May_8_05 Prov 31.10-31 Mom - Vision From A-Z
Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Sunday, May 8th, 2005
Enter to Worship
| ! Prelude
| ! …………………………………………………………..………
| ! David Witt
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| ! Invocation
| ! …………………………………………………………..………
| ! Michael Hollinger
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| ! Opening Hymn*
| ! …………………………………………………………..………
| ! #32
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| ! “Immortal, Invisible”
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| ! Welcome and Announcements
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| ! Morning Prayer
| ! ………………..………
| ! Mr. Hollinger
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| ! Responsive Reading
| ! [See Right]
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| ! Offertory Hymn*
| ! …………………………………………………………..………
| ! #375
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| ! “Tis’ so Sweet, to Trust in Jesus”
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| ! Offertory
| ! …………………………………………………………..………
| ! Mr. Witt
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| ! Doxology
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| ! Scripture
| ! Proverbs 31:10-31
| !
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| ! Sermon
| !
| ! Mr. Hollinger
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| ! “Mom: Vision from A-Z”
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| ! Concluding Hymn
| ! #212
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| ! “Be Thou My Vision”
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| ! Benediction*
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| ! Congregational Response
| !
| !
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| ! Postlude*
| ! …………………………………………………………..………
| ! Mr. Witt
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- Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
Responsive Reading
Be subject to one another in out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord
For the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—
yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.
In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it,
just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body.
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.
- Ephesians 5:22-33, NRSV
Title: Mom: Vision from A-Z
Text: Proverbs 31:10-31
FCF: As the Bride of Christ, we can be people worthy of being praised like this woman.
SO: I want my congregation to realize that Christ loves this church, and that he has a vision for it. This body needs to begin to dream again, and I want them to take from this the first steps of how to dream
Intro:
I want you to imagine for a moment, you are young man have that heart-felt conversation only a young man can have with his now ageing father. As he prepares to set you lose in the world, he takes the time to give you one last exhortation – Get Wisdom! That’s what the book of Proverbs is – an exhortation to get wisdom. No matter how, make sure that wisdom is what you get. But he knows you’re a young man. Your hormones are in overdrive, and while you sit patiently your mind isn’t always on the conversation. So, as your dad wraps up “the talk,” he knows he needs to show you why you need wisdom. So he tells you a secret. Like all young Jewish boys, a wife has been selected for you, and your father wants to tell you about her. She’s beautiful, she’s charming – one day both you and your children will realize how great she is. You will rise up and call her blessed. Even if her children should pass before she does, she has the vision to know that upon meeting her children in heaven, the words ‘Blessed are you among women!’ will be the first on their lips.
But know, I want you to imagine something else. This young lady you are going to be married to is also there. Perhaps she’s just sitting outside in the hallway, and she is hearing this description of this woman, and thinking, ‘This is pretty heady stuff!’ This ideal woman sounds too good to be true. ‘Oh, wait a minute,’ she realizes, ‘that’s supposed to be me! I can’t live up to this,’ she thinks. But, you see, this father is wise. He has seen vision in this girl. This poem he constructs – and it is just that a beautiful love poem – this poem is a vision about a woman of vision. It is an idealized portrait to be sure, but it is based on real characteristics of a real woman he has knows. She just needs to see it for herself.
Now I want you to change this imagination one last time. I want you to imagine that the young man is Jesus. He loves his bride. His bride, of course, is his church. He cares for her; he loves her; he wants to encourage her. And so, he carefully reconstructs the poem his father told him so many years before to remind his bride of the vision he once saw in her. She is a blessed woman. Every generation, she gives rise to another generation of children that holds fast to him, and has the vision that he has of her.
So, with this in mind, I beg your forbearance as I read this vision – this vision about a woman of vision, once more.
<READ Proverbs 31.10-31>
When I started working for the government, I had to use the desk of a man who had a teenager daughter. On his desk, he had a mothers’ day card that said ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Dad!’ That was a card that needed a little bit of explaining. I finally found out the story – he was divorced, and had to be both mother and father to his daughter. And so, one year, in recognition of that fact, she decided to make him a ‘Happy Mothers’ Day, Dad!’ card. It was a beautiful sentiment, but only that obviously needed some context to be understood. This morning, if you don’t mind, I want to do a little bit of explaining about this Mothers’ Day card of a poem, tucked there at the end of Proverbs. Before I get into the heart of the message that this poem tells us, I want to start by telling you a little bit about how it’s put together – because it’s really a beautiful poem.
- Its an acrostic
- It’s a chiasm – centered on the husband!
But, beyond the beautiful trappings, I want to focus your attention on just a single detail that stands out in this praise of a good woman. You see, this poem is a vision of a good woman – but she is good precisely because of the vision she has. Specifically, I want to point out a few characteristics of that vision – a vision that we, as the bride of Christ, have an obligation to instill in our own children – birthed both by water and spirit – both natural children and spiritual ones. If you’ll beg the indulgence, I suggest that this poem tells us that we, as the bride of Christ are called to have a vision for his church. Specifically, I see three characteristics – three ‘C’s that define how we should act. Just as the woman of vision looks out for her family:
- we are called to “Consider,”
- we are called to be Committed to that vision
- we are called to be Compassionate.
