Mother's Day Sermon 5/14/23

Mother's Day 2023
May 14, 2023

by Rev. Katie Mulligan
Preached at United Presbyterian Church
Levittown, NY

Click here for the audio recording

Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 2:19-25
...while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, ‘Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!’ When he turned round and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears
came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

This morning I welcome all of you who have been mothers, are mothers, long to be mothers, have had a mother, are missing a mother. For those of us fortunate enough to be gathered in the loving company of our mothers or children today, I give thanks and praise! For those of us who are separated from their mothers or children through distance, estrangement, or death, my heart aches with you. My own mother is 3,000 miles from here. My children are not with me today.

Perhaps you are not a “mother” in the sense of the word normally permitted to us. Perhaps you are a man. Perhaps you have not birthed or adopted or raised or parented a human child. I welcome you here still. For what makes a mother goes far beyond our reproductive capacity. To mother is to birth life into existence, to sustain life, and to mourn life as it ends. Perhaps you have mothered a ministry, a project, a home, a neighborhood—maybe you are the neighborhood mother on the porch--, an ideal. I know you can mother a project, because I was working on a project last week, birthing something into existence. And someone came along and tried to kill it, and I turned into a fierce mother bear! The disciples went to Jesus and asked, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and he said, “One who becomes like this little child. And woe be to any who become a stumbling block for such a child.” As I read it, we are called to be mothered and to mother, to be nurtured and to nurture. I welcome here today all of you who respond to that call to be and birth life, in whatever form that takes.

I especially welcome my trans sisters and brothers and all who have rebirthed themselves around gender and sexuality. Those who have been told they cannot or should not be mothers, for whatever reason. I welcome you too here today, as one who births life into existence.

I welcome here today, my mother, born Anna Jean Tischhauser, and her mother, born Anna Hulda Tischhauser, and her mother, also Anna Tischhauser. I welcome all who have birthed new identities with new names or new lives. My mother who became Jean Ann and then Jean Ewer and then Mom and Grandma and now Great Grandma. My grandmother who became Ann Ewer and then Ann Hays, who went to college when my mother did and became an accountant and married her third and best love in her 50s. I welcome myself as Katie Mulligan, born something else a long time ago, now also known as Moe James (that story another day). I bring myself to this conversation of creation and re-creation and nurturing and motherhood even as I have moved 23 times in this life—I know a little something of bringing life to a new place. Perhaps you do too, with or without children.

My Great Grandma T was married to Ernst Tischhauser (Grandpa T), and they came here to the U.S. as immigrants from Switzerland. He was a pastor, my great-grandfather, and they were poorer than church mice with six children plus my mother to feed. They bought their flour in bulky flour sacks, and from the flour sacks, my great-grandmother made the childrens’ dresses.

My great grandmother had a saying, “Long thread, lazy girl.” She was an embroiderer, and she taught my grandmother, who taught my mother, who really tried to teach me! Long thread, lazy girl—what this means is that as you are embroidering, you clip off a thread and when you are done with the thread you have to tie a knot in the back. And the threads are such a pain to knot! So the temptation is to take a longer piece of thread so you don’t have to tie as many knots. But the thread gets tangled in the back and then you have to take out the thread and do it again, with a shorter piece of thread. Long thread lazy girl. What I learned from that is in our work everywhere we must take short threads and knot them carefully in the back. Oh the things we can learn from our mothers and grandmoms!

A mother is someone who can make something from nothing, and I welcome here today all of you who have created something from nothing, you who have stretched meals to feed more mouths than you thought you could, you who have found joy, even in the midst of sorrow and difficulty. You are welcome here today. Welcome mothers, one and all. Welcome children one and all.

A few years ago, my oldest son surprised me with a Mother’s Day gift. He called and told me not to come home for a couple of hours because he was working on something. I asked if that something was burning down the house. He promised it was a good something, so I went to a coffee shop to wait for the text that said I could come home.

Two hours later I walked in the house, where he had gathered every picture of our family he could find and placed them artfully on the table, around a vase of flowers. There were candles lit, and a card filled with I love yous, music was playing in the background. My son was beaming with pride for himself, for me, for our relationship.

It was The Perfect Mother’s Day.

Another day, that same son of mine picked a fight with me, and as he cursed me out in the way that only loved ones can do sometimes, this scripture of Elisha and the bears and the 42 boys came to mind. In that moment, sitting in our car, I may have also said to the Lord, “You deal with this child, I just CAN’T with him.”

I’m grateful the Lord sent us a cup of tea instead of two she-bears.

This mothering gig is a messy business.

It occurred to me, as I sat in the car and wondered what on earth to do with this child, that with the power to birth and sustain life, we also, as mothering humans, have the capacity to destroy it. And not only that, but sometimes we have the desire to.

Elisha the prophet had just left a town where he had performed an incredible miracle! The people were thirsty, but their community water was bad. Out of that water came death and miscarriage—what life is possible if the water is bad? So they came to Elisha, and he asked them for salt, and then he blessed the water in the name of the Lord, and from that day forward the water was clean and healthy. No longer would death come from the water, but life.

I imagine Elisha was satisfied with a good day’s work that day.

As he left town, perhaps whistling a tune, along the road he ran into a large group of boys. They came after him and called him “Baldhead!” They told him to go away—ungrateful little wretches! And in a moment of aggravation, Elisha cursed them in the name of the Lord, and out of the bushes came two mama bears, and those mama bears attacked 42 of the boys.

I am so fascinated by this scripture and how people have attempted to justify this event. As I read about the scripture, this is what I found:

--there must have been many more than 42 boys—it was a mob!

--the boys were really young men—more like 20 years old!

--Baldhead was a scathing insult—perhaps implying disease and illness!

--The children were really saying “Go on up!” not just “Go away!” They must have been implying that Elisha should “go on up” like his mentor the prophet Elijah had gone up in a chariot into the heavens—in other words they were telling him to go die!

Reason after reason why Elisha was in danger or why the Lord could not stand for a prophet to be insulted. But when you boil it all down, Elisha lost his temper and cursed these children, and then two bears came and ate 42 of them. Elisha, in his hands, held the power of life and death. We, as mothers, all of us, men and women, hold the power of life and death in our families and communities in our hands.

I’ve been reflecting hard on this passage with all that is happening in the world these last many years. I’ve been thinking about confrontations on trains and interactions with vulnerable strangers. I’ve been thinking about this building and this Sanctuary and our collective responsibility to breathe life into these old bones and sustain it. I’ve been thinking about how we balance care with fear, and how too often…fear wins. 

Sometimes, as I care for another human who is scared and lonely and wanting to hide under the bed like a cat, I find my voice dropping low and gentle and my movements slow and become deliberate and careful, knowing that in front of me is another sacred human being who desperately needs the shelter of another human who gives a rat’s patootie about their existence and their well-being. I feel impatient sometimes—it is exhausting to care like that. And I think about how I long for others to nurture me that way too…gentle, firm, with my best interests at center…Do you also long to be mothered on this mother’s day?

It is not easy to create, sustain, and care for life. We justify violence and lack of care because we lack time or we are afraid or those aren’t our people, or we don’t have enough resources or they don’t deserve it, or we don’t have the skills or, or, or…so many reasons not to offer care…But when we boil it down, our people are dying, they are thirsty and the water is bad, and we hold the power of life and death in our hands. What will we do about it? Will we curse in aggravation and watch as more die? Will we be a stumbling block? Or on this mother’s day, will we turn to our community, hold out our arms, and love and nurture people to life?

Sometimes motherhood surprises us—like a child who crawls in our lap when we weren’t looking. A few years ago, one of the churches I worked with had a thanksgiving dinner for the community. They put out flyers inviting anyone and everyone to come. A young Black girl came with her father to the dinner, and she met another child at the church and they played. Later that day, a church member offered to bring that child to Sunday school. She lived close by and did not have children of her own, but watching the children play together, her heart was moved.

The one girl brought her cousin. And then they brought their 3 friends. And for a year it was the 5 of them. They called themselves a squad. Other people might call them a crew or a gang. They were family, those 5.

After a year, those 5 started to bring siblings and friends, and then we had 20. They were not well connected to a church, they didn’t have a lot of resources, but they came whenever we could get them a ride. 

They were a squirrely bunch, that crew of children. They talked in church, they were on their phones, they couldn’t sit still to save their lives. But they were fierce and devoted and loyal to one another, and they made me laugh all day long. One of the students once said in the van, “I ain’t NEVER gettin’ married. Imma marry my CAT.” I won’t say which one was my favorite, but obviously…

They teased tested us constantly, those kids. For the whole first year one of them rarely spoke to me offering only these words in greeting: “Miss Katie, you ugly.” They didn’t make it easy on church folks, and the three primarily white churches I worked with struggled to offer care. They wanted to, but Lord it was hard. Working across culture with Black youth was a challenge we were ill-prepared for. And we messed it up a lot. They kept coming back, though, and for some years we did the best we could together. They didn’t offer respect where it wasn’t mutually given. If you didn’t know their name and a little bit of their story, they didn’t even know you exist. You’d be trying to tell them to be quieter in church, and they’d walk past you like they didn’t even see you. But if you took the time and effort and risk to know them, their smile lit up the world.

One time, I had to cancel a roller skating trip because I didn’t have enough chaperones. I posted the cancellation on facebook, and then the comments started rolling in. 25 comments from these kids I loved saying, “You never do NOTHING for us. You cancel everything. Adults can’t be trusted. I’m DONE with you, do you hear?” And then two of them unfriended me on facebook.

I watched all of this with a mixture of amusement and exasperation and sadness. Two days later the kids needed something else from me and added me back on facebook. In that moment I had the power of life and death. We could have reacted to their anger with our own anger. People could have got hurt. But instead we rode it out. We loved them instead of cursing them. We went roller skating finally a few months after that.

It's been some years since I was in that ministry. I miss those kids…and the kids aren’t kids anymore. Most of them have children now too, and are learning, I suspect, the challenges and joys of nurturing life. They weren’t an easy crew, that’s for sure. They were disruptive and rowdy and often enough disrespectful. But they were thirsty for love. They were thirsty for good water. They were thirsty for life. And for a little while, very imperfectly, the churches I worked with made good on baptismal vows somebody else took on their behalf for these children.

As you go about this Mother’s Day in your own way, I ask you to think about how you might mother our community. What life might you birth into our church and surrounding communities? In your daily routine, are you blessing or cursing our church and community? In your wanderings through and around Long Island, do you bring clean water or ravaging bears?

May I share one other story with you? Last night I saw a post on Facebook from Angels of Long Island, a thrift store loosely connected to the clothing bins in our parking lot. On Tuesday night they are holding a special evening for drag queens who are planning to march in the Pride Parade in Patchogue in June. The thrift store is helping them with clothing and other support for the upcoming Parade and they posted a flyer about the event on Facebook. As you can imagine, the comments started rolling in. A lot of mean-spirited comments, designed to tear down and harm both those who participate as drag queens and the thrift store who is offering them support. Mockery and cruelty, and a lot of it was done in the name of God and scripture. The manager of the thrift store and director of the non-profit who owns it, Debbie Loesch, held steadfast. She responded to all of those comments with a grace I could not muster. She removed those who could not refrain from cruelty from the group. And they are moving forward with the event to support vulnerable people in the community. Take a ride out to Patchogue and support Angels of Long Island, would you? Perhaps take in the Parade. 

For we hold life and death in our hands and it matters how we move in this world. The essence of creating and sustaining life isn’t the presence of so-called ladybits, nor is it bearing, adopting, or otherwise acquiring children. Mothering is about having a care, giving a rat’s patootie, as they say. Anyone can do it, but sometimes you have to take a really deep breath. May we breathe in the Spirit and breathe out God’s mothering Love. Amen.