MOTHER, CHURCH

Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons,

a ministry of Second City Church in Midtown Harrisburg.

It's our hope that these sermons will draw you

more into the life of following God, Father,

Son and Holy Spirit. Please consider coming and

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in the heart of Midtown Harrisburg. You can find

us online at secondcitychurch .org and on Facebook,

Instagram and YouTube. We hope you enjoy this

sermon. God bless. Oh Lord God, we give you thanks

and praise for you are good and your mercy endures

forever. It is good to be in your house this

morning. Please open our hearts and let us hear

your word. Please let the words of my mouth and

the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in

your sight. Oh Lord, our rock and our Redeemer.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. I do want

you to know that in preparation for this sermon,

I did some serious research. I texted our family

group chat and asked for things that you ended

up saying as a mother that you never thought

you would say as a mother. Here follows a partial

list. One, no, you may not put your broccoli

in my coffee. Two, do not put your face on people's

feet. Three, you are not allowed to say please

in this house. Are you imagining what led to

that one? And then this is my personal favorite

from my own wife. I dropped pizza on my baby!

So, being a mother makes you do and say unexpected

things, right? Motherhood is hard. It's hard

work keeping small people alive and clean. Eliza

Roper, who I don't see today, told me a great

story a couple of weeks ago about how a very

new mama, you know, just a week or two into little

Finn's life. She woke up in the middle of the

night sort of terrified because she didn't remember

Finn being in bed with her and here he was. Well,

so she wakes up and she starts bouncing him and

she doesn't realize that it's the cat. She's

trying to cradle the neck of the cat and doesn't

notice the fur or the tail, right? So sleep deprivation.

Being a mama makes you sort of temporarily crazy,

right? So that's a funny story, funny quotes.

And if you've ever been like a mother or a father,

you'll kind of laugh and nod and remember those

times and how different they are from everyday

life. But of course, mothering just isn't about

birth and infancy and very young childhood, right?

It's about everything that comes after that.

And the text that we read from the Bible this

morning, Remind us that this mothering thing

is not for the faint of heart. Think about how

Mary was prophetically welcomed into motherhood

by Simeon. A sword will pierce through your soul

also. Now of course that's an extreme case. Praise

the Lord. Not everybody's mothering experience

is going to be as tumultuous as being the mother

of the Son of God. But while not everybody gets

crucified, nobody makes it through life without

getting beat up a little bit. And if you are

a mother, your heart gets beat up a little bit

every time your child goes through difficulties,

right? So being a mother is no joke. And just

to make a note, culturally, it is not getting

any easier. There's a new story about 10 years

ago now where Hallmark, the card company, decided

to donate thousands and thousands of cards to

prisons so that prisoners could send Mother's

Day cards should they want to at no cost if they

signed up for this. Well, this was a huge hit.

Tons of people appreciated it. Lots of really

nice news stories came out of this. Good on you,

Hallmark. Well, so Hallmark thought this was

a great idea, and they thought they would try

the same thing again the following year on Father's

Day. Well, guess how that goes, right? Total

flop. Almost nobody in this country signed up

in the prisons to send a father's day card and

the reasons for this People with strong father

figures in their lives are usually not the ones

in prison Right. So what this means I imagine

is that the moms in our country largely are raising

our children Without the support that God intended

and they are being bruised from that all around

us So there's no guarantees that things are gonna

go right for you as a mother but As a society,

as a country, I think we still all understand

the importance of motherhood. There's a lot of

support, no matter where you go, for moms. This

means that, at the same time, moms are some of

the most valued members of our society and also

some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

Why both at once? Well, I suspect it's because

we all had mothers, and we didn't all treat them

the way that we should have all the time, and

so we've all seen from the inside how mothers

bear more than they should have to bear, and

we're all sort of trying to make up for it. So,

what I want to start off saying today is that

thank you, mothers, of our community and of Second

City Church. And of course I don't mean just

physical mothers. I mean spiritual mothers too.

You can have a huge influence in people's lives

without having physically produced them. So mothers

of all kinds, you are loved and valued and we

appreciate the work that you do and the Lord

sees and will reward all of the stuff that you

do that doesn't get noticed, even by your own

children. Amen, right? Okay. All of that was

sort of an introduction. I want to use all of

that stuff. Mothers are underappreciated. Mothers

are vulnerable. Motherhood is painful. Motherhood

is unfairly demanding. I want to use all that

as a sort of a springboard to what I want to

pitch today to us as a community, as a church.

