“When Neediness Escapes Its Cocoon”
Sermon Written By Rev. Dick Stetler – May 10, 2020
On the occasion of church’s closure due to COVID-19 Virus
Centenary United Methodist Church
Psalm 31:1-5,
15-16; John 14:1-14
Mother's Day Our Scripture
lesson this morning may appear to be strange for Mother's Day.
It comes to us courtesy of our lectionary-listing of Scripture
lessons for today. We have
been taught that God's love of us is beyond our comprehension while
remaining unconditional.
These can be the innate qualities of a mother. Since Jesus taught
us that we should always be understanding, tolerant, and forgiving of
one another, we have to assume that these attitudes are also part of the
nature of God. (Matthew 18:21-22) The classical love of a mother for her
off-spring, is applicable to what Jesus was teaching:
There are many
rooms in my Father's house and I am going now to prepare a
place for you. I would not tell you this if it were not true.
After I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again so that
I can bring you to where I am. (John 14:2f) Such love
appears to be a universal potential for all of us regardless of where we
are on the learning curve of spiritual maturity.
No one has a right to label anyone as being lost in this
world. Perhaps that
person's path never intersected with someone who could teach them about
their vast potential if they access their inner world. If they had such
an experience, they also have to recognize what is being offered. Many
people listen but do not hear; they see but do not understand. (Matthew
13:13f) The Apostle Paul
also described this understanding when he indicated in his letter to the
Romans that absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of
God. (Romans 8:31f) Many of
us grew up with this teaching. Mother's Day can
become a time of remembering that all of us have been imprinted by our
Mother's energy. As soon as
we escape our mother's womb and become an air-breathing mammal, we are
placed on our mother's breast where we are touched, spoken to, and
experience for the first time the sensation of a profound
energy-exchange that is irreversible.
We are on our way to adapting to an entirely different
environment from the one we just left.
This
energy-exchange imprints us with our initial understanding that we are
not alone in our new experience of being in a physical form.
Touching, holding, receiving nourishment, hearing the soft,
loving tones of her voice reassure us that we transitioned into an
environment that is safe, secure, and perfectly normal once we grow used
to being here. This early
experience is a critical time in our lives.
Without it, infants frequently leave and are written off as a
victim of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), a circumstance that
mystifies the medical community. A
book that I read decades ago described what may be the cause of SIDS.
The author was a pediatric specialist that was invited by the Brazilian
government to find out why the death rate among newborns was alarmingly
high in one of the country's new state-of-the-art hospitals. Dr.
Knicely found that in the nursery, the new arrivals were being fed by
positioning babies so that they could suck on the nipple of a bottle of
formula that was fastened on the side of the crib. When
mothers' breast milk had been extracted and analyzed, it was found to be
deficient in nutritional value due to the poor diet of many of the new
mothers. He
asked the staff to take the babies to their mothers who would hold and
talk to them while giving them the formula. Instantly, the infant
mortality rate dropped to nearly zero. His theory was that babies need
to be loved by someone as soon as they are born. Just as babies were
dying without receiving love, so do adults. A number of years
ago, I received a call from one of our men in the congregation.
He was a Ph.D. Professor at the University of Maryland.
The story that he told me reinforced a condition I have found
throughout my career. That
thought was that a mother's love can invisibly affect the future of our
adult lives. Don's mother was a
disciple of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of The Church of Christ,
Scientist. Ms. Eddy was
a published author in New England in the late 1800s. Her main work was
titled Science and Health. Her teaching
offered a bridge between traditional Christianity which labels people as
sinners, to a less primitive consciousness that stresses that
human emotions and thoughts can be trained so that people create their
own health, prosperity, happiness, and peace of mind that are attitudes
that Jesus taught. (Matthew
5:3f) This background is necessary before explaining what happened to
Don. One day, he told
his mother that he was not comfortable with her faith any longer and had
joined the Methodist Church.
For reasons that remained unknown to Don, she disowned him
immediately. Don was completely devastated.
She turned off her love toward him and never spoke to him again.
As an adult and
married, he told me that he worked with his mother for a while but
eventually gave up trying to get her to understand his need for
something more than what her faith was offering.
His mother behaved as if Don had died. He told me that he never
healed from this detachment from his mother.
He said: I am an
accomplished professor and my response to my mother's lack of love for
me makes no sense. I realize on a cognitive level that this is what she
wanted to do and she was doing it. She died recently, leaving the breach
open and raw. What I never
anticipated was my own deep hurt which torments me day and night. I am
acting like a child that is being punished for my choice to become a
Methodist. The purpose for his
making an appointment with me was to see if he could find help to
forgive his mother and let go of her response so that he could move on
with his life with a sense of peace. I told him that his
mother's response to him does not exist anywhere in the teachings of the
Christian Science Faith. I assured him that his pain was real and that
he was not alone with this deep-seated hurt. Other adults have even
entered their senior years still burdened by not receiving enough
approval from their mothers.
