Mother's Day 2019: A Human Being, Not a Human Doing

So we're taking a break from our series going through the Book of Jonah for Mother's Day.

So what better way to celebrate Mother's Day than have a man come up here and man explain to all the women how to be good moms?

Isn't that a great way to do this?

A tradition of the church for centuries.

Hopefully, I won't do that too much, but maybe have some observations.

So two weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk working, Christy, it was on Monday, Christy works on Monday.

So Christy was out in Gwinnett working at her family's business, and so she was there, and then she calls me and she says, Hey, uh, our oldest daughter Josie, she's up at the clinic and she needs to go to the doctor.

And I very firmly fired back.

She does not need to go to the doctor because I took her to school that morning and she is fine.

I listed my reasons, most of which were just the fact I didn't want to rearrange my afternoon.

So, of course, 10 minutes later, I'm at the school picking up Josie to take her to the doctor, and we stop for a smoothie and we play a hand clap game.

I didn't know in the waiting room I'm trying not to touch anything or breathe because all that scares me.

But we're there and the doctor sees us and does the strep test, and she's fine, and we're fine, and she's back at school by the end of the day.

Everything's fine.

But the whole time, uh, my sweet wife, sweet mom, she is calling.

I don't know, how many times do you think you called?

Confession in front of it.

It was a lot of calls.

Uh we'll just say that.

I also don't tell her what stories I'm gonna tell in sermons, so she always likes this moment Sunday mornings.

It was probably four or five calls.

Uh you know, it was enough to be like, this is a lot of calls, it was that much.

And so what, like, like what, why?

Why all the phone calls?

Well, moms, you already know, right?

You know, because if you're at work and your child is sick, there's just part of you that's like, what's going on?

How is she?

What like I you want to be, you want to be with with her or with him, and then sometimes it works the other way around.

You're with your child, and you sort of feel like you need to be doing something for work, or work out, or work out more, or clean something again, or just something, like something productive.

Or your kids are grown.

That's possible too.

Your kids are grown, and you have you're in that hard place if you're not quite sure.

Like, when are you still mom?

And then, like, when are you friend?

And that's hard.

A lot of this is hard, a lot of these roles of parents is is hard.

And it can be hard for you today because of the things that Christy listed out, because you've been having trying to have children, you couldn't, or you have children, and it's hard, or your children are grown and they're strained relationships.

All of that can be hard.

Or maybe you lost your mom this year and you have your first motherless mother's day, which is hard.

It's all hard, it's can be very hard.

We can feel lost in all of it.

A few months ago in an op-ed in the New York Times, uh, the writer Olga Meking wrote this in her article, In the Country of Motherhood, Finding My Own Path.

That's the title.

And here's what she wrote.

Here's a little paragraph.

The Japanese have kitsungai, a method of repairing broken pottery with gold, making it even better, more valuable after it has been broken.

Some of the parenting books I read told me that I should similarly welcome the shattering of myself and that I was made better because I was now a mother.

I disagreed.

I liked myself just as I was before I had children.

While other mothers were taking pride in their new broken, repaired forms, I was on my hands and knees still looking for pieces of myself.

So she's asking a pretty good, legitimate question, and is as that we should all ask in front of any role that breaks us in some degree: who am I?

Who am I if this role cannot define me?

Where am I at?

So our text this morning is this well-known story in Luke chapter 10 with Jesus and Martha and Mary.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

I'll reread what Christy read, jumping there at verse 38 in Luke 10.

Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village.

And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house, and she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.

But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?

Tell her then to help me.

But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.

Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her.

So, two points for this morning.

Here's point number one is you are more loved and secure in Christ than the roles you serve, which frees and empowers you to joyfully serve the roles you serve.

Big sentence, that's a long sentence.

I probably should have broken it up into two points.

I'll say it again so we can get it.

You are more loved and secure in Christ than the roles you serve, which frees you and empowers you to joyfully serve the roles you serve.