And I want to invite us all to be more like mothers.

We can all be more suffering and underappreciated

and vulnerable guys. So my title today is Mother.

Church, there's a comma in there. That is a comma

of direct address or evocative comma for you

grammar people, right? That's not just an accident.

Think about that old line that you hear quoted

sometimes. No man can have God for his father

who does not have the church for his mother.

We can discuss the extent to which this is true.

It's certainly not true in the way some people

have used it, meaning to say, if you're not a

member of my specific denomination or brand of

Christianity, you're not there for a Christian,

right? But there is some level of truth, right?

No man can have God for his father if he will

not have the church for his mother. Think about

it. Who did Jesus come to save? He came for his

body, which is the church, which is his bride,

right? If you're a person who's saying, I want

to be a Christian, but I don't want anything

to do with the church, you're You're saying,

I want to be the beloved of Christ without being

a part of the beloved of Christ. There's like,

there's a simple math problem there or something,

right? Anyway, what I'm talking about right now

with this is if we are called to have the church

as our mother, we as the church need to do our

best to make sure the church is being mothering.

It should be easy for people to find the church

a mother, right? So, how can we as individuals

and as a body be mothers, be mother -ee, be mothering?

Well, I think it starts with what we saw with

Mary. A sword will pierce through your soul.

Friends, what is mothering somebody but being

willing to love that person at cost to yourself?

All of us, when we're open to relationships of

any real depth, we're opening ourselves up to

being wounded. CS Lewis in his great book the

four loves says this about love quote to love

at all is to be vulnerable Love anything in your

heart will be rung and possibly broken if you

want to make sure of keeping it intact You must

give it to no one not even an animal Lock it

up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness

But in that casket safe dark motionless airless

It will change. It will not be broken. It will

become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

If we are willing to love, we are willing to

be hurt. The two things are almost synonyms.

And of course, we see this most profoundly in

Jesus himself, who demonstrates his great love

for us by his suffering, by his agony and death,

right? So we're all in the same boat together.

If we're willing to love, we're willing to be

hurt. Now I want to go back to our Old Testament

texts in 1st Samuel 1, and I want to look at

Mary's prototype, Hannah. I think there's a number

of things that we can learn from Hannah, whether

we're male or female or biological mothers or

not. old or young. I think there are things that

we can learn here and that we can use as models

in our own spiritual life. And by the way, Hannah

is a positive figure in this test. We read this

and I think we might think like, oh she's acting

pretty strange, but she's definitely a positive

figure. I know this in part because Luke seems

to use Hannah as his model for Mary in his own

gospel. So, for instance, this occurs, one, in

the long prayer that's given to both of them

at the end of their narratives. Two, the specific

word handmaiden. Both of them use the word handmaiden

in relation to themselves. Hannah and Mary both

do. And then finally, at the end of the records,

Samuel and Jesus, the sons that come from these

two episodes, both of them are said to, quote,

grow in stature and favor with God and man. The

two lines are almost identical. So, Mary is very

definitely modeled. in Luke on Hannah. Okay,

so she's a positive figure for us. Anyway, so

I'm taking everything that Hannah does here is

worthy of praise and emulation, even if it seems

weird or out of place. So, here on Mother's Day,

what can we learn about being a loving community

from Hannah? To me, it boils down to three points,

okay? We need to want hard, we need to pray hard,

and we need to give hard. Alright, so first one

want hard Hannah is an intense person She has

a definite desire and she knows it and she expresses

it I think that sometimes we have this idea in

our spheres that Progressing in holiness is actually

just progressing in being a boring person or

even being bored with life Just not caring what's

going on around you, right? I think that's totally

wrong and I think we see this in part in this

text our desires should be increasing, they should

be getting calibrated, right, on the right things,

to use a really good metaphor, but they should

be increasing, getting more poignant, as we increase

in holiness. I want to come back to that point,

but for now, let's look at the text here. Hannah

has a definite desire, it's for children. Elkanah,

her husband, so we're talking a lot about how

mothering is hard, but This text suggests that

being a husband is like no walk in the park either,

right? Hannah is a godly woman. She is a holy

person, right? And she is not making things easy

on Elkanah, right? So Elkanah tries to comfort

Hannah with himself. Look at verse eight. He

says, am I not more to you than ten sons? Right?

