I have to start the sermon today with a confession:  I chose the scripture texts partially tongue in cheek because I know it’s Mother’s Day, and when I think about the real job of mothering – of parenting – in today’s world, these were the scriptures that came to mind.

         Loving (as any parent well knows) does not always come easily.  Sometimes those children, who look like perfect angels when they’re asleep, can be perfect little hellions when they’re awake, and every child knows that too.

         We know how hard we can be on our parents.  We do NOT always love our brothers and sisters.  We do NOT always clean up after ourselves.  We do NOT always do what we know we ought to.  And through no fault of her own, there are more times as not that our mothers’ voices sound like this:

         Please take that downstairs with you when you go.

         Did you brush your teeth? 

         What are you doing out of bed?

         Don’t just leave that there!

         Take that downstairs.  OK?

         Yes.  You have to wear a jacket.  No, I don’t care if you look like a dork.

         Can you take that downstairs?

         I don’t care if she can.  If her mother said she could jump off a bridge would you expect me to let you do it too?

         Is that yours?

         I thought I asked you to take that downstairs!

         Yes, you have to eat everything on your plate and no I do NOT think brussel sprouts look like eyeballs.

         Take it downstairs NOW. 

         Don’t touch your brother. 

Don’t touch your sister either.

No body touches anyone in this house again without my express permission.

NO!  When I said to take it downstairs now, I meant NOW --- not tomorrow. 

Of course I love you, but dying your hair green with Jell-O is still not a good idea.

Now means NOW. Not later.  Now.  Take this stuff downstairs.

Surely that sounds vaguely familiar to you.  And if so, then surely you can see how my mind turned to the gospel reading for today.  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  Sometimes it really seems as if our children are out to persecute us.  Yet Christ commands that we love them, even then.

That is the serious side of all this.  Parenting for us is a Christian responsibility.  And, for the most part, all those famous parenting statements, including the most famous of all: “Because I said so, that’s why,” are forms of loving.  Loving doesn’t always mean giving what someone wants.

Loving means setting guidelines and limits, explaining them and, unfortunately, enforcing them.  Love means saying no.  And love means doing all of that when it would be so much easier to just give in --- to say yes.

Perhaps Erma Bomback put it best in one of her columns that I have saved over the years:

“Someday when my children are old enough to understand, I’ll tell them when they say “You just don’t love me”; I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going and what time you would get home.

I loved you enough to let you discover for yourself that your friend was a creep.

I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your bedroom --- a job I could have done myself in 15 minutes. 

I loved you enough to let you fall down while you were learning to walk and while you tried to ride your bike for the first time without training wheels and when you first wobbled around on high heels. 

I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be.  And I loved you enough to help you become the best you possible.

That’s how much I loved you.”

I see children as kites.  You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground.  You run with them until you’re both breathless … they crash … You add a longer tail.  You patch and comfort, adjust and teach – and assure them that one day they will fly.

Finally they are airborne, but they need more string, and you keep letting it out.  With each twist of the ball of twine, the kite becomes more distant.  You know it won’t be long before that beautiful creature who is your child will snap the lifeline that bound them to you and they will soar.  Only then will you know that you did your job.

Which leads me to why I chose the reading from I Corinthians.  This reading is really about the love of God and the gift of love God gives us.  It is concerned with our growth in love and in the Christian faith, but it also applies on a different level to the love we frequently receive from our parents and how we grow to understand the value of it.

“Love bears all things.  Believes all things.  Hopes all things.  Endures all things.  Love never ends… When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child.  I reasoned like a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things.”

Children do grow, and generally, they grow to appreciate and understand the value and cost of the love that raised them.  And they grow in the way of that love.  The reality is we are the greatest influence on the way our children grow.

Tell a child that it’s doing your best that counts and not just whether you wind up on top, and nine times out of ten, they’ll try more new things.  But only if they see you trying things and failing too.

Tell a child God loves them and, nine times out of ten, they will rely on God --- if they see that in your life.  Teach them the value of a Christian life and, nine times out of ten, they will live out those principles, if they see you living by them too, even if they don’t get to church as often as you’d like. 

For, unfortunately, telling them is not enough.  As a parent you can’t get by with do as I say, not as I do.  That’s another reason was parenting is so tough.

Children who smoke, tend to have parents who smoke.  Children who mock authority, generally have parents who mock authority.  Children who are starving for love, and for limits, generally have parents who set up the rules but then don’t enforce them.

Is a parent, then, always responsible for the way their child grows?  Oh, if it were only that simple!  There are so many other factors involved.  The list is endless. A lot of it is sheer luck.  But research has shown, time and time again, 

That parents are the greatest influence --- and that the loving and the parenting never ends.

         So for all those times you have sat at the kitchen table going over the multiplication tables --- for all those times you said no when you’d rather have said yes --- for all the bedtime stories and clean clothes that magically appeared in our closets – we thank you.