What About Huldah This Mother`s Day
By Kathryn H Hamrick
Managing Director MetLife Financial Services, Shelby, NC
[Reprinted by permission from Baptists Today, May, 2000.]
Hopefully, some Baptist preachers will read this column before conjuring up their Mother`s Day sermons. Although not a seminarian, I have absorbed 50-plus Mother`s Day sermons and suspect that Modern Hermeneutics has had more to teach about postmillennialism than about motherhood.
Yet in my dictionary, "postmillennialism" is sandwiched between "postmenopausal" and "postnasal drip." How apropos! I can`t speak for you, but I can envision in this juxtaposition the rich outline of a three-point sermon.
You would think that even without hermeneutics or dictionaries, preachers would be able to get a better handle on motherhood, a subject whose ties to apple pie and the American flag are legendary. Yet come Mother`s Day, the tendency is to retreat to tradition and trot out a sugar stick.
I reckon there is safety in predictability. And some things are predictable.
For example, conservative preachers hand out an orchid to the oldest mother and then open their pulpit Bible to Ephesians KJV. Same chapter, same verse as last year.
Broadman Hymnal churches pass out carnations to the mothers with the most children, then ask the congregation to open their pew Bibles to Proverbs 31. If they have graduated to the 1991 Baptist Hymnal the congregation will also sing "God Give Us Christian Homes." Moderate churches ask all the mothers to stand, and also all the aunts, sisters, cousins and other married and unmarried persons (including males) who have ever nurtured someone. Then they read the Cotton Patch take on Ruth.
Give us a break! The Bible has a lot more to offer women than a verse in Ephesians, a chapter in Proverbs and just one woman in the Old Testament.
We would welcome a sermon on one of the hundreds of female Bible characters, especially some whose stories we rarely hear. Like Esther and Hannah, Dorcas and Priscilla.
And what about Huldah? I was well past 40 when a woman preacher at the small Methodist church up the street let the cat out of the bag about Huldah.
As for the Proverbs 31 woman, if you hold her out as our Mother`s Day role model, expect to lose 92% of us. By verse 17 "Supermom" will kick in. Behind our smiles we`re composing Monday`s "to do" list: balance the bank statement, plant petunias, volunteer at school, backup the computer, get the tires rotated, plan the family vacation, and make phone calls for the Chamber.
Thank goodness a friend helped me take the Proverbs 31 woman off the pedestal. She asked if I knew why "her children rise up and call her blessed." It is, she said, because they don`t know her name.
If you don`t think that will preach, ask your wife. There is a sermon here, one that most women need to hear-and badly.
Indeed motherhood should lend itself to powerful preaching. So what about lobbing a well prepared three-pointer our way? Speak to us about courage, wisdom, and hope. Preach to us on priorities, purpose, and possibilities.
Tell us of forgiveness-and a Christian approach to revenge?
Use humor. It is one of mother`s chief survival tools. A sermon such as "What to do when the epidural wears off" would hit the nail on the head.
Let me conclude by confessing that it is not ladylike to pick sermons apart. It may not even be Christian. Nor is it wise to find fault with the annual, lovingly prepared sermon on motherhood. Especially since for the rest of the ecclesiastical year motherhood does not seem to appear on the theological radar screen.
But in addition to casting pearls of wisdom about the traditional roles that can bring such joy, there is a nagging question that just won`t go away. What about Huldah? ¢
