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
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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.