And the answer is totally no. And she's right.

A husband's not a kid. She didn't have what were

her soul's deep longing and she knew she couldn't

accept any substitutes. So I think there's a

good and healthy element to this rejection of

El Khanna's misguided gallantry. Hannah didn't

just want to be a recipient of love. She wanted

to be a giver of love and the desire to be a

giver of love is at its root a desire to be like

God himself. Because beloved God is love. We

love because he first loved us. So the desire

to have an object to love is nothing short of

a healthy expression of the image of God in us.

I think Hannah is right to want to have someone

to love. And so the question then for us is how

hard do we want to love? Do you remember the

Queen song? If I was brave like Peter, I would

be singing right now, but I'm not. Can anybody

find me somebody to love? I need somebody to

love. Friends, ask the Lord to inflame that desire

in you. Let's be like Hannah. Let's be like Jesus.

Be a lover. Ask the Lord to find you somebody

to love. Part two, Hannah didn't just want hard,

she prayed hard. If Hannah had wanted hard and

pouted, that would be a sad story and it wouldn't

be in the Bible probably, right? We all know

enough people like that already, but Hannah didn't

just How she prayed she prayed really hard right

she went to Shiloh interestingly The temple had

not yet been built right Solomon wasn't born

yet. So Shiloh is where the high priest was it's

where the tabernacle was being stored So she

goes there and she it says it she prayed under

the Lord Wept sore in the King James in here.

It's a little more discreetly. It says wept bitterly,

but that's great She's praying so intently that

even though she wasn't praying out loud She was

making some kind of commotion and Eli notices

and comes over and accuses her of drunkenness

That's why by the way, I have that quote from

Baudelaire the French poet in the bulletin be

drunk always on wine or poetry as you wish he

says, right? Well Hannah is drunk on prayer here.

I have that in there, not just because being

a mother makes you want to drink sometimes. One

time a very nice southern doctor told my wife

and I that the best remedy for baby Beatrice's

colic was a little whiskey for mom and dad. He

was a very nice guy, wore a bow tie. Not to make

light of this too much, and there's a lot that

we can go into here, power differentials and

things like that, but my point is that Eli is

not far wrong. Hannah is drunk, or at least she's

in an altered state of consciousness, right?

She is so intent on getting God's attention that

she's behaving in such a way that it's mistaken

for physical drunkenness. And by the way, who

is God to Hannah, right? Experientially? If you

look back at the text, look at verse 5. The Lord

had closed her womb. That's the text of the Bible,

right? Hannah only knew God as someone who was

not giving her what she wanted. And yet, she

did not allow herself to get cynical, she did

not allow herself to get bitter. Instead, she

continued to go to God in prayer, and in this,

I think she reminds us of the widow that Jesus

talks about in his parable, right? The widow

who continuously went to the judge. The persistent

widow. The way the Lord frames it is he says,

we ought to pray always and not become discouraged.

That's scripture. What that means is that there's

going to be a temptation to be discouraged, right?

The message of the Bible is not you pray and

then everything's awesome. Great news, right?

The message of the Bible is sometimes you pray

and pray and pray and it looks like nothing is

happening but you pray anyway. And Hannah is

a model for us in this. Friend, I commend to

you Hannah's persistence. I commend to you Hannah's

drunkenness. Even though it would totally embarrass

me if I saw you at this. I think we need to be

less mindful of ourselves and more mindful of

those people around us and getting ourselves

into a position where we are mindful of them

in prayer. Looking at my own life, I'm extremely

good at being anxious about things, but I'm extremely

bad about casting my anxiety upon the Lord because

he cares for me. I feel like Hannah is a model

to us here because she's anxious, but that she

casts her cares upon the Lord. I'm not just advocating

emotionalism. I'm not saying get drunk on emotion

all the time and actually the text doesn't allow

us to do that Look at verse 18 So this is after

Hannah has prayed It says she said let your servant

find favor in your eyes Then the woman went her

way and ate and her face was no longer sad Listen

to the wise words of the great 17th century pastor

Matthew Henry on this verse He says Hannah had

by prayer committed her case to God and left

it with him And now she was no more perplexed

about it She had prayed for herself and Eli had

prayed for her and she believed that God would

either give her the mercy She had prayed for

or make up the want of it in some other way Prayer

will smooth the countenance. It should do so.

