Please Note That Most Messages Follow
The Revised Common Lectionary

Liturgy Based On Psalm 66:8-20:
Minister: O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard:

People: Which holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved.

Minister: For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried.

People: Thou broughtest us into the net; thou laidst affliction upon our loins.

Minister: Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water: but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place.

People: I will go into thy house with burnt offerings: I will pay thee my vows, Which my lips have uttered, and my mouth hath spoken, when I was in trouble.

Minister: I will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings, with the incense of rams; I will offer bullocks with goats. Selah.

People: Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.

Minister: I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue.

People: If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:

Minister: But verily God hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer.

People: Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me.

Minister: This is the Word of the Lord!
People: Thanks be unto God!

I have many wonderful memories from my childhood which involve my Mother. I will never forget trying to teach her how to ride a bicycle! Our house sat in a development at the end of the street. All our yards were connected one with another with no barriers in between and our house sat at the top of a slight hill. My Father, my Sister, and I got Mom on her bicycle and when she said she was ready we ran a few feet and turned her loose! Man did that woman go! She had it down perfectly and then it happened! Three yards down was the Graybeal’s back yard. In that back yard was a clothes line. For reasons we may never know, as Mom rode past that clothes line pole she let go of the handle bars of the bicycle and grabbed that pole! Round and around she went until both she and the bicycle were lying flat on the ground. To my knowledge my Mother never got on a bicycle again.

Of course there is the infamous "behind the couch" story. My Grandfather had traveled to Pennsylvania to visit our family. He was comfortably sitting on the couch in our living room when I had gotten in trouble with Mom and I bolted behind the couch to escape the "long arm of the law." Mom had a fly swatter in her grip and whenever she would run to one end of the couch I’d run to the other. She would then run to THAT end of the couch and I’d run to the other. After several relays to both ends of the couch my Mother said in a very authoritative voice: "Raymond CHARLES Osborne!!!! If you don’t come out of there this instant your punishment is going to be worse than ever!" To which I said in the wisdom of a six year old - "Well that’s what I’ve been trying to do for the last five minutes but YOU haven’t given ME half a chance!"

There are other childhood memories that I cherish about my Mother too. Every morning when I would wake up and stumble into the kitchen, my Mother would always be in there making my Father’s coffee to put in his thermos for work - one cup at a time.

There are a lot of things from my childhood that I cannot remember. There is one thing that I will never forget - my Mother and Father loved their children very much. There were far too numerous ways that they both proved their love to my sister and I that time will not permit me to mention them all here.

Thursday was a Father-Daughter day for Paige and I. Together we journeyed to Gardner-Webb University where I had to turn in a final project for Greek. Every now and again Paige would raise up and say "Daddy I love you." Of course I would reply to her "I love you too Sweetheart." Once I took it a bit further as I added: "Paige how do you know that Daddy loves you?" Her reply was pretty good I think for a four year old. "I just know."

In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus is still speaking to His disciples. He speaks to them about love. He tells them how it is that He will know that they love Him and how it is that they will know that He loves them.

In verses 15 and 21 Jesus says to them:

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me;" (NRSV)

How does God know we love Him? How does Jesus know we love Him? He knows we love Him IF we KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS. If we do the things He has asked us to do. If we are obedient to His call upon our lives. If we live the way He says we are to live. If we keep His commandments - Then He knows that we love Him.

It doesn’t take a degree in Theology or a knowledge of the Biblical languages to know what it takes for us to prove our love to God. It’s laid out in an elementary language that even a child can understand - "Keep my commandments." But what are those commandments? Do you think it was the ten commandments? I doubt it. I would say that more likely Jesus was referencing an occassion when He was interrogated by a bunch of lawyers about "What is the Greatest Commandments?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Isn’t that amazing? Jesus said the greatest two commandments are about love! Love for God and love for one another!

Jesus was about to die. He knew that. He knew Judas would betray him and the he would be crucified the next day. He had one last opportunity to teach them. What would he say? Would he tell them once again of his resurrection to come. Would he tell them a parable that reinforced their faith in God’s ultimate sovereignty. Would he reveal some hidden secrets of God’s plan for the end of time.

Of all the things he could have said he said "Love one another." Of all the hidden knowledge he could have revealed to them, of all the spiritual depths he could have sounded, he chose to remind them to love one another as he had loved them.