That's a preacher's way of saying you are a human being before you are a human doing.

Now, in the ancient world, and in the context of this passage this morning, the Greco-Romans saw women as property, not as people.

Roman law stated that all the sons born to a father had to be raised, but only the firstborn of the daughters.

Girls had almost no education.

They had no cultural value.

Women were human doings.

They were not human beings.

And Jesus shows up into this horrible context and values Mary not as she is doing something, but as she just is someone.

You see, God does not value you for the role you serve or the role you do not serve.

He values you because you are his.

A few weeks ago we were in York for the Mockingbird Conference, an annual theological ministry conference we go to.

We took the afternoon before the conference began that evening, and we went to the Museum of Modern Art, the MoMA.

Not usually my scene, but I was there pretending like I could fit into this crowd.

And there on the second floor, we were on the second floor, and there's this massive, massive canvas.

Huge white canvas.

I mean, it was taking up a wall.

Huge, five colored lines painted vertically on the canvas.

I stood in front of it trying to be cultured enough for this.

And you hear other people around you making little, oh wow, oh yeah, you know, what?

It just looked like somebody didn't finish.

It doesn't, I didn't get it.

We moved on.

On the fifth floor was the Impressionists.

So Picasso, uh Renoir, Matisse.

And there on the fifth floor, most of the people were up there, by the way, if you're just wondering where people were filtering, slowly everybody was up there looking at those pieces of artwork.

And we're all up there, and there in the biggest room, a floating wall there in the middle of the floor, is Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.

Big crowd gathered around it, just staring at it.

Stood in front of that piece of art as well.

And it was very quite different scenario, at least for me.

And the feeling for me in front of that piece was there's nothing to add.

There's nothing to change.

It was complete.

It was perfect.

Even its oddities were perfect.

I didn't feel inadequate in front of it at all.

I felt the opposite of what I felt in front of the five-line big white canvas piece.

And now it's been a few weeks, and now I'm wondering if actually both pieces of art did their job.

I still don't love modern art, but it certainly created a feeling in me.

It did that.

Sort of angered me a little bit.

And then you're like, what's the anger?

Why am I angry?

I think I could do that, is why.

But the piece, that piece of art made me feel incomplete.

The Van Gogh piece didn't make me feel that.

The five-line piece made me feel incomplete, which is often how I feel.

At least when I'm trying to self-justify with a role.

And here's the point to use roles, good roles, godly roles, to use roles as self-justification is enslavement.

It's actually sin.

Because our justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Self-justification by roles is all conditional.

It's based on you and your behavior and your merit, which then is condemning in time.

Do you love and raise your children?

Or do you use your children to define you?

Do you love and care for your friends?

Or do you need them to approve of you?

Do you love and serve your job?

Or do you need the next rung up to finally be okay?

And the gift of God's grace is we get to be merry.

We act like Martha, but we get to be merry.

We can let go of roles and busyness as to be defined by God's grace to us, that we are his beloved because of his grace to us.

And it's then we are freed and empowered to be quicker repenters joyfully, to serve our roles joyfully without them defining us, so we come into the role with a full cup.

Two weekends ago, the Kentucky Derby ran.

Now I know nothing about horses.

If you want to know about horses, you talk to Miss Harriet right over there.

She knows about horses, probably maybe the only one in the room.

I don't know about horses, but I knew this was a big deal.

First of all, the race is a big deal, but then this race was a big deal.

If you didn't catch it on the news, maximum security, the horse, not the security going on that the horse, maximum security, was in the lead, drifted out of his lane by two lanes or so, cut off War of Will, who then interfered with long-range Toddy, who then interfered with Boat Express.

Alright, can you believe it?

Now the problem is that a jockey and a horse, once they establish their lane on a straight, they gotta stay in their lane.

They can't drift.

Now the problem was worse, is that maximum security went on to win, which is tens of millions of dollars of revenue for that owner.

And the stewards, which is a fancy name for ref, the stewards, they came out and said he's disqualified.