So what I'm saying here we should be really earnest

when we do pray and then we should be really

calm when we have prayed. One way of thinking

about this is we can exhaust ourselves in prayer,

just tire ourselves out and then when we're done

praying we can really rest having given our cares

over to God. I want to tell some stories about

prayer really quickly. First off is a personal

one. I knew a couple who was struggling with

infertility. By the way, I just wanted to stop

here and say that I know the desire to be a mother

and the agony when you're not one According to

normal course of things. It's just really hard

I know this from this couple and I know this

from this text among other things and I just

want to not be insensitive to that I know Mother's

Day can be a hard time for people in that situation.

So please Go to somebody and pray, you know be

loved But anyway this couple that I knew I knew

they had been trying to get pregnant for a while

And it just seemed like things kept stretching

on and these guys just weren't having their prayers

answered and after a while And I just they just

come to get sadder and quieter every time I saw

them and after a while of this I said all right

That's enough right, and I knew these guys pretty

well So I actually knew where the man had proposed

to his wife, and it was pretty close to where

I lived. So every day after work, I went home

and I got changed, and I ran to the spot where

the man had proposed to his wife, and I demanded

that the Lord give them a child. And I did this

for a while, and then after a while, the Lord

answered the prayer. And now every time I see

their little one, I'm reminded that God is a

God who answers persistent prayer. Now don't

start thinking I have some kind of special link

with the Lord here There's plenty of other things

that I've been uppity about with the Lord and

he has not answered me But take this as what

you will it feels pretty good when the Lord answers

a big one, right? One more story. This is one

that many of you know already. This is the story

of the most famous Extra biblical mother in Christian

history. I want to talk about Monica or Saint

Monica as our Catholic friends call her She is

the mother of the famous theologian Augustine

who following the closing of the canon in the

Bible is the most important Christian in history.

John Piper says this, it's not just me. So, Augustine,

he'd been a bad guy. He broke his mom's heart

with specifically his sexual ethics. He was kind

of running around, right? And also these stupid

religious experiments that he was messing around

with. And Monica was a faithful Christian and

she begged the Lord for years that her son would...

turn around, would repent and become a Christian.

And again, it took a while, but man, did the

Lord answer her prayers, right? This was no deathbed

conversion. And by the way, her husband, Constantinus,

appears to have been converted on his own deathbed.

But Augustine, When he gets turned around, this

in God's providence is literally world -altering,

right? So Augustine, in his famous book, The

Confessions, he writes about this. And I want

to read a little bit of that to you. So this

quote's a little bit difficult to understand

because in part it's translated and also it's

written as a prayer. So when Augustine uses the

second person, when he says you, he's not talking

to you, he's talking to the Lord. Anyway, here's

what he says. indeed she his mother was a servant

of servants and Everyone acquainted with her

gave her great praise and loved you whom they

met in her heart a Heart revealed by the impact

of her holy behavior on others. She cared for

her children Repeating her birth pangs for them

whenever they strayed Isn't that a beautiful

thought? That we can meet the Lord in somebody

else's heart and that we do meet the Lord because

of other people's prayers, right? So what I'm

saying here is this, who are we praying for the

way that Hannah prayed for her son? Who are we

praying for the way that Monica prayed for Augustine?

Friends, let's be earnest, like these great women

in our prayer. So, third point, Hannah wanted

hard, she prayed hard, what else did she do?

She gave hard. So admit it, when we first read

this text, you were kind of thinking Hannah is

pretty selfish, isn't she? Admit it. Couldn't

she have just been a good stepmom to Penn and

I as kids? Couldn't she just learn to be content?

Why does she have to make things so rough on

old El Khanna? Well, I don't think the text lets

us see us that way, in part because of what we

already talked about. Also, her name, Hannah,

means grace. That's kind of hard to beat. Nice

job, Tannises. But also, there's a repeated theme

in this chapter. So look again with me here.

So verse 11. It says, I will give him to the

Lord all the days of his life. Verse 22, I will

bring him so he may appear in the presence of

the Lord and there dwell forever. Verse 28, as

long as he lives he is lent to the Lord. What

does this mean? Hannah wanted a child badly,

desperately, right? But she didn't want the child

in part for herself. She wanted the child to

be able to give. She needed something better

than what she had in order to have something

good enough to give to God and Then once she

gets it once she gets this baby that she prayed

so hard for she turns right around and gives

The baby back to God and this is just the way

of things for us as a people of God. God gives

to us so we can give to others and we can give

back to him. Think about the elders in Revelation.

