Sermon by The Very Rev Chris Yaw; based on John 10:22-30; our Mother's Day tribute can be seen on our YouTube channel, go to www.stdavidssf.org
Mother’s Day 2022
Did you know that by the time they’re born, babies can actually recognize their mother’s voice?
In one study, doctors gave day-old infants pacifiers that were connected to tape recorders. Depending on the babies’ sucking patterns, the pacifiers either turned on a recording of their mother’s voice or that of an unfamiliar woman’s voice.
The amazing result, says the study's Columbia University co-author, is that: “Within 10 to 20 minutes, the babies learned to adjust their sucking rate on the pacifier to turn on their own mother’s voice."
This points us to a newborn’s innate love for their mother’s voice.
Why?
Because in a perfect world, it's that voice of comfort, safety, assurance, confidence, strength, encouragement, acceptance, contentment.
It's a voice we never tire of hearing - as our mother’s channel the voice of God into our pre-born and newborn ears - inspiring those feelings of comfort, safety, assurance, confidence, strength, encouragement, acceptance, contentment.
This is the first exposure we have to what psychologists call our ‘Family of Origin’ voices.
These play the primary role in shaping us - our values, our virtues, our deeply held political, religious, scientific, and world views.
And as we get older - our 'family of origin voices' change.
Our environment changes.
We change.
We begin to discover that the world is not perfect.
And that our ‘family of origin’ voices are not as edifying as they were when we came out of the womb.
Here’s how a mom named Anita Renfroe found a way to illustrate that point…
[Roll Anita’s Renfroe Mothers video]
Any of us heard those bits of advice before?…
As we grow up, these ‘family of origin’ voices are no longer 100% encouraging.
They can be helpful and hurtful, correct and incorrect, building us up and tearing us down.
And as we grow into adults, discerning which voices we want to keep and which voices we want to discard, becomes a really important endeavor.
Becoming mature adults - mature Christians - means shedding those unhelpful ‘family of origin’ voices - and embracing what psychologists call ‘family of creation’ voices.
These are the voices that we choose to hear -
Because as we get older, we can now choose our environments - the people and influences that we want to surround ourselves with.
And selecting healthy, nurturing, and truthful ‘family of creation' voices - that can make us into the honest, generous, kind, and encouraging people we were created to be - this is our big job as adults.
How many of us have gone to counseling through the years to help us figure out that some of the things we learned growing up were not helpful?
We often need help discerning these voices -
And that’s where our Gospel takes us this morning.
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Here in John, chapter 10, Jesus is at loggerheads with the corrupt religious leaders of his day - who are unhappy with Jesus’ teaching - his honesty, integrity, and altruism is threatening to them.
They gather around him and they say they just don’t get Jesus -
Where is he going?
What is he saying?
Jesus tells them they can’t hear his voice -
It’s because these religious leaders have allowed their 'voices of origin' to shape them - the voices that told them that status, power, and money were signs of God’s favor - and they have not matured beyond this.
They have decided to stay where they are - their hearts hardened - as they ignore opportunities to mature - and discover that service, sacrifice, and humility are what God is really about.
And so, Jesus is wanting these corrupt religious leaders to shed those erroneous voices - and to seek after a new voice - his voice that can make them into better people - the kind who can understand who Jesus is - and to embrace the life of servanthood, selflessness, and charity that is at the heart of a mature, satisfying, and fulfilling life.
Jesus is saying that they can’t hear his voice because they are still clinging to the faulty voices of their origin that cannot take them where they say they want to go - to be with God, speaking and acting the way God wants them to go.
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Many years ago, I worked at a television station and I got a phone call there.
A woman complained that she could not get our station on her TV.
I asked her to tell me what channel she was turned to.
She said ‘Channel 6.’
I said, ’No wonder. We’re channel 9.’
In other words, it’s not the TV station’s fault —
And our inability to hear God’s voice is not God’s fault.
And that’s the point of my sermon this morning -
Everybody’s brought up with their own unique set of 'voices of origin.'
They shaped us when we were young.
Some of those voices were good, some of them not so good.
And as we’ve gotten older, we now have the choice to disregard the things that didn’t work, and take on new friends, new beliefs, new practices, that can make us better.
How is that going in your life?
How seriously are we considering God’s call of maturity?
How well do we understand the damaging nature of not keenly discerning those voices of origin?
Research and experience show us that we tend to repeat the relational patterns we learned in childhood unless we make a conscious and intentional effort to change them.