That’s pretty basic stuff! And maybe that’s what we need - to get back to basics. To strip away all the complexities and additions to life and remind ourselves what is most important. There is nothing more basic to the Christians faith and life than love. That is what it all boiled down to: "Love one another."

I don’t know about you, but I have an idea you and I share in common a busy schedule. Often my schedule becomes so filled with so many things that I find myself dreaming of what it would be like to have more hours in a day. As our church grows and becomes busier - I become busier. I then awaken to the realization that if there were more hours in the day we would probably schedule more meetings and appointments becoming even more busy than ever before.

The underlying purpose of life as taught in the Bible is love and how the most perfect love is found in God, given by God, and given through God. In the Corinthian passage Paul says of all things - love is the greatest. In his epistle, John continues this great theme of love:

"Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."

Today is Mother’s Day but do you know the story of the genesis of this holiday?

The history of Mother's day is a lesson in getting back to the greatest commandments. The story of the modern celebration of Mother’s day goes back to Ann Marie Jarvis.

Ann Marie Jarvis was a woman who not only gave birth to 12 children, eight of whom died in childhood, she founded a group called "Mother’s Day Work Clubs" that offered humanitarian aid to soldiers on both sides during the Civil War as well as attempts to improve sanitary conditions. After the Civil War she organized a "Mother's Friendship Day" to bring people from both sides of the war together and heal the wounds of the war.

In other words she took the ideal of a mother’s love and applied it to loving her neighbor - even when that neighbor was an enemy.

Ann Marie Jarvis died in 1905. After her death one of her daughters, Anna Jarvis, organized a memorial service for all mothers at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church. She also supplied carnations to be given to each participant in the service in honor or memory their mothers. The idea caught on and by 1914 "Mother’s Day" was a national holiday.

Mother's day was truly popular. It was so popular that some decided to cash in on its popularity. By 1923 Anna Jarvis found herself suing to stop a Mother’s Day festival. Later she was arrested for disturbing the peace at a Mother’s day convention. She was angry that the white carnations, which she had designated as the official Mother’s Day flower, were being sold. She said, "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit."

The original intent of Mother’s Day was to honor women who lived the ideal of a mother’s love. But it became a means of commercial profit. Somewhere along the line the real meaning of the holiday was lost in the trappings. And so its founder Anna Jarvis had to fight to get people back to the basics of Mother’s Day.

It has often been said that there is nothing like a Mother’s love. During one of my pastorates I was called to a home where a young school teacher was getting ready to go hunting when his rifle fell, shot him in the lower abdomen and he died instantly. His father had been killed in a logging accident years before. As I held her in my arms these were his mother’s words to me:

"Ray I thought I’d never make it when Bobby’s daddy was killed. But there has never been a hurt in my life that compares to losing my child."

Their are a lot of mothers unfortunately who know exactly how this mother feels. But our world is filled with people whose lives have been devastated by other disruptions. Hearts that are broken in two. Just think of the people affected by the tragedies of Kosovo, Littleton Colorado, and now the devastation of Oklahoma and Kansas.

Hear the rest of our Gospel lesson this morning. Hear the words of Jesus to your pain:

"I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."

What a promise! Let me read that again: "I will NOT leave you comfortless! I will come TO YOU!"

One of the things I remember about being a child is that every time I fell down and scraped my knees or whenever I struck out at a baseball game, or whenever I got my feelings hurt - I always went to Mom. And no matter what it was, Mom always had a way to make me feel better.

With my own children whenever they get hurt or sad - who do they cry for? Mom. See that’s what mom’s are all about. God has taken our mothers and given them a love that only they can understand.

But here’s the icing on the cake. As good as a mother’s love is - God’s love is even better!

God compares His wonderful care to that of a Mother in Isaiah 66:13 "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you;"

You see - perfect love is found in God. What about you this morning? Is there a pain in your life that just won’t go away? Would you give anything in this world to be able to wrap your arms around someone and hear these words "Fear not my child everything is going to be fine?"

I implore you to turn to God this morning. Claim His promise for your life! "I will not leave you comfortless! I will come to you!" Feel His Big Gentle Almighty arms wrapping around you this morning. And then hear Jesus saying to you:

Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you."

Amen.

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