I took a risk with Don by giving
him an exercise to do. My understanding of departed spirits is unique,
to say the least. I said: Don, your mother is
in a place where she is also burdened from her response to you.
She now knows her mistake and is grieved by how she treated you.
When your wife is not home, sit somewhere in your living room and
call out your mother's name. Ask her to come and sit in a chair across
from you.
Don, as ridiculous
as this may sound to you, talk to her. She will come and she will hear
everything that you have to say.
Tell her how you feel.
Tell her how much you love her and ask her to release you. Ask
her to give you some sign that only you will recognize that she was
there with you and that all is forgiven. I had a prayer with
Don and we parted ways. I
did not see him again for months.
My imagination went wild with thoughts that my words had fallen
on deaf ears and he wrote me off as someone who was lost in some
religious fairytale.
Finally, he called me and scheduled another appointment.
He apologized for not getting back to me. Shortly after our last
visit, he had been invited to be a guest lecturer at another University
for a period of months. Don had followed
through and he called out his mother's name.
He told me that their living room was filled with her presence.
He became very emotional as he talked to me. Something obviously
had happened to him that evening. He said: My mother's
presence filled the house. I felt her presence the moment she came to me
and I knew when she left. I never expected that anything like that was
possible. In the week that
followed, Don's wife came to him and said, "Where did this letter from
your mother come from? I
found it on the telephone stand."
He looked at it. It
was a letter that he remembered receiving years ago when he was a
college student. Her letter was glowing with how proud she was of
him. As he told me this
sequence of events, he quivered as tears were streaming down his face.
He asked, "Where did this letter come from and how did it get on
our telephone stand?" Don had been overwhelmed by this experience as he
sat there sobbing like a child.
A great burdened had been lifted and his mother enabled him to
resume his life. Don's
response was like what happened to Thomas when he saw Jesus alive for
himself. (John 20:24-29) Don and two other
men in our church created a new group that later became known as The
Angel Gang. The
support-group still exists and has become a happy, joy-filled fellowship
to which others have bonded.
All three of the founders have graduated from this life, but
their legacy continues. Sometimes we look
at God as a being that has failed us.
We prayed and we begged for God's love to come to us. God's love,
however, did not come in the form that we wanted. We were pained and
disappointed because of our lack of understanding God's nature.
We can personalize God to the extent that we wonder why our
dear friend did not come to us during a moment that we felt was a
time of our greatest need. God's love gave us
life. God's love knows
that even though we became frustrated as a child, we eventually learned
how to tie our own shoes.
God never does our homework for us.
Wise mothers allow
their child to struggle, knowing that the caterpillar will
eventually shed its protective-cocoon to become a butterfly. Our
initial neediness of wanting to be loved as a child mutates as we
spiritually mature. We
become a being that has learned how our energy-exchanges, that may
appear in many forms, can bring divine, unconditional love to
others. We have learned how
to bring Heaven to earth before we graduate to one of those rooms
in His Father's house that Jesus said was waiting for us.
Mothers are our first teachers of such love.
Happy Mother's Day! CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER Merciful God, how
often we have defined you by what the Scriptures tell us, by what
pastors have proclaimed, and by what our experiences have confirmed
during our life's adventure.
In truth, we have not scratched the surface of defining your
nature. Our limited understanding cannot grasp what is infinite. Lead us
to practice your patience, your understanding of those who are
misguided, and your love that has given us free-will to choose.
Help us to rise above our need to judge others so that we might be more
refined instruments of your peace.
Amen.
PASTORAL PRAYER
Ever faithful and
loving God, this morning we come filled with thanksgiving for your
creating us with such wonderful abilities to care for and nurture each
other. You have given us the capacity to share guidance for the
development of more refined attitudes and spirits. We realize that the
mystery of life continues to unfold around us.
Many of our yet to be discovered talents and potential skills
remain dormant until our more demanding experiences require their use.
Today we celebrate the life of the woman
who carried us within her body for nine months during the miracle of our
development into the life form that we have become.
We are one-of-a-kind. No one like us has ever existed. Today, we
honor and appreciate our mother who sang and read to us, who stood vigil
until our fevers broke, who offered us guidance, and who attempted to
imprint us with the values that had worked in her life.
Many times, during the search for our
own identities, we listened but did not hear and we looked but did not
see. During those years when our individual characters were forming, we
may have felt that our mothers did not understand us. But she knew that
life can become very complicated if we are not equipped with values,
goals, and spirits that will serve us during moments of uncertainty when
our decisions will chart the course of our lives.
May each of us learn to radiate the kind
of love that does not count the cost, that does not look at itself as
sacrificial, and that does not give so that rewards will come.
This morning we thank you for Jesus who came to show us how to become
the people that you created us to be. It is through his spirit
that we now pray the prayer that he taught his disciples to say when
they prayed . . . |