If we were raised in a house that resolved conflict by ignoring it, then we are very likely to do the same as adults.
Those voices that got us into that habit, are still very much present, and keeping us from finding a new and better way. (Scott Stoner)
So, we wonder:
In what ways have we been successful in defining and shedding those negative ‘voices of origin’ that are not helpful to us? And how successful have we been at adopting the positive, life-giving ‘voices of creation’ - which seek to liberate us?
And that’s the point of this sermon — to challenge us to think through which voices we’re listening to.
How can we shed those unhelpful voices of origin - and reach out and replace those voices — with the maturing and fulfilling ‘voices of creation’ - which we find in Jesus’ voice - which God has given us in order to be our best selves for ourselves and others.
There are few things our mothers want from us than for us to mature, be happy, and live out God’s purpose for our lives - and that means making room for that voice that seeks to bring us there.
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One of the most important claims of Christianity is that God is not only in us, but all around us - that we live within God as God lives within us.
This means that we have an ability to discern that ‘voice of creation.'
And so, if you’re like me, you may have wondered:
If God is all around us, why is the reality of God not more apparent to us?
And why don’t I hear that ‘voice of creation’ more loudly?
One reason is because that’s a spiritual voice - and you and I are much better equipped to discern a worldly one.
Here’s what I mean.
You and I are equipped with these 5 very visceral senses of smell, taste, sight, hearing, and touching - and so we put most of our emphasis on these ways of knowing things -
In our physical world, we have a predilection to getting to know those physical things first.
So much so, that we neglect putting emphasis on the spiritual or the heart-knowledge that we possess - and that opens us to God - we stray from our original innocence and God-Consciousness because we don’t spend the same amount of time nor put the same kind of weight upon knowing spiritual things.
What does that look like in our lives?
How might God be calling us to spend more time and energy on spiritual things?
A nature writer named Loren Eiseley suggests that we humans are like a Brazilian amphibian fish whose eyes have two lenses - one for seeing under the water and one for seeing above the water.
But most of us, most of the time, spend too little time in that other world - so we have cataracts on those second lenses and don’t commonly perceive the world of the Spirit because we don't spend enough time there.
St. Paul argues in the Bible that our blindness flows from our centering on the created things versus the creator - the finite versus the infinite - possibly because the finite is just so apparent to us - perhaps because our primal anxiety leads us to seek security in what we can most readily grasp - see, feel, hear, smell, and touch. (Marcus Borg)
And so what happens is what happened to the corrupt religious leaders that Jesus spoke with in today’s Gospel - we fail to seek the mature voice of creation. We stay content with the voice of origin, in all its fallacy, thus neglecting to notice the divinity that surrounds.
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Many of you have heard me tell the story of two Israelites walking together down a path.
It was a muddy path. There were stones and goopy puddles to avoid.
The first Israelite had his gaze fixed downward, on this muddy path directly in front of him and said, “What a dirty, drippy mess this is! My sandals are getting ruined, this mud is nearly impossible to walk through!”
But the second Israelite had his gaze firmly fixed on what was to his left, to his right, what was all around him. And he was in absolute awe as he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about - look up man - we’re walking past walls of stilled water - through the parted waters of the Red Sea!"
In many ways, that describes what you and I face every day - we are so caught up in looking down at the sidewalk - that we fail to look up at the grandeur around us.
And we fall prey to the temptation to limit our gaze to the finite and worldly - versus looking up - and the honing of our spiritual eyes to take in the miracle of life all around us.
Friends, in what ways are we limiting God because we are not looking up?
In what ways are we living in discontent because we're not seeking the maturity that can lift us up?
As imperfect as all of our upbrings have been, we have taken away some good things. And our mothers have, very likely, played an important role in that.
Over the last few weeks, I asked you all to send me photographs of your mother's, and to use one word to describe your mother.
And as we close out this sermon, we are going to play a video compilation of those pictures and adjectives.
And I would like to ask you to choose one word to characterize a voice that you need to hear this week. Maybe it's the word kind, loving, sensitive, supportive.
But God's voice is seeking to be heard.
And God's voice has often been channeled through our mothers.
This is a voice that is seeking to edify and lift us up.
Like newborn children, let us choose to hear that voice, over and over again, and it's words of comfort, safety, assurance, confidence, strength, encouragement, acceptance, contentment.
[ROLL St. David’s Mother’s Day VIDEO]
Amen.