They've been given these crowns of glory that

presumably they earned through pretty hard work.

What do they do? They turn around and throw them

in worship at the Lamb. That's the normative

motion of gifts to us. They come to us by the

grace of God and we give them right back. And

friends, if you're a Christian and you're a parent,

You've already made precisely the same bargain

as Hannah here, whether you know it or not. I

don't want to startle you, but you've got your

kids on loan from their real daddy. Your mothering

and your fathering, they are real, but they are

creaturely imitations of the kind of everlasting

sacrificial love God has for them already. So

you have your kids and you're weaning them just

like Hannah. Why? So they may appear in the presence

of the Lord and dwell there forever. That's real

mothering. That's real fathering. It's training

your children not to be loyal ultimately to you

or anything else that you love except to God

himself, right? And children, this applies to

you. This applies to all of us. This kind of

parenting is one that we can do with anybody,

everybody that we love. Okay, we can lift them

in prayer to a position where they'll be able

to be lent to the Lord as long as they live.

And by the way, in the presence of the Lord they'll

live a long time. Okay, now you might be thinking

come on stalker. This is just allegorizing This

isn't a reformed reading Well as the great Robert

for our capen says in his book the supper of

the lamb Which you are welcome to come out and

read with us on Thursday nights here at the church

Consider how wrong you are Let's look at some

New Testament text to back this all up. So Romans

16 13 Paul He says to greet Rufus chosen in the

Lord also his mother Who has been a mother to

me as well You women you can be mothers to more

than just your own children and remember Paul

is a grown man Saying this so you can mother

people of all ages right Galatians 419 Paul calls

the Galatians quote My little children for whom

I am in the anguish of childbirth until Christ

is found in you This is the masculine Paul right

anybody who's sitting out there and saying I'm

a guy I'm not listening to this mothering stuff

Well, this is Paul. He's comparing himself not

just to a woman, but to a woman in childbirth.

It doesn't get much more feminine than that,

right? Remember how I said your desire should

be increasing as you increase in holiness? Paul

is in agony here to see the people that he loves

well off in their relationship with God. And

then there's the one that we read this morning

already, 1st Thessalonians 2 .7. Paul says this,

we were gentle among you like a nursing mother.

taking care of our own children. Paul says that

he and his male godly associates acted like gentle

nursing mothers. My dudes, are we taking notes?

The clear implication here is that church leadership

should be gentle and sheltering and life -giving.

So mothering is for everyone. Let's learn from

Hannah. Let's be grace to the people around us.

And, like Augustine, in the quote that I've read,

remember the mothering love that we've been shown

by our own earthly mothers, of course, but also

by the spiritual mothers the Lord has richly

blessed us with. Philosopher James K .A. Smith,

in his book, On the Road with St. Augustine,

he's got a fantastic chapter in there on Monica.

You should read the book, especially this chapter.

In this chapter, he describes how his own wife,

standing in front of Monica's tomb, Rome was

moved to tears and this is what he says about

that incident quote in this hushed space witnessing

this encounter I realized something I hadn't

appreciated before and probably can't ever fully

understand a solidarity that spans centuries

a sympathy that transcends geography this bond

between Monica and mothers who weep and pray

and chase their children, misunderstood, unappreciated,

resisted, resented, and yet none of that resentment

could stop them. None of that resistance will

deter them. No lack of gratitude could ever persuade

them to give up. Like Grace, Monica and her emissaries

do not work on a logic of return. Friends, this

selfless and maternal love is what we all need.

It's what the world desperately needs. It's a

shining note of the gospel in our world that's

so intent on only doing what feels good. So let's

all be more motherly. Let's enter into the great

faithful line of Hannah and Mary and Monica.

Let's offer one another sacrificial love and

kindness. Let's want one another's good and work

for it. Let's pray for more people in our midst

to pour the love of Christ into. Let's adopt

one another as family. So we can more wholeheartedly

give one another to the Lord. Amen. Let's pray.

Oh Lord, we give you thanks once more for all

of the care that you have shown us throughout

our lives. For the care that you have shown throughout

generations. Lord, we ask for your grace, that

we might be good to those around us, that we

might be faithful. We ask, O Lord, that your

glory would shine in us. We pray all these things

in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening

to Second City Sermons podcast. We hope this

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God bless.