bought this lie that the man must be more successful than his wife (cause that’s in the Bible…). We pass it to each generation, forgetting that God’s heart is always beating strongest for those who are told they shouldn’t have a voice.
There is a saying – ‘a rising tide lifts all ships’ – and we as Christians (if you don’t believe in God, you are off the hook for this part) must realize that women taking ahold of, and embracing the dreams and purposes God places on their lives, will not bring men down, but conversely it means we all get to rise together.
True honor to the mothers and women in our lives involves men loving them into the destiny God has called them. What if God’s plan for your family was the exact opposite of how many men live? What if, when God said “I will make the man a suitable partner,” God actually meant what He said? A partner.
One of the biggest joys in my life has been watching my wife Sheri lean into the dreams God has placed on her. It is like adding beauty onto beauty.
With it comes a solid fact: she makes me work hard to keep up…and I love it.
God does not put his fingerprints on our lives and His purposes in our hearts to have them stifled by other people. We each have a role in life, a part (if that word is too loaded for you…), and when we embrace and support each other, we all win.
When a male or female, single or married, older or younger person in this church finds and embraces the call of God on their life, we all win.
It does not have to look like what we think in our minds a win would look like.
It does not have to make sense to us.
It especially does not have to fit our upbringing.
Nobody agrees with everyone 100% anymore. I submit Facebook as Exhibit A for this…
However, everyone agrees that supporting and valuing each other is a good thing. When we place a high value on others being made in the image of God, it changes how we view people. It particularly stirs us up when we see someone being made to feel as if they have no value.
Last week, a few of us here went to a church leadership conference (THRIVE). There were some great speakers, and from one I heard a story that got me so inspired I thought my heart would explode. I almost didn’t even make the session, I had my stomach set on getting a sandwich instead.
The story goes like this…
In Japan in the 1800s, there was a vast, centuries old system of legalized prostitution and sex slavery. When a family incurred a debt, often brothel owners went to that family, took their young girls, and forced them to work in large brothels in Tokyo until the debt was paid.
In 1900, the Salvation Army began talking among its leadership about how they might take on such a vast system of exploitation. They were called the Salvos in that part of the world, and though they had only been around for about 5 years in Japan at that point, they knew they had to act.
They pursued legal means at first, winning a court battle in February 1900, which decreed the brothel girls in Tokyo could not be held as slaves. The Salvos waited, but it was not enforced.
Several months passed, and the Salvos put together a newsletter with information on the front for every girl that sought freedom. It detailed who to talk to and where they could get help. Even the locations of houses they could stay at in Tokyo.
Then they stopped waiting.
Salvo veteran Matilda Hatcher recalled how the group of men and women knelt in prayer around a pile of War Crys – the Salvation Army paper – as their leader explained the situation and pointed out that fierce opposition would follow the enterprise they were planning. The whole of that night was spent by those men and women in passionate prayer for courage, wisdom and Divine aid.
In the morning the small group marched down the street behind the Salvation Army Flag and into the notorious Yoshawara Quarter, beating a bass drum and singing all the way. They stopped on the street corners (every so often) to explain their reason for marching.
The Salvos were violently assaulted by the brothel keepers and their hired thugs. Their flag was ripped up and the drum was smashed. Almost everyone was injured. (Japan Salvos)
Several days later, they got a new drum and marched out again.
And again.
Eventually, every newspaper in Japan reported on the Salvos attempts to free the indebted girls from the brothel system. Hundreds of police joined the cause. One story records that an entire staff of one of the leading Tokyo newspapers joined the cause to free a girl who had told the reporter from that paper that she wanted out of a Yashawara Brothel.
The outcry became so loud that the Japanese Government held an emergency session to determine a plan of action. A decision was reached that any girl that wished to leave had only to tell the police and they would be freed.
By the end of the year, 12,000 girls had been freed. Thousands of homes across Japan received back their daughters.
It’s a beautiful story, but it begs the question: why?
Why endure the beatdowns and the thugs?
Why did they act?
I think it was because of the value that they placed on others. It was the belief that all of us are made in the image of God, that we have extraordinary value not in ourselves, but because the fingerprints of God cover us all.
When we understand the love of Jesus, how He died on the cross in our place, taking on Himself all the wrongs we have ever done and in turn offering us forgiveness for our sins the moment we ask Him regardless of if we deserve it, because the reality is that none of us could ever deserve to be saved. When we begin to try to wrap our heads around that kind of love, when the love of that Jesus begins to seep into our bones, our lives change.
The author Craig Groeschel put it this way: “People are tired of hearing about the love of Jesus. They want to start seeing the love of Jesus.”
I think the effect of an increasing love for God is an increasing desire to see that every person – regardless or status or gender or race – belongs. That Jesus is for them as much as He is for us. That how we treat those around us, not just today, but everyday speaks louder than any card we could ever give.
I pray we choose to embrace the imprint of God in each other and respect and honor each other.
I pray that we seek God’s voice in our lives louder than any other.
And I pray we break out some drums.
Chasing The Wild Beast 