Never before in the Kentucky Derby had they disqualified a winning horse.

And their quote is this a foul is a foul.

You see, we want to win at motherhood, right?

We want to win at the role that we serve.

We want to win at that.

Of course we do.

But as soon as it becomes our source of absolution or righteousness or worth, we will live in condemnation and exhaustion to it.

Because a foul's a foul.

And we don't live in perfection with our roles.

We're not the perfect parent, perfect friend, perfect business owner, perfect employee, perfect neighbor.

Life by a role is life by merit, and life by merit is condemnation and exhaustion and time.

And it's amazing in the story with Martha and Mary what Jesus is doing.

He's doing exactly what we need, what the gospel is, and that is that Jesus is extending constant forgiveness to Martha in her sin of busyness, in her role idolatry.

And this is our sin taken on the cross, on Jesus for us, that we have complete absolution, nothing for us to add.

And then to Mary, he's extending constant worth.

And this is the gift of righteousness and worth and justification that the cross gives us.

Point number two is this we can begin to understand God's love to us in Jesus Christ as the perfection of motherly love.

We can begin to understand God's love to us and Jesus Christ as the perfection of motherly love.

There's this great little passage in Isaiah 49, 49, 14.

Yet Jerusalem says, so that'd be a way to say God's people, yet God's people say, the Lord has deserted us.

The Lord has forgotten us.

So the people are saying, I don't feel loved.

Life's hard.

I feel like he's forgotten me.

I have hurts and I have wounds.

Where is he at?

Why does he fix this?

And God does not give them an explanation of their struggling, he does give them a promise of his love.

So the Lord's forgotten me, you've got forgotten me.

And then verse 15, never.

God says, never.

Can a mother forget her nursing child?

Can she feel no love for the child she has born?

But even if that were possible, I would never forget you.

See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.

Always in my mind is a picture of Jerusalem's walls and ruins.

Now we're not going to get into a mother's debate on nursing.

We're not going to do that this morning.

Attachment moms, sleep training moms, tiger moms, you work that out in the parking lot or online.

You'll probably just do it online.

That'd be okay.

But the point here in this passage is this is can't can a mom forget a baby she's cared for and nursed?

A mother's love is close and unconditional.

But what if you did?

What if you did find a mom who was able to do that?

Just let's float the scenario, is what this passage says.

Let's float the scenario.

What if you did?

God says, not me.

I will never forget you.

I will love you unconditionally in and through all things, in and through all your sin, in and through all your struggle.

One way forever, constant love.

We are the baby before the mother, taking and taking and taking, and God gives and gives and gives.

And then in verse 16, the image changes.

I have written your name on the palms of my hands.

And I learned this week that a servant would sometimes be tattooed on the palm of his hands, the name of his master.

But never would a master tattoo the name of his servant on his own hands.

So what is this verse?

What is this image?

Both images.

It means God is radically graciously devoted to you.

And here's what you get to do this week.

Any day, any moment.

You get to preach to yourself that though you often act like Martha, you are in fact Mary.

You get to joyfully collapse into God's grace and joyfully repent of all the ways your heart, me too, I get to do this, our hearts stay busy and love rolls as to define us.

And we get to rest back in the absolution, forgiveness, and justification we have by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

My brothers and sisters, God did and He continues to humble Himself and radically, unconditionally devotes Himself to you in Christ Jesus.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you so much.

We are so grateful that our very beings, our very beings do not have to be dependent upon what we produce, what we look like, what we earn, what we merit in the world or in religious life.

Forgive us for making roles our God, for making roles our Savior.

Free us from that.

Help us be joyful, quick repenters this morning.

Any day, any moment that we see ourselves doing it.

We ask for that conviction upon us that we might be quick repenters in the great grace of God.

Help us to see how much we are loved and secure in Christ Jesus, that it might free us and empower us to serve the roles you have called us to serve.

In Jesus' name we pray and live all things.

Amen.