Consider
Read verse 16 again with me if you would – “She considers a field and buys it. With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard.’ Look also to verse 21 – “She is not afraid for her household when it snows, for she has clothed her children double.’ Just a quick side note here - in your bibles it may say ‘in crimson.’ The consonants for ‘double’ and ‘crimson’ are the same, and the vowels were all made up later. Seeing as the color red doesn’t really have much to do with snow, I think its pretty clear that the word was supposed to be double. Regardless, however, the constant theme is this – She is a woman who considers the future.
She sees a field; she buys it. She sees winter coming; she prepares for it. She is a woman who looks to the future.
Bonnie Angelo wrote a book a few years back called First Mothers: The Women who Shaped the Presidents. In it, she talks about the mothers of each of the last eleven presidents, from Sara Roosevelt to Dorothy Bush. Not all of these men even knew their fathers, and some feared the ones they had. In a review of that book, it is said:
“What is shared by all presidents is their recognition of a happy childhood or at least a firm belief in one. Obviously, there is always revisionism and beatification of the presidents’ youth, but why do all presidents remember their childhood as idyllic? Ms. Angelo gives the answer: their mothers. Because of their family matriarchs the future presidents were completely self-confident. Their mothers were pillars of comfort for their families, tutors, and friends who created cheerful and supportive worlds for their sons, gave them inner faith, serenity and security, and implanted beliefs and attitudes. Concentrating on mother-son relationships, Ms. Angelo proves Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words: ‘Men are what their mothers made them.’
“All of them were strong, self-assured, and intelligent individuals with diverse backgrounds who invested wit, knowledge, and energy in their children under the careful guard of unconditional love. These women also shared one more attribute: selfless love not expressed in words.”
“A study has indicated that a father’s main concern for his sons is the choice of career, while mothers envision a future with no limits. In their view their sons are destined to excel. As Mrs. Angelo writes, “right or wrong, from her viewpoint you [the child] are always right.”
“Some of the future presidents had a hard time defining their identity as they grew up. Sara Roosevelt’s “mother knows best” principle made FDR strive for separation from his mother’s possessive love. Another matriarch, Rose Kennedy, exercised a powerful attachment to her sons. But Martha Truman, a strong woman, too, already knew how to let go of ties of affection between the mother and the son.
“These mothers encouraged their sons to stretch their horizons and ambitions, tend to spirit and mind, foster an iron will, and strive for self-improvement. They were role models and were able to turn even volunteer service into the equivalent of a career, as Dorothy Ford did. They fostered an adventurous spirit in their children, much like Dorothy Bush did. They were the directors and producers of their son’s lives, as Nelle Reagan was for her child. They instilled into their sons the ability to feel other people’s concerns, as Virginia Clinton did. They were bent on stressing accomplishments, as Lillian Carter was, the first presidential mother to have a career outside the home—at sixty-eight she joined the Peace Corps and went to India. Their vanity, apparent in Ida Eisenhower, was a strategy for their children. Competitiveness was bred into families, and the future presidents were nurtured by the drive to win. Due to their manipulativeness, Mrs. Angelo deducts, the young boys’ political skills might be attributed to their need to win their mothers’ approval, as it was in case of Rebekah Johnson.
The vision that these mothers had for their children was that they would grow up well. It wasn’t some pie in the sky ‘If only’-type wish. It was a thought-out plan of selfless love that desired only the best for their children. Sometimes, that meant doing things differently. But it always meant seeing what their children needed, and doing that.
Visions aren’t comforting things, but they are growing things. If you cannot see the winter approach, you do not think your children need coats. If you aim your children for nothing, they will surely achieve it.
Committed
But, it is not enough merely to consider the field. You must go out and buy it. That brings me to my second point – a bride of vision is committed.
I read about a Junior High physics teacher who spent a day lecturing on magnets. He showed them demonstrations of the powerful attractive force by moving iron particles around. And then, the next day, he decided to give a pop quiz. He wrote, “I am a six letter word, beginning with ‘M’ and I pick things up. What am I?’ Nearly half the class responded, ‘Mother.’
You know, people have done studies on the value of a mothers work. They consider that on average, a single child averages out to an additional 1000 hours of housework a year for the first eighteen years of a child’s life. If you were to pay a mom for the various roles she takes on – teacher, counselor, cook, maid – if you were to pay her a competitive wage, she should be earning $130,000 year.
The fact of the matter is, a mom is committed to her children. As v15 says, ‘She rises while it is still night and provides food for her household and tasks for her servant-girls.’ Truly, her lamp does not go out at night!
Being a mom is hard work. Any vision of a future that is worthwhile requires commitment and dedication predicated on love.
Compassionate.
And it is that love which brings me to me last point. This woman of vision is known for her compassion. She is a woman of vision who sees the poor. She opens her hand and reaches out to the needy.
Bride of Christ, I exhort you. You are this woman. You live in a world of poor, needy people who require many things. But most importantly, they need Christ. You have that vision. You have birthed six churches in your life time. Do not think that just because you are old you cannot do it again. Even Sarah could have a child at 90. This church has been around for 220 years, but it is that same level of compassion that started this church that continues in it today.
The question is, ‘Do you have the vision and the commitment to see that compassion through?’ Next week, I want to have a family meeting. We’re going to talk about that vision we still have, and direct our resources towards it. It’s not going to be a one-time thing. It will be a long time of patient endurance, but it will pay off.
Surely, our children will rise up and call us blessed.
Would you pray with me now?