Fourth after Easter
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
II Timothy 1:5-7, 4:7
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3 I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4 Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. 5 I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 6 For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
“They were praying for us.”
There were tears in her eyes and her voice was trembling with so much emotion that I was slightly surprised at the reaction.
It was sometime in the late spring of 1993, and Leslie and I had driven down to visit my parents in Franklin, KY, about 2 hrs south of Louisville. We were engaged to be married, and had recently set the date of the wedding for July 18th. Leslie had walked downstairs and was stumbling through the kitchen when she noticed that my parents were sitting at the breakfast table with their heads bowed. As she stopped and listened, she heard them praying for each of us children by name.
Neither the visit nor the fact that my parents were praying at the breakfast table was unusual – to me. I had grown up hearing my mother pray, not only in church, but daily, around the breakfast table. After getting the food on the table and calling us TO it, we would say grace, and while we were eating, she would read the ‘Open Windows’ devotional, and read the names of the missionaries who were celebrating birthdays that day.
As I recall, and speaking for myself, as a teenager, I was usually more concerned with simply waking up and thinking about the upcoming day at school than with what was being read, and unless a missionary whom we knew was celebrating a birthday, the names of the missionaries were of no great concern to me.
It wasn’t until I finished the last semester of my senior year of high school away from my parents that I realized how much I had become accustomed to that routine. During those last 5 months they came back to the States on medical leave and had made the decision to let me remain in Chile and graduate with my classmates. I lived with two other families with very different routines. It was then that I first missed that send-off in the mornings.
Home is as much the people as it is a place. The missionary mothers that I lived with those last 5 months, Aunt Betty and Aunt Kate, opened their homes to me, and made me a part of their families. Even now, 23 years later, they still hold a special place not only in my heart, but also in my spiritual pilgrimage. Though not related by blood, those two women witnessed the very beginnings of my spiritual growth outside of my physical home and immediate family.
We can hopefully all identify those strong women of faith in our lives – whether or not they are related by blood -- who played that role – who birthed something in us that spoke not only to their faithfulness, but of God’s faithfulness to us through them.
Hermana Elena de Alarcon was my 4th and 5th grade Sunday school teacher, her faithful presence and patient teaching of a rambunctious class of preteens sowed in me the seeds of faith that helped me to teach 4th grade Royal Ambassadors at Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, KY, 14 years later.
The passage this morning is a testament not only to place, but also to people who form a spiritual home for Timothy.
The tone in which Paul is writing is in the manner of someone who is looking back over his life and, in gratitude, passing the baton. It is in 2nd Timothy 4:7 that we find Paul saying ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’ But I’d like to draw your attention briefly to the verse before that, verse 6, ‘As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.’
A libation is an offering, a sacrifice.
Aunt Laura Frances, Aunt Clara, Aunt Carol, Aunt Georgia Mae. Combined, they probably represent over 150 years of missionary service. They were unmarried throughout their missionary careers, but any one of them would happily claim the 40 or 50 other missionary kids that I and my brother and sisters grew up with as their own. And we would happily and gratefully claim them as our own. We are probably all familiar with the story of Lottie Moon. She and my Aunts each dedicated themselves to fleshing out the gospel of Jesus Christ, not only to the children of their fellow missionaries, but to the hundreds of Chinese or Chilean men, women and children whose lives they touched during their decades of service, and in their lives and in their ministry, found themselves being poured out as a libation.
When I spoke to the Associational WMU meeting in Tappahannock last year, I told them as I tell any WMU gathering, that I felt as though I was talking to a roomful of my mothers. I was raised on their prayers, notes of encouragement, and love. Thanks to them and their promotion of and involvement in missions education and giving, my family had a roof over our heads, clothes to wear, and schools to attend. They put me through college, they supported me as a missionary journeyman in Spain for two years, they are, through their promotions of the Hispanic Ministry and the donations they’re collecting, pouring themselves out as a libation.
The way we have seen the women of Jerusalem respond to events such as the youth dinners, funeral meals on short notice, and bringing together the church family for Sunday evening family nights has been a pouring out. In John, Chapter 15, we find Jesus speaking to his disciples – saying, ‘no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’ In lives of service, we find no better example, aside from Christ, than the giving we see on a daily or weekly basis of dedicated women of God who care for and teach, and most importantly, live out the basic truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The women who invest themselves in the lives of others, be they their own children or someone else’s, be they related or not, be they lifelong friends or recently-made acquaintances, those women are living out that great love that Christ was describing, to give your life for your friends.
“Momma’s in the kitchen”
“What’s she doing?”
“Piddlin’”
The word is usually said in a chuckling, shaking-your-head kind of way. We used to sit and watch her from the other room. She would slice a piece of cheese and eat it. She would put away a dish from the previous meal. She would chop some onion and celery for the next meal. Next, she would count out plates and cups to see if she needed to run the dishwasher. She would stand in front of the refrigerator for what seemed an eternity looking through recycled whipped cream containers for the green beans from last night. And when we asked her what she was doing, she would always respond with, “I’m just piddlin’.”
It is true, though. My mother’s favorite place to be is in the kitchen, not just in the house, but in the HOME – she has spent her life mixing and measuring the ingredients, watching the temperatures, layering where layers were needed, chopping where chopping was needed, tossing out what had no reason being in the kitchen.
More often than not, she reverts to the old favorites; zucchini casserole, chicken and rice, roast with vegetables. The ingredients are second nature and the cooking time is instinctively recognized.
Momma’s feast is in the works. What was once a meal she prepared by herself has now become a potluck, where her children are bringing their own dishes to the table, and there are LOTS of differently flavored dishes on the table. My sisters and brother and I hold a wide range of views both politically and in matters of faith, but those differences are minor when we gather. There is one ingredient that is common to all of them: God’s Love in Christ. We all know whose we are and from whom we came.
In talking to her now about how she raised us, what comes through most poignantly is how aware momma is of what she didn’t do. The harsh word that haunts her decades later but is lost to our memory. I do remember the occasional chase through the backyard with a switch, and an equally memorable spanking, but those are different stories. What overwhelms those memories is the sure and certain knowledge that more than anything, my mother loved me. And as I’ve grown older, it is most obvious that she loves me because God first loved her.
Even in her own life, looking back on what she considers a mixed bag of successes and failures, Momma is very aware of the grace that surrounded it all. Grace that allowed siblings who gave new meaning to the term rivalry to grow into loving brothers and sisters, Grace that kept us all close in spite of thousands of miles of distance between us, and Grace that draws us together even now.
There are women I’ve known who’ve found it necessary to rely more heavily on that grace. Women who’ve suffered through parenting in ways that I can only imagine, or who’ve survived a childhood with an absent mother, who have found in one of those other women in their lives, sometimes much later in life, the mother they never knew. It is in those relationships that we can see the faith community that Christ is calling us into. Christ has provided for us a family, related not by OUR blood, but by HIS blood. Mothers, Fathers, Sisters and Brothers.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? I would invite you to ask yourself these questions: who is YOUR Lois, who is your Eunice, or, can you name someone who might be your Timothy? I would encourage you to take a minute at some point today, perhaps before the end of this service; to thank God for that Woman who played such an important role in your life, and if you can, let her know directly how thankful you are for her presence in your life.
Let’s pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment