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"Peace and Motherhood"
Matthew 14:22-33
Romans 12:9-21
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
May 13, 2001
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN
This morning across the country is a day when people remember their mothers. It is the time of year that greeting card companies rake in the cash, flower distributors have a great harvest and long distance companies make sure that the phone lines are jammed full.
This is Mother's Day. A day that the often unrecognized work of mothers is celebrated. It is a day that is a stumbling block for people who are not mothers. It is a stumbling block for people who still need healing in their relationships with their parents. And it is a stumbling block to the gospel when we retreat simply into syrupy sentimentality on days such as this.
How did Mother's Day come to be you may be wondering? Well, even if you're not, I'm going to tell you.
Technically, Mother's Day came into being by presidential proclamation on May 8, 1914 stating that the second Sunday in May would be "a day to express love and reverence for the mothers of our country." This grew out of a Sunday School celebration of motherhood back in 1908, at the suggestion of Anne Jarvis in Philadelphia.
But the etiology of Mother's day is much older than the 20th century.
Many ancient texts lift up mother-worship as a norm. We recall the Pre-Christian worship of Cybele or Rhea "The Great Mother of the Gods" in Asia Minor. Cybele traversed the mountains in a chariot led by lions. The people worshipped the power and majesty of motherhood with dancing and music--a far cry from tender maternal sentimentality.
250 years before Jesus, the festival of Hilaria was held on the Ides of March in the Greco-Roman world. During this festival, people made offerings in the temple. With the advent of Christianity, like many pagan rites, this festival was appropriated and modified. Mother God became Mother Church. And the mother to be worshipped became mother Mary. But still in March, on the 4th Sunday in Lent, people were encouraged to return to the church of their baptism--to the mother's womb, and of course give gifts at the altar.
More recently, Mother's Day was a time to remember all of the empty hearths when children had gone off to war. Thus mother's day has a kindred heart with the meaning and the bringing of Peace. Mothers know, perhaps more than any of us, the incredible loss of a child in war or even in the violence of our time.
Julia Ward Howe is believed to have established the first modern US Mother’s Day observance as it says in your Bulletin insert, in June of 1872. In the aftermath of the Civil war, she called for women and children to come together, speak, sing and pray for those things that make for peace. Having witnessed the carnage of war, women have a special way of looking at the world, a way that us men have avoided, a way that might make for peace.
Across the country, the first Sunday in May is celebrated as Peace Sunday in the American Baptist Churches. Since we are not prone to do things the way other Baptist bodies do, we are holding Peace Sunday on this Mother's Day Sunday. We are doing this in order to celebrate the coming of peace and the hope for a new world which is as ancient and as powerful as the origin of our beings.
You have an excerpt of her writing in the bulletin insert which the women are going to be invited to speak as an affirmation in a few minutes. The rest of Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 "Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World" says, "As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them, solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after (their)own time the sacred impress, not of Ceasar, but of God. In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality, be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."
Imagine what such a convention might come up with.
Imagine the different way of looking at the world.
Imagine decisions made without the burden of patriarchy or "we’ve always done it that way before."
Imagine a group of women using their own experience to recreate the world in a way that makes for peace.
If a group of women got together—mothers even—what might happen?
Let me tell you a story which I heard at the Every Church a Peace Church Conference in Duluth a few weeks ago.
In the early 1990’s a group of women from Dolores Mission Catholic Church in East Los Angeles were searching for a solution to the heavy toll of gang violence. Eight gangs were active in the parish, and gang killing or injuries were a daily occurrence. The women gathered and prayed for a solution to the carnage. One night, they read the scripture of Jesus walking on the water. A light went off in one of the women’s heads and it shook her to her foundation. Like scales falling from her eyes, she saw the parallel with their own predicament. The storm on the sea of Galilee was the gang warfare in the streets of Boyle Heights. Fearing for their own safety, everyone had fled behind the locked doors of their homes like the disciples hiding in the hull of their fragile boat, hoping and wishing that the storms would just go away.
They believed that the only way they would be saved is to get securely out of the line of fire. But, like the ones in the boat, their paralysis ultimately did not ensure them that they would be secure; they could be killed by misdirected gunfire blasting into their homes or they could be shot in broad daylight walking to the market. They were as likely to become victims as Jesus first century followers were. The boat could capsize. They could lose everything in the maddening storm.
But then, said one woman, Jesus appears. We, like the disciples want him to magically solve the crisis. We cry out to him, implore him to save us. But instead, he says to us, "Get out of the boat. Leave the illusion of security behind you. Get out of the boat and walk on the water. Walk on the water, and for us that means enter the violence-saturated streets—and we will calm the storm together."
After a lot of soul searching, 70 women (and even a few men) began a peregrinacion—a pilgrimage, a procession from one gang turf to the next throughout the barrio. When they encountered startled gang members who were preparing for battle, the mothers invited them to pray with them. They offered them chips and salsa and pop. A guitar was produced, they were asked to join in singing the ancient songs that had come with them from Michaocan and Jalisco and Chiapas. Throughout the night in eight war zones, the conflict was interrupted. People were dumbfounded. The gang members were disoriented.
Each night the mothers walked and within a week there was a dramatic drop in gang-related violence. The members of the newly formed Comite Pro Paz en El Barrio—Committee for peace in the Neighborhood—had responded to the emergency of violence being waged in their area by breaking the rules of war. By nonviolently intervening and intruding, they had challenged the old script of escalating violence and retaliation and created, for a time, a new and more creative script.
By entering the zone of danger, walking out on the water in to the storm with Jesus, they had created a momentary space for peace. All parties were granted the gift of being able to see their humanness.
The gang members, most from broken homes saw for the first time that someone cared about them. At the same time, the women were able to let go of their paralyzing fear and anger long enough to see the human face of the gang members. They saw their own children and their friends’ children. It is no accident that the women christened their night time journeys "love walks."
But this was more than simply putting an end to violence, an eye in a larger storm. It was a form of transformation. By provoking a confrontation with their humanness, they unleashed a process of communication and transformation. Their activity changed the gang members and themselves. The women listened to the deep anguish of the gang-members about the lack of jobs and about police brutality. This led them, to develop a tortilla factory, bakery and child-care center, creating jobs and giving the gang-members an opportunity to acquire some skills. It was also a space where conflict resolution techniques were learned, because people from different gangs worked side by side on these projects. The women then opened a school. And they shifted from a "Neighborhood Watch" mode—where they were the eyes and ears of the police—to a group trained to monitor and report abusive police behavior, a development that has redefined the relationship between the LAPD and the Barrio.
The people in this neighborhood are the first to say that they have not achieved a utopia. There is still poverty, racism and violence. Nevertheless they have taken an enormous step toward creating a much more human environment. They did this by risking being human together. Or, in terms of their founding vision, "getting out of the boat" and "Walking on the water."
(From Violence to Wholeness: a ten part program in the spirituality and practice of active nonviolence, by Ken Butigan,1990 pp.39-41)
This church has women’s groups that meet together to look at novels and to find grace that occurs. One group has been meeting for decades, bringing hope, healing and special community to one another. The main leadership of this church is women. And I am thankful for you and I will do my best to follow your leadership when it comes to making peace in this world, because of your potentially clearer outlook on the things that make for peace.
The things that shatter the peace can be likened to storms.
As we look out at our world we can see many a storm brewing.
There’s a storm of injustice.
There’s a storm of environmental degradation.
There’s a storm of violence: street violence, violence against women and children, violence at work, violence against neighbors.
There’s a storm that says erroneously, might makes right.
There’s a storm that has us build up missile defenses so massive that we might never have to use them while simple things like education, childcare and health care get slashed again. Albert Einstein once said, "You cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war." How can we make for peace when drug companies don’t give drugs to the people of Africa suffering from AIDS because it would hurt their profit margin?
There’s a storm brewing and Jesus is walking on the water, encouraging us to get out of the boat, walk with him and calm the storm.
Amazing things can happen when we get out of the safe boat and walk on the water.
Our foremothers taught us well to end the madness of war and to cease the whirlpool cycle of violence. I hope as you think about mother’s day, you will also take the opportunity to look for creative ways to make peace in the world. Think about the storms which Jesus is calling you out of the boat to join him in calming it, to bringing healing.
What better way to honor our mothers than to do a little walking on water, like many mothers have done in the past.
When we do so, then we truly live in a new way,
a way of peace and motherhood.
A way of power and grace.
A way of love and light.
And in this Easter season, it is another way to witness the way